From building an Automation SaaS to getting acquired by Notion

During his stint as a product manager at 2014, the time when SaaS was booming, Ashok noticed that there’s a high demand for complex workflow automations from customers. This got him to start Automate.io, and they would later go into head on competition with Zapier.

Fast forward, Ashok was getting inbound interests for acquisition left, right and center. But he and his team kept their heads down and kept on building.

But one inbound interests for a partnership got his attention, which eventually got them acquired by Notion.

Tune into this episode to gain insights on how they powered automations at 30,000+ organizations and the A-Z journey of getting acquired by Notion.

Key take aways:

8:11 - Scale of Automate

10:23 - Acquisition opportunity

15:23 - Team expectation management during acquisition

19:16 - Duration for acquisition and competing offers

21:22 - Company structure that smoothened the acquisition

24:34 - Acquisition - Culture Compatibility and Adaptation

26:36 - Navigating specific cultural differences 

29:20 - Transition from role as a CEO post acquisition

32:32 - GTM for 1st 100 customers and first 500

36:39 - Pricing models

39:37 - Do’s and Don’ts for acquisition

Happy listening!

Happy listening!