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The reference call
The call was about Akshay, the founder Cristina Cordova had worked for at her first full-time startup, Pulse. He had been her TA in a computer science persuasive technology class, and Pulse grew out of that course. About seven years into her time at Stripe, she got his message: he was thinking about joining Notion, and they wanted a reference from someone who had worked with him at a startup.
Ivan was clearly deliberate about whether Akshay was the right fit. Notion had about ten people at the time, so the hire mattered. When the questions ran out, he asked what she was up to and why she didn't join Notion herself. She was on parental leave with her first child, and with Akshay just hired, she couldn't see what she would do there.
Choosing Notion
She stayed in touch and angel invested in Notion some months later. After that came a tough stretch at Stripe, when what she wanted to work on wasn't what was being asked of her and she couldn't see her next job there. Notion was the first company that came to mind. She weighed it against one other company, and both were tools that help people build things. She chose Notion.
How did a Stanford class lead to a startup?
Stanford's Persuasive Technology Lab was founded by researcher B.J. Fogg in 1998 and studied how software can shape people's behavior. A course built around that field asked students to build real apps, and several students kept developing their projects after the class ended. Stanford has a long record of coursework turning into companies, since students there are surrounded by classmates, advisers, and investors. Pulse, the news-reading app, was one of those outgrowths, and LinkedIn acquired it in 2013.
Why does one hire matter so much at ten people?
In a company of ten, each person is a tenth of the team. A single hire shapes the culture, the speed of decisions, and who gets recruited next, because early employees tend to refer people they know. There is also no layer of management to absorb a bad fit. This is why founders of tiny companies often put candidates through far more scrutiny than large employers do.
Why do reference checks usually run so short?
Most reference calls are used to confirm what a candidate already said in interviews, so they cover a short list of standard questions. Recruiters often make several of them in a day, which pushes each one toward a quick format. Founders hiring for a ten-person team tend to treat references as another interview instead. That is how a call can stretch past an hour.
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