Unheard Roots of Notion (pt.2) 💻

Alright folks, who's pumped for Part 2 of the Notion story?

If you haven’t yet, read part 1 before reading this.

Or else you will be super confused.

Notion 1.0 is built 📱

The very first version of Notion was only a website builder.

“The very first is a web page builder. Thats the prototype. And from there it evolve into web app builder. Thats pretty much the first few years of Notion.” - Ivan Zhao, Video Demo

Although no-code web builders eventually took off, Ivans version of a website builder failed to get traction.

Why? First and foremost the product was built on an inadequate tech stack.

Second, Notion evolved into a web app / software builder and struggled to find product market fit in that space.

Fundraising & Angel Investors 💵

While building Notion 1.0, Ivan also raised money from angel investors.

Remember the hacker news post he created before moving to San Fransisco (it was in part 1)?

One of the people that offered him a job was Akshay Kotari, an entrepreneur that went on to sell his startup for $80 million to Linkedin.

When Ivan started building Notion, he reached out to his contacts in startups including Akshay to discuss his new startup.

Fortunately, Akshay had spare money from the exit, which allowed him to invest in Notion.

Near Bankruptcy & Moving to Japan 🇯🇵🏯

Remember when we said Notion 1.0 failed to get any traction?

It took Ivan a couple of years to see the first version of Notion wouldn’t get any traction. Unfortunately by then the team was close to bankrupt, running out of money everyday.

The choice was clear, Ivan would either run out of money and lay his small team off or find a way to drastically lower costs.

What did he do? Ivan moved the entire team (4~ ish people) to Kyoto, Japan to cut costs.

No one on the team knew how to speak Japanese so there wasn’t much for them to do except code / design every single day.

Notion 2.0 is born 🙌

The team realized instead of creating an app exclusively for building web apps they could create a lego-block styled app.

The idea was they would create elements like databases, tables, embeds, etc and allow people to create whatever they wanted with those elements / lego blocks.

The messaging of Notion changed from telling users to build software to giving users building blocks necessary to make their jobs easier and get the job done.

Users could still build software and apps but also whatever else they wanted including CRM, habit trackers, databases, and much more on Notion.

Lessons from Notion 📚

• Know when to pivot

It took Notions founding team too long to pivot when their first idea failed to get traction which led to them nearly becoming bankrupt.

It’s important to be able to recognize negative patterns, interrupt them, and adjust the direction you’re going in.