The Productivity App That Won the Pandemic

In uncertain times, we all want a sense of control

Angela Lashbrook
Debugger

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Image: Notion

In April 2020, as many businesses were shutting down due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Notion was booming.

Although the expansive note-taking app had been around since 2013, the company’s founders and investors apparently understood that the way we work would suddenly see a drastic change as the coronavirus spread across the country. Notion founder and CEO Ivan Zhao raised $50 million, pushing the company’s value to $2 billion.

The gamble on the part of Zhao and his investors was a good one. Notion’s user base has more than quadrupled since 2019. In August, Zhao told Protocol that each week was its biggest ever in terms of growth.

In a world that feels truly out of control, millions of people have turned to their Notion accounts to restore some order. Astronomical stress, daily Zoom meetings, and virtual cocktail parties make it feel as if we need more help than ever to keep on track of it all — even if many of us barely leave our homes.

Notion is unique in that it allows users to include a wide variety of online content, from tweets to images to graphs, that many other note-taking apps make difficult or impossible to include in a document. In a way, Notion is almost like a productivity…

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Angela Lashbrook
Debugger

I’m a columnist for OneZero, where I write about the intersection of health & tech. Also seen at Elemental, The Atlantic, VICE, and Vox. Brooklyn, NY.