Notion is a workspace application that combines notes, documents, databases, wikis and project management. Notion Labs was founded in 2013 in San Francisco, and the app was first released in 2016. It grew largely through individual users and templates before large companies adopted it.
What it is
Content is built from blocks that can hold text, images, pages and databases, which can be shown as tables, boards, calendars or timelines. Over time the company added Notion Calendar in 2024, Notion AI in February 2023, an AI agent in September 2025 and a developer platform in 2026, according to Wikipedia.
History
Wikipedia lists Ivan Zhao, Akshay Kothari, Chris Prucha, Jessica Lam, Simon Last and Toby Schachman as co-founders. A Contrary Research report describes how an early version built on a weak technical base kept crashing, and how in 2015 the founders laid off their staff and moved to Kyoto to rebuild the product from scratch. Notion 2.0 arrived in March 2018 when the team had fewer than ten people, and the app reached one million users in September 2019.
Funding includes 50 million dollars in January 2020 at a 2 billion dollar valuation and 275 million dollars in October 2021 at 10 billion dollars. A CNBC report cited by Wikipedia put annual revenue at 500 million dollars in September 2025. Notion acquired Automate.io in 2021, Cron in 2022 and Skiff in 2024.
Why it matters to founders
Notion is the usual example of product led growth through templates and a free plan, and it is the workspace many solo founders use to run their business. See Product-led growth and Freemium.
Related entries
See Ivan Zhao, Notion, Product-led growth and Freemium.
Notion is part of Tools and stack.
Sources
Wikipedia entry for Notion and Contrary Research report on Notion. Reviewed October 2026.
