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Notion – Reaching 1M users with 18 employees (disclosinggrowth.substack.com)
4 points by mcarreiro 1865 days ago
2 comments

> Notion was built using first principles thinking.

First principles thinking has really become yet another buzzword. I mean, what does that even mean in this context where notion is an amalgamation of every office productivity tool out there.

> He saw that people did not want to learn a new tool from scratch - people want to use the tools to solve their problems.

And yet the Notion team decided to create a new tool from scratch, one that's actually quite complex and often criticized for having a steep learning curve.

> Not only have they built a product that is challenging and beating the Goliaths of the industry such as Microsoft Word, Google Docs and Evernote, they have also grown a community that loves the company.

I would be surprised if Notion even has 0.1% of Word's userbase.

Thanks for the feedback! Those are valid points. I agree that initially it can feel overwhelming, but once that initial stage passes you understand the potential it has. But there is always unavoidable complexity when your product is a combination of several tools in the same place - text editor, calendar, to-do list, and so on.

Regarding making a small market reach compared to Word - that's true but bear in mind that this is a product that was originally launched 5 years ago, and only in 2018 it started gaining significant traction.

Not sure how notion is beating Google and MSFT.