Adriane is the Cofounder and CEO of GrowthAssistant.com.
Guest Author: Adriane Schwager
In 2015, Notion almost died. The founders moved from SF to Kyoto, Japan so they could build in peace.
Last year, they did $119.4M in revenue. And hit $10 BILLION in valuation. How? Two things:
1. Focused Product
2. Community-led growth
Bookmark this one, Ivan Zhao and Simon Last started Notion in 2013 with the vision to give non-technical users the ability to make their own tools without writing code.
It did well, and they expanded the vision: all-in-one workspace for entrepreneurs. The launched the beta in 2015. And it imploded. No users, bad feedback, and it constantly crashed.
Plus they were running out of money. So Ivan and Simon laid off the few employees they had, left their SF office, and moved to Kyoto, Japan. “No one there spoke any English, and we didn’t speak Japanese. There was nothing to do except code.”
They stayed focused on their original mission: no-code tools for non-technical founders to build their businesses. And they built it obsessively: both in the weeds of every piece of code and every design decision. By 2018, they were ready to launch.
Notion 1.0 came out that year. And it exploded. Users loved the UX, convenience, and thoughtfulness that went into the product. Some even called it “a milestone in the history of UX design.”
Just look at how simple the home screen is. Hiding behind is a very powerful tool you can run a business using. And they keep iterating, but with the same core in mind. In the last 5 years, they’ve gone viral. Everyone uses Notion. But there’s one more part of the story: community-led growth.
Early on, they’d see users post on Twitter and Reddit about how they were setting up their workspaces and different things one could do with Notion. Camille, Notion’s Head of Marketing, noticed this and went all-in. She hired Ben Long to head the community, and they launched V1 of their ambassador program. It was a super-hit.
Users passionate for the product got a real way to do something about it. And Notion was the kind of product MANY users were passionate about. r/Notion, started by ambassadors now has 300k+ members, and those ambassadors still manage this subreddit.
They kept going: Champions Program, Campus Leaders, Location-based groups, interest-based groups, and more. Then Notion hit the holy grail: Viral User-Generated Content TikToks started exploding with people demo-ing their workspaces, their notes and to-do systems, and massive YouTubers got in on the Notion train.
People began building businesses out of selling Notion templates! It turned into a virtuous cycle that keeps spinning faster.
And Notion keeps growing. 30% + growth on a base of 35 million users!
What a business. What a team.
Check out the original tweet here.
