Ivan Zhao: Why Notion hides no-code Lego inside productivity

1. 0:00 – 4:41

   Introduction to Ivan Zhao

   1. LRLenny Rachitsky0:00

      The way you described the early years of Notion, you described the first three to four years as the lost years.

   2. IZIvan Zhao0:05

      We try many different version. The first version, okay, everybody can make and create their software, so let's just build a developer tool that's so easy that more people can do that. We try that like a couple years and learn that actually most people just don't care. The... Our realization is actually let's hide our vision, which is everybody can create their software, in the form factor that people do care. So what kind of tool do people use every day? Productivity software. It took us two year to realize we need to build a productivity tool. We call the sugar, called the broccoli. People don't want to eat the broccoli, but people like sugar, so give them the sugar and hide the broccoli inside of it.

   3. LRLenny Rachitsky0:40

      What other elements do you think are key to you finding something that actually ended up working?

   4. IZIvan Zhao0:44

      What is the building a product or business? One user, you want revenue. That's a product business, and building for something you want the world to have is building for your value. You have some taste. You have some aesthetic. They are different energy. You need to create a balance. Too much of yourself, then there's no users. Then you're just doing art project, and too much for business, you're building a commodity.

   5. LRLenny Rachitsky1:03

      The way you think about Notion, it's almost like a philosophy of how to work and be, versus just a productivity tool, and so I'm just curious how you think about the relationship between tools and human potential.

   6. IZIvan Zhao1:15

      Tools are extensions of us, and once they extends us, once we shape them, once we bring them to, to world, they can come back to shape us.

   7. LRLenny Rachitsky1:26

      (instrumental music) Today my guest is Ivan Zhao. Ivan is the co-founder and CEO of Notion. Ivan is a really unique and also a deeply philosophical founder who doesn't do a lot of podcasts, so I'm really excited to share a glimpse into how he built one of the most beloved and most popular products in the world. We talk about the first three to four years of Notion that he describes as the lost years, how he was able to get into a great school in China by winning a programming contest, the joy and suffering of building a successful horizontal product, plus his approach to staying lean and craft and making trade-offs, and also leadership. Also, a wild story about how Notion almost died during COVID because the one database that everything lived in almost ran out of space. If you enjoy this podcast, don't forget to subscribe and follow it in your favorite podcasting app or YouTube. Also, if you become a paid annual subscriber of my newsletter, you now get a year free of Notion Pro and Perplexity Pro and Superhuman and Linear and Granola. Check it out at lennysnewsletter.com. With that, I bring you Ivan Zhao. This episode is brought to you by Eppo. Eppo is a next generation A/B testing and feature management platform built by alums of Airbnb and Snowflake for modern growth teams. Companies like Twitch, Miro, ClickUp, and DraftKings rely on Eppo to power their experiments. Experimentation is increasingly essential for driving growth and for understanding the performance of new features, and Eppo helps you increase experimentation velocity while unlocking rigorous deep analysis in a way that no other commercial tool does. When I was at Airbnb, one of the things that I loved most was our experimentation platform, where I could set up experiments easily, troubleshoot issues, and analyze performance all on my own. Eppo does all that and more with advanced statistical methods that can help you shave weeks off experiment time, an accessible UI for diving deeper into performance, and out of the box reporting that helps you avoid annoying prolonged analytic cycles. Eppo also makes it easy for you to share experiment insights with your team, sparking new ideas for the A/B testing flywheel. Eppo powers experimentation across every use case, including product, growth, machine learning, monetization, and email marketing. Check out Eppo at geteppo.com/lenny and 10X your experiment velocity. That's geteppo.com/lenny. This episode is brought to you by Airtable Product Central, the unified system that brings your entire product org together in one place. No more scattered tools, no more misaligned teams. If you're like most product leaders, you're tired of constant context switching between tools. That's why Airtable built Product Central after decades of working with world-class product companies. Think of it as mission control for your entire product organization. Unlike rigid point solutions, Product Central powers everything from resourcing to voice of customer to road mapping to launch execution, and because it's built on Airtable's no-code platform, you can customize every workflow to match exactly how your team works. No limitations, no compromises. Ready to see it in action? Head to airtable.com/lenny to book a demo. That's airtable.com/lenny.

2. 4:41 – 7:46

   Ivan’s early life and education

   1. LRLenny Rachitsky4:41

      (instrumental music) Ivan, thank you so much for being here and welcome to the podcast.

   2. IZIvan Zhao4:47

      Thank you for having me.

   3. LRLenny Rachitsky4:48

      I know you don't do a lot of podcasts, and so I'm very honored that you're here. I want to start with the story of Ivan. Your background is quite unique for a founder of a $10 billion-plus tech company, and I don't think a lot of people know it. For example, you grew up in a, uh, a small town in China, and the way you got out of there, the way you got into tech is pretty interesting. Can you, can you just walk us through that early years of Ivan and how, how you got out of there?

   4. IZIvan Zhao5:16

      Yeah. I think a small town in China, the definition, it's, it's actually a four million people city.

   5. LRLenny Rachitsky5:21

      (laughs)

   6. IZIvan Zhao5:21

      So, uh, the city is called Urumqi. It's in the northwest desert part of China. So I grew up there and, um, then I move into... My mom took me to, uh, Beijing, the capital of China, and, um, that's actually how I got into programming, coding. Because I'm from somewhere else, and in order to go into good school in the capital, you need to win some kind of competition, and there are different path. You can good at math, uh, there, or you can good at, at programming, like Information Olympiad. Um, I was really into compu- computer games at the time, so of course, I picked the programming one so I can play with computers all day long, and I win some competition, uh, and got me into a good school. So that's how I got into programming. Um...... later then I moved to Canada. Uh, when I moved to Canada, gone into college, did not study computer science since I already know how to code. Um, played a lot of video games, did a lot of art, actually, s- art and science. Um, by the time I graduated college, I realize most of my friends are artists that need to make their websites, get web portfolio made, and I'm the only nerd in my art friend circle, so I made three or four websites and realized, "Oh, actually people don't know how to create with the software medium, computing medium." So that got me to want to create a product like Notion today, which will allow more people to create tools, create software for their daily work and life.

   7. LRLenny Rachitsky6:49

      Okay. So going back to, uh, you, you... to get into a great school and to, uh, kind of, uh, leave the s- small town, not so small, you had to, uh, enter a programming contest and you, uh, you placed first or second, or how, how well did you actually do in this-

   8. IZIvan Zhao7:05

      Second in Beijing. So-

   9. LRLenny Rachitsky7:07

      In Beijing? Okay.

   10. IZIvan Zhao7:08

       ... uh, pretty big. Beijing's a big city. So-

   11. LRLenny Rachitsky7:10

       Okay.

   12. IZIvan Zhao7:11

       ... um-

   13. LRLenny Rachitsky7:11

       Incredible. Another stat I, uh, or story I heard is that you learned English by watching SpongeBob Squarepants. Is that real?

   14. IZIvan Zhao7:18

       Yeah, it's real. Um, I moved to Canada pretty late, uh, 16 years old, and what I learned is, yeah, in, in China, you can learn English, but it is typically just grammar and doing exams. What you're missing is the context, the culture, so you have to watch SpongeBob or Simpsons to get a sense of humor, essentially. You can understand jokes, right? Uh, watching cartoon, it's, it's probably the easiest way to do that.

   15. LRLenny Rachitsky7:45

       That's

3. 7:46 – 10:49

   Discovering the vision for Notion

   1. LRLenny Rachitsky7:46

      amazing. Um, and there's another just kind of seminal moment in your path. I don't know if it was this point or later, but the Douglas Engelbart paper, uh, ended up being a very meaningful moment for you.

   2. IZIvan Zhao7:58

      So while I was in Canada in, uh, last year of school, working on trying to building website from our friends and, uh, building a creative tool for them, and, uh, then you just look into the history of creative tool for software for computing, um, you eventually arrive at 1960 and '70s. So you re- realize the first generation of computing pioneers, which was around San Francisco, Stanford areas, South Bay, they actually had the best ideas. For them, people like Douglas Engelbart, Alan Kay, Ted Nelson, those first generation pioneers, for them, computing, there shouldn't be a separation between builders and users. It's the same medium. Engelbart's original paper, called Augmenting Human Intellect, when I read that paper, it's like, "Holy shit. If you making software, if you know how to code or design, this is the highest leverage thing you can do for other people, is to give them the ability to use computing to augment their problem-solving ability or their intellect." Uh, that just got me obsessed with this problem, and I want to start a company like Notion.

   3. LRLenny Rachitsky9:05

      Makes me think of Steve Jobs' famous line of how the computer is the bicycle for the mind.

   4. IZIvan Zhao9:10

      You know what? Steve Jobs is actually at fault of this in some strange ways. So-

   5. LRLenny Rachitsky9:16

      Hmm.

   6. IZIvan Zhao9:16

      ... the story is like... actually, the fact. It's not a good story. Um, Xerox PARC has, working on the first generation personal computers called Xerox Alto. Alan Kay was one of the main person behind that. Alto runs on this system called Smalltalk, which is there's no separation between users and Users App. There's no thing called application. Everything is malleable. You can change the tools, right? So when Steve Job, the famous story is when he went to Xero- Xerox PARC to... in demo with the Alto, uh, he does not... it's the first time he see graphic user interface, one of the first time, and it's also they present them with this Alto system that everything could change. But he did not see the, the power of it. Even when, um, people would demonstrate like, "Hey," Steve Jobs say, "I don't like this direction of scrollbar direction. When you scroll up and down, it shouldn't scroll the opposite reverse direction." And then people would just instantly change the scrollbar direction for him. Uh, that's the power of the original Smalltalk Alto system. He only saw the graphic user interface. He did not see the underlying object or an environment power. As the generation of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates bring, make PC, personal computing, uh, popular, and they sort of stuck with this kind of application framework rather than this Smalltalk object-oriented framework, then that has all the apps we have today and has the SAS problem we have today.

   7. LRLenny Rachitsky10:43

      That, uh, vision of how products should be sounds very familiar, and we'll talk about that later, of how you think about Notion.

4. 10:49 – 13:56

   The lost years of Notion

   1. LRLenny Rachitsky10:49

      But let's zoom to the beginning of Notion. When we were chatting earlier, the way you described the early years of Notion, you started Notion 2013, and some, over 10 years ago at this point. You described the first three to four years as the lost years of Notion, and I think this is actually a really big deal for founders to hear about, because there's all these companies these days, you hear these stats. They had 100 billion ARR in, like, two years, under two years now. And you don't hear a lot of stories of companies of your scale and success that took three to four years to find product market fit, essentially. What went on during these lost years as you describe them, and just how did you, how did you stick with it? That's a long time to stick with something that isn't working.

   2. IZIvan Zhao11:32

      Because the goal is always building a computing tool, it's like, what product is this? It's really hard to shape the product, right? Um, the vision is the, the... the dream is there, but the product is very... there's so many path. We tried many different version. The first version to take, okay, everybody can make and create their software, so let's just build a developer tool that's so easy that more people can do that. We tried that, like, couple years and learned that actually most people just don't care.... the majority of people, they wake up, they, they have report due. They need to get their job done. They don't care creating software to optimize whatever they're doing. They don't care. Uh, so give to our friends, give to investors, um, yeah, did, did not resonate with people. Um, but we really wanna build that tool, so we just keep going, and the, uh, realization is actually let's hide our vision, which is everybody can create their software, in the form factor that people do care. So what kind of tool do people use every day? Productivity software. So that's why I came to Notion today. If you use Notion, Notion work more understood as a productivity suite, but our intent... And if you're u- using Notion more, you'll unders- discover our intent, which is Zetahash has a no-code developer power into it. You can create almost any kind of productivity software using Notion itself. Um, that took us two-plus year to realize. So actually, the world is not like you. The world are not, like, develop- developer, designer-minded. The world is, they only care what's in front of them, and it's so noisy.

   3. LRLenny Rachitsky13:16

      There's a quote that, uh, this makes me think about, where you said, "The first version of Notion was more about what I wanted than what people wanted."

   4. IZIvan Zhao13:23

      Very much so, because, like, sense of maturation is you, you don't see the world just from your perspective, but from outside your perspective, right? It takes... We were young, took us mu- multiple years, uh, hit your head straight into the, into the wall to realize that, 'cause people just-

   5. LRLenny Rachitsky13:39

      Yeah.

   6. IZIvan Zhao13:40

      ... don't care.

   7. LRLenny Rachitsky13:40

      I love the way you phrased it, that you kind of have to hide your vision behind something that people, uh, understand and know, know how to use, and...

   8. IZIvan Zhao13:47

      Yeah. We called the sugar-coated broccoli. People don't want to eat the broccoli, but people like sugar, so give them the sugar-

   9. LRLenny Rachitsky13:53

      I know.

   10. IZIvan Zhao13:53

       ... and hide the broccoli inside of it.

   11. LRLenny Rachitsky13:55

       Wow.

5. 13:56 – 17:14

   Rebuilding and perseverance

   1. LRLenny Rachitsky13:56

   2. IZIvan Zhao13:56

      Yeah.

   3. LRLenny Rachitsky13:57

      The other thing I've heard is that you had, you threw away your code every time. Like, so you rebuilt it many times. You threw away the code each time.

   4. IZIvan Zhao14:03

      That's true, actually, it took us four year to get somewhere. First two year is that you build too much like no-code, like developer product, and nobody cares. It took us two year to realize we need to build a productivity tool. Then it took anoth- another year or two to reali- to buil- to build this out, but in the middle of that, realized we built it on the wrong technical foundation. So like, uh, eight, 10 years ago, there's competing, before Re- r- right now all the web app runs on React, right? Before React wins, there's a competing technology called Web Component from Google, and it makes sense. Web Component feels like a Lego-like, like the building block like, and we're betting on that technology, and then we realize because it's so new, it just is so unstable. It don't know where the bug come from, is it from your source code, is it from underlying libraries? Um, then we have to restart a company, otherwise, rebuild the whole thing. Otherwise, we're gonna run out of time. So that's, uh, instead reset the code base, reset the company, so we can build on a round, mor- more orthodox technoco- technology foundation.

   5. LRLenny Rachitsky15:10

      How did you actually stay solvent all this time? A lot of people want to keep working on an idea. Uh, oftentimes, they need to pay the bills. How, practically, were you able to keep working for three or four years? I, I know there's a story of your mom loaning you some money during that time.

   6. IZIvan Zhao15:25

      Well, Chinese mom always can, uh, help, uh, uh-

   7. LRLenny Rachitsky15:28

      (laughs)

   8. IZIvan Zhao15:28

      ... when I'm single child. Um, yeah, they, my mom helped me. Well, actually, my mom helped me kickstart the company. 'Cause I'm Canadian, in order to move to US, you need to, like, register a company. So my mom help me with the initial and then ra- raise the money, and I, I sort of returned the money to her. Then we run out of money, so, "Hey, mom, can I borrow that just to bridge us?" Uh, which she did. I really grateful for that. Um, how do we bridge? How do we last here so long? Because the thing you want to create does not exist. With ............................ Notion's, it's the Lego for software. It doesn't quite exist, right? There's a Lego for Lego. You can see that in furnitures where it exists. But Lego for software, at the usable, mass market adoption level, doesn't quite exist, and you just want that thing to exist. And I grew up with Legos, it's the only toy I ever wanted, and I want the same feeling, um, of creativity and playfulness to the tool that people can use every day. So, and my co-founder, Simon, feels the same way. Lego is the only thing he, like wanted, uh, for every Christmas.

   9. LRLenny Rachitsky16:36

      Have you guys seen Magna-Tiles though? I have, I, I have a one and a half year old, and Magna-Tiles are-

   10. IZIvan Zhao16:41

       Oh.

   11. LRLenny Rachitsky16:41

       ... quite delightful. It's like a-

   12. IZIvan Zhao16:42

       What's a MagnaTile?

   13. LRLenny Rachitsky16:42

       I think it's like a pre-Lego, (laughs) like the ............................

   14. IZIvan Zhao16:45

       Magna-Tile.

   15. LRLenny Rachitsky16:45

       Yeah, it's like a, they're little magnetic plastic, uh, uh, planes, and then you can build little, you can build much bigger things really quickly.

   16. IZIvan Zhao16:55

       Oh.

   17. LRLenny Rachitsky16:56

       It's more for babies, uh, but I'm, I'm having a blast. (laughs)

   18. IZIvan Zhao16:58

       Oh, I see It as kind of like... Uh-huh.

   19. LRLenny Rachitsky17:01

       It's like a different version of Legos.

   20. IZIvan Zhao17:03

       Yeah.

   21. LRLenny Rachitsky17:03

       I like that you're in real time looking it up. You're like, "Okay, we're, our new vision, Magna-Tiles for software."

   22. IZIvan Zhao17:08

       Now most people know Lego, MagnaTile-

   23. LRLenny Rachitsky17:10

       Yeah. (laughs)

   24. IZIvan Zhao17:11

       I- IDEA is the same, modular, right?

   25. LRLenny Rachitsky17:13

       Yeah.

   26. IZIvan Zhao17:13

       Creativity.

6. 17:14 – 18:53

   Layoffs and company morale

   1. IZIvan Zhao17:14

   2. LRLenny Rachitsky17:14

      Okay, back to your story. So there's also a moment where you move to Japan. Just what was that about? Is that just, like, escape and disconnect from-

   3. IZIvan Zhao17:20

      Yeah, that was during the, one of the review phases, um, during the we know what the product should look like. It should be a productivity software with Lego power hiding inside of it. We built on a wrong technical foundation, and if we continued to build on the wrong ones, we're gonna run out of money, company won't exist. So we decided to lay off everybody. At that time, Notion was five people. We lay off everybody, back to me and Simon, two people. Um, and morale obviously was really low. You have to say goodbye to your teammates. And, um, so we have the idea, let's just go somewhere that we never been to, to change the scenery a little bit. And Japan is always top on our list. So, um, you know, the funny thing is, if we, and we subleased our apartment and office, we're actually making money living in Japan.... uh, and then San Francisco. So, uh, we did that for a while. We actually traveled around the world for a while just to, like, change it up. Um, me and Simon just coding every day, and, um, design every day. That's- that's some of the happiest moments, you know? Birthday every day.

   4. LRLenny Rachitsky18:27

      I saw a stat you were quoting 18 hours a day. So like, here's the quote I heard. Uh, "We just code, code, code, then hey, let's go out for food. Then we go eat, go back to work and do it again."

   5. IZIvan Zhao18:35

      'Cause me and him working so well now, even back then, it's like you sort of know what each other people are thinking, and you can just cross through the problem space really quickly, the technical product space, design space, um, and just nonstop of,

7. 18:53 – 25:08

   Advice for startup founders

   1. IZIvan Zhao18:53

      uh, shipping stuff.

   2. LRLenny Rachitsky18:55

      So maybe just to close out this thread, for people, for founders that are either struggling and just, like, can't find a thing that's working, "I've been working on something for a long time," I'm curious what advice you'd share for sticking with it. And I'll share things I've heard you say so far, and I'm curious if there's something you'd add. One is you just, like, believe this needs to exist in the world, and you need to, like, really feel this, I need this to be a thing. I think there's an element of staying lean, like you've let everyone go and it's just you and Simon again. There's also this element of disconnecting almost, and just, like, going to a different location, and just like, "Let's just reset." What other elements do you think are key to you finding something that actually ended up working?

   3. IZIvan Zhao19:36

      I'm kind of lucky, and Simon kind of lucky, that high is never too high, low is never too low for us. So somehow s- wasn't feeling too down. Um, whenever I feel s- down, I just go to sleep. Then next day, I'm- I'm just reset. So, that's kind of lucky for me. Um, definitely don't wor- don't- don't be afraid to reset. I think courage is quite important, because like oftentime you're working on things don't matter but momentum just took you there. Um, your first point of building something you want the world to have, um, what is the building a product or business? Right? You want user, you want revenue. That's a, that's a product business. It's almost like a sports. The market is the arena that you'd want to optimize the scorecard, or, um, it's- it's building for winning. And I grew up playing sports. I re- um, I like to compete. So, I like that. Um, and building for something you want the world to ex- to- to have is building for your value. Uh, you- you have some taste, you have some aesthetic, you have some values, you want the world to have more of that. There are different energy. Um, I realized actually fairly recently, like, they are really different. Depends on which day I wake up, I might- I might be in different mood for things. But building for value, it's more lasting and more fulfilling. Looking in the thing we're building today and looking, looking back, I find most prouder thing, like, I create something authentic to myself and ha- happened to be also useful for others. And that just keeps you going, and that feels like a more durable energy source for all those dark years, lost years, through Notion, and still every day for me.

   4. LRLenny Rachitsky21:24

      It's interesting you say that, because there's also this- there's this aspect of it wasn't working initially because you were building it for yourself and not for people. But what I'm hearing is, it's- it's still important to build a thing that you are still excited about, but also have you go back and forth. Here's what the business needs-

   5. IZIvan Zhao21:40

      Oh, yeah.

   6. LRLenny Rachitsky21:40

      ... and here's the thing I'm excited about.

   7. IZIvan Zhao21:42

      You're really acute, almost like a therapist, right? So, uh-

   8. LRLenny Rachitsky21:44

      (laughs)

   9. IZIvan Zhao21:45

      Uh, it's true. Like, you're building too much for your own self and value without realizing at the end of the day if you're building a product and tool has to be used by others, you need to create a balance. Too much of yourself, then there's no users. Then you're just doing an art project, you're just doing a research project, right? And- and too much for business, you're building a commodity, right? So, where's the spectrum? Um, yeah. It's- it's, uh, it's never-ending spectrum. Um, it's interesting.

   10. LRLenny Rachitsky22:17

       Yeah. (laughs) Okay. So, I'll summarize some of the things you shared of just how to stick with it and st- stay with an idea and not give up. So, uh, I love that you said just get sleep. Very Brian Johnson of you. Just, like, get some sleep when it's a real down day. There'll be another day tomorrow. Really simple but... (laughs)

   11. IZIvan Zhao22:32

       It's like a daily personal physical reset, right? You can reset your code base, you can reset your mental model.

   12. LRLenny Rachitsky22:38

       Mm. Okay, and then there's also a... I love these points. Don't be afraid to kind of reset as you just said. Like, uh, Tobi Lutke was on the podcast, he said the same thing. Just be comfortable with sunk cost. I have done all this already, and I will throw it away and start again, and that's okay.

   13. IZIvan Zhao22:53

       Yeah. I think s- it's not just like a self-help f- with way to say don't be afraid to reset. That's like, that's okay, that's fine. I think the more interesting point here, it's like, you can create progress through better abstractions, and that thing compounds faster, it can catch up to all the thing you build much quicker than you ever thought, right? 'Cause humans are not thinking, not good at thinking in terms of abstraction or the exponentials. We're thinking in terms or linearly. And if you just reset and you find a better way to do it, you can get all the thing you have, the sunk cost recovered really quickly. So, actually going back to the computing pioneers part of like Smalltalk, the f- one of the first system and a huge influence for Notion was really tiny code base and li- inspired by LISP, which is another programming languages, and probably like 100 lines of code or something. Right? S- the kernel of things could be really small, but just like math, it can compound. It can- it can have complex behavior that unlocks so much value and things for you. But if you just find those right, you can catch up to all the thing you did. You're- you are free to lose really quickly. So, I think that's the- the kernel of why reset is so powerful.

   14. LRLenny Rachitsky24:10

       And, and we're seeing exactly what you're describing in LLM advancements these days. All these companies have been working on this for so long, and then they've cracked, kind of, an abstraction of how to think about scaling these mach- these systems. And now it just... People launch them and are immediately where the companies that have been working on this for decades are today, because they are building off these abstractions, as you described, and these-

   15. IZIvan Zhao24:33

       Yeah, like-

   16. LRLenny Rachitsky24:34

       ... big ideas.

   17. IZIvan Zhao24:34

       ... China caught up with the US really quickly.

   18. LRLenny Rachitsky24:36

       With DeepSeek, yeah.

   19. IZIvan Zhao24:37

       Yeah.

   20. LRLenny Rachitsky24:38

       The point you also made about momentum, like be afraid... Be wary of momentum taking you in a direction and moving in a different... Not being stuck to that direction is exactly the way, uh, I think the chain of thought models now work actually, where generally LMs are like, "Next word, next word, next word, next word." And if they ever make a wrong turn, they're stuck, they keep going from that path. And these chain of thought models are now good at just, like, "Wait, let me think. Let me rethink. Is this actually the right path or should I start again?" So I feel like AI's almost figured out exactly what you're describing (laughs) .

   21. IZIvan Zhao25:07

       Interesting.

   22. LRLenny Rachitsky25:07

       Oh, man.

8. 25:08 – 29:56

   Product-market fit

   1. LRLenny Rachitsky25:08

      Okay, last question about the early years. Everyone's always wondering, what does pro- product market fit feel like? You've been... You worked on it for three to four years. What was, kind of, the moment... What did... What did... What did it look like? What was different when you're like, "Okay, this is gonna work"?

   2. IZIvan Zhao25:20

      I think going back to me and Sam, high is never that high, low is never that low. It never hit me, hit us as, like, a finery state. It just, kind of, like, "Oh, good, we have people who care about this thing we make now." Oh good, people are... Um, reach out to us or paying us, and it's... It's a, kind of, very gradual ramp. Um, maybe that's why early days, when it's really the lost eras, it doesn't feel too low because it just... Even for Notion today, it feels like it's so small in terms of where it could be, and it just steady keep going, right? It's a... It's a... It's a less of a milestone way to thinking about things. It's more just, like, "Can we do the thing that's in our head and better than we did last week?" way of thinking about things. So it never... there's a such moment that product-market fit, "Boom, milestone achieved." Didn't feel that way.

   3. LRLenny Rachitsky26:13

      I've heard that from a lot of founders, actually. Was there... Was there, like, a moment, uh, in that point of just, like, "Oh, this is different," or, "Maybe it's gonna work this time"?

   4. IZIvan Zhao26:23

      I think, for a while, like, okay, once we start revenue, product grows, uh, faster now. Investors start knocking on the door with, like... I remember one day, it's like, there's a dog food, dog food, uh, dog treats sent entire ma- uh, sent to our office. So first of all, office wasn't public, the address, and the dog treats. Like, why do people want this so much, right? So that, that was a moment I paused a little bit, um, and I guess there's enough attraction for investors, um...

   5. LRLenny Rachitsky26:55

      And the dog treats were trying to con-... It was like a gift to be like, "Hey, you should talk to us. We're sending this fun gift."

   6. IZIvan Zhao26:59

      Yeah, 'cause of the way how we'll just hire someone in the office as a dog. Then we're, I think we post on Twitter or something. (laughs)

   7. LRLenny Rachitsky27:05

      (laughs)

   8. IZIvan Zhao27:06

      And then... And so, why did this show up to our office? Someone really hustled into, uh, where we are and I said, uh, our office address, and follow us on Twitter, so...

   9. LRLenny Rachitsky27:17

      Did you end up taking their money?

   10. IZIvan Zhao27:19

       Not the first time, yeah.

   11. LRLenny Rachitsky27:21

       Okay. Okay, later. (laughs) Okay.

   12. IZIvan Zhao27:23

       (laughs) .

   13. LRLenny Rachitsky27:23

       But it's a long game.

   14. IZIvan Zhao27:24

       No.

   15. LRLenny Rachitsky27:25

       Awesome. So that's... That's... I've never heard that before, sign product-market fit, is VCs are starting to... You start getting a lot more messaging and cold outreach from VCs.

   16. IZIvan Zhao27:33

       So actually, I had, um, one of our investor, uh, is really helpful, because all those years, you... You sort of just like... There's no feedback loop. You just go for it, then the feedback loop gradually show up. Then you see... Oh, then it... For a while, it's, "Oh, VCs started knocking on door, so, um, I should talk to those people, the people who like what we're doing," right? I l- I did some meetings, quite a few meeting, maybe a dozen, I realize, and one of the investors saying, like, "Ivan, what are you doing? Like, you clearly don't need money. Um, do... You're just trying to feel good, do external validation about this?" And I said, "Oh, that's so true." It's like, I don't... There's... It doesn't help us make a better product, right? And the truth is with our... what customer tell us. Um, then we... Then sort of, like, we just went back to building... I went back to hardcore building no-meeting modes. That's where the dog food story came about and realized, "Oh, that's interesting."

   17. LRLenny Rachitsky28:30

       You mentioned this investor that you said was really helpful. Is... You wanna give them, uh, some cred, or do you want to keep it private?

   18. IZIvan Zhao28:35

       Oh, Shanna Fisher. She's in New York. Uh-

   19. LRLenny Rachitsky28:38

       Okay, cool.

   20. IZIvan Zhao28:39

       Yeah, she's like, um, another therapist, right?

   21. LRLenny Rachitsky28:41

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9. 29:56 – 34:27

   Staying lean and efficient

   1. LRLenny Rachitsky29:56

      I want to shift to talking about Notion today and the way you've approached it. And, uh, a good segue is what you've s- been talking about right now, is how lean and efficient you've been and how that's been a big priority for you. So a few stats I've seen, uh, one is that you're... you guys are profitable. You've been profitable for a couple years now.You haven't s- I think, I don't know if you've spent even the money you've raised. Like, I think most of it is still in the-

   2. IZIvan Zhao30:19

      Yeah.

   3. LRLenny Rachitsky30:20

      ... yeah, still in the bank. You're nodding if you're on YouTube. Uh, you didn't have a salesperson until you hit over 10 million ARR. You hired your first PM at, like, 50 people. You've always kept the team generally really small. Why has that been important to you? It's, like, very cool now. Everyone's like, "Of course, that's how it should be." But for the past decade, that has not been the case. You've always been that way. Why has that been so important?

   4. IZIvan Zhao30:44

      I think going back to the abstraction system way of problem solving I think we're lucky that me and Simon and Akshay, we have the skillset that you probably can run a whole company with just a couple of us. I can code, I can design, uh, I can do marketing, storytelling, talk- talking sell- close sales deals. So you sort of realize you don't need a lot. And, but when you can do a lot at the same time, uh, or hire people who can do that, it naturally keeps the, the company small. And, uh, you all know, you're doing product management, it's, the over- overhead is actually more from internal communication, right? It's really hard to get people's mind to be aligned on things to see the world in the same way. Um, and the part that you do need people, maybe you can solve better through a system, through better tools. Like Notion itself is a meta tool, it's a tool to build other tools so we pretty much run everything on Notion. We use the same mindset to build our company. Um, and accidentally that keep our headcount low, keep our company profitable, and which then put you on the positive treadmill of you don't have to go for the next 18, 24 months to find money. You just have to... you can just focus on building. And also, because your team's small, uh, we, we have this internal notion called talent density.

   5. LRLenny Rachitsky32:11

      Right.

   6. IZIvan Zhao32:12

      Which we're not... we don't try to track number of people, but we try to track how talent-dense revenue per employee, uh, we are. And people want to work with other more talented people. So, um, it's, it's a positive compounding loop.

   7. LRLenny Rachitsky32:27

      I wonder how much of this is actually from being around for so many years without success of, "We just have to stay very lean and save our c- cash 'cause otherwise we'll die." Do you think that was, that was like a formative experience to inform how you want to operate? Or is that always something-

   8. IZIvan Zhao32:41

      No, I wouldn't say we're... Notion's like a cost-saving first company. Like, I like fancy chairs. I like furnitures (laughs) . Uh, but we're not, like, wasting money. I think all, uh, it's more just from a taste or approach to problem solving, right? I just believe better system is much better than brute force through people.

   9. LRLenny Rachitsky33:05

      When people hear this idea of staying lean and, you know, staying small, like, it sounds great. Of, yeah, "We're, we're going to be super efficient and lean and smart with our money and talent-dense." It's very hard to do, and it's very hard not to hire more engineers, more designers. What advice do you have for folks that want to operate this way? Like, what has allowed you to actually be successful while staying lean and not having as many engineers as competitors, many designers as competitors?

   10. IZIvan Zhao33:29

       I think just understand abstraction or system is a better curve than headcount curve, right? Linear. I don't th- We in turn... I help other people now understand this. Internally, we c- we, we use the metaphor, Notion's a small bus. The bus, the, the, the, the smaller the bus, it's easier to turn corners, easier to accelerate, easier to maneuver. The bigger the bus it is, it just, like bigger the boat, bigger the bus, slow it down. And as a leader in the company, you decide who sit around you on the bus seats, right? That, it dictates how fast our overall bus moves. Dictate your work and life experience at this company because you're, you pick your roommate, you pick your seat mates. Um, that metaphor clicks with people inside a company and, and overall help us optimize the... make the bus tight, make the bus lean.

   11. LRLenny Rachitsky34:20

       I've never heard (laughs) that metaphor before.

   12. IZIvan Zhao34:22

       Well, I... probably came up somewhere, but... worked. No.

   13. LRLenny Rachitsky34:25

       Small bus.

10. 34:27 – 37:20

    Creating a unique office culture

    1. LRLenny Rachitsky34:27

       Um, so along these lines, actually, so I visited the office recently, and I noticed that it's just, like, a very cozy vibe. And I learned that you had a rule of no shoes in the office for a long time, until the last office. That you all ate around one table for a long time. That you tried 30 different, uh, shades of warm white on the walls before you chose. Why is that important to you? Why is it so important to be so thoughtful about the office experience?

    2. IZIvan Zhao34:53

       Maybe there are two dimension part of it. One is, um, one is the, the pragmatic part. You just want office to be a pleasant experience to be at. Um, therefore most office, the top light feels like hospital.

    3. NANarrator35:07

       Mm.

    4. IZIvan Zhao35:07

       It's just like, "Oh, man." And then the white is so pale, and the floor is so dark. Like, don't use white. Use some kind of cream. Make floors more friendly colors, and don't use top light. Top light is evil. So just, the office feels cozy so people spend more time. You feel more, more creative, more at ease in the office space, right? The, the vision we, we have is it should feels like artist studio or should feel like your home. That's why most our office furniture are home furnitures. It just feels cozy. That's more of... so people spend more time, it feels more creative, juices flow better. The other word is like, at least personally for me, it hurts the eyes if you just see ugly things. It's more from a value of aesthetic front. It's like we talk about ergonomic chairs, is does it hurt your back when you sit on bad chairs? But you have more visual input from, at least for me, from the eyes. If the ugly, the chair looks ugly, the wall looks ugly, it hurts. So it's better to not have thing that hurts.

    5. LRLenny Rachitsky36:05

       You also have a really interesting naming convention for your, uh, conference rooms.

    6. IZIvan Zhao36:08

       Yeah.

    7. LRLenny Rachitsky36:09

       It's true. Yeah.

    8. IZIvan Zhao36:10

       We name our conference room after timeless tools in history.So there are, um... Give you one example, iPhone's obvious one, original Macintosh, um, various different form of chairs, LAMY's 2000 pens, um, uh, Toshiba rice cookers and other ones. Um, um, because they're inspirations, they're just like... At the end of the day, we're creating a tool. Uh, we're creating a meta-tool, allow other people to create tools, software tools. And Toshiba rice cooker changed how people eat rice in Asia for... (smacks lips) For, for 100 million... Tens of 100 million people, right? The Sony transistor radio is the first one to shrink semiconductor to something small and useful for people. And those things changed people's life and lasts for decades. What it's like to create a software product like that? I want to inspire my team to think that way, 'cause it's like software and, and especially tech, it's just every six months, every 12 months cycle, they don't... We don't think enough about creating something that lasts. Uh, I care creating something that's at least the form factor lasts longer than

11. 37:20 – 38:44

    Craft and values: the foundation of Notion’s philosophy

    1. IZIvan Zhao37:20

       12, 18 months.

    2. LRLenny Rachitsky37:21

       There's a quote that you tweeted once that I think of as you talk about this from Steve Jobs, "The problem is that there's just a tremendous amount of craftsmanship between a great idea and a great product." I don't know if you remember tweeting that, but just wha- what do you think of when you, when you hear that?

    3. IZIvan Zhao37:36

       Yeah. I think the key word here is craft. Like internally our company philosophy called crafts and values. Craft is like your skillset, your taste. Value is like your personal value and how do you see the world. Um, craft is interesting world, it's kinda like about apply your value to some technical know-how and to make more clever trade-offs to create something new and useful, um, and just keep doing that at it. And like my wife often refer me like as a wood cabinet builder.

    4. LRLenny Rachitsky38:14

       (laughs)

    5. IZIvan Zhao38:14

       Like that's how I, at least my mindset training towards building Notion is like, "Oh, can I make this wood cabinet more beautiful and more useful and feels nicer on your hand?" Um, and that's like you have aesthetic direction towards it, and you have your technical know-how to actually make things happen, then you need to do permutation and trade-off in your head or on paper and to get there.

    6. LRLenny Rachitsky38:37

       Right.

    7. IZIvan Zhao38:37

       That, to me, that's craft. And mo- building product to me, at least to me, feels that way. Building business feels that way. Building company feels that

12. 38:44 – 41:24

    Navigating tradeoffs in product and business building

    1. IZIvan Zhao38:44

       way.

    2. LRLenny Rachitsky38:44

       It's interesting that so much of this conversation is this... And the way you think about building this company is this balance between practical, useful things people need and, like, business and, you know, practical stuff, and then this, like, the value of building something you're proud of and craft. And there's always this trade-off almost of, like, speed and quality, and I know that's an important element for you, just, like, thinking about trade-offs between decisions. So talk about just trade-offs, just like how you think about making a trade-off.

    3. IZIvan Zhao39:13

       Yeah. I think this is quite relevant, especially for product makers and business makers, is y- there's no free lunch. You don't get something for free, you have to give up something. Uh, um, then what do you give up? It's essentially then it... Are you give up the right thing that market or u- user wants at that given space and time? It's kinda just the craft of building a business or building a product, right? Um, and that market is so dynamic, especially now with AI era, like the, the, the, the optimized function for the market changes, so then you need to make new trade-off and new technology emerges, right? That's... I always feels like AI language model feels like a new type of wood. It's feel like aluminum, it's a new type of material, right? So you can make... Like (smacks lips) mass air travel wasn't available until aluminum become cheap enough that people can make airplanes that's support this, right? And it costs. And l- it's like computer wasn't there until semiconductor becomes like rely... It's like require new technology to unlock new way to making trade-offs, and then you're, then you need to balance the technology trade-off with human behavior trade-off. So whereas we're not, as a human after... Ever since we got out of Africa, we're sort of set, right? That's like a constraint, it's invariable and every generation pick up some new thing, but after you're 16 years old, you don't want to learn new things. So those are like, there are people trade-off, technology trade-off, there's some kind of macro, there's a different dimension of things just cooking together that come together as a product or as a... More as a business than what is that. And I think a product maker, business maker's job is to find that sweet spot of all the mul- multiple dimensions, then create something has a right to exist, at least more durable to exist, right?

    4. LRLenny Rachitsky41:15

       And I'm hearing there's a kind of this thread of just, like, with new technologies, what is now possible. And I know you guys are doing some cool stuff with AI that I'm gonna get to that is unlocking some cool new

13. 41:24 – 49:11

    Leadership and personal growth

    1. LRLenny Rachitsky41:24

       ideas. Uh, but before you get there, I wanna talk about just you as a, as a leader. At this point, you've been at this for 12 years, something like that?

    2. IZIvan Zhao41:31

       Something like that, yeah.

    3. LRLenny Rachitsky41:32

       And if you don't mind me saying, you're, you're a, you're, you're a soft-spoken leader, which is not like... You're not like the archetype of what people imagine is like the CEO of a 10 billion... And I'm sure you guys are valued much more now, I don't even know, that- that was probably an old valuation. Uh, I think it's great for people to see leaders like you that are not necessarily the classic archetype of CEO. And I imagine there are things you've had to work on and build and lean into that aren't natural to you to step into this role or this increasingly growing high-scale business. What are some of the areas you've had to most build and, and learn to do that didn't come naturally to you?

    4. IZIvan Zhao42:10

       Yeah. I guess you've never been in a business meeting or brainstorm session with me.

    5. LRLenny Rachitsky42:15

       (laughs)

    6. IZIvan Zhao42:15

       When I'm

    7. LRLenny Rachitsky42:15

       I haven't seen that side of Ivan yet.

    8. IZIvan Zhao42:18

       Yeah. I wouldn't say I'm the most, uh, soft interaction person. Uh-... at work. Um, it's actually the reverse is true, 'cause you grow up in Ch- I grew up in China, people were more direct. People would just, like, say what they want, say what they think, right? So... And you move to California, you move to US, you move to the West, it's like, "Wow, everybody says everything's wonderful, everything's nice," but that's not true. Uh, um, I would say Notion's ethos probably more like the East Coast rather than West Coast, so somewhere in between, right? It's more direct. Um, what do I need to learn? Um, bunch of things. I think the early e- days is like, we talk about that the world is not like you, the world don't care about you. So you, it's like, you sort of have to shave off the idealistic part of you to build something that's like the world actually cares. To sugarcoat the broccoli, you have to hide your broccoli within some kind of sugar pills, right? So, um, that's one. That's more self. That's about myself. As company grow, you realize... I'm pretty good at storytelling, so it's like, that's like a one-to-one influence. Um, but as company grow, you realize you need to be one-to-many storytellers. That's a skill, it's like I... th- one reason I try not to do podcasts and all this is, oh, it's actually n- it drains energy, I mean, in, uh, different ways, right?I prefer just building product and brainstorm sessions. Then you realize it's a necessary craft for me to pick up in order to change the shape of this company, th- the business I'm building. I treat it like a craft, like there's some things, sk- it's like a video game. You need to pick up something to unlock something else and make new demand, new kind of trade-off with yourself and the business. Right? Um, that's kind of fun though. Every, every 12, 18 month, Notion's like a new company. Uh, or at least they require different kind of skill set coming from me. So I need to pick up new things, and it's an infinite game, and infinite games are more fun.

    9. LRLenny Rachitsky44:19

       I love this idea. I, I love that you keep coming back to this idea of there's, like, the ideals and the values and the vision and what you're trying to do, and then you have to find the way to, uh, frame it and, and package it so that people actually understand and want it, and that's how you get in.

    10. IZIvan Zhao44:34

        Mm-hmm. Yeah. It's like human minds are resistant to change, and how do you land in people's head through... Like, that's what marketing and positioning are for, right? So you need to find the sweet spot to get in. Um, and you also be truthful. It not just deceiving. So deceiving is not truthful. Pe- you can fool other people once or twice, then it's, there's no future. It has to be actually tied back to something genuinely the value creating or, or the exchange with the other person. So yeah, it's a craft. It's like, it's a... Market storytelling is a dimens- is a vast dimension of making trade-off.

    11. LRLenny Rachitsky45:15

        Okay. I love this word trade-offs comes up again and again, too. It's so interesting that there's these threads that have come up again and again in our chat. Uh, along the journey of becoming this leader that you've become, what would you say is maybe the biggest surprise or most unexpected part of the journey, of something you've had to learn to do or something that didn't turn out the way you expected just as a personal growth story?

    12. IZIvan Zhao45:36

        If you use the product in the past three years, you realize, Notion product, you realize like, hey, we actually ship bunch of things not so great, like two years ago, right? 'Cause I actually... Last year, 2024 is the year that we sh- I can say we ship good stuff at good velocity and good quality and align with our values. We sort of get lost there for a year, year and a half shipping something not according to our value, not according to my value. Like Notion, we call Notions Lego for software. We sort of ship non-Lego pieces into our product. They're still there. We're still cleaning up part of it. Um, that's a realization. It's like going back to the value part. It's like if you create this thing called a product or business, you attract people who are value aligned to it. Then if you're trying to optimize too much on this competition, revenue side of things, forced to introducing something entire value, uh, then you, the system, it's like there's organ rejection with your employees, with your customers, right? Like, give you a concrete example. Um, for a while and still is, project management is one of the most important use cases for Notion. And you can get your project man- uh, better project management tool just by hardcoding things like sprints, uh, milestones, all those things into your product, right? Or you can do it in the, the way the Notion has all been through Lego pieces. Okay, what is a sprint? Sprints are clusters of, uh, tasks that group together. So it's, it's a new Lego. So introducing Lego is much harder. It's slower. Um, you can... Instead, we hardcoded sprint concept into the product and this has become doesn't quite fit, right? And took us, uh, took me at, at least a year, year and a half to realize that's not the way we should continue building Notion. We should buil- go back to original Lego way of building the product. Um, so we changed quite a bit internally. Now it feels good now. Uh, and, uh, building according to your value is the meta point, at least for me.

    13. LRLenny Rachitsky47:43

        Okay. I gotta follow this thread. What is it that you changed that allowed you to come back to your first principles? Was it, like, you step... Is it founder mode, uh, was the answer? Is it people, personnel shift? Is it y- uh, wha- what allowed you to change the way things were going?

    14. IZIvan Zhao47:58

        I would say all of that above, but especially just release the sprint product to our community and customers, then they're like, "What is this?" It's, like, underpowered compared to other competitor products and to doing project management, and it doesn't work well with the rest of Notion Lego set. And if you talk with engineers, they'll say, "Okay, there's this part of Notion you have to touch the code base that's just weird," right? They say, "You hardcore too much into it, from auto dimension, technical front, calling the customer. And when you use the thing, it just doesn't feel right." So, um...There's another saying that if you're building a Lego way inside Notion, in the code base or product, the system work for you. If you're building non-Lego way, the system work against you. So in some sense, we're creating the tool that has emergent behavior and you need to channel in that emergent behavior to unlock more value.

    15. LRLenny Rachitsky48:52

        So I'm hearing as you launched it, it just didn't go well. Everyone's just like, "What is this? This isn't feeling good." And there's a moment of realization of, "I see. Here's what we did wrong here, and we should come back to this original, uh, abstraction vision of what we're trying to build."

    16. IZIvan Zhao49:04

        Mm-hmm. It took like nine, nine month, a year to realize, right?

    17. LRLenny Rachitsky49:08

        Mm-hmm.

    18. IZIvan Zhao49:08

        Some time.

    19. LRLenny Rachitsky49:10

        Yeah.

14. 49:11 – 51:08

    Challenges and crises: lessons from Notion’s journey

    1. LRLenny Rachitsky49:11

       Along those lines actually, uh, people come on this podcast and they share all these stories of things are going awesome all the time, and we... Like, this was a great example of it didn't. I'm curious if there's another story of, let's say, a crisis that you all went through when things were looking pretty bleak for Notion along the journey of building Notion?

    2. IZIvan Zhao49:31

       Yeah. One of the bleakest one is when we, um... During COVID, we just couldn't scale up our infrastructure. It was pretty, um... For the longest time, like, Sam is really good at don't do premature optimization. So for the longest time, when Notion runs on one instance of Postgres database, and which then we find the beefiest machine, we keep scrolling, find a beefier and beefier machine to scale our user base. But then we're running out of the, the... Even the largest instance there is for a Postgres. So there's a doomsday clock, like, when we're gonna truly run out of this space to store everything in Notion, and Notion got completely shut down. Uh, so we stopped building any new features, all hands on deck, every eng- almost every engineer in the company trying to solve that problem. Um, eventually we did, but it was, it was a close call.

    3. LRLenny Rachitsky50:21

       Like, how close are we talking about?

    4. IZIvan Zhao50:23

       If I recall correctly, probably weeks, running out of time. And then as you approach the limit of what Postgres can do, behavior becomes sporadic. You just, you feel don't, really don't know which day gonna hit you. But we just need to go as fast as you can to, to become sharding, sharding problem.

    5. LRLenny Rachitsky50:39

       Yeah, I was gonna ask. So the solution is sharding the database?

    6. IZIvan Zhao50:41

       Yeah, sharding the database.

    7. LRLenny Rachitsky50:41

       Okay, cool.

    8. IZIvan Zhao50:43

       Don't, don't do as late. Yes, don't do premature optimization, but plan ahead a little bit. Don't go with...

    9. LRLenny Rachitsky50:49

       How long did you have from when you launched this doomsday clock to time running out? Was that, like, a few months?

    10. IZIvan Zhao50:54

        Maybe a bit longer. Yeah, in the month, less than six, but more than three, something like that.

    11. LRLenny Rachitsky50:59

        Mm. The bittersweetness of COVID just ramping up certain businesses.

    12. IZIvan Zhao51:02

        Yeah, people just surrou- like, they have to use online productivity software, right? Collaboration tools.

15. 51:08 – 1:02:40

    Building horizontal software: joys and pains

    1. IZIvan Zhao51:08

    2. LRLenny Rachitsky51:08

       Yeah. Blessing and a curse. Speaking of a blessing and curse, this is a great segue to where I wanted to go and kind of the final area I want to spend time on, which is building horizontal software and building software that bundles together a bunch of different stuff. Notoriously hard to build a horizontal platform that does a lot of things when there are often point solutions that are very, very good at that one thing. And it's of- it's interesting if you look at the timelines of companies that have built horizontal products, they all take a long time to build and finally find product-market fit, so it's actually a really common pattern. And when we were talking about what would be fun to talk about, the way you described it is like the joy and pain of building horizontal products. So let me just ask broadly, just what have you learned about what it takes to successfully build a horizontal platform type of product?

    3. IZIvan Zhao51:56

       First of all, no regret. And second, I wouldn't want to do anything else, because, like, going back to the value, Lego for software doesn't exist, and Lego is a horizontal thing. So that's the thing we want to build, we always want to do that. So we did not start to optimize for business, but we optimized for that mission. Um, learning-wise, I think segmentation is quite important, because people can use Lego for different things. Only hardcore Lego fans care about Lego bricks. Most people care about Lego boxes, and they actually want the Lego box to be ready-made. When you un- unpackage box, the set is there for you, right? That's what we're learning a lot, especially move up market. There's this term that took me a while to learn is called solutions. You need to be a solution for enterprise customer. You just need to sit somewhere on a P&L to optimize for their business or reduce their risk. Um, that's Lego box. It's not a Lego brick. Um, really, segmentation related to that. So need to shift your mindset as you move towards B2B, uh, more towards move up market. Uh, I wish we have done that earlier. For the longest time, I was still too much in the Lego brick mindset, now in the solution Lego box mindset.

    4. LRLenny Rachitsky53:14

       That's such a good metaphor. I feel like even if you're not building Legos for, for business, uh, just this idea of what is the box that you are selling to people, like, what is it, how is it being positioned? How do you picture it? What are the value props? Such a good metaphor.

    5. IZIvan Zhao53:29

       If you're building vertical software, naturally your vertical is the box, right? So you, you know you have one or two persona you're selling into. Um, pretty straightforward that your market constraints you. And no judgment, people like to, uh... You can go that way, but then you hit this, you s- hit the wall of the market. The advantage of building horizontal, there's no wall, at least for in our space. We, Notion to go after entire software market, but then you need to create a wall yourself so... to make your go-to-market distribution, to create the spot in people's mind, your customer mind more clearly for them and for your go-to-market teams. That's why we're... I... Solution is one of my favorite word internally to rally the sales team or the product team to think that way. But then you need to hold in your head, make sure you're still building bricks behind the scene. Otherwise, you'll pigeonhole yourself into, uh, the bad spot like we did with, uh, project management sprints features.

    6. LRLenny Rachitsky54:25

       So speaking of that, so I don't know if you know this. I ran a survey recently where I asked my readers what tools they use most, what tools they love most, and I went out to my entire subscriber base. We got 6,500 people filling out the survey. And Notion, more than any other company, placed very highly in many categories. ... for example, it was... I have the notes here. Yo- It was the second most popular project management tool after Jira. It was the fourth most popular docs, which is interesting 'cause you think Notion would be... Like, Notion is known for docs, and it's interesting. It was... That was the lowest one actually. And then it was third in CRM, just behind Salesforce and HubSpot.

    7. IZIvan Zhao55:02

       Yeah. As... We did not intend to build CRM, but what is a CRM? It's r- relational database. Um, that's why we give people that brick. That's a relational database and they can build CRM themself. Um, I think the good advantage is if a customer use Notion, they can address those three, four use cases in one place. Uh, especially for our startup mid-market companies, their need for each of the vertical as... use case is not as complex. So they can have all the information in one place. Good for their teams. Good for AI actually. That's a huge market change that's like we did not expect until recently, right? Um, and save their costs, which is, um, more and more people care about the bundling purchase nowadays. Um, and our approach for that is like, yes, we're number two in project management, number, what, number four in CRM, but we're gonna introduce more bricks to make us number... move up the categories, ranking. So it just takes time. But that's our approach.

    8. LRLenny Rachitsky56:05

       Yeah. Well, it's working, whatever you're doing there (laughs) . Um, so say someone is trying to build a horizontal tool like, like yours. There's a lot of founders that are trying to build something that can do a lot of things really well. Do you have any advice for that first use case, just figuring out something that initially works? Like you're talking about segmentation. Is there something there of like do this if you want to find any success with a horizontal tool?

    9. IZIvan Zhao56:28

       First, I wouldn't recommend it (laughs) .

    10. LRLenny Rachitsky56:30

        But you wouldn't do it differently?

    11. IZIvan Zhao56:32

        Uh, I wouldn't do differently myself, but I wouldn't recommend it. There's... It's, it's a problem. The problem space too large to have a, a best practice. But I, I can share something that's relevant for us. Like Notion, we always want to build a meta tool, a tool to build the, the leg of our software. We somehow stand up upon document notes as one use case, and that just gave us a large top of the funnel. There's a... One billion plus people use this use case every day, right? So, um, that fuels our growth. We, we call our internal strategy called B2C2B. All those consumers, personal user use Notion for the most simple way you can use a computer or your phone, which is notetaking or document sharing. And, and then they realize, oh, Notion can do more of that. There's relational database power. You can do tasks, you can manage, track other things. Then they bring Notion to work. Half our B2B customers, uh, coming from prior personal users and lo- lot... Most of them use Notion for notes and doc in the first place. So pick... Well, at least we stumbled upon a use case, a horizontal use case, give us a large top of funnel that help us grow our more verticalized, um, enterprise use cases. And that's the reason where, um, we ship a calendar product last year, because which other category of software has one billion plus user? There's document notes, there's calendar, there's email, right? That's why we're also working on an email product right now.

    12. LRLenny Rachitsky58:01

        Oh, man. Watch out everyone. And then you mentioned AI and it's such a good point. That AI is best when it has data, and the fact that you have all of this stuff already in there gives you a lot of really interesting opportunities to leverage AI.

    13. IZIvan Zhao58:17

        We definitely did not expect language model. Uh, it's, it's, it's such a gift for everybody building tools, right? Completely changed the, the material you can work with. Um, one realization is you have a surface area that people spend daily work with, especially doing writing and managing your tasks and project. Uh, it's really easy to slice language model, writing AI capability into it. So that's the first product we built. Then the realization is AI is so good at reasoning and understanding and searching things, and, and it's... You can do a much better job of finding and searching things if all the information are together. That's when we realized AI is really good with bundled offerings. AI is really good with horizontal tools. So that's the second phase we call... The first product was our AI writer product. Second product is AI Q&A or connectors. Um, please look up all the information in Notion and give your answer, right? Um, and then we also need to work with external, uh, connector because there's things that living in Jira, living in Zendesk that other customers still rely on. So we need to build AI connectors. Um, but more a-... More and more information coming back to the Notion core. I will say the third one, which is even more fascinating, uh, it's the... For the longest time and still is, the one of the biggest weaknesses of building for LEGOs, it's, it's hard to piece together. It's not everybody can put together LEGO set from scratch, right? It's... There's always the builders and user with the LEGOs, but guess who is really good at piecing things together, assemble things, especially with things like AI is s- s-... Since 2003.5, AI is so good at writing code. Coding is just assemble things together. So now we're looking at a... Holy shit, we spent the last five, six year building all those LEGO blocks for knowledge work. Um, if you're just putting AI coding agent on top of it, you can have... Create any kind of knowledge, customer software, custom agent for whatever your vertical use cases need. So that's the most fascinating approach for me. And we did not expect this at all.

    14. LRLenny Rachitsky1:00:31

        Hmm. Thank you, AI. Is there anything else along the lines of building horizontal products and bundling that you think is interesting to share or important? Otherwise, I have one last question I want to ask you.

    15. IZIvan Zhao1:00:43

        I think market's kind of like waves. There's a... Who said this?There's two way to build business: bundling, unbundling, right? There's too much of a zig into zag. Actually, my favorite version of this is like, um, in, um, there's a classic Chinese literature called Romance of Three Kingdoms. Um, it's great novel. It talk about the Three Kingdom era of China, and the opening sentence of this novel, uh, it's, "Empires long united must divide, long divided must unite, as has always been." Bundling, unbundling. Uh, it's one of my favorite, um, book to read when I was a kid. Um, but business works same way, right? When it's too much, um... You can sort of see this. It's like, before computers, everything works on paper. Our knowledge work are done through papers, is fully democratized medium. Then PC happens during the '80s. The first errors of PC, there actually are so many applications. There is this like early database software like dBASE, it's quite famous, it start as dBASE II because it give them credibility. Oh, they have been stick around for some time, right? So that's the first unbundling phase of software computing. Then Microsoft bundle everything back into, uh, one suite in the '90s, then SaaS unbundled it. Now we're sort of at the tail end of SaaS. There's just so many verticalized SaaS, average company to use, like, almost a hundred tools. It's not... It's kind of madness, right? So there's more, the market is shifting towards more of bundling approach, and with AI and with the macro. So, there's more value to be created through bundling, um, at least for now. But the market could shift again. So understand this trend, I think helpful to see should you build vertical solution or should you build horizontal solution, because it does different things.

16. 1:02:40 – 1:06:17

    Philosophy of tools and human potential

    1. LRLenny Rachitsky1:02:40

       I love that story. Okay, so last question. Um, something that, uh, one of your early investors, Finn Barnes, suggested I ask you, I'm curious where this goes. There's this kind of, and you've, you've kind of touched on this a number of times, is the, the way you think about Notion, it's almost like a philosophy of how to work and be, versus just a productivity tool. And so I'm just curious how you think about the relationship between tools and human potential, and humans, and how we live in the world.

    2. IZIvan Zhao1:03:08

       The tools are extensions of us. That's why our office room named after timeless tools. They are just... They extends us a little bit, right? Um, and once they extends us, once we shape them, once we bring them to, to world, they can come back to shape us. One of, one of my favorite quotes, like the Marshall McLuhan quotes, like, "We shape our tools, thereafter our tools shape us." Um, I think this is probably too philosophical for building product or business, but there is, there is a sense thinking like, what are you bringing to the world that will come back to bite you or shape you? Um, and are you extending the part, the so-called good part of human nature? Or are you extending the part that's, you know, might be more zero sum, might be more negative, right? Um, for me, what is LEGOs? LEGO is creativity, LEGO is beauty. Um, software to me feels like lacking both. It's definitely lacking a lot of creativi- uh, creativity. It's so rigid. So, I believe both are human nature that works to amplify. You can build another business that amplify different part of human nature, right? Sequoia famously invest in Seven Sins or seven human natures of, uh, human, because they're so powerful. If you just latch onto them, you can create a business, you can create a product. Um, but at least I prefer to amplify creativity and beauty in the domain of software. To me, that's aligned with my values, and I think can at least shape the, shape the market, shape our user of our product, um, towards the better part of themself.

    3. LRLenny Rachitsky1:04:58

       It must feel so good to have a product that is so aligned with the way you want to see the world, and actually working and growing at this rate, and scaling and becoming this, uh, I don't know, part of the aether of the world.

    4. IZIvan Zhao1:05:11

       Feels good. Yeah, it feels good that some of the most heartwarming thing is still, it never gets old. Like when you walk by coffee shop and see people using Notion like, oh, it feels good. And it feels good like that we see people in our community can create a living selling Notion template, Notion apps, that they're not a software engineer, right? Going back to the original mission of more people create software. I think that's one of the most fulfilling thing, uh, at least as a maker of tools can experience.

    5. LRLenny Rachitsky1:05:39

       But last point, I think people don't realize, uh, so people are making millions of dollars selling Notion templates, uh, on the internet, like at Etsy and other places.

    6. IZIvan Zhao1:05:48

       Consulting templates, yeah. It's like... And they're not programmers. I think that's the... I would say that's the heart of it, because their domain expertise, they, they have, like they are YouTubers or creators, they have lifestyle brand, they know certain things, but they're not makers of software. And they can use Notion package, their workflows and expertise into Notion app and templates and make a living with it. Um, it's awesome, you know? Yeah, like millions of dollars.

    7. LRLenny Rachitsky1:06:15

       It's powerful enough.

    8. IZIvan Zhao1:06:15

       It's crazy.

    9. LRLenny Rachitsky1:06:16

       Yeah.

17. 1:06:17 – 1:12:17

    Lightning round and final thoughts

    1. LRLenny Rachitsky1:06:17

    2. IZIvan Zhao1:06:17

       Ivan, before we get to, uh, an abridged lightning round, I'm curious if there's anything else that you wanted to touch on, think might be useful for folks to hear before we get to our very exciting lightning round. I think people in tech... I wish more people look beyond tech to, to steal good ideas. Uh, it's like tech, Hacker News, Twitter are so focused on the now and what's in front of it, what happened six month ago, right? Versus humanity, if you ch- just read books in other industry, you can look sideways.If you go back in history, there's a massive amount of patterns and shapes and trade-offs you can steal from. Um, and you can make what's in front of you much more interesting. It could give you more in... like, people figure out clever patterns in whatever domain in the past, so you can just take in front of you, right? And, and, I wish more people do that. I think it would be a very interesting way for product makers, business maker, to solve the problem in front of them by stealing outside of the, from the domain of tech and business. So, uh, at least it's very inspiring, very useful for me, personally.

    3. LRLenny Rachitsky1:07:25

       Uh, makes me think of, uh, the quote, "Good artists copy, great artists steal."

    4. IZIvan Zhao1:07:30

       Great artists steal, yeah. Picasso stole, or Steve Jobs stole that from Picasso or something, who stole from somewhere else probably. Yeah.

    5. LRLenny Rachitsky1:07:37

       Well, this is actually an amazing segue to our very abridged lightning round, and the first question is... Uh, and by the way, welcome to the lightning round.

    6. IZIvan Zhao1:07:43

       Oh, okay.

    7. LRLenny Rachitsky1:07:44

       The first question is just, what are a couple of books that you find yourself recommending most to other people? Could be along the lines of what you just described, or it could just be generally?

    8. IZIvan Zhao1:07:53

       I think the domain that I'm interested in the most is the complex system domain, because like it's, um, you, you can look up the term, like I think more and more people talk about this, but thinking system, you know, complex system, when all the different thing merge together, it creates emergent properties, talking about ants, talk about beads, talk about life itself. It's just so fascinating, right, how do, with few primitives, a few Lego bricks, you can create a thing called life. Uh, that thing just ............................ it's, it's, it's sugar for me. So I love greetings in that domain. Um, and this is really helpful for create product, at least a horizontal product, because you're trying to channel the energy, use smaller parts to create something that the sum is much larger than its parts.

    9. LRLenny Rachitsky1:08:43

       Is there a specific book that comes to mind, or is it just generally that's a cool, that's a area you ..........................

    10. IZIvan Zhao1:08:47

        I would think probably that's a cool area to-

    11. LRLenny Rachitsky1:08:49

        Okay.

    12. IZIvan Zhao1:08:49

        ... pay attention to. Yeah.

    13. LRLenny Rachitsky1:08:50

        Uh, next question. Do you have a favorite recent movie or TV show you've really enjoyed?

    14. IZIvan Zhao1:08:55

        I like to watch old documentaries. Uh, maybe this is another area or category too. There is quite a few on YouTube, like people make a really good documentary in the '80s, in the '70s, that's like all the old BBC ones, they're just excellent, and they have a strong opinion in them. And they're no longer just like general education thing, you know. Uh, they have a, they have a direction, they have a, they have a taste. Um, go look it up. Like, um, oh, one, oh yeah, one is a really good one to get start called Connections. Um, uh, I think it's called by this gentleman's name is Burke, um, it's about how different things from different domains inspire other domains. And usually he used 30 minutes or six, uh, 60 minutes to, to chain together a bunch of connection of stories. Um, it, it's really good for technologists to, to watch, re- highly recommend.

    15. LRLenny Rachitsky1:09:49

        I feel a, a very consistent pattern throughout all of these answers and your entire conversation of just emergent properties, connections, LEGOs, building pl- uh, abstractions.

    16. IZIvan Zhao1:10:00

        Mm-hmm. Yeah. Uh, uh, like thing I did Enneagram, my Enneagram is-

    17. LRLenny Rachitsky1:10:03

        Uh-huh.

    18. IZIvan Zhao1:10:03

        ... seven and eight. Seven is like, uh, well, it's actually perfect with what we just talked about. Seven is like creative, m- finding connection, see the forest and tree. Eight is they call challenger, it's like competitive, uh, AR optimizing, so true energy exists in me, right?

    19. LRLenny Rachitsky1:10:23

        Oh, wow.

    20. IZIvan Zhao1:10:23

        Yeah.

    21. LRLenny Rachitsky1:10:23

        This all makes sense. I got to take this Enneagrams, comes up a bunch on this podcast.

    22. IZIvan Zhao1:10:27

        Right. Yeah.

    23. LRLenny Rachitsky1:10:29

        Uh, final question. Do you have a life motto that you often think back to, that you often repeat in your head of just like when times are hard or just to keep going with something you're working on that you find useful?

    24. IZIvan Zhao1:10:41

        I like to think things as a craft, as you just make it better, make for yourself. If it's unique enough for yourself and useful for others, things will follow.

    25. LRLenny Rachitsky1:10:51

        Ivan, thank you so much for being here. Two final questions. Where can folks find you online if they want to follow up on anything, and then how can listeners be useful to you?

    26. IZIvan Zhao1:11:00

        Probably find me on Twitter, IvanHzhao, um, just helpful from, give us feedback about Notion, about our product. That's the best, best help.

    27. LRLenny Rachitsky1:11:12

        What's the best way to do that? Is it like DM Ivan, or is it-

    28. IZIvan Zhao1:11:14

        Yeah, just DM me.

    29. LRLenny Rachitsky1:11:15

        Okay.

    30. IZIvan Zhao1:11:16

        DM me. Uh, yeah, that's, uh, probably the best way.

Episode duration: 1:12:17