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)
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Who is Ivan Zhao and what inspired him to start Notion?
The way you describe the earliers of Notion, you describe the first three to four years as the lost years.
We try many different versions. 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 tried that like a couple years and learned that actually most people just don't care. The 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 years to realize we need to build a productivity tool. We call the sugar called the broccoli. People don't wanna eat the broccoli, but people like sugar, so give them the sugar. The hydro broccoli inside of it.
What other elements do you think are key to you finding something that actually ended up working?
What is a 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. There are different energy. You need to create the balance. Too much of yourself, then there's no users. Then you're just doing art projects. And too much for business, you're building a commodity.
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.
Tools are extensions of us. And once they extend us, once we shape them, once we bring them to to world, they can come back to shape us.
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 program. Programming contest, the joy and suffering of building a successful horizontal product, Plaza's 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 lenny's newsletter.com. With that, I bring you Ivan Zhao. This episode is brought to you by EPO. Epo 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 Epo to power their experiments. Experimentation is increasingly essential for driving growth and for understanding the performance of new features.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
Who is Ivan Zhao and what inspired him to start Notion?
0:00–11:29
2
What were the “lost years” at Notion and how did the team discover product‑market fit?
11:29–19:11
3
How did Notion survive the COVID‑19 database crisis and what technical fixes were made?
19:11–27:39
4
Why does Notion keep a small, talent‑dense team and how does that affect speed?
27:39–36:08
5
What is the “sugar‑coating the broccoli” strategy and how does it shape product decisions?
36:08–45:07
6
How does Notion balance craft, values, and trade‑offs when building a horizontal platform?
45:07–54:26
7
What lessons does Ivan share about staying resilient and resetting during tough periods?
54:26–1:03:38
8
What is Ivan’s personal philosophy on tools, human potential, and the future of Notion?
1:03:38–1:12:14
Speakers
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