Investing in Free Users to Fuel Growth

Rama Katkar has helped steer some of the most iconic companies in tech through moments of scale and transformation. Now CFO at Notion and formerly a finance leader at Instacart and Credit Karma, she joins CJ to unpack what it means to build a modern finance function inside a product-led growth company. They discuss how to design finance for velocity without losing discipline, the art of forecasting when virality drives your business, and why Notion’s path to profitability looks different from its peers. Rama also shares lessons from scaling Credit Karma through its $8.1B acquisition by Intuit, what she learned about IPO readiness at Instacart, and how finance leaders can balance ambition with realism in uncertain markets.

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LINKS:

Rama Katkar on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ramakatkar/

Notion: https://www.notion.so/

CJ on X (@cjgustafson222): https://x.com/cjgustafson222

Mostly metrics: https://www.mostlymetrics.com

RELATED EPISODES:

“Let’s Just See What Breaks” — Intuit’s CFO on Being a Disruptor When You’re Already the Incumbent—

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TIMESTAMPS:

(00:00) Preview – Credit Karma, Instacart, and the Road to Notion

(00:01:14) Welcome & Episode Overview – Rama Katkar, CFO of Notion

(00:02:22) Sponsor – Fidelity Private Shares | Mercury | RightRev

(00:06:10) Interview Begins – From Dinner Conversations to Notion’s Pricing Evolution

(00:09:20) Early Launch of Notion AI and Add-On Pricing

(00:12:40) Community-Led Growth and Notion’s Viral Flywheel

(00:14:38) Sponsor – Tipalti | Aleph | Rillet

(00:18:39) Who Adopts Notion First? Product, Design, and Engineering

(00:20:32) Turning Free Users Into Paid Teams

(00:22:09) Why Notion Added an Enterprise Sales Motion

(00:26:29) The CFO’s Long Game: Balancing Free Users and Cost

(00:30:44) How Notion Experiments With AI Pricing

(00:32:42) Rama’s Three-Part Framework for Forecasting

(00:36:38) Why Notion Plans on a Six-Month Cadence

(00:40:56) Transition – From Forecasting to M&A: Credit Karma’s Wild Ride

(00:41:31) Selling Credit Karma During the Pandemic and DOJ Review

(00:44:04) Closing the Deal With Intuit

(00:49:47) Why the Org Chart Is the Most Important M&A Slide

(00:52:08) The Long-Ass Lightning Round

(00:56:45) Career Advice to Her Younger Self – Context Over Calculation

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SPONSORS:

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#CFOInsights #StartupFinance #NotionHQ #ProductLedGrowth #RunTheNumbersPodcast

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