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Clockwise from back: Simon, Toby, and Ivan in an early Notion office.
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We rebuilt Notion four times in those “lost years.”
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In one version, you’d press a key to X-ray all blocks (what were we thinking?!)
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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”).
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Simon rebuilding Notion from our flat in Japan.
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Eventually we learned. But I am glad we didn’t cave and change our mission.
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Notion is built on the 70s’ vision that software can “augment human intellect”.
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It’s amusing that our original pitch deck still describes the company we are building today!
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A slide from Notion’s original pitch deck imagining a marketplace where builders sell Notion templates. |
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1B+ people live and work in either Microsoft or Google suite (no real alternatives), and a sea of SaaS fragmentations (too rigid, too uncreative).
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The world needs a “LEGOs for software” and Notion is here to build that!
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A slide from a recent All-Hands presentation.
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With our LEGOs, a community of non-programmers can sell “software” built on Notion (some made $1M in 2023!)
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We dreamed of this in the original pitch deck, but I wasn’t sure it would come true.
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It’s gradually coming together, though instead of 15 months like we imagined in our original pitch deck, it took us 10 years 😅
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Creators are building businesses on top of Notion.
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As with our mission, our love for craft hasn’t changed.
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We tried 30 shades of warm white paints for our office wall.
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We couldn’t find merch we love, so we made our own work jackets.
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We care about craft & beauty, and we want to bring them to this world.
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Notion’s cofounder, Akshay Kothari, painting office #3 in Benjamin Moore OC-97 “Cream Froth”. We tried 30 shades of warm white to find the right paint for our office wall.
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Notion work jackets IRL #twinning
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And after some hard lessons on building at scale (story for another time), our product craft is reaccelerating!
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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!
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We do all of this because we don’t just want to build a piece of software.
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We want to build something that’s great, according to our values.
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Something that the next generation don’t just have to use, but LOVE.
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To quote Steve Jobs, “put something back to the humanity.”
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Notion creators on TikTok
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Most importantly, I feel grateful this is not just my life’s work—but many people’s at Notion.
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There have been many highs & lows over the last 5+ years to make this real.
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Clockwise: Three of Notion’s earliest employees, Slim (standing), Jake, and Rob. Rob built our Android app, security, IT, and now infra!
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Today, we are grateful that Notion might have touched & helped 100M of you in your work and lives.
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An ode to the computing pioneers: Software can augment human intellect.
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An ode to the craft: Software can and should be beautiful.
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Looking ahead to 1B :–)
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A billboard on highway 101 in San Francisco (Thanks for that “dream” sign, whoever put it up).
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