Most people I talk to about Notion view the app as a document editor or a sort of internal wiki on steroids. More advanced teams build out systems for project tracking, planning and reporting.
Document-based internal tooling has built Notion a great business, but their biggest opportunity is to replace HubSpot.
Because Notion feels so familiar to Google Drive and parts of the Atlassian suite, it’s counter-intuitive that their end game wouldn’t be displacing those giants, but Notion databases, combined with AI, are the foundation for a much more interesting future.
Today, a company can use Notion to run almost their entire business:
- CRM (Notion database)
- CMS (Notion database)
- Document management (Notion documents)
- Publishing (Publishing a Notion page as a site)
- Forms for data capture (to a database)
The biggest missing piece compared to HubSpot is marketing automation, but that’s an acquisition away. Other than that, you can already manage customer records across the entire lifecycle.
On top of the flexible database foundation, a robust API and integrations make nearly anything possible. You can use Notion to track inventory of physical products, run hiring processes, and build automated workflows.
"But that Notion feature isn’t good..."
I’ve heard many people point out the things they don’t like about particular Notion features and yes, compared to HubSpot, functions like site publishing feel extremely primitive.
There are several reasons why these kinds of product problems, perceived or real, are non-issues.
First, it’s not rocket science to build out robust features and Notion has a great team. They’ve also proven they can successfully acquire and integrate products. My bet is that the areas that feel primitive are that way because of intentional focus on core functionality and AI. In other words, it’s safe to assume that your complaints are solved problems in the future.
Second, it’s easy to forget that the threshold for software complexity and power at many small and medium sized business is low. They aren’t power users, so simple is preferable.
As my friend pointed out recently, one of the biggest risks Notion faces is that the app is noticeably slow, which could be very problematic as user expectations continue to increase. At their scale, with their architecture, fixing it would be a huge undertaking.
AI in a truly connected ecosystem will feel like magic
And this will make HubSpot feel antiquated. There are two significant paradigm shifts in this potential future.
Document management and customer management merge
Most of us still operate in a world where document management and customer management happen in different systems. That fragmentation is particularly painful for small and medium sized businesses. Closing that gap is a multi-billion dollar industry of integration-as-a-service tools (a la Zapier, Tray and the like).
Notion’s recent additions of calendar and email apps remove that separation, creating a truly connected system, which is what people have always wanted. Your calendar can finally be meaningfully connected to your CRM, documents, email—the entirety of your company’s information.
AI will make the system more useful in real time
Businesses are dynamic. Products change, people change, processes change, data changes, but the systems we use for document and customer management are rigid. How many dollars and hours have been spent modifying Salesforce?
Previously these kinds of fundamental overhauls were tedious, which was the rhetorical (and practical) dark side of flexibility, but AI solves that problem. Anyone can make complex changes to the system.
The real magic will come from Notion’s upcoming agentic AI functionality1, which could fundamentally change the way businesses use software to operate.
- Did your business model change significantly? AI can instantly restructure your CRM to fit the new requirements.
- Did a call transcript include a decision about a major project? AI can automatically update project documentation and timelines.
- Did a customer email a support rep about a huge problem? AI can automatically search customer notes, product documentation and internal calls, draft a reply email for the rep to review and schedule a meeting with the customer on the reps calendar.
- Is there a pattern in new customers from a specific industry? AI can generate marketing assets and execute a content and email campaign.
Why stop at Google Drive if you can take out HubSpot too? The Grammarly, Superhuman and Coda combination would indicate they are thinking along the same lines.
Perhaps most importantly, Notion has the cash and revenue growth to easily make this a reality.
Join almost 3,000 subscribers via Substack to get notified about new posts.