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)

Lenny's Podcast: Product | Growth | Career

Lenny Rachitsky

Technology, Business, Entrepreneurship

5 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 6 March 2025

⏱️ 72 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

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.

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What you’ll learn:

1. Why you sometimes need to “hide your vision” behind something people actually want—what Ivan calls “sugar-coating the broccoli”

2. How Ivan and his co-founder persevered through multiple product resets and complete code rewrites

3. Why Notion prioritized systems over headcount, keeping the team small and focused even at scale

4. Why Ivan believes in craft and values as the foundation for product development, balancing technical excellence with aesthetic sensibility

5. The surprising story of how Notion nearly collapsed during Covid when their single database almost ran out of space with only weeks to spare

6. Community-led growth tactics

7. Ivan’s unique journey from a small town in China

8. Much more

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• Eppo—Run reliable, impactful experiments

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Find the transcript at: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/inside-notion-ivan-zhao

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Where to find Ivan Zhao:

• X: https://x.com/ivanhzhao

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ivanhzhao/

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Where to find Lenny:

• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com

• X: https://twitter.com/lennysan

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/

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In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) Introduction to Ivan Zhao

(04:41) Ivan’s early life and education

(07:46) Discovering the vision for Notion

(10:49) The lost years of Notion

(13:56) Rebuilding and perseverance

(17:14) Layoffs and company morale

(18:53) Advice for startup founders

(25:08) Product-market fit

(29:56) Staying lean and efficient

(34:27) Creating a unique office culture

(37:20) Craft and values: the foundation of Notion’s philosophy

(38:44) Navigating tradeoffs in product and business building

(41:24) Leadership and personal growth

(49:11) Challenges and crises: lessons from Notion’s journey

(51:08) Building horizontal software: joys and pains

(01:02:40) Philosophy of tools and human potential

(01:06:17) Lightning round and final thoughts

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Referenced:

• Ürümqi: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%9Cr%C3%BCmqi

• Notion: https://www.notion.com/

• SpongeBob SquarePants: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpongeBob_SquarePants

• Augmenting Human Intellect: https://web.stanford.edu/class/history34q/readings/Engelbart/Engelbart_AugmentIntellect.html

• Alan Kay: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Kay

• Ted Nelson: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Nelson

• Steve Jobs on Why Computers Are Like a Bicycle for the Mind (1990): https://www.themarginalian.org/2011/12/21/steve-jobs-bicycle-for-the-mind-1990/

• Xerox Alto: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerox_Alto

• React: https://react.dev/

• Simon Last on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/simon-last-41404140/

• Magna-Tiles: https://www.magnatiles.com/

• Design on a deadline: How Notion pulled itself back from the brink of failure: https://www.figma.com/blog/design-on-a-deadline-how-notion-pulled-itself-back-from-the-brink-of-failure/

• Bryan Johnson on X: https://x.com/bryan_johnson

• Tobi Lütke’s leadership playbook: Playing infinite games, operating from first principles, and maximizing human potential (founder and CEO of Shopify): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/tobi-lutkes-leadership-playbook

• Smalltalk: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smalltalk#:

• Lisp: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisp_(programming_language)

• DeepSeek: https://www.deepseek.com/

• Shana Fisher: https://www.crunchbase.com/person/shana-fisher

• LAMY 2000 fountain pens: https://www.jetpens.com/LAMY-2000-Fountain-Pens/

• Macintosh 128K: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_128K

• Toshiba rice cooker: https://www.toshiba-lifestyle.com/us/cooking-appliances/rice-cooker

• Transistor radio: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transistor_radio

• Jira: https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira

• Salesforce: https://www.salesforce.com/

• HubSpot: https://www.hubspot.com/

• Zendesk: https://www.zendesk.com/

• Misattributed McLuhan quote: https://mcluhangalaxy.wordpress.com/2013/04/01/we-shape-our-tools-and-thereafter-our-tools-shape-us/

• Phin Barnes on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/phineasbarnes/

• Hacker News: https://news.ycombinator.com/

• Pablo Picasso quote: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/629531-good-artists-copy-great-artists-steal#:~

• Connections with James Burke on Prime Video: https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/amzn1.dv.gti.484e32c5-60bd-4493-a800-e44fd0940312

• The Enneagram Institute: https://www.enneagraminstitute.com/

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Recommended book:

• The Romance of the Three Kingdoms: https://www.amazon.com/Romance-Three-Kingdoms-Luo-Guanzhong/dp/024133277X

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Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected].

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Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed.

Get full access to Lenny's Newsletter at www.lennysnewsletter.com/subscribe

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	The way you describe the earliest of Notion, you describe the first three to four years as the lost years.
0:05.7	We'll try many different versions.
0:06.8	The first version, okay, everybody can make and create their software.
0:10.1	So let's just build a developer tool that's so easy, that more people can do that.
0:14.5	We'll try that a couple years and learn that actually most people just don't care.
0:18.7	Our realization is actually, let's hide our vision,
0:23.4	which is everybody can create our software in the form factor that people do care. So what kind
0:28.1	of tool do people use every day? Productivity software. It took us two years to realize we need to
0:32.0	build a productivity tool. We called a broccoli. People don't want to eat the broccoli,
0:36.1	but people like sugar. So give them the sugar.
0:38.8	A hide the broccoli inside of it. What other elements do you think are key to you finding something that actually ended up working?
0:44.2	What is 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.
0:55.1	There are different energy. You need to create a balance. Too much of yourself, then there's no users.
1:00.4	You're just doing art project. And too much for a business, you're building a commodity.
1:03.5	The way you think about notion, it's almost like a philosophy of how to work and be versus just a
1:09.0	productivity tool. And so I'm just curious how you think about the relationship between tools and human potential.
1:15.2	Tools are extensions of us.
1:17.7	And once they extends us, once we shape them, once we bring them to world, they can come back to shape us.
1:27.6	Today my guest is Ivan Zhao.
1:29.8	Ivan is the co-founder and CEO of Notion.
1:32.8	Ivan is a really unique and also a deeply philosophical founder who doesn't do a lot of podcasts.
1:38.7	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.
	...

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