How Notion took over the World (the history of Notion)

The $10 billion productivity app that almost failed

Notion is one of the biggest productivity apps ever, with over 20 million users. It has a very loyal following worldwide by both individual people and large companies. Thanks to this, Notion is now worth a whopping $10 billion.

But did you know that they almost failed completely at the start, so much so that the founders had to fire all their employees and flee to Japan just to be able to sustain themselves? This is the story on how Notion transformed itself from a near-disaster to the true empire it is today.

The origin

In 2013, a guy named Ivan Zhao had a dream. As a university student he had learned to code in his spare time and realized how big of an advantage it was. He had plenty of friends that made digital art, but since they did not know how to code, they needed help to express themselves on the internet.

It was also during the time when it first became possible to create things on the web without needing to code. Seeing all the trends like Wordpress blogs and social media, Ivan saw an opportunity. Maybe he could be the first one to enable millions of people to express themselves on the web just as easy as assembling lego blocks that they could use again and again?

It was then that he met another student called Simon Last. They quickly became best buddies and went on to work together, trying to make this dream a reality.

The failure

Over the next two years, Zhao and Last worked endlessly. They managed to get four more people to help them and even some startup capital.

However, just like most startups at the time, things were not looking great. The software was simply too buggy and unreliable, almost nobody wanted to use it, and their hard earned startup capital was running out. Living and working in San Francisco became too expensive for them as well.

Eventually Zhao and Last had to fire all the employees, start from scratch and move to a much cheaper area across the globe, Kyoto Japan. But they have always wanted to go to Japan so it was like these adventures that you do in your twenties.