Overnight Success: Notion

​Ivan Zhao and Simon Last spent a year in Kyoto coding 18 hours a day and eating instant noodles. They were starting from scratch, borrowed $150,000 from Ivan's mom, and 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 and 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 and 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 and 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 founders telling you what it was really like. Light bites and 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