Notion Yearbook

Numbers

Founders

General

NOTION CO-FOUNDERS SIMON LAST, IVAN ZHAO AND AKSHAY KOTHARI

from www.sequoiacap.com

2015

https://web.archive.org/web/20150713213039/http://early-access.notion.so/

2018

https://web.archive.org/web/20180930194606/https://www.notion.so/

Funding History

From Getlatka

Notion Revenue

see chart view

From Notion revenue is $43.5M, valuation more than $10B

Notion Funding History

from getlaka as of Oct, 2022

2022

From left to right: Ivan Zhao, Co-founder and CEO, Camille Ricketts, Marketing, Lillie Martin, Community & Support, and David Tibbitts, Community & Support. (2019)

from invisionapp.com

Co-founder & CEO Ivan Zhao

from www.google.com

before 2016

Notion Labs Inc is a startup based in San Francisco, founded in 2013 by Ivan Zhao, Chris Prucha, Jessica Lam, Simon Last and Toby Schachman.

In 2013, Zhao and Last raised about $2 million from angel investors—a mix of friends, family and friends of friends.

from Sequoiacap

But the early version of Notion wasn’t an overnight success.

The team built the platform on an outdated technology stack that didn’t provide sufficient stability and headroom for growth.

from https://www.taskade.com/blog/notion-history/

In 2015, Notion co-founders Simon Last and Ivan Zhao had removed from their lives anything that wasn’t writing code and eating noodles.

Three years into building their startup, they scrapped the code powering their app. They were running out of money.

They’d just laid off their only colleagues. And to stretch what money they had left, they’d moved from San Francisco to Kyoto, Japan, which was less than half as expensive.

from Wikipedia

“We focused too much on what we wanted to bring to the world. We needed to pay attention to what the world wanted from us.”

— Ivan Zhao, Co-founder of Notion

from https://nira.com/notion-history/

Notion Labs Inc is a startup based in San Francisco, founded in 2013 by Ivan Zhao, Chris Prucha, Jessica Lam, Simon Last and Toby Schachman.

In 2013, Zhao and Last raised about $2 million from angel investors—a mix of friends, family and friends of friends.

from Sequoiacap

Early Version

The Ideas

The no-code/low-code movement has been in the works for almost 20 years. The early attempts at empowering regular (read: non-technical) users to create and modify software started in 2003 when Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little released WordPress.

The idea to build software from Lego-like bricks captured the imagination of many generations of developers, including Notion’s co-founders Ivan Zhao and Simon Last.

from Taskade

Limping Start

“We focused too much on what we wanted to bring to the world. We needed to pay attention to what the world wanted from us.” — Ivan Zhao, Co-founder of Notion
from https://nira.com/notion-history/

2016~2017

Notion is …

1. Wikis

Almost like website, you can create, edit and design your own layout.

2. Documents

Begin documents and work completely offline.

3. Tasks

Create tasks on new boards or design your own to-do list process.

from Medium

Notion provides

Flexibility
Easy on-boarding
Range of media/tool to embed

from Medium

Notion 1.0

Rebuilding Notion from scratch wasn’t easy.

Zhao and Last worked effortlessly with very little sleep, and at some point, Zhao even had to borrow $150,000 from his mother to keep things rolling. But the hard work paid out.

In March 2016, the pair released Notion 1.0.

from Taskade

Notion is a bright idea for working in harmony

Getting a whole team, or even just two people, to work in harmony can be a lot harder than it sounds.

When you’re managing several team members, remote workers or just needing a shared space to hash out ideas, the complications mount up quickly.

Notion is a great example of a free platform for working in a shared space, including text, images and more.

from https://notion-1.en.softonic.com/

What is Notion ?

1. Wikis

Almost like website, you can create, edit and design your own layout.

2. Documents

Begin documents and work completely offline.

3. Tasks

Create tasks on new boards or design your own to-do list process.

from https://medium.com/keep-productive/why-notion-is-the-app-to-watch-in-2018-875cf62fa226

What Users Think in 2017

Rebuilding Notion

2018~2019

“In all honesty, Notion 2.0 is really the 1.0 for us. It finally delivers on our promise—a singular tool that handles all your work outside email and Slack. With the addition of tables, Kanban boards, and calendars, along with the existing notes and wiki features, we think we have done it with this release—Notion is now truly the ‘all-in-one workspace.'”

— Ivan Zhao, Co-founder of Notion

When Notion 2.0 launched in March 2018, two things happened that drove immense growth and put the company on an entirely new growth trajectory.

from https://nira.com/notion-history/

Notion is an all-in-one workspace where you can write, plan, collaborate and get organized - it allows you to take notes, add tasks, manage projects & more.
Imagine a lego structure.
Notion provides the building blocks and you can create your own layouts and toolkit to get work done. Many people refer to Notion as an “internal wiki” allowing teams and individuals to plan their projects, work and goals.

2019 The Verge

Notion’s powerful note-taking app is now free for students and teachers

The Big Challenger to Evernote

Notion vs. Evernote: Generalization vs. Specialization

Pricing: Winner = Notion

Overall User Satisfaction: Winner = Notion

Note-Taking: Winner = Evernote

Organization: Winner = Draw

Search: Winner = Evernote

https://nira.com/notion-vs-evernote/

Here Comes Notion 2.0

Fast Growing

Why Notion is staying small as its valuation gets bigger

The company, centered around an app that helps non-developers build collaboration tools, has more than one million users and has scaled its product quickly despite having a team of just 27.

from TechCrunch

2020~2022

Notion now offers free credits to any startup globally, partners with AWS and Stripe

From techcrunch.com

Notion VS. Google Doc?

Google, meanwhile, has been making Docs more like Notion with interactive checkboxes, custom templates, and easier linking between documents.

From f-st.co

Notion's latest feature is an AI that can write blog posts, to-do lists and more

From www.engadget.com

Productivity startup Notion valued at $10B in latest $275M funding round

The significant increase in the startup’s valuation is a reflection of its rapid business growth.

San Francisco-based Notion, which operates a popular cloud-based productivity platform of the same name, says that its user base has expanded by 500% since its last funding round.

Moreover, the enterprise edition of Notion’s productivity platform is growing at a rate of 350% year-over-year, though the startup didn’t share absolute numbers.

From siliconangle.com

Notion acquires Cron, the next-generation calendar

from NotionHQ

Jump to $10B

Notion – One workspace. Every team.

Notion VS. Microsoft Office?

As Notion’s style of free-flowing, interlinked documents has taken off—the app now has more than 20 million active users—both tech giants seem to have taken notice.

Microsoft recently announced Loop, a Notion-style editor that integrates with Word and Excel.

Google, meanwhile, has been making Docs more like Notion with interactive checkboxes, custom templates, and easier linking between documents.

From Notion vs. Microsoft Office and Google Docs

Notion Yearbook

Notion Timeline

Homepage History

Co-Founders