Ivan Zhao
Co-Founder & CEO @ Notion
Co-founder & CEO of Notion. Leading the company's AI integration and workplace collaboration vision.
“Ivan Zhao is the co-founder and CEO of Notion. Ivan shares the untold story of Notion, from nearly running out of database space during Covid to finding product-market fit after several “lost years,” and the hard-won lessons along the way.”
Career History
| Company | Role | Years |
|---|---|---|
| Notion | Co-Founder & CEO | 2013-present |
| Inkling | Designer | ~2011-2013 |
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Episodes (1)
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Quotable Clips
“It's very much so because sense of maturation is you don't see the world just from your perspective but from outside your perspective. At tech, we were young. Took us multiple years. It hit your head ...”
Notion’s lost years, its near collapse during Covid, staying small to move fast, the joy and suffering of building horizontal, more | Ivan Zhao (CEO and co-founder)
“We call it sugar-coated broccoli. People don't want to eat the broccoli but people like sugar, so give them the sugar then hide the broccoli inside of it.”
Notion’s lost years, its near collapse during Covid, staying small to move fast, the joy and suffering of building horizontal, more | Ivan Zhao (CEO and co-founder)
“Because me and him working so well now. Even back then, it's like you know what each other other people are thinking and you can just cross through the problem space really quickly. The technical prod...”
Notion’s lost years, its near collapse during Covid, staying small to move fast, the joy and suffering of building horizontal, more | Ivan Zhao (CEO and co-founder)
“It's like a daily personal physical reset. You can reset your code base. You can reset your mental model.”
Notion’s lost years, its near collapse during Covid, staying small to move fast, the joy and suffering of building horizontal, more | Ivan Zhao (CEO and co-founder)
“Trying to caught up the US really quickly.”
Notion’s lost years, its near collapse during Covid, staying small to move fast, the joy and suffering of building horizontal, more | Ivan Zhao (CEO and co-founder)
“Yeah, because of the way how we just hire someone in the office as a dog. Then I think we post on Twitter or something. And I said, "Why did this show up to our office?" Someone really hustled into wh...”
Notion’s lost years, its near collapse during Covid, staying small to move fast, the joy and suffering of building horizontal, more | Ivan Zhao (CEO and co-founder)
“And also because your team's small, we have this internal Notion called talent density. We don't try to track number of people but we try to track how talent-dense, revenue per employee we are. And pe...”
Notion’s lost years, its near collapse during Covid, staying small to move fast, the joy and suffering of building horizontal, more | Ivan Zhao (CEO and co-founder)
“No, I wouldn't say we're, Notion, is a cost saving-first company. I like fancy chairs. I like furniture. But we're not wasting money. I think it's more just from a taste or approach to problem solving...”
Notion’s lost years, its near collapse during Covid, staying small to move fast, the joy and suffering of building horizontal, more | Ivan Zhao (CEO and co-founder)
“It probably came up somewhere but... Or it does not.”
Notion’s lost years, its near collapse during Covid, staying small to move fast, the joy and suffering of building horizontal, more | Ivan Zhao (CEO and co-founder)
“I guess you've never been in a business meeting or brainstorm session with me. You're not there.”
Notion’s lost years, its near collapse during Covid, staying small to move fast, the joy and suffering of building horizontal, more | Ivan Zhao (CEO and co-founder)
“That took nine months, a year to realize sometime.”
Notion’s lost years, its near collapse during Covid, staying small to move fast, the joy and suffering of building horizontal, more | Ivan Zhao (CEO and co-founder)
“If I recall correctly, probably in weeks running out of the time. And then as you approach the limit of what Postgres can do, behavior becomes sporadic. You really don't know which day going to hit yo...”
Notion’s lost years, its near collapse during Covid, staying small to move fast, the joy and suffering of building horizontal, more | Ivan Zhao (CEO and co-founder)