[HN Gopher] How Notion pulled itself back from the brink of fail...
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How Notion pulled itself back from the brink of failure (2019)
Author : corentin88
Score : 93 points
Date : 2021-06-17 15:14 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.figma.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.figma.com)
| seumars wrote:
| Coincidentally Notion and Figma suffer from the same technical
| bottlenecks and therefore miss out on what I think is just as big
| a market: quick notes and quick prototypes. Take a native
| alternative to Figma like Adobe XD: it lets you create a
| document, put some boxes on the screen, hit cmd+enter, and
| instantly pops up a scrollable view of your prototype. Figma
| however lags for seconds each time it has to compile the
| presentation view.
| TenJack wrote:
| I feel like the app wasn't anything like the Notion that we see
| today when they moved to Kyoto. Feels almost disingenuous to call
| it Notion at that point.
| emptyparadise wrote:
| What was it like?
| ibdf wrote:
| Almost paid for Notion twice but I never do it... because of the
| damn tables... Just let add me add a simple non relational table
| where I can have row and column headers. Not every tabular data
| needs to look like a database. And finally... it's so unclear
| what they are working on that I just don't want to invest my time
| on it if I don't know where this product is going. So much
| potential...
| knubie wrote:
| > Just let add me add a simple non relational table where I can
| have row and column headers.
|
| Could you explain more what you mean by this? Or give an
| example of some software that behaves like what you're
| describing?
| leokennis wrote:
| I'm guessing it's the fact that every column needs to "be
| something" (text, number, checkbox etc.).
|
| 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.
| mandliya wrote:
| I still find notion too slow for some reason although it has
| improved over the last year for me. Kudos to the guys though.
| Great story. Notion definitely has growing feature list. Now it
| has API, backlinking etc.
| virgil_disgr4ce wrote:
| Speed is the number 1 most reported customer feedback (from
| what I've read), and I share the concern. As a result they made
| that their no. 1 priority; they did recently make some
| significant improvements but I still personally find it too
| slow in many cases, especially since I'm trying to replace
| Notational Velocity, which was designed very specifically to be
| as fast as physically possible. Until Notion deploys native
| apps and further improves caching it's still going to feel slow
| to me :/
| askafriend wrote:
| I recommend having 2 note taking apps.
|
| #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.
| virgil_disgr4ce wrote:
| Exactly, I've been thinking about making a hyper-simplified
| super-fast "input" app that connects to the Notion API for
| thought-capturing...
| jitl wrote:
| One of our engineers made a Siri voice command for this
| using the built-in iOS Shortcuts a few weeks ago; maybe
| give Shortcuts a look? Might be less trouble than opening
| Xcode.
|
| https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/4b1fc970b5314a2b93edb50e
| 7cb...
| manmal wrote:
| I use the same "stack" as you, but never thought of
| synchronizing them. Great idea!
| jspash wrote:
| My _only_ pet-peeve about Notion is that I want to default to
| large blocks of text all the time. Not single lines of some data-
| type.
|
| 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!
| leokennis wrote:
| Not sure if this is fixed now, but as Notion basically treats
| every line of text as one "row object" that you can drag around
| etc., you cannot even select multiple lines of text on iOS...
| Spivak wrote:
| Technically it's every paragraph of text but you have to
| Shift+Enter to not generate a carriage return.
| open-source-ux wrote:
| " _He suddenly popped to the top of our most active user list --
| spending upwards of 18+ hours a day in our design tool_ "
|
| 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.
| drevil-v2 wrote:
| Until Notion starts encrypting my data end-to-end it is just non-
| viable. The temptation is too great if the data is just sitting
| there on their infra to start poking around and gain "customer
| insights" and "add value".
| okprod wrote:
| For third party cloud-based Evernote/Workflowy/todo type
| services, I think I've only used OmniFocus that has E2EE.
| bachmeier wrote:
| I can't comment on the tech stack and all that, since I didn't
| see the internals, but I think Evernote deserves at least as much
| credit for saving Notion. Evernote used to have a real free plan
| and it cost only $3/month or something to go premium. Notion's
| "1000 free blocks" was confusing and honestly not that helpful,
| nobody knew who they were, and they were selling a premium plan
| for more than Evernote (who everyone knew and trusted). Notion's
| pricing and free plan strategy was a disaster from my
| perspective. It's understandable that this is an ad for Figma,
| but there were definitely other issues.
| temp8964 wrote:
| Evernote has been really stupid recently. They created a new
| version of their desktop app which does not include all the
| functions of the previous app. I can't even set default font
| and size now. I had to use their legacy version. This totally
| breaks the trust and I am moving my stuff out and will no
| longer renew my subscription.
|
| 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?
| dkarl wrote:
| I don't participate in the Evernote forums, but I have been a
| heavy user of Evernote since 2014, and I've seen other simple
| apps that I liked and depended on go into an obnoxious
| feature spiral as they desperately tried to unlock a higher
| level of market share, leading to degradation of usability
| and reliability. I'm happy for Evernote to let the product
| "stagnate" in a form that is useful and reliable for me, so I
| can understand why some people are vocal about Evernote not
| expanding their scope.
|
| 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?
| temp8964 wrote:
| Sorry with the confusion. "multiple levels of notebooks" is
| a separated topic. And I forgot to type "levels of"...
|
| But if you didn't notice the change of default font and
| font size, may be you are using the legacy version.
| fencepost wrote:
| _Evernote has been really stupid recently. They created a new
| version of their desktop app which does not include all the
| functions of the previous app._
|
| 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.
| panta wrote:
| The new Evernote desktop app is terrible. It's slow as
| molasses (Electron?), search is not reliable, and without
| connectivity it doesn't work (you don't see your local
| notes). Adding notes via the dedicated email address doesn't
| work anymore. They are adding new features of little or no
| value while letting the essentials rot. I'm a long time
| paying customer, and I have been recommending it to many
| people, but now I'm preparing to leave too.
| andreilys wrote:
| 100%. Encountering the "1000 free blocks" after I ported over
| all my notes left a really bad taste in my mouth.
|
| 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.
| ar_lan wrote:
| That restriction is gone. Notion is hands-down the best note
| taking system I've ever seen/used.
| adkadskhj wrote:
| What makes it best at note taking in your eyes?
| moooo99 wrote:
| Not OP, but it's definitely the incredible flexibility of
| the system, especially the databases.
|
| 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
| distrill wrote:
| I agree with all of this, and I want to add that it's
| truly cross platform. Their web app is the same
| experience as their native app (this suggests electron
| but I'm not an electron hater and the native app is not a
| resource hog). It also has native builds across
| platforms, including mobile which is also well done.
|
| 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.
| manigandham wrote:
| Why would you recommend against using it when your issue is
| that you didn't want to pay for it?
| mxwsn wrote:
| Notion has been free for personal use with unlimited blocks
| for a year or two now.
| fastball wrote:
| Gonna have to disagree, I thought Notion's free-for-a-certain-
| number-of-blocks pricing was great. It let you try the platform
| without limits on functionality or limits on time. If you
| signed up for an account but then forgot about it and came back
| 3 months later it wouldn't be expired like a one month free
| trial would be. I think it makes a lot of sense for any
| platform based around content creation.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > thought Notion's free-for-a-certain-number-of-blocks
| pricing was great. It let you try the platform without limits
| on functionality
|
| 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.
| fastball wrote:
| I don't think the kind of people that are overly worried
| about _not using up their free trial_ generally make good
| paying customers.
|
| 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.
| itake wrote:
| I was one of the people that saw the free 1000 blocks and
| chose not to signup, because I didn't understand what
| that gets me.
|
| I am currently happy on the free-tier and would cheer-
| lead internally at my job if there was interest to
| migrating to Notion.
| manmal wrote:
| You could always create another free workspace, and move
| pages between them. Once you got tired of that, you bought
| an account. Happened for us, and I think it was a great way
| of pulling us in.
| _pmf_ wrote:
| > So they sublet their San Francisco office and moved to a
| cheaper city where they could focus: Kyoto
|
| Come on ...
| ironmagma wrote:
| What's the exact objection? Kyoto seems to have roughly half
| the cost per square foot of SF.
| smoldesu wrote:
| So does Illinois.
| ironmagma wrote:
| So is Florida. They can't move everywhere.
| fastball wrote:
| And your point is?
| smoldesu wrote:
| Justifying your move to Kyoto as "being cheaper" is a
| lie. There is not a human with a pulse who will believe
| that you dropped everything you were doing to move to
| Japan because rent costs half as much. I might believe
| that they "wanted a change of scenery" or "needed to
| relocate for creative purposes", but price?
| fastball wrote:
| Why not all of the above? They didn't say price was the
| _only_ factor, just said it was a reason.
|
| 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).
| TameAntelope wrote:
| I think the specific phrasing was a literary device,
| because it was such an odd choice. Set up the reveal with
| a mundane/reasonable "explanation" then follow up with
| the answer to keep the article snappy and interesting.
|
| They elaborate on their choice of Kyoto as a way to
| isolate themselves further from distraction -- the
| language barrier.
| drevil-v2 wrote:
| Haha my thoughts exactly..
| black_puppydog wrote:
| Since it's not discussed in this article: Is there a write-up of
| the "suboptimal tech stack" and the hows and whys of the rewrite?
| mimixco wrote:
| Notion blogged (once they fixed the problem) that their
| original design had all customers' data in a single, unsharded
| database.
| jitl wrote:
| I joined Notion two years ago, so this era predates me, but I
| can shed a little bit of light:
|
| 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.
| reidjs wrote:
| As much as I like the idea of webcomponents and graph
| databases, I'm glad I left a job that was shifting towards
| using them. As cool as they are, they are a bit too risky to
| devote serious career time. I really hope webcomponents
| become a serious choice someday for your average developer,
| though.
| mimixco wrote:
| We make a product in the same collaboration space as Notion
| but we're a younger company. Our latest stuff is all Lit
| (what became of LitElement and Polymer). Today, web
| components in general (and Lit in particular) work really
| well on all modern browsers.
|
| 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.
| myth_drannon wrote:
| I thought UI is in Clojurescript with Datascript, or was it
| Roam...
| jitl wrote:
| That's Roam.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| Some of the clones use Clojurescript too. Athens and
| Logseq for example. Seems to be weirdly popular in this
| particular niche.
| ronyeh wrote:
| Thanks. Interesting to hear what goes on behind the scenes!
|
| 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!!
| jitl wrote:
| Interesting, we fixed a bug like this on iOS when iOS 13
| came out. I wonder if your keyboard is doing something
| similar to the iOS 13 keyboard. What phone, OS version, and
| keyboard software do you use? Does this happen with all
| keyboards, or just your favorite one?
|
| (I tried on my Pixel 2 / Android 11 with Swiftkey and
| Gboard in English and Korean, couldn't repro)
| bartaxyz wrote:
| From the look of the code of their website and the fact that
| they have 'isReactNative' variable declared, I believe
| they're using react-native even for their website. Which
| would make it single frontend codebase for all of their
| platforms.
| askafriend wrote:
| But React Native is a mobile framework...how can they use
| it on their site? I don't think that quite makes sense.
| philip1209 wrote:
| https://github.com/necolas/react-native-web
| manmal wrote:
| This project really has gone full circle.
| moooo99 wrote:
| Sharing the codebase between all apps would definitely be
| an explaination for the occasionally unpleasant desktop
| experience.
| jitl wrote:
| I'm an engineer at Notion. We don't use React Native (I
| worked on the rewrite of our apps to remove it). There's
| still a bunch of code that refers to our mobile app
| platform as reactNative, which is what you're seeing.
| dancemethis wrote:
| Hopefully Anytype will soon push Notion back into oblivion, where
| all proprietary, data-hoarding things should be.
| Karunamon wrote:
| They have full exportability.
| smoldesu wrote:
| I used Notion for a few months last year, and I honestly don't
| understand why techbros are fawning over it. You pay $4/month
| for... not hosting the most light-weight data you have? Maybe I'm
| just jaded, but Notion seems like an expensive solution to a
| problem that most people can solve for free.
| finiteseries wrote:
| It's nothing to do with hosting light weight data, it's
| everything to do with collaboration, UI, and not having to do
| it yourself.
|
| 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.
| jressey wrote:
| Our team chose it and I was pretty on the fence because wikis
| have existed for more than a decade and I had always considered
| the problem solved.
|
| 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.
| virgil_disgr4ce wrote:
| In my experience, getting engineers to not merely tolerate
| but _like_ a collaborative tool is absolutely invaluable.
| Hamuko wrote:
| Notion is alright for collaboration, but I don't really
| like it for anything else.
|
| 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.
| sharkjacobs wrote:
| I love Notion's app icon. It's one of those logos that's just the
| first letter of the name, but it's so nicely executed, it's by
| far the best in type.
| fierro wrote:
| this is the real reason I use Notion. Keeps that Dock looking
| nice and minty.
| furgooswft13 wrote:
| aww I was hoping this was gonna be an article about the glorious
| comeback of Not-ion as the true superior tiling window manager
| (suck it i3).
| fencepost wrote:
| And I was thinking "Notion? Didn't the Notion Ink come out then
| disappear into the Pit of Gone Android Devices?"
|
| 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"
| notjustanymike wrote:
| While this is obviously an article by Figma about how great Figma
| is at allowing people to use Figma, there are some interesting
| tidbits about keeping everything so you can review what didn't
| work and why.
| bendotero wrote:
| Really not feeling the silent approval of working 18+ hour days
| and not sleeping. It's unhealthy and should be frowned upon.
| tested23 wrote:
| The way i read this comment is that you are unhappy that people
| put in extra effort into their passion and dreams and instead
| people should just strive to be mediocre.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| As much as some may dislike this, putting in extra effort that
| pays off will _always_ be looked upon positively by American
| society.
|
| 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.
| askafriend wrote:
| > As much as some may dislike this, putting in extra effort
| that pays off will always be looked upon positively by
| American society.
|
| 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.
| nxc18 wrote:
| The reason that doesn't work is because you can't sustain it.
| If you save your startup from the brink of death in under a
| year, sustainability isn't needed. Plenty of people do
| university in similar circumstances. People in China do 996 and
| it works for them.
|
| 18 hour day still leaves 6 hours for sleep, assuming you
| structure the rest of your life efficiently.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| Only do this if you're being compensated for it properly.
| Otherwise you're just wrecking your body for someone else's
| profit.
| KMnO4 wrote:
| > People in China do 996 and it works for them.
|
| 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
| bla3 wrote:
| At least it was founders who benefit from doing this, instead
| of salaried folks working to enrich their boss.
| DeBraid wrote:
| Agree. They own the company, success or failure is on their
| name. A 2-person team on brink of failure doing week or two
| of 18-hour days to rescue the business (and reputation to
| lesser extent) is reasonable to me.
|
| By contrast, salaried folks with no equity should not be
| cranking out those hours, IMO.
| spoonjim wrote:
| Well it seemed to be what was required of this person in this
| situation at this time.
| karaterobot wrote:
| It seems a bit different when the two founders are the only
| ones doing it. Nobody coerced them, it's a decision they made
| for themselves. It's also different when it's crunch on a very
| finite timeline (the end of the runway) versus an open-ended
| expectation that you'll work until you die.
|
| I have no idea what the work culture and expectations at Notion
| are today, I'm just going off the subject of this article.
| IncRnd wrote:
| All employees should be grateful, when their companies have
| incredible founders, executives, or owners who do what needs to
| be done for the survivability and outlook of the business.
|
| In the same way excellent, productive employees should be
| compensated by their employers.
| AbrahamParangi wrote:
| Building successful startups requires effort. Effort is not
| sufficient, but it is mandatory.
|
| You can frown upon it but this is reality.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| If I owned a double digit percentage of voting stocks in a
| company, I'd work 18+ hour days too. I'm the one giving myself
| the permission to do that and I'm the one directly benefiting
| from the work financially.
|
| But just for salary? Hard pass, thank you.
| mimixco wrote:
| Well said.
| arnvald wrote:
| It's definitely unhealthy and unsustainable, I agree with you.
| Doing it for a longer period of time must have some long-term
| negative effects on one's body.
|
| 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.
| rgoulter wrote:
| I noticed that whenever I've had that "just one more thing"
| passion, I've rarely been so productive on the following
| days.
| randomsearch wrote:
| Curious if anyone knows - how much of the actual functionality of
| Notion can you simulate in Figma? Would you just use it for
| graphic design or could you realistically simulate some of the
| actual app behaviour?
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