Notion · AI product · Mid · 45 to 60 minutes

Where should Notion apply AI in SDR outreach?

Notion is a workspace app where people write, organize knowledge, and manage projects in one place. Answer this product management case and get it graded line by line against a weighted rubric.

Problem framing
AI product judgment
Prioritization
Experiment design
Metrics

The situation

The head of sales and an engineering lead ask you to recommend where Notion should apply AI to help the sales development team. SDRs spend much of their day researching accounts, deciding whom to contact, drafting outreach, and following up across many leads. Interest in generative AI is high, and some leaders want a fast tool that helps reps write better outbound emails. Others worry that the team may be optimizing the wrong step, because sales results depend on a broader workflow and any weak AI output could hurt first impressions with prospects. You need to advise whether Notion should invest in an AI feature for SDR outreach now, and if so what problem it should target first. Assume you have one PM, one engineer, and six weeks to validate or pilot something before the next planning cycle. Your recommendation must balance speed, confidence in the problem, and the risk of shipping customer-facing AI that looks impressive but does not move outcomes.

What to produce

Write a 1 to 2 page product recommendation memo.

Your answer must

Define the primary user, the job to be done, and the business outcome you are trying to improve.
Compare at least two candidate problems in the SDR outreach workflow that AI could address, with value, feasibility, and risk tradeoffs.
Describe how you would validate the problem before building, including evidence to gather, methods, and the signals that would change your mind.
Recommend whether to build now, run a pilot, or delay, and state the first scope you would test if you choose to proceed.
Propose success metrics for both validation and any initial launch, plus the main risks and mitigations.

Constraints

You have a very small team and only one planning cycle to validate or pilot a direction.
You cannot rely on large new datasets, long model training work, or a broad rebuild of the sales workflow.
Any AI output may affect customer outreach, so quality, trust, and inconsistency are major risks.

Format

Use sections: problem, options, validation plan, recommendation, metrics and risks.

How Notion actually played it

Explains how an AI engineer spent a month as a sales development rep to find which problems were worth solving, discovering that timing of outreach mattered more than email wording. A discovery lesson for AI tool builders.

Spend time inside the workflow before building a tool
The real problem may differ from the assumed one

Built from Context Before Code: How Notion Put an AI Engineer on the Sales Floor by First Round Review.