Summaries Entrepreneurship and Startups Notion's Co-Founders: 9-Year Mission to Revolutionize Knowledge Workflows

This is a summary of a YouTube video "9-Year Hustle to Achieve a Single GoalㅣNotion's Cofounders" by EO!

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Ivan's mission-driven ownership, pacesetting, and truth-seeking has enabled Notion to grow 100-fold in 4 years and create powerful tools to enable knowledge workers to customize their workflow.

• 🤔
  00:00

  After studying electrical engineering, I moved into product and business, then venture capital before founding my own company and creating Pulse, which was featured by Steve Jobs at WWDC 2010.
• 💡
  02:02

  Studying cognitive science & computing helped me help my artist friends create websites.
• 💰
  03:56

  Invested in Notion in 2013, betting on mission to enable everyone to be a creator; had to be rewritten due to technical issues.
• 🤔
  05:52

  Founders moved to Kyoto to find a slower pace of life and more affordable housing.
• 🚀
  07:05

  Ivan offered me a COO role to help scale Notion's user community, which has grown 100-fold in 4 years.
• 🤖
  09:27

  Notion A.I. brings AI into the workspace, allowing users to generate content with AI assistance by simply asking for help and clicking generate.
• 💪
  12:06

  We prioritize mission-driven ownership, pacesetting, and truth-seeking to make the best decisions.
• 💡
  13:37

  Notion's mission is to create powerful tools to enable knowledge workers to customize their workflow.

Key insights

• 💻 Notion's goal is to provide a single medium for all work, from note-taking to project management, using building blocks for apps.
• 💼 Notion's co-founders had a 9-year hustle to achieve their single goal, showing that success often requires persistence and dedication.
• 💡 The tipping point for Notion's success was when they moved away from asking users to build software to providing simple templates that allow them to do their job.
• 📈 Notion's business has grown over 100 fold in just four years, from eight people to close to 500 people.
• 🎨 Notion's cofounders believe that their product is like art, combining intuition and technology to create a natural extension of the user's body.
• 🧩 Notion's modular approach allows for efficient building and customization of the product, with engineers focusing on building capability and marketing creating specific use cases.
• 💼 Notion's cofounders prioritize speed and ownership in achieving their mission of enabling ubiquitous software tool making.
• 🗓️ Notion's cofounders have a long-term mission to create a more powerful productivity software that works the way people's brains work, which may take more than a decade to achieve.

Detailed summary

• 🤔
  00:00

  After studying electrical engineering, I moved into product and business, then venture capital before founding my own company and creating Pulse, which was featured by Steve Jobs at WWDC 2010.

  • I studied electrical engineering, but found it too granular, so I moved into product and business, then spent a year in venture capital before starting my own company at Stanford.
  • Pulse, a news application built for the iPad in 6 weeks, became a success after Steve Jobs mentioned it at WWDC 2010.
• 💡
  02:02

  Studying cognitive science & computing helped me help my artist friends create websites.

  • Releasing quickly, solving a real problem, and focusing on distribution are key to success in product development.
  • I studied cognitive science and a bit of computing and philosophy, but ended up helping my artist friends create their own websites.
• 💰
  03:56

  Invested in Notion in 2013, betting on mission to enable everyone to be a creator; had to be rewritten due to technical issues.

  • I invested in Notion in 2013, betting on Ivan's mission to enable everyone to be a creator and unleash creativity in the world.
  • Notion started as a web page builder and evolved into a collaborative document editing platform, but had to be rewritten due to technical issues.
• 🤔
  05:52

  People don't wake up wanting to build software, so the founders decided to move to Kyoto, Japan, where the pace of life is slower and the apartments are bigger and cheaper than San Francisco.
• 🚀
  07:05

  Ivan offered me a COO role to help scale Notion's user community, which has grown 100-fold in 4 years.

  • We moved away from asking users to build software to providing them with templates to do their job, introducing a knowledge base to allow collaboration.
  • Ivan offered me a COO role to help scale the business and build go-to-market and foundational teams, allowing him to stay focused on product.
  • Notion's user community has grown 100-fold in 4 years, with 43K members in South Korea alone.
• 🤖
  09:27

  Notion A.I. brings AI into the workspace, allowing users to generate content with AI assistance by simply asking for help and clicking generate.

  • Design should be intuitive and simple, like an extension of the body, and should solve people's problems to be successful.
  • Notion has built a modular product with building blocks that can be used to create custom solutions, and today they are introducing Notion A.I. to bring AI into the workspace.
  • Notion AI allows users to generate content with AI assistance by simply asking for help and clicking generate.
• 💪
  12:06

  We prioritize mission-driven ownership, pacesetting, and truth-seeking to make the best decisions.

  • Notion's values are mission-driven ownership, being pacesetters, and truth-seeking to make the best decisions.
  • We strive to be kind and direct while setting a fast pace and seeking truth to help us make good decisions and hire the right people.
• 💡
  13:37

  Notion's mission is to create powerful software tools that enable knowledge workers to modify or create their own software to work the way their brain works.

Q&A

• How did Ivan start his career before founding Notion?

  Ivan studied electrical engineering, but later moved into product and business before starting his own company at Stanford.

• What were the key factors for the success of Pulse?

  Releasing quickly, solving a real problem, and focusing on distribution were key factors for the success of Pulse.

• How did Notion evolve from a web page builder?

  Notion started as a web page builder and evolved into a collaborative document editing platform, but had to be rewritten due to technical issues.

• Why did the founders of Notion decide to move to Kyoto, Japan?

  The founders of Notion decided to move to Kyoto, Japan because of the slower pace of life, bigger apartments, and cheaper cost of living compared to San Francisco.

• What is Notion's mission?

  Notion's mission is to create powerful software tools that enable knowledge workers to modify or create their own software to work the way their brain works.