The giant competitor’s launch we feared turned out to be an opportunity

The giant competitor’s launch we feared turned out to be an opportunity

Nearing the end of 2023, we decided Morgen’s Q1 focus would be simple: integrate with the task and project managers most hotly requested by our users. For over a year, Morgen users were time-blocking tasks from Todoist, Microsoft, and Google in their calendars, and we knew that those who used Morgen for this purpose were most likely to stick.

So we set our sites on four big integrations, starting with the most requested one: Notion. Morgen users had given this feature request 6x the votes of any other integration. We knew people were seeking a great solution for planning and time blocking their Notion tasks.

This was going to be a big win to kickoff 2024. Then on January 1, Notion dropped this not so subtle hint:

Yes, that’s right… the promise of a calendar that was apparently both exciting and dropping soon. If you’re a Notion fan, you likely saw the content rollout that followed, teasing Notion calendar. As far as we could tell their launch was scheduled two weeks before our own.

Morgen is tiny compared to Notion. Suddenly Notion consultants and influencers we were in talks with about our launch mostly went silent. They knew what was coming and were probably under embargo… it was hard to provide a compelling reason to prioritize our launch instead.

And here’s the thing with going up against Notion. It’s not a tool people love, choose, and have made ubiquitous across many parts of their lives.

We considered cutting the integration. The work was 90% done, and it was a deflating sunk cost to swallow.

But without knowing exactly what Notion was launching, it seemed silly to give so close to the finish line. We moved the integration into testing and prepared for a smaller rollout.

Then something happened: Notion Calendar dropped. Notion influencers and consultants were all over YouTube and X declaring their love for it.

But then, some grumblings started happening. Because let’s be clear, when you’re as big and beloved as Notion, some people will feel let down and left out.

To our surprise, the noisiest complaints - limited integrations, platforms, visibility of properties - were all gaps we could fill. One of the most voted comments on Reddit suggested Morgen as a better alternative, and the integration hadn’t even launched.

Within minutes, we added a sign-up to our homepage for those who wanted to be notified when the integration was available. We quickly created a landing page highlighting how Morgen + Notion was altogether different from Notion Calendar. We started talking about it in our Discord community.

Our site traffic spiked in the days following the Notion Calendar launch, hundreds signed up for early access, and on the day of our integration launch, we surpassed all previous daily downloads.

I’m so glad we didn’t shy away. Notion amplified the conversation about calendars, it created an idea of how much better Notion could be if it coexisted with your calendar, and for those for whom the hype didn’t live up, Morgen became a compelling alternative.

I wouldn’t suggest building a business on tool integrations. Bigger tools have the resources to quickly make improvements and add new features in ways we can’t. But as they move to satisfy large numbers of people, there will always be those who feel left out and disappointed and who are seeking alternatives.

On January 1, I may have been cursing Notion, but now, two months later, we owe them a thanks.