How Notion pulled itself back from the brink of failure (2019)
figma.com
figma.com
The problem was that it was difficult to know what a block was or how much you could do with 1000 blocks until you had invested enough time in the platform to be able to estimate how many blocks you might need to evaluate it.
Then there was additional mental overhead of trying to conserve blocks to extend your free trial. Do you implement something the correct way? Or do you maybe cut some corners to use fewer blocks so you can stay on the free plan a little longer? This extra decision making step added a little bit of fatigue to every interaction, which isn’t what you want when users are trying to evaluate your tools.
Typical trials have well-defined and easy to understand limits in units that users already understand: Users, bytes, projects, documents. If users have to learn your project before understanding the terms, it’s mental added overhead.
Here was my experience: my team signed up, started using it, tried out all the different features (none of which were behind a paywall), didn't hit the 1000 block limit, and started paying within a week of signing up because it was exactly what we were looking for at the time.
I am currently happy on the free-tier and would cheer-lead internally at my job if there was interest to migrating to Notion.
I wonder how the total numbers of people that did each of these things compare.
[1] The size of search index depended on the amount of content indexed as well as heavily on the features that were turned on. E.g. pre-index search-term expansion would increase the size by a factor, and so on.
Evernote also refuses to create multiple level of notebooks and manual order of notes. They also have strange user accounts on their user forum proactively denounce feature requests. Every time I search for a new feature request supported from many users will end up see a few familiar accounts claiming you don't need the new feature. I was like, who the heck are those people?
However, if they take away my ability to set the default font size, or create multiple notebooks, I will probably leave as well. Taking away multiple notebooks would break a lot of my use cases. Maybe I am already using the legacy version?
But if you didn't notice the change of default font and font size, may be you are using the legacy version.
Sounds like what Microsoft did with OneNote the Windows 10/Microsoft Store app vs the desktop application with significantly more capability though I believe the Win10/Store version is expected to catch up at some point.
It’s looking like I will have to write my own note app if I want something that does what I want and is going to last so I don’t loose my notes every decade.
I remember asking for this over 10 years ago in their user forums, only to get some volunteer evangelist (who wasn't an employee and didn't have an official title but spent hours a day on the forum) claiming it "wasn't needed".
I gave up on Evernote when I realized they were spending more time on branding instead of features and reliability. And the constant in-app advertising nagging me to upgrade from Plus to Premium didn't help. I was already paying them money, I shouldn't have been treated like a free user.
This is exactly what I found a couple years ago. These people were under many threads with new feature suggestions. Not sure whether they are still there. They do find a purpose of their life. Lol.
This thread is the first time I even heard about notion, but since they are getting so much praise here and since they made it so easy to import my notes, I just switched over.
Ive since deleted the account and moved to an internal note taking system. Anytime someone asks me about Notion I actively recommend against using it.
I basically track everything, from sideproject progress, CRM, personal challenges, workouts, books read, personal expenses, whishlists and todo with Notion in an unique way. While I'll be the first one to admit that the flexibility can be overwhelming sometimes, for basically every common usecase there are templates or YouTube tutorials
There are other good note taking apps out there and there, and there are other note taking apps out there that solve the device problem I struggle so much with. But notion is the best note taking app with the best cross device/platform support I've come across.
Linux, Windows, Android, Web... the service performs excellent across all platforms.
This small, but important detail, immediately stood out to me. The ability in SaaS to track your users with precision is welcomed by many (most?) developers. Knowing your most active users is regarded as an important data insight, and developers are eager to extract that data.
For me, I find it unsettling so much user behaviour is recorded through online apps. Not only is this app tracking seen as natural among developers, it's eagerly embraced.
SaaS promises customer tracking on a level never before achieved, and many developers seem happy to see it continue.
This is absurd. Why should the company that made the product know how much I'm using it?
What I care about is that they cannot correlate what I do in the app with what I do outside of the app.
It's really annoying and I know some people probably love this feature. But I feel like something that is primarily a note-taking app (yes, it a super-customisable database etc.e etc. also) should act like 99% of the note-taking apps that have been written previously.
Am I missing a huge paradigm shift in the way notes are taking "these days"? Just give me a blob with free rein. I'll format it later (maybe).
Using Notion isn't - for lack of a better word - comfortable to use.
Having said that, I use it all day every day. So it must be doing something right!
https://twitter.com/realjeffkeen/status/1176483281682018306?...
#1 geared towards speed and simplicity - the one you reach for first when you just want to jot something down without thinking too much about it.
#2 geared towards organization and power - this is more like a wiki - more structured, organized, and thoughtful.
From time to time, you can pull important information out of #1 and put it in #2 in a much more structured/formatted/organized way.
This 2-tier system has worked the best for me and I no longer have to keep looking for the one app that will magically do it all (I don't think it's possible). I use Apple Notes for #1 and Notion for #2.
https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/4b1fc970b5314a2b93edb50e7cb...
Could you explain more what you mean by this? Or give an example of some software that behaves like what you're describing?
While in less strict systems (Word, Apple Notes, whatever) I can just create a 10x10 table, and randomly put images in one cell and text in another etc.
Imagine a table you write in markdown, like:
| | pro | con |
|——-|————-|————-|
| A |loud |heavy|
| B |light|flimsy|
You can’t have it inlined as just a table, it needs to become a database with filterable columns that you can’t lock, you add each lines as a row etc.
1. The web UI used Polymer/Web Components. Simon (CTO/cofounder) described this as building on shifting sand as browsers and poly fills changed the standards and things never seemed to work well for long.
2. There was a lot of Redis with Lua action, using Redis instances as a distributed system for some purpose I don’t understand. This never worked well.
3. There was experimentation with graph database like Neo4J which turned out to be slow for the kinds of queries Notion needed to do. Not sure if this was part of the first era or if it was tried out for the rewrite.
Because of all that, they completely rebuilt the product using the most boring/normal technology possible. Today we run on Postgres/Memcached for data, a Redis for rate limit and queueing, and a Typescript/React front-end.
For us, with the current state of web components, we see this as the ideal time to move to all web component UIs going forward. We view it as a strategic advantage.
Random bug report. On Android while making checkbox lists, I always have to hit enter twice to get to the next line. If I hit enter once, the cursor visually moves down to the next line, but once I start typing the new line gets joined back onto the previous line. I notice this happens when I don't add an extra space at the end of the first todo/checkbox item. Sorry to jump on your comment with a bug report!!
(I tried on my Pixel 2 / Android 11 with Swiftkey and Gboard in English and Korean, couldn't repro)
Also, if I tap on the end of a line and press newline, I get another block. If I type something and then press newline, then it happens exactly as ronyeh described (again, only with Gboard in English)
But I'm on Android 11 on a Motorola hyper one with the default Gboard in English. I just downloaded notion today and my OS has no pending updates.
I can repro 100% of the time.
- [ ] my to-do item$
- [ ] my to-do item $
In the above two examples, if I press enter when my cursor is at the end of the line (indicated by the dollar sign), the top example does the wrong thing. The bottom example works fine.
What’s the difference? Is it just that Notion is a plucky startup and that makes them inherently less trustworthy somehow?
Companies, especially companies in a state of massive flux like a fast growing startup, have no fixed traits like trustworthiness. It depends on the leadership team at the moment, pressures from external stakeholders, how bonuses and other incentive structures are designed.
I can tell you from personal experience that you can start out with the best intentions but sooner or later the power dynamics will change and then suddenly "Don't be evil" is just a joke meme.
Come on ...
They elaborate on their choice of Kyoto as a way to isolate themselves further from distraction -- the language barrier.
I know I moved out of London last year because I no longer needed to be in London and rent was hard to justify.
Sounds like they were in the same boat. You can rebuild your app from anywhere, might as well do it from somewhere cheaper (yet still vibrant).
But that was certainly not the only reason for moving to Kyoto.
Good for them for shoving it at VCs who didn't want to invest when they needed it the most. If VCs can't take the risk of helping a company during their lows, then they don't deserve the rights to join at their highs.
The unfair advantage they have that is hard to articulate and easy to overlook is that Ivan seems to have very very good taste. This article gives some clues in that direction.
shameless plug: i'm the founder of a yc backed open source note taking tool. for notion users, we describe ourselves as basically notion but made for developers - local first, open source and super fast.
18 hour day still leaves 6 hours for sleep, assuming you structure the rest of your life efficiently.
I’m not sure I’d phrase that so lightly. The 996 work model has been compared to “modern slavery” [0]. I’m not sure it’s comparable to the article either, since 996 isn’t a choice that offers future rewards. Working 18 hours for a short term can be worth it if you’re a (co)founder saving your business. Theoretically he could retire early after making a few million off Notion’s success, and get back those hours lost to work.
[0]: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/acfi.12682
By contrast, salaried folks with no equity should not be cranking out those hours, IMO.
In the same way excellent, productive employees should be compensated by their employers.
You can frown upon it but this is reality.
There's something on the other side, though - when I was in my early 20s I could be obsessed about building things, even if it was just a project for university. When I woke up in the morning I was thinking about the next thing I was going to implement, and I could stay up till late night because I didn't want to stop coding. It wasn't healthy, thankfully it never lasterd very long, but I sometimes miss that feeling of being so passionate about building something, because for whatever reason I don't get that feeling anymore.
I have no idea what the work culture and expectations at Notion are today, I'm just going off the subject of this article.
And I am glad for it. Honestly, I like the push/pull nature of effort as it is currently. I like that there's tension, that we have to constantly assess, "Am I doing enough?" to figure out where our personal lines are (and everyone is different). If anything, I'd suggest that we all get more assertive and confident where we draw that line, and comfortable with the consequences.
I think applying a standard "this is an appropriate amount of effort" across the board is a great way to hurt the explosive growth that we've all benefitted from these past 30 years.
Goes all the way back to the Puritans who founded the first colonies in early America. They were known for valuing work ethic, discipline, and frugality - the values espoused by their Protestant faith.
Unsurprising that those same values have become deeply ingrained in American society over the years.
But just for salary? Hard pass, thank you.
For those who haven't heard of it, the article is about https://www.notion.so/ which Wikipedia summarizes with "an application that provides components such as notes, databases, kanban boards, wikis, calendars and reminders. Users can connect these components to create their own systems for knowledge management, note taking, data management, project management, among others"
However, engineers like using it and that is invaluable. I can't explain it, I guess cause it 'feels' 'new.' It is pretty fun to use on a Mac, and the results are aesthetically pleasing. I understand there are some pretty sophisticated things you can do with the API, and we are already talking about tying it to PRs to make release notes.
Pretty promising all-in-all, but I wouldn't have picked it over and established wiki solution.
The search is so slow that I'd rather just have all of our technical documentation as a Markdown files in a Git repo than in Notion.
Our usage of it could probably be replaced with text files, ascii art and a git repo or some wiki solution built out in the early 2000s but masochism isn’t in the values.