Last month, Notion passed 100M users!
I found the photo I took after we reached 1,000 users. And I still recall the day when we passed 1M in 2020, right before Covid.
From 1,000 users to last month when we passed 100 million users (thank you!).
I feel grateful, introspective. Looking back, there’s so much learning, yet much remains unchanged …
In our early years, we were rather lost.
We started in 2013, but it wasn’t until 2018 with the Notion 2.0 Product Hunt launch that we saw signs of traction.
We had no business sense, struggled with building a horizontal tool. Notion almost died. (Thanks for the bridge, mom!)
Clockwise from back: Simon, Toby, and Ivan in an early Notion office.
We rebuilt Notion four times in those “lost years.”
In one version, you’d press a key to X-ray all blocks. (What were we thinking?!)
In one, we had the right product, but wrong tech stack, so Simon Last & I went to Japan to rewrite (hence our main git repo is “notion-next”).
Simon rebuilding Notion from our flat in Japan.
Eventually we learned. But I am glad we didn’t cave and change our mission.
Notion is built on the ’70s vision that software can “augment human intellect.”
It’s amusing that our original pitch deck still describes the company we are building today!
A slide from Notion’s original pitch deck imagining an eventual marketplace. With your help, we built it!
1B+ people live and work in either Microsoft or Google suite (no real alternatives), and a sea of SaaS fragmentations (too rigid, too uncreative).
The world needs building blocks for software and Notion is here to build that!
With our building blocks, a community of non-programmers can sell “software” built on Notion. (Some made $1M in 2023!)
We dreamed of this in the original pitch deck, but I wasn’t sure it would come true.
It’s gradually coming together, though instead of 15 months, like we imagined in our original pitch deck, it took us 10 years. 😅
Creators are building businesses on top of Notion.
As with our mission, our love for craft hasn’t changed.
We tried 30 shades of warm white paint for our office wall.
We couldn’t find merch we love, so we made our own work jackets.
We care about craft & beauty, and we want to bring them to this world.
Notion’s cofounder, Akshay Kothari, painting office #3 in Benjamin Moore OC-97 “Cream Froth.”
Notion work jackets IRL #twinning
And after some hard lessons on building at scale (a story for another time), our product craft is re-accelerating!
Notion hasn’t shipped this well ever—7+ releases this summer—answering our community’s asks fast, with a quality we can be proud of!
https://x.com/ivanhzhao/status/1803066729226011123
We do all of this because we don’t just want to build a piece of software.
We want to build something that’s great, according to our values.
Something that the next generation doesn’t just have to use, but LOVES.
To quote Steve Jobs, “put something back to the humanity.”
Notion creators on TikTok.
Most importantly, I feel grateful this is not just my life’s work—but many people’s at Notion.
There have been many highs & lows over the last 5+ years to make this real.
Three of Notion’s earliest employees. Clockwise: Slim (standing), Jake, and Rob. Rob built our Android app, security, IT, and now infra!
Today, we are grateful that Notion might have touched & helped 100M of you in your work and lives.
An ode to the computing pioneers: Software can augment human intellect.
An ode to the craft: Software can and should be beautiful.
Looking ahead to 1B :–)
A billboard on highway 101 in San Francisco (Thanks for that “dream” sign, whoever put it up).