✨Notion

Notion is a philosophical descendent of HyperCard (turns out you can even buy a third-party HyperCard-themed Notion template) that offers extremely adaptable information structures built from an alphabet of ‘content blocks’. It’s also worth $10 billion and has 30 million users. I used it to create the first bidirectionally linked note-taking system... See more

In San Francisco, while Zhao still believed he was right about his grand vision, he realized he was wrong about his market. It was a crucible moment. The first version of Notion was a tool that non-coders could use to make their own apps. Disappointingly for the co-founders, it turned out, even if they were Last’s and Zhao’s actual friends, non-cod... See more

After many years of building and tens of millions of users, Notion now describes itself this way: “Every department’s work. In one tool.”  You can almost feel their internal struggle with language—the search for the right words. How can you describe something that is genuinely novel? What happens when something is so fundamentally different th... See more

After many years of building and tens of millions of users, Notion now describes itself this way: “Every department’s work. In one tool.”  You can almost feel their internal struggle with language—the search for the right words. How can you describe something that is genuinely novel? What happens when something is so fundamentally different th... See more

Kothari and Zhao talk about this moment as still the “early innings” of Notion, and see Notion 1.0 as about lists, Notion 2.0 as about databases and the upcoming Notion 3.0 as about whole workflows.

Notion was not a word processor. It was not even a word processor with better embeds. It was nothing short of a reimagining of what you could do with “blank pages” on a computer screen. Or potentially even a reimagining of how we make software itself. It seemed quite vague and grand.