How Notion Turned Templates Into a Growth Engine

Lucas: Notion launched as a note-taking app in 2016. By 2020, it was a platform. The engine that drove that shift wasn't a feature - it was a template. Luna: A template? Like a pre-built page for project management or a habit tracker? Lucas: Exactly. But Notion didn't just ship a few default templates. They built a gallery where users could publish their own templates, share them, and even earn recognition. By 2022, the template gallery had over 5,000 templates, and user-generated templates accounted for more than 60% of new sign-ups. That's the kind of growth that doesn't require a huge marketing budget. Luna: So users were essentially doing Notion's marketing for them. But how did they get the first few templates? You need critical mass for a gallery to be useful. Lucas: That's the classic chicken and egg problem. Notion solved it by seeding the gallery internally first. Their team built around 50 high-quality templates for common use cases - meeting notes, task lists, a simple CRM. Then they opened submissions to power users who had already been building custom setups. Those early adopters became template creators, and their templates attracted new users who then became creators themselves. Luna: So the templates acted as both onboarding and distribution. New users see a template for 'Personal Dashboard' and they're instantly productive. They don't have to start from a blank page. Lucas: Right. Blank page syndrome is real. Notion's template gallery removed that friction. And because templates were created by other users, they felt more authentic than something Notion wrote in a boardroom. The templates also had a viral hook: when you used a template, it often linked back to the creator's profile or website. That gave creators an incentive to promote their templates, which brought more people to Notion. Luna: I remember seeing a template for 'Startup OS' that went viral on Twitter. The creator got thousands of downloads, and each download was a new user for Notion. It's like an affiliate program without the commission. Lucas: Exactly. But Notion also added social features: you could duplicate a template with one click, you could see how many times a template had been duplicated, and there were curated collections like 'Made by Students' or 'For Remote Teams'. That turned the gallery into a discovery engine. By 2023, the top 100 templates had been duplicated over 10 million times combined. That's 10 million new workspaces, each one a potential paid conversion down the line. Luna: But not all of those users convert. Notion's freemium model means many stay free. Still, the templates reduce churn because users have invested time setting up their workspace with templates they like. Lucas: That's the stickiness. Once you've built your entire workflow inside Notion using a custom template, switching to another tool is painful. The template itself becomes a switching cost. And Notion made it easy to share your own setup, so power users became evangelists. They'd tweet 'Here's my Notion setup for freelancers' and include a link to duplicate. That's a viral loop that doesn't cost Notion a cent. Luna: So what's the downside? I mean, if templates are so powerful, why doesn't every SaaS product do this? Lucas: A few reasons. First, your product needs to be flexible enough that templates make sense. A project management tool like Asana can have templates, but a single-purpose app like a calculator can't. Second, you need a community of users who are willing to create and share. Notion had a dedicated user base on Twitter and Reddit before the template gallery launched. Third, you need to moderate quality. Notion had to invest in curation - they featured high-quality templates and hid low-effort ones. If the gallery is full of spam, it loses trust. Luna: And there's also the risk that your most popular templates become the product itself. If everyone uses the same 'Project Manager' template, does Notion become just another project management tool? Lucas: That's a real risk. Notion's strategy was to keep the core product flexible and let templates be the surface layer. They also started offering official templates in partnership with companies like Headspace and Doordash. That gave them control over top-tier content while still benefiting from the UGC long tail. By 2024, Notion had over 50,000 templates in the gallery, and the company estimated that template-driven sign-ups had saved them over $100 million in customer acquisition costs. Luna: That's a staggering number. And it's all because they turned users into marketers. I think the lesson here is that product marketing doesn't always have to be about ads or campaigns. Sometimes the best marketing is building a mechanism that lets your users sell for you. Lucas: Exactly. The template gallery is a perfect example of product-led growth. The product itself - the ability to create and share templates - is the marketing channel. And it worked because it aligned incentives: users got recognition and a better workflow, Notion got free acquisition. It's a win-win that's hard to replicate but worth studying. Luna: I think a lot of product marketers overlook this because it requires giving up control. You have to trust your users to create content that represents your brand. Notion did that, and it paid off. Lucas: And they didn't just trust blindly. They built systems: template submissions, reviews, featured sections, and analytics for creators. They treated their template ecosystem like a marketplace. And when you look at their growth curve - from 1 million users in 2019 to over 20 million by 2022 - the template gallery is a huge part of that story. Luna: If these marketing conversations have sparked something you've actually used - like a new way to think about your own product's growth - honestly, if today was worth a coffee to you, that's the link: buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Lucas: Yeah, it's a small way to keep the show ad-free and independent. We don't have sponsors, so listener support is what makes this possible. Luna: And we really appreciate it. Now, back to templates. I want to dig into one specific example: the Notion 'Second Brain' template. It went viral on YouTube and drove a massive spike in sign-ups. How did that happen? Lucas: The 'Second Brain' template was created by a productivity YouTuber named Thomas Frank. He had a large audience already, and he built a Notion template that mirrored the PARA method from Tiago Forte. He published a video tutorial showing how to set it up, with a link to duplicate the template. That video got over 2 million views. Every view was a potential Notion user. The template itself was duplicated over 500,000 times. That's half a million new workspaces from a single creator. Luna: So Notion benefited from the creator's existing audience. That's influencer marketing, but without a paid contract. The creator did it because it built their own brand and drove traffic to their other content. Lucas: Right. And Notion didn't have to negotiate a deal. They just made it easy to share templates. The creator saw the value in creating the template because it positioned them as an expert. It's a classic platform play: provide the infrastructure, let others build on top, and capture the growth. Luna: But not every product has that kind of creator ecosystem. For a B2B SaaS targeting enterprises, templates might not have the same viral effect. Lucas: True. But even in B2B, templates can work. Salesforce has AppExchange, which is essentially a marketplace of custom solutions built by partners. HubSpot has a template marketplace for email and landing pages. The key is that the templates solve a specific pain point. For Notion, it was 'I want to organize my life but I don't know where to start.' For HubSpot, it's 'I need a professional email template but I'm not a designer.' The template removes friction and showcases the product's value. Luna: So the template is a form of product demo. You're not just telling someone what the product can do; you're giving them a working example they can use immediately. Lucas: Exactly. And that active use is far more powerful than a passive demo. When you duplicate a Notion template, you're already using Notion. You've invested five minutes, and you're likely to explore more. That's why the conversion rate from template users to paid subscribers was 20% higher than from other acquisition channels, according to Notion's internal data. Luna: So the lesson is: if your product has any customizability, expose it as a template. Let users build on it and share it. And make the sharing mechanism as simple as a single click. Lucas: And measure the impact. Notion tracked template duplicates as a leading indicator of sign-ups. They could see which templates were driving the most growth and feature those. They also gave template creators analytics - how many duplicates, which countries, etc. That gamified the process and encouraged more creation. Luna: I think a lot of product marketers get stuck on the 'create once, use once' mindset. They make a template for a blog post or a webinar, but they don't think of it as a living growth asset. Notion's templates are constantly updated and iterated by the community. Lucas: That's a great point. A template is not a one-time asset. It's a platform for ongoing engagement. And the best part? It scales without incremental cost. Every new template adds value to the entire ecosystem. That's the network effect that made Notion's template gallery one of the most efficient growth engines in SaaS. Luna: So if you're a product marketer looking at this, what's the first step? You can't just copy Notion's exact model, but there are principles to take away. Lucas: First, identify the most common starting points for your users. What's the first thing they want to do when they open your product? For Notion, it was 'create a page.' For a CRM, it might be 'add a contact.' Build a template for that action. Second, make it shareable. Not just a PDF download, but a live template that opens in your product. Third, incentivize your power users to create templates. Give them recognition, features on your site, or even early access to new features. Fourth, curate and promote the best templates. Quality over quantity. And fifth, track the metrics: duplicates, sign-ups, and conversion rates. Optimize the templates that drive the most value. Luna: That's a solid framework. And it's not just for SaaS. I've seen e-commerce brands use product templates - like 'build your own bundle' - that customers can share. It's the same principle: give users a blueprint that makes them successful, and they'll do the marketing for you. Lucas: Exactly. At its heart, the template strategy is about lowering the barrier to value. When a user can go from zero to productive in two clicks, they're hooked. And when they can share that experience with others, the growth takes care of itself. Notion proved that templates aren't just a feature - they're a growth engine. Luna: And honestly, that's a lesson that applies to almost any product. The question is: what's your template? Lucas: That's the question every product marketer should be asking. And if you find it, you might just unlock your next growth wave.