Even Zhao and Simon Last built separate website platforms, merged them into Notion, then scrapped everything when the tech stack failed. They moved to Japan and spent a year rebuilding it, working 18-hour days, before releasing Notion 2 in March 2016.
Even Zhao and Simon Last.
6,000 miles.
12 months.
About 18 hours a day.
Notion 2.
These college students combined their startup ideas and built a $10 billion company. College students Even Zhao and Simon Last were studying in separate universities but working on the exact same startup idea. They were both developing a plug and play platform that would enable non technical people to build websites. After running into each other the two decided to merge their two projects into one. They named it Notion. Unfortunately they made the grave mistake of building Notion on an outdated tech stack. So after several months of the platform constantly crashing on users, Zhao and Last made a pivotal decision. They fired their entire team, packed their bags and moved 6,000 miles to Japan away from any distractions. They spent the next 12 months coding 18 hours a day to rebuild the entire Notion app from scratch. With a few hours of sleep each night and only taking breaks to eat ramen, they released multiple versions of the app one after the other. Finally In March of 2016, Zaouin last launched Notion 2.
