I love digital tools. Before cell phones, I had multiple electronic planners, each one more powerful and more portable than the last. I obsessively programmed and hacked these glorified address books as a hobby, and I was attached to them just as much as my iPhone XS Max today. In those days, people looked upon me as a nerd, a freak, and now everyone has tech neck. The irony hasn’t escaped me.

Of course, an electronic device is only as good as its programming, or innate ability to be programmed, and it’s RAM and ROM capacity. My first computer was a Commodore VIC-20, which was marketed for its impressive 5K “combined” memory back in 1981. Naturally, I expanded my memory to its max, from a measly 5K to 40K, so I was set for life! If my mental math and memory are right, Commodore’s incredible computing power assured my ability to type about 10 pages of double-spaced text. That was it. Put another way, the 40K in my dream machine ran and thought entirely on the same number of bytes it takes to create, but not display, two icons on your desktop where you are skimming this article. How far we have come in 40 years.

This piece is supposed to be about Notion, after all, but now we’re going to discuss Evernote for a moment. I swear this will come together soon.

Notion raised $50 million from Index Ventures and other investors, who valued the company at $2 billion. Today, it has a $10 billion valuation.

WIP...