Unifying the tech stack for X&

Xand is a venture capital firm that invests in early-stage startups, focusing on sectors like crypto, AI, and fintech. Founded in 2016 and headquartered in Los Angeles, California, Xand has a proven team with entrepreneurial experience and a strong network.

Besides running their own fund, Xand also provides “VC-as-a-Service” to high net worth individuals to help them set up and run their own funds. To support this, Xand is developing their own proprietary VC management software called Sanbo.

Xand has more than 20 team members who are working remote across Singapore, Japan, the US and Europe.

The Challenge

When Tashi from X& reached out to us, they already had put a solid Notion System in place, because they followed our publicly available Notion For Business Design Principles.

But they were in a unique situation due to the three pillars of their operations:

• Running their own fund
• Running funds for external teams (”VC-as-a-Service”)
• Building a SaaS product (their own proprietary VC Management Software)

Having to manage internal and external workflows is a big challenge in Notion. Oftentimes, teams default to inefficient setups or accidentally expose confidential data because they don’t get experienced support at the right time.

Since the team had only recently shifted to Notion, many workflows were still scattered across a wide tech stack:

• Engineering was working in Trello
• Research was managing the deal flow in Google Sheets
• The Design Team had to monitor countless different inboxes for requests

What’s more, Tashi and the team were spending a ton of time in meetings, but had trouble tracking follow-ups and action items.

This all made it really hard for team members to focus on their work and impossible for management to get a clear overview of progress, planning and execution.

How we structured the Notion Consulting Process

In order to deliver quick and meaningful improvements in just four weeks without interrupting the day-to-day operations of X&, we used our Seven Day Sprint Model.

Here’s how this Notion Consulting approach looks like in practice:

1. Weekly Sprint Cycles: We implemented weekly 30-minute check-in calls with Tashi and the remaining leadership team. These focused sessions allowed us to align on progress and select 2-3 priorities for the upcoming sprint. This agile approach ensured we were always working on the most impactful tasks.
2. Immediate Impact: By focusing on short sprints, we were able to deliver meaningful workflow improvements from week one. This eliminated any lengthy ramp-up and helped to further increase buy-in from the team.
3. Interviews with Key Stakeholders: In the first week of the project, we sat down with every department head to learn about their current workflows, bottlenecks and frustrations. Then, we designed an improved workflow in Notion and helped them migrate their existing data.
4. Direct Communication Channels: We set up a common Slack channel to establish a direct line of communication with the entire team. This allowed us to provide real-time updates on changes and quickly address any questions or roadblocks.
5. Iterative Improvement: In typical agile fashion, we continuously improved one area after another over the course of 4 weeks. This iterative process made sure that we could quickly test new solutions and adjust based on short feedback cycles, making sure that the final result precisely met X&’s needs.

Our Seven Day Sprint Model is tailored for fast-paced environments like Venture Captial, where every minute counts. It’s perfect for teams that can’t hit pause on their work, since it doesn’t interrupt the day-to-day operations.

By combining short sprints, direct communication, and continuous improvement, we were able to transform X&’s Notion workspace in a short time while helping every team member to transition to the new system.

Implemented Solutions

Meetings & Tasks

One of the most powerful things Notion can do for your team is to break down silos.

If you have a good meeting culture, you already know that you should end meetings with specific Next Actions.

But all too often, these Next Actions are only recorded in the meeting notes or the follow-up email – siloed away and not part of the general project management.

This puts a big burden on every team member to continuously do double entry and manually record any follow-ups on their own to-do list.

Vice versa, it’s really hard for management to see whether tasks from meetings are completed in time and where additional support or follow-up would be needed.

To break down this silo between meetings notes and tasks, we created a simple yet powerful meeting template for X&.

In this template, meeting attendees can record any notes and follow-ups which then are automatically added to the overall project management system.

What’s more, there’s a central overview to track progress for meeting follow-ups, identify bottlenecks and analyse how well the time in meetings is spent overall.

Daily Progress Updates

If your team uses Notion the right way, then you sit on a treasure trove of data.

Leveraging Notion’s databases, you can transform the structured information into any insights you need to run your business.

In the case of X&, that meant having Daily Progress Updates to motivate team members and help management see progress in real time.

Now, everyone on the team receives a daily email with

• their open tasks for the week
• their finished tasks for the week
• and the overall progress towards 100%

At the same time, team leads receive an update on recently completed work, which eliminates the need to constantly check in for work updates.

Tailored Department Workflows

To unify the tech stack and help Engineering, Research and Design fully migrate to Notion, we created dedicated workflows in Notion that

• mirrored and improved their existing setups, making it a no-brainer for the team to switch and
• integrated it with the overall team setup to ensure everyone was working into one single source of truth

Let’s take a closer look at the design workflow.

Previously, the design team

• Received requests via Slack, Email, in-person conversations or text messages
• Had no way to see their overall workload and use it to communicate realistic timelines for requests
• Spent an outsized amount of time reporting on progress and other admin work (rather than finishing designs)
• Had a hard time delegating work within the team

This is a fairly typical situation for “agency-within” departments in companies. “Agency-within” departments happen whenever a certain team mainly delivers work to other stakeholders in the company and work mostly reactive.

Very common examples for this include:

• Design Teams in Product-driven companies
• Marketing Teams in Product-driven companies
• HR Teams during a hyper-growth phase
• Legal Teams

Over time, we’ve developed our TTTF Framework to help streamline this process and help the “agency-within” department break free from the vicious cycle.

(it’s a concept that I also shared during my speaker appearance at Notion’s big Make With Notion Conference in Berlin)

The new workflow for the design team looks completely different:

• Take incoming requests through a single form (and make sure that all relevant information is immediately provided)
• Automatically show current workload & deliverables to people requesting new work to build understanding for realistic timelines
• Stakeholders are automatically notified of any progress on their request
• Fully integrated with the remaining Project Management system to easily delegate and track work

Managing Tasks Across Different Access Levels

Distributed Access Rights are currently the biggest challenge in Notion.

Notion is best used for internal management in a mostly transparent team culture.

Specific confidential parts can always be walled-off (like HR or Finance), but by and at large, you want an interconnected system to make the most of it.

Which posed a big challenge for X&, since they were also managing the funds of their various clients in Notion.

In these situations, there are a series of tools we can deploy to help create different access levels while still giving the management a central overview of everything going on.

Which tool is the best is highly dependant on the specific requirements.

In the case of X&, we opted for a Global Task Aggregator.

This is a special Notion Database that is connected to all individual Task Databases. Using no-code automations and formulas, we can then display all tasks in one single place, show analytics and run advanced workflows.

Now, the core team has one single source of truth for all their work and no longer has to check 7+ different teamspaces to make sure nothing falls through the cracks.

Fund-in-a-box Setup

Last but not least, we created a “Fund-in-a-box” setup for X& to help them onboard new clients quickly to Notion.

Rather than having to rebuild the same setup every time a new fund is created, the team now has a short SOP with 8 easy steps that replicates a full setup including

• Tasks & Projects
• Meetings & Notes
• Fundraise & KPI Trackers

plus an integration with all the other elements of the workspace (like the Task Aggregator and the Daily Progress Updates).