Coda Growth Playbook

Shishir Mehrotra realized that in most companies, a document is just a 'dumb' container. He wanted to build a document that had the power of an app.

The 'Maker-Incentive' Strategy & The 'Packs' Ecosystem: Coda tacticaly won by targeting the 'Power User' who felt limited by Notion or Airtable. Their growth engine is the 'Maker Competition'—running high-stakes contests to build the best 'Doc'. By launching 'Coda Packs' (integrations that let the doc *do* things like send Slack messages or pull Jira tickets), they moved from a note-taking tool to a 'Custom Operating System'. Their growth relies on 'Utility Lock-in'—where a team builds a bespoke, complex workflow that is too valuable to migrate, ensuring high-margin retention.