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When I initially signed up for Notion, I did so thinking the API was already usable. It was used as a selling point for their premium service even though it was

When I initially signed up for Notion, I did so thinking the API was already usable. It was used as a selling point for their premium service even though it wasn't implemented. This was a year and a half ago or so. I felt pretty burned by it and killed my subscription. Hopefully this turns out well for the people who've been waiting for it, but that experience left a terrible taste in my mouth.

bnt 5y ago
Isn't that the whole point of Agile MVP development? Sell something that doesn't exist and hope someone buys it? Personally, I don't expect much from it, after working with Airtable's API and hating every second of it.
- villasv 5y ago
  You nailed the opposite of an MVP, which is to deliver it immediately and improve it later.
  - Areading314 5y ago
    Theres a lot of reasons why it makes sense to sell something before building it. You want to be up front about this fact but getting commitments to buy something is a good idea before actually spending money and time to build it.
    - villasv 5y ago
      Of course. That has nothing to do with agile MVPs, though.
- arcticfox 5y ago
  Well you've either got to make it clear that it doesn't exist yet, or not actually charge them until you build it. Otherwise that sounds like fraud.
- wpietri 5y ago
  There's some validity to the criticism, but that's more the intersection of short-cycle methods and American "hustle" culture than anything to do with an MVP approach itself. People with more integrity can take an MVP-centered approach and just be honest with customers about where they are. Indeed, I think that honesty works better; underpromising and overdelivering is a great way to build trust among your initial customer base. Trust that you need to carry people through the inevitable bumps and anticipations of an early-adopter experience.
- louisvgchi 5y ago
  What in particular did you not like about their API?
wpietri 5y ago
For those like myself ignorant about the company, Notion appears to be a project management tool with integrated wiki and docs support. With at least a claimed strong user focus.
- MattRix 5y ago
  Yup, that’s how they present it, though in reality it’s pretty clunky as a project management tool, and you’d almost always be better off using a purpose-built solution. Notion makes a decent tool for a personal/organizational wiki but it’s too slow/unresponsive/janky to use for many other purposes IMO. I’ve been using it for a couple years and I used to hold out hope that the performance could be optimized, but at this point I think it must be some fundamental issue with their tech stack (or some other organizational issue). It just feels bad to use. The pages take forever to load, the search is slow, and the actual page editing feels sluggish. It’s a shame because otherwise I really like the core ideas of how Notion works. If someone released a tool that was “Notion but fast”, I’d switch in an instant.
  - ternaryoperator 5y ago
    Your comments reflect my almost two-year experience with the paid version of Notion. I found it very difficult to figure out how to use the tools beyond very narrow use-cases they provided in examples. And I found the docs were almost useless in explaining the overarching design. As a result, despite a lot of time spent, I kept bumping into unexpected limitations or design corners with no way out other than to scrap the document type I was trying to construct. I went back to Trello for project management, Todoist for to-do's, and my Dropbox-backed markdown files for notes. It's a shame because with more attention to the user experience and better docs, I think they'd have a killer product.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - jrcii2 5y ago
      I had a similar experience. The slowness of Notion to me. I now use Obsidian which has tons of nice shortcuts and is snappy, even as it's what I believe is an Electron app.
freewilly1040 5y ago
I didn't quite have the impression you had, but I did sign up for a "early access beta", that mostly resulted in me receiving a bunch of spam from the company telling me how almost ready the api was. Happy the thing is released finally, it is a big improvement on Google docs.
paulddraper 5y ago
Same. That said, Notion is a really good product.

bnt 5y ago

Isn't that the whole point of Agile MVP development? Sell something that doesn't exist and hope someone buys it? Personally, I don't expect much from it, after working with Airtable's API and hating every second of it.

villasv 5y ago
You nailed the opposite of an MVP, which is to deliver it immediately and improve it later.
- Areading314 5y ago
  Theres a lot of reasons why it makes sense to sell something before building it. You want to be up front about this fact but getting commitments to buy something is a good idea before actually spending money and time to build it.
  - villasv 5y ago
    Of course. That has nothing to do with agile MVPs, though.
arcticfox 5y ago
Well you've either got to make it clear that it doesn't exist yet, or not actually charge them until you build it. Otherwise that sounds like fraud.
wpietri 5y ago
There's some validity to the criticism, but that's more the intersection of short-cycle methods and American "hustle" culture than anything to do with an MVP approach itself. People with more integrity can take an MVP-centered approach and just be honest with customers about where they are. Indeed, I think that honesty works better; underpromising and overdelivering is a great way to build trust among your initial customer base. Trust that you need to carry people through the inevitable bumps and anticipations of an early-adopter experience.
louisvgchi 5y ago
What in particular did you not like about their API?

wpietri 5y ago

For those like myself ignorant about the company, Notion appears to be a project management tool with integrated wiki and docs support. With at least a claimed strong user focus.

MattRix 5y ago
Yup, that’s how they present it, though in reality it’s pretty clunky as a project management tool, and you’d almost always be better off using a purpose-built solution. Notion makes a decent tool for a personal/organizational wiki but it’s too slow/unresponsive/janky to use for many other purposes IMO. I’ve been using it for a couple years and I used to hold out hope that the performance could be optimized, but at this point I think it must be some fundamental issue with their tech stack (or some other organizational issue). It just feels bad to use. The pages take forever to load, the search is slow, and the actual page editing feels sluggish. It’s a shame because otherwise I really like the core ideas of how Notion works. If someone released a tool that was “Notion but fast”, I’d switch in an instant.
- ternaryoperator 5y ago
  Your comments reflect my almost two-year experience with the paid version of Notion. I found it very difficult to figure out how to use the tools beyond very narrow use-cases they provided in examples. And I found the docs were almost useless in explaining the overarching design. As a result, despite a lot of time spent, I kept bumping into unexpected limitations or design corners with no way out other than to scrap the document type I was trying to construct. I went back to Trello for project management, Todoist for to-do's, and my Dropbox-backed markdown files for notes. It's a shame because with more attention to the user experience and better docs, I think they'd have a killer product.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - jrcii2 5y ago
    I had a similar experience. The slowness of Notion to me. I now use Obsidian which has tons of nice shortcuts and is snappy, even as it's what I believe is an Electron app.

freewilly1040 5y ago

I didn't quite have the impression you had, but I did sign up for a "early access beta", that mostly resulted in me receiving a bunch of spam from the company telling me how almost ready the api was. Happy the thing is released finally, it is a big improvement on Google docs.

paulddraper 5y ago

Same. That said, Notion is a really good product.