From Firing Their Entire Team to a $10 Billion Empire: How Notion Rebuilt From Rock Bottom in Japan

In 2015, Notion was on life support. The startup, founded by Ivan Zhao and Simon Last, had spent three years and most of its funding trying to build a tool they thought people wanted. They had a tiny team of four employees, a codebase that wasn’t working, and a user base that wasn’t showing up. It was the kind of situation that usually ends with a quiet shutdown and a “lessons learned” blog post.

Instead, the founders made a decision that seemed suicidal to most startups: they fired the entire team, scrapped their product, and left San Francisco entirely. Their destination wasn’t a shiny tech hub but Kyoto, Japan. The move wasn’t about inspiration—it was about survival. Kyoto cost less than half of San Francisco, and with their bank accounts almost empty, every dollar counted.

Life in a Two-Story Coding Cave

In Kyoto, their life became monastic. Ivan and Simon rented a small two-story house and spent 18 hours a day coding, living on instant noodles, and rarely stepping outside. They didn’t even bother with chores or real meals. Ivan couldn’t read Japanese menus, so he guessed his orders using Chinese characters—“beef” or “chicken” were his safe bets.

They weren’t building a company at this point; they were fighting for its life. Ivan later recalled, “We were just, code, code, code.” It was in this isolation that they realized why their first version had failed: they misunderstood human behavior.

The Insight That Changed Everything

The first Notion had been ambitious—it allowed people to build custom apps—but hardly anyone used it. The problem? Most people don’t want to “build apps.” They want to solve problems. Quickly. Easily. Without thinking about code.

That insight became the foundation for Notion’s rebirth. Instead of giving users an intimidating blank canvas of code, they gave them intuitive building blocks. Notes, tables, databases, and templates could now snap together like LEGO bricks. People didn’t have to be developers to create the workflows they needed.

In March 2016, Notion 1.0 launched. The response was immediate and explosive. It rocketed to the top of Product Hunt, earning Product of the Day, then Week, then Month. The same company that had been days away from dying was suddenly Silicon Valley’s darling.

Obsessing Over Users, Not Investors

While other startups would have rushed to raise money after this breakout, Ivan and Simon made another unconventional choice: they stayed bootstrapped. Instead of courting venture capitalists, they focused entirely on users. Ivan personally responded to every tweet, complaint, and suggestion. This obsessive focus built a loyal, almost cult-like following.

The results were staggering:

• 2019: First funding round—$10 million at an $800 million valuation
• 2020: Pandemic drove remote work adoption; users quintupled
• 2020: $50 million Series B at a $2 billion valuation
• 2021: $275 million Series C at a $10 billion valuation

In just five years, Notion had gone from the brink of collapse to a decacorn.

Building a Platform, Not Just a Product

What made Notion different wasn’t just great marketing or timing—it was the philosophy behind the product. Instead of handing users a rigid tool, Notion gave them a platform to create their own solutions.

Think of it like this:

• Microsoft gave people tools to create documents.
• Apple gave people tools to create apps.
• Notion gave people tools to create workflows.

Platforms like these turn users into creators. They allow one product to serve infinite use cases—note-taking, project management, wikis, task lists—without changing the core software. This flexibility turned Notion into a global phenomenon.

By 2024, the numbers spoke for themselves:

• 100M+ users
• Revenue skyrocketed from $3M (2019) to $300M (2024)
• 50% of Fortune 500 companies use Notion
• Creators earn over $1M selling custom Notion templates

All of this started with two founders coding in a Kyoto “basement” with nothing but noodles and stubborn belief.

The Pattern Behind Every Tech Empire

Notion’s journey isn’t just a startup fairy tale—it reflects a bigger pattern in tech history. Every generation of transformative companies empowers users to do something that was previously hard or inaccessible:

• Railroads gave ordinary people access to distant cities.
• Electricity brought power to every home.
• The internet put global information in everyone’s pocket.
• Platforms like Notion give individuals the ability to build their own digital tools without knowing how to code.

The companies that recognize and ride these shifts don’t just make products. They make empires. And like Ivan Zhao and Simon Last proved, sometimes the path to a $10 billion company runs straight through a two-story house in Kyoto, fueled by instant noodles and 18-hour coding marathons.