The first thing one notices when entering Notion’s new downtown San Francisco headquarters is the artwork. Not because it’s grandiose, but because it all rests on the floor, leaning against the walls.
The C-suite wanted their offices to have a casual, residential feel, but the reason the art isn’t hung is so that any piece can easily be picked up and moved — similar to the interface of Notion’s collaboration platform, which has exploded in popularity since the pandemic.
“The office should feel like an extension of our product,” said cofounder Akshay Kothari. It’s also why every floor is painted Cream Froth, matching the software’s signature color.
Last month, the company, which has a $10 billion valuation, made its move to the Monadnock Building at 685 Market St., migrating north from the Mission, where it had been based since its founding in 2013.
Notion signed a 10-year direct lease and is in the process of occupying five floors spanning 100,000 square feet, doubling the size of its previous headquarters. Kothari said there is an understanding with the landlord, Brookfield, that Notion gets first dibs on available space in the rest of the 10-story building, built a year after the devastating 1906 earthquake.
The move marks a milestone for a company that nearly folded a decade ago, before its founders pivoted from catering to software developers to providing a platform for use by the general public. “Notion nerds,” as they are sometimes known, use the tool for everything from daily journals to travel planners to an organizer for polycules.
Notion has raised more than $330 million in funding, claims 100 million users, and has more than 1,000 employees worldwide, half of them in San Francisco. Kothari said the company requires employees to come into the office Mondays, Thursdays, and one other day each week.
“Even during the thick of the pandemic, we never hired for remote-first roles,” Kothari said. “Our mantra is that when you can come in, please do. We believe in the value of being together in person.”
After getting the keys in January, it took Michael McGinley, Notion’s real estate leader, four months to renovate the top three floors of the Monadnock Building. That involved spraying the ceilings with acoustic foam and building out 18 meeting rooms per floor, named for “timeless” tools like the Le Creuset Dutch oven and the binder clip. Each floor is also packed with 17 phone booths.
One of the building’s most striking qualities is a central atrium that allows in natural light from all directions. “This was one of the last properties we toured, and we all fell in love with it,” McGinley said, pointing to its Beaux-Arts character and Brookfield’s commitment to helping pay for renovations.
Notion’s search for an office took around a year to complete and involved touring more than 50 San Francisco properties, from SoMa to Jackson Square.
“Most of the tech office deals we had seen up until that point had been second-generation subleases,” said Luke Ogelsby, a broker with CBRE who represented Notion. “Credit to them for having the vision to build something out and for taking the plunge.”
The building’s last major tenant was Uber, which decamped to Mission Bay in 2019. Afterward, Brookfield — which purchased the building in 2014 for $80 million — renovated and reopened the Dawn Club on the ground floor, which initially opened in the early 1930s.
When Notion CEO Ivan Zhao and Kothari toured the building, they were brought in through the jazz club, where a band was hired to play for them. “That was a special touch,” Kothari said.
A combination of the tech industry’s pullback and a wave of mortgage defaults and foreclosures has left more than a third of the city’s 86 million square feet of office space vacant, according to first-quarter data from Cushman & Wakefield. Slowly, the market is turning around as more properties trade hands at a discount and a new crop of tech tenants graduate to bigger offices.
Kothari said there was never a doubt that Notion wanted to remain in San Francisco. Even though Market Street’s reputation has taken a hit since 2020, the search was more about finding the right building as opposed to fixating on a neighborhood, he said.
“We hope to build tools as timeless as this building,” Kothari said. “The fact that it’s reinventing itself at the same time as the rest of the city is something we’re really proud to participate in.”
