Joe FierHead of Builds, Delphi · Scaling expert knowledge with AI

like #notion check this out #expertise

Name: like #notion check this out #expertise
Uploaded: 2023-12-14T12:00:03+00:00
Duration: 1 min
Channel: Joe Fier
Description: A short YouTube narrative by Joe Fier recounts the origin story of Notion: college students Even Zhao and Simon Last independently built similar…

14 Dec 2023 · 1 min

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A short YouTube narrative by Joe Fier recounts the origin story of Notion: college students Even Zhao and Simon Last independently built similar website-builder projects, merged them into Notion, and initially launched on an outdated tech stack that caused frequent crashes. They fired their team, relocated ~6,000 miles to Japan to work distraction-free, and spent about 12 months rebuilding the app—working ~18 hours per day and releasing multiple iterations—culminating in the March 2016 relaunch of Notion 2. The video frames Notion as ultimately becoming a $10 billion company.

Questions this video answers

$10 billion

~6,000 miles (to Japan)

About 12 months

About 18 hours per day

March 2016

Chapters

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 Unfortunately they made the grave mistake of building Notion on an outdated tech stack.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.