In 2015, Notion was on life help. The startup, based by Ivan Zhao and Simon Final, had spent three years and most of its funding making an attempt to construct a device they thought folks wished. That they had a tiny workforce of 4 workers, a codebase that wasn’t working, and a person base that wasn’t exhibiting up. It was the sort of state of affairs that often ends with a quiet shutdown and a “classes discovered” weblog submit.

As a substitute, the founders decided that appeared suicidal to most startups: they fired your entire workforce, scrapped their product, and left San Francisco solely. Their vacation spot wasn’t a shiny tech hub however Kyoto, Japan. The transfer wasn’t about inspiration—it was about survival. Kyoto value lower than half of San Francisco, and with their financial institution accounts virtually empty, each greenback counted.

Life in a Two-Story Coding Cave

In Kyoto, their life turned monastic. Ivan and Simon rented a small two-story home and spent 18 hours a day coding, residing on prompt noodles, and infrequently stepping outdoors. They didn’t even trouble with chores or actual meals. Ivan couldn’t learn Japanese menus, so he guessed his orders utilizing Chinese language characters—“beef” or “hen” had been his secure bets.

They weren’t constructing an organization at this level; they had been combating for its life. Ivan later recalled, “We had been simply, code, code, code.” It was on this isolation that they realized why their first model had failed: they misunderstood human conduct.

The Perception That Modified Every part

The primary Notion had been formidable—it allowed folks to construct customized apps—however hardly anybody used it. The issue? Most individuals don’t need to “construct apps.” They need to clear up issues. Shortly. Simply. With out serious about code.

That perception turned the inspiration for Notion’s rebirth. As a substitute of giving customers an intimidating clean canvas of code, they gave them intuitive constructing blocks. Notes, tables, databases, and templates might now snap collectively like LEGO bricks. Individuals didn’t should be builders to create the workflows they wanted.

In March 2016, Notion 1.0 launched. The response was fast and explosive. It rocketed to the highest of Product Hunt, incomes Product of the Day, then Week, then Month. The identical firm that had been days away from dying was instantly Silicon Valley’s darling.

Obsessing Over Customers, Not Traders

Whereas different startups would have rushed to lift cash after this breakout, Ivan and Simon made one other unconventional selection: they stayed bootstrapped. As a substitute of courting enterprise capitalists, they centered solely on customers. Ivan personally responded to each tweet, criticism, and suggestion. This obsessive focus constructed a loyal, virtually cult-like following.

The outcomes had been staggering:

• 2019: First funding spherical—$10 million at an $800 million valuation
• 2020: Pandemic drove distant work adoption; customers quintupled
• 2020: $50 million Collection B at a $2 billion valuation
• 2021: $275 million Collection C at a $10 billion valuation

In simply 5 years, Notion had gone from the brink of collapse to a decacorn.

Constructing a Platform, Not Only a Product

What made Notion totally different wasn’t simply nice advertising or timing—it was the philosophy behind the product. As a substitute of handing customers a inflexible device, Notion gave them a platform to create their very own options.

Consider it like this:

• Microsoft gave folks instruments to create paperwork.
• Apple gave folks instruments to create apps.
• Notion gave folks instruments to create workflows.

Platforms like these flip customers into creators. They permit one product to serve infinite use instances—note-taking, challenge administration, wikis, activity lists—with out altering the core software program. This flexibility turned Notion into a worldwide phenomenon.

By 2024, the numbers spoke for themselves:

• 100M+ customers
• Income skyrocketed from $3M (2019) to $300M (2024)
• 50% of Fortune 500 corporations use Notion
• Creators earn over $1M promoting customized Notion templates

All of this began with two founders coding in a Kyoto “basement” with nothing however noodles and cussed perception.

The Sample Behind Each Tech Empire

Notion’s journey isn’t only a startup fairy story—it displays a much bigger sample in tech historical past. Each era of transformative corporations empowers customers to do one thing that was beforehand laborious or inaccessible:

• Railroads gave abnormal folks entry to distant cities.
• Electrical energy introduced energy to each dwelling.
• The web put world data in everybody’s pocket.
• Platforms like Notion give people the flexibility to construct their very own digital instruments with out figuring out learn how to code.

The businesses that acknowledge and journey these shifts don’t simply make merchandise. They make empires. And like Ivan Zhao and Simon Final proved, typically the trail to a $10 billion firm runs straight by way of a two-story home in Kyoto, fueled by prompt noodles and 18-hour coding marathons.