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Notion Productivity Tool: The Unlikely $10 Billion Odyssey from Near-Bankruptcy to Household NameNotion Productivity Tool: The Unlikely $10 Billion Odyssey from Near-Bankruptcy to Household NameNotion Productivity Tool: The Unlikely $10 Billion Odyssey from Near-Bankruptcy to Household NameNotion Productivity Tool: The Unlikely $10 Billion Odyssey from Near-Bankruptcy to Household NameNotion Productivity Tool: The Unlikely $10 Billion Odyssey from Near-Bankruptcy to Household NameNotion Productivity Tool: The Unlikely $10 Billion Odyssey from Near-Bankruptcy to Household NameNotion Productivity Tool: The Unlikely $10 Billion Odyssey from Near-Bankruptcy to Household Name

Notion Productivity Tool: The Unlikely $10 Billion Odyssey from Near-Bankruptcy to Household Name

Oct292025

Kyoto, Japan—2015. The scent of cheap instant noodles hung in the air of their tiny apartment as Ivan Zhao and Simon Last stared at their failing startup. They had fled San Francisco’s crushing expenses for Japan’s ancient capital, not for spiritual enlightenment but pure financial survival. Their bank account was bleeding out, their product was crashing constantly, and they had just let go of their entire team. This was the brink of startup death—the moment where 90% of ventures collapse. What happened next would become Silicon Valley legend: instead of giving up, they spent 18 hours a day for months rebuilding their product from scratch, fueled by ramen and conviction that people needed a Notion productivity tool to organize their thoughts and work .

This is not another Silicon Valley fairy tale. This is the story of how relentless focus on user needs, community-led growth, and strategic patience transformed a failing startup into a $10 billion productivity powerhouse used by over 30 million people worldwide. It’s a masterclass in building a beloved brand in a crowded market—and the painful sacrifices required to pull it off .

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From Garage Demo to Global Phenom: The Unlikely Rise of HeyGenFrom Garage Demo to Global Phenom: The Unlikely Rise of HeyGenFrom Garage Demo to Global Phenom: The Unlikely Rise of HeyGenFrom Garage Demo to Global Phenom: The Unlikely Rise of HeyGenFrom Garage Demo to Global Phenom: The Unlikely Rise of HeyGenFrom Garage Demo to Global Phenom: The Unlikely Rise of HeyGen

From Garage Demo to Global Phenom: The Unlikely Rise of HeyGen

Oct142025

The video that sparked HeyGen’s creation was supposed to be a secret—a crude, 30-second proof-of-concept. In late 2021, co-founders Joshua Xu and Wayne Liang huddled around a single laptop in a sparse office. They typed a script in English, selected a Chinese-speaking avatar, and hit “Generate.”

What appeared on the screen seconds later was not just a video; it was a vision of the future. The avatar’s lips moved in perfect, fluid sync with the Mandarin audio. The tone was natural, not robotic. There was no expensive film crew, no green screen, no sound engineer. It was just code, creating something that felt impossibly human.

Xu, who doesn’t speak Mandarin, played the video for his mother. She understood every word. “How much did this cost?” she asked, impressed. When he told her it was generated by their AI, her disbelief was the final validation. They weren’t just building a tool; they were building a HeyGen — a universal translator for human expression powered by artificial intelligence.

This was the spark for HeyGen, a company that would soon explode from a niche AI toy into a foundational platform for global business communication, reaching a $440 million valuation in under three years and challenging the very economics of video production.​

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