Mission: To simplify and enhance productivity for individuals and teams worldwide.

Meet the Founders: Ivan Zhao is a passionate designer with an eye for user experience. Simon Last, is a talented programmer who starts as an intern. Akshay Kothari was the last piece. He had sold his previous company to Linkedin for $90m at the age of 27. It’s safe to say these guys were exceptional!

Vision: To create a tool combining the flexibility of a notebook with the power of a database to enhance productivity.

Technical Hurdles: Building the product proved to be a significant challenge. Constant experimentation and obsessiveness.

Keeping the vision: Since the beginning, the team had this solid vision of creating building blocks for the internet.

Stay Obsessed: For example, Simon had started his career as an intern. Ivan remarked over a podcast that Simon embodied the value of being obsessed when he had finished the Steve Jobs biography over a weekend. Truly obsessed with learning and being the best.

P.S. that’s a 656 page book.

Milestone Achievement:

• In 2018, Notion moved from a web page tool to a productivity tool. Ivan noted that people don’t want to build the tool but they want an off the shelf product that is easy to work with.

• The “aha moment” was when they realised they had to position themselves as a productivity tool but really it was a powerful computing tool that people could build anything with.

• The release of Notion 2.0 in 2018 was when people really started to use the product and its enhanced features.

• Significant increase in user adoption and market recognition.
  

Worldwide Acclaim:

• Build for the user, not for the idea. Notion built a product around the lifes and problems of people. Creating a study plan, a meal prep diary, a kanban to track leads - these are all user based scenarios.

• This created a viral loop for Notion.

  • Create user based templates

  • Community talks about them and makes tutorials

  • Users find out about Notion.