Representative appearances

• Notion’s Sarah Sachs & Simon Last on Custom Agents, Evals, and the Future of Work

  Co-founder of Notion, discussing technical implementation of agents, coding workflows, and product vision.

• Ivan Zhao & Simon Last’s $10B Notion Story 💼🔥

  These co-founders raised $275 million to make employees feel safe enough to join the company even though they didn't actually need it. Ivan Xiao and Simon Last launched Notion in 2013 to create a tool that can do anything you can do with paper. It was initially built to help non-coders make their own apps. But by 2015, Notion was on the brink of collapse. People didn't understand or need the product, and the company ran out of money. So Ivan and Simon had to lay off their entire team and sublet their San Francisco office. Ivan and Simon moved to Kyoto in Japan to cut costs and took a $150,000 loan from Ivan's mother. They spent 18 hours a day coding and would only take breaks to eat noodles. They eventually rebuilt Notion from scratch to make it a more userfriendly productivity tool. In 2016, after months of intense work, they launched Notion 1.0 on Product Hunt. The new version became the most popular app on Product Hunt and gained traction. Within weeks, Notion became profitable and its user base grew on word of mouth alone. Students used it for taking notes, entrepreneurs for organizing their startups, and artists for showcasing their portfolios. By 2019, Notion had reached its first million users. In 2021, the company raised $275 million from CO2 Management and Sequoia to ensure its team's job stability and innovation. In July 2024, it reached $100 million users and is now valued at $10 billion. Sign up to our free newsletter to get the deep dive Ivan and Simon used to save Notion.

• Momentic + Standard Capital Series A Interview

  Mentioned as the person from Notion who posted on Twitter leading to their partnership.

• How Notion Reimagined Productivity Tools | Ivan Zhao

  Co-founder of Notion, mentioned as the technical partner who rebuilt the product in Japan.

• Notion's lost years, near collapse during COVID, staying small to move fast, building horizontal

  Co-founder of Notion, mentioned as a key technical partner to Ivan Zhao.