Welcome to the 9th edition of GrowthDeck! If you enjoy reading deep dives like this, please share it with your friends or colleagues who would appreciate it. Now, let's dive in!

There’d be hardly any person in the SaaS world who has never heard of Notion.

Can you imagine a work collaboration software that started as a side project, today has around 30 million users, and is valued at over $10b?

This is exactly what Ivan Zhao, Simon Last, And the team at Notion have pulled off within a decade. Today’s issue is all bout Notion’s Journey, the ups, the downs, and some amazing growth drivers that the founders used to scale Notion.

The story of Notion's meteoric rise is a testament to visionary thinking, strategic execution, and an unwavering commitment to user-centric innovation. There is a lot that can be learned from this issue that you as a founder can implement while building your SaaS.

It all began in 2013 when Ivan Zhao conceived the idea for Notion while constructing a one-page portfolio website. He grew frustrated with the limited tools available to effectively manage his work. Ivan left his position at Iinking that same year. In 2013, they secured seed funding and embarked on the journey to build an all-in-one tool named Notion.

Through iterative efforts, they diligently advanced the product; however, positive indicators were elusive. In 2015, Notion confronted a grave crisis as founders Ivan and Simon grappled with financial challenges and frequent program crashes. They came to the realization that they were promoting a product they personally enjoyed, rather than one that truly met customer needs. Recognizing the need for a dramatic shift, they took bold steps: downsizing the team, relocating to Kyoto, Japan, and Ivan even secured a $150,000 loan from his mother to continue this venture.

After coding for nearly 18 hours a day while living in Kyoto, they unveiled Notion 1.0 in March 2016. From that point onward, their trajectory has been consistently upward.

Now that we know the entire story of Notion, let’s dive into some growth drivers that propelled Notion’s growth.

Notion’s Growth Drivers