Your Startup Story
A Startup Story
The Kyoto Reset: How Notion Nearly Died Before It Became a Movement
Hall of Fame · an editorial retelling
Ivan Zhao's first version of Notion was failing — wrong technology, dwindling money. In 2015 he and Simon Last laid off the team, moved to Kyoto where they knew no one, and rebuilt the entire product from zero.
Origin
Ivan Zhao founded Notion in 2013 around an old dream from computing's pioneers: software that ordinary people could shape themselves, the way they arrange a room. The first product chased that vision on a technical foundation that couldn't support it. By 2015 the app was buggy, the runway was short, and the team had to go.
The Reset
Zhao and cofounder Simon Last kept the company alive by cutting it to two people and moving to Kyoto — cheaper than San Francisco, and free of distractions, since they barely spoke Japanese. They rebuilt Notion from scratch, coding through days structured around walks and work. The exile produced Notion 1.0, launched in 2016 to a warm reception, and the block-based editor that defined the product.
Traction
Notion grew almost entirely through word of mouth and community — templates shared on Twitter, student ambassadors, teams replacing four tools with one. The company stayed tiny relative to its valuation, famously reaching millions of users with a few dozen employees.
Vision
Notion became the emblem of the 'tools for thought' renaissance and one of the defining workspace products of its generation. Its origin story endures as the gentlest form of startup wisdom: sometimes the way forward is to shrink, move far away, and rebuild the thing right.