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Ivan Zhao & Simon Last spent a year in Kyoto coding 18 hours a day & eating instant noodles. They were starting from scratch, borrowed $150,000 from Ivan's mom, & moved to Japan because they couldn't afford San Francisco anymore.
Three years into building Notion, they had to face the truth: nobody wanted their app-building tool. The whole thing was built on Google's Web Components, which turned out to be a disaster. It crashed constantly.
Today Notion has 100 million users & is worth $10 billion. But back then they were just two guys who didn't speak Japanese, living in a tiny house with a paper screen between their bedrooms.
Ivan & Simon will share:
Why they thought everyone wanted to build their own apps (they didn't)
The day they decided to let go of their friends & start over
What it was actually like coding in Kyoto for a year straight
How they went from 1,000 users to 100 million
Why they turned down investors even when they were broke
This is what it really took to build the tool that replaced Google Docs for an entire generation.
Limited to 30-50 founders. No slides. No script. Just two brothers telling you what it was really like. Light bites & drinks provided.
04:30 pm: Doors open
05:00 pm: Fireside chat starts
06:00 pm: Office tour + mingling
06:30 pm: Door shut
Part of the Overnight Success event series - see other events at overnightfpv.com
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