“I favour founders who are obsessed with building products that users will love”: Interview with Itxaso del Palacio, Partner at Notion Capital
Summary
Having made 80+ investments to date, the Notion team founded, built, and exited two successful SaaS businesses – Star and MessageLabs. My technical background as an engineer — the field in which I obtained a PhD — starts with the analysis of a big topic and finishes focusing on a very specific question, in which you become a subject expert. As a result, it has since attracted a lot of capital — with numerous VCs now investing in this space — which endorses Notion’s decision all those years ago. This gives European teams a fantastic opportunity to build global companies, without the costs traditionally associated with the ‘enterprise sales’ model. In my case, if founders are able to communicate a clear value proposition, product vision and roadmap, as well as a scalable strategy for reaching customers and users, they will trigger my imagination and begin a powerful conversation.