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)

0:00 The way you describe the earlier years of Notion, you described 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. then more people can do that. We'll try that like 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. People don't want to eat the broccoli, but people like sugar. So give them the sugar. What other elements do you think are key to you finding something that actually ended up working? What is up 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 a balance. Too much of yourself, then there's no users.

1:00 You're just doing our project. And too much for business, you're getting 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 extense 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.

1:32 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.

1:57 Plus'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.

2:15 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 dot com. With that, I bring you Ivan Zhao. This episode is brought to you by Epo.

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4:44 Ivan, thank you so much for being here and welcome to the podcast. Thank you for having me. I know you don't do a lot of podcasts and so I'm very honored that you're here. I wanna start with the story of Ivan. Your background is quite unique for a founder of a ten billion dollar plus tech company.

5:01 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

5:11 Pretty interesting. Can you can you just walk us through that early years of Ivan and how you got out of there? I think a small town in China, the definition it's it's actually four million people So uh it's the it is called Yuru Mukki, it's then the northwest desert part of China. So I grew up there.

5:28 And um Then I move into my mom took me to um Beijing, the capital of China. And um That's actually how I got into programming. Code. Because

5:38 I'm from somewhere else and in order to go into a school in the capital, you need to win some kinda competition. And there's m different paths. You can get a math. uh there or you can get a a programming like information now in phone Um

5:51 I'm streaming to computer. 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

6:01 and coming to a custom. So that's how I got into programming. Um Later then I moved to Canada. No.

6:08 When I moved to Canada Got into college. Did not study computer science since I already know how to co. Um A lot of video games.

6:17 Did a lot of art actually. Art and science. Um By the time I graduated college Realize. Most of my friends are artists, they need to make their websites.

6:28 Get web portfolio made. And I'm the only nerd in my our friend circle. So I made three, four websites and realised Oh. Actually people don't know how to

6:39 Create with the software media. Computing media. So that got me into want to create a product like notion today, which allowed more people to create tools, create software for their daily work and life. Okay, so going back to uh

6:52 You you two get into a great school and to uh kind of Mm. Leave the s small town, not so small. You have to uh enter a programming contest and you uh you placed first or second or how how well did you actually do in the kind of in Beijing. So in Beijing, okay. Uh pretty big. Beijing's a big city. Okay. Incredible.

7:13 Another stat I uh or story I heard is that you learned English by watching Spongebob SquarePants. Is that real? Yeah, it's real. Um I moved to Canada pretty late. Uh Sixteen. Years old and What I learned is yeah, in in China you can learn English.

7:28 But it is Typically just grammar and Doing exams. What you're missing is the context. The culture.

7:35 So you have to watch SpongeBob or Simpsons to get Uh a sense of humor, essentially. You can understand jokes. Right. Uh Watching cartoon, it's

7:43 It's probably the easiest way to do that. That's amazing. Um and There's another kind of seminal moment in your path. I don't know if it was this point or later, but the Dungalus Engelbert paper. Yeah.

7:55 Ended up being a very meaningful moment for you. So While I was in Canada Mm. last year of school

8:02 working on trying to building website. From our friends and uh Building a creative tool for them. And then you just look into the history of a creative tool. for software for computing.

8:15 Um eventually arrive at nineteen sixty and seventies. So you realize the first generation of company and pioneers, which is around San Francisco, Stanford area, South Bay. They actually had the best ideas. For them, people like Douglas Englebar. Alan K Ten Nelson, those first generation pioneers

8:34 For them computing there shouldn't be a separation between Builders. And users. It's the same media. Angel Barr's original paper call Augmenting Human Intellect, when I read that paper, it's like holy shit.

8:47 If you making software, if you know how to core design. This is the highest leverage thing you can do for other people. So giving them the ability to use computing. problem solving ability or their intellect. Uh

9:00 That just got me obsessed with this problem and I want to start a company like Notion. Makes me think of Steve Jobs' famous line of how the computer is the bicycle for the mind. You know what? Steve Jobs is actually at fault of this.

9:14 In some strange ways. So The story is like Actually the fact that's not your story. Um

9:20 Xerox Park. has working on the first generation Personal computer is called Xerox Auto. Alan K was w one of the main persons behind that. Auto runs down to the system called small talk, which is there's no separation between users and

9:35 Users are 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 Zero Xerox Power two In demo with it Altool. Uh he does not it's the first time he sees graphic user interface. One of the first time.

9:52 And it's also they present them with this alpha system that everything could change. But he did not see the the power of it. Even when Um

10:01 People with demos tree like hey Steve Jobs say I don't like this direction of scroll bar direction when you scroll up and down. It shouldn't scroll the opposite reverse direction. Uh then people just instantly change the scroll bar. Direction for him.

10:15 Uh that's the power of the original small talk although system. He only saw the graphic user interface. underlying object oriented environment power. As the generation of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates Bring

10:29 P C personal computing. Uh. Popular. And they sort of stuck with us like an application framework. Rather than does a small talk.

10:37 Object around the framework. then that has all the apps we have today and has the SASPRA we have today. That uh vision of how product should be. Sounds very familiar. And we'll talk about that later of how you think about Notion. But let's do To the beginning of Notion.

10:53 When we were chatting earlier. The way you described the earliers Of Notion. You started Notion in twenty thirteen, and some over ten years ago at this point. You described the first three to four years as the lost years. Of notion.

11:05 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 a hundred million AR and 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 last years as you describe them and just how did you

11:28 How did you stick with it? That's a long time to stick with something that isn't working. Because the go is always building a computing tool. It's like what product? It is this. It's really hard to

11:41 Shape the product. Right. Um The vision is the the The dream is there, and But the product it's very there's so many paths.

11:50 We'll try many different versions. 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. Then more people can do that. We tried that in a couple of years. And learn that

12:03 Actually most people just don't care. The majority of people they wake up, they they have Report you then to get their job done. They don't care creating software to optimize whatever they're doing. I don't care.

12:16 Uh so we'll give to our friends, give to investors. Um Yeah, did did not resonate with people. Um But we really want to build that tool.

12:27 So we'll just keep going. And the a realization it's actually Let's hide our vision, which is everybody can create their software. in the form factor that people do care.

12:41 So what kind of tool do people use every day? Productivity software. So that's why it came to Notion today. If you use Notion No sure. More Understood as the productivity suite.

12:52 But our intent and we use some more your honors discover our intent, which is Sar hash has the no code developer power into it. You can create almost any kind of productivity software. use the notion itself. Um

13:04 That took us two plus years to realize. So actually the world's not like you. The world are not like develop developer or designer minded. The world is They only care what's in front of them. And they're so noisy.

13:16 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. Very much so,'cause like sense of maturation is You you don't see the world just from your perspective, but from Also your perspective, right? It takes

13:33 We were young, took us my multiple years a hitter head straight into the into the wall to realise that. Keep what you're talking about. I love the way you phrase that. You kind of have to hide your vision behind something that people uh understand and know know how to use and

13:47 We call the sugar called the broccoli. People don't want to eat the broccoli, but people like sugar, so give them the sugar. The hide property inside of it. Well Yeah.

13:57 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. It took us four years to get somewhere. First two year is that you bow too much like a no co like developer product, nobody cares. Took us two years to realise we need to build a productivity tool.

14:17 Then it took another another a year or two to really to To build this out. But in the middle of I realize we've got on the wrong technical foundation. So like eight, ten years ago, there's competing before Re right now all the web app runs on React.

14:31 Right. Here's a competing technology called web component from Google. It makes sense. Web component feels like a legal like like the building block like And we're betting on that technology. And then we realized

14:45 Because it's so new. It just are so unstable. It don't know where the bug come from. Is it from your source code from the underlying libraries? Um Then we have to restart a company.

14:57 otherwise rebuild the whole thing, otherwise we're gonna run out of time. So that's Instead reset a code base, reset a company. So we can build on our own more orthodox. Technol Technology Foundation. How did you actually stay

15:12 Solvent all this time. A lot of people want to keep working at an idea. Uh oftentimes they need to pay the bills. how practically we're able to keep working for three to four years. I know there's a story of your mom loaning you some money that time. Well, Chinese mom always can. And I'm a single child. Um

15:30 Yeah, they my mom helped me Actually my mom help me kick start a company'cause I'm Canadian. In order to move to US you need to like register a company. So My mom helped me with the initial And the r raise the money uh sort of return the money to her. Then we run out of the money, so hey mom, can I borrow that just to bridge us? Uh which she

15:50 Yeah, I really Grateful for that. Um How do bridge? How do you last your so long?

15:56 Because the thing you want to create does not exist. with the call is called notions the Lego for software. It doesn't quite exist, right? There's a Lego for Lego. You can't see that in furniture as for excess. But like for software.

16:11 And The usable mass market adoption level doesn't quite exist. And You just want that thing to exist.

16:19 And I grew up with Legos. Yes. The only toy I ever wanted. And I want the same feeling. Um

16:26 creativity and playfulness. So the tool that people can use every day. So and my co founder Sam feels the same way. Lego is the only thing he like wanted. For every Christmas. Have you guys seen magnetiles though? I have I I have a one and a half year old and magnetes are Quite delightful. It's like a I think it's like a pre Lego. Like the Chile Scott Writers.

16:46 Yeah, it's like uh they're little magnetic plastic Uh Uh platens and then you can build little You can build much bigger things really quickly. It's more for babies. But I'm I'm having a blast. Oh I see it. It's kinda like

17:01 Uh huh. It's like a different version of Lego. You're like, Okay, we're our new vision, magnetiles for software. Now most people know Lego magnetiles. Idea is the same modular. Yeah. Creativity. Okay, back to your story. So there's also a moment where you moved to Japan. Just what was that about? Is that just like escape and disconnect? Yeah, that was during the one of the repeal phases. Um

17:24 During the We know what the product should look like. It should be a productivity software with the Lego power hiding inside of it. We built on a Ron Technical Foundation. And if we continue to build on the round ones, we're gonna run out of money, company won't exist. So

17:39 We just had to lay off everybody. At that time notion was five people. There are I brought it back to me and Sam and two people. Um And morale over yesterday was really low. You have to say goodbye to your teammates. And um So we have the idea let's just go somewhere that

17:55 We've 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 sublease our apartment and office, we're actually making money living in Japan.

18:09 Uh and then San Francisco. So uh We did that for a while. We actually travel around the world for a while just to like ched up. Um yes, I'm just coding every day. And um

18:22 Design every day. Tell. That's somewhat of the happiest moment. No. Birthday every day. I saw a stat you're quoting eighteen hours a day, so here's the quote I heard.

18:30 Uh we just code code code, then hey, let's go for food, then we go eat, go back to work and do it again. '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 crawl through the problem space.

18:45 Really quickly. The technical. product space, design space. And just nonstop of uh Shipping stuff.

18:55 So maybe just to close out this thread, four 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.

19:13 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, 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.

19:31 What other elements do you think are key to you finding something that actually ended up working? I'm kinda lucky and Simon kinda lucky that high is never too high, lower is never too low for us. So somehow As it wasn't filling too down. Um

19:47 Whenever I feel Down I just go to sleep. And next day I'm I'm just reset. So that's kinda lucky for me.

19:54 Um Definitely don't work don't Don't be afraid to reset. I think courage was quite important. because like often time you're working on things don't matter, but momentum just took you there.

20:06 Uh. Your first point of building something you want the world To have a Um What is the building a product or business? Are you one user, you are revenue. That's it.

20:18 That's a product business. It's almost like a sports. the market is the arena, then you'd want to optimize the scorecard word. Um as a building for winning. And

20:29 I grew up playing sports. I re I'm I like to compete. So I like that. Um

20:35 I'm building for something you want the world fix. 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.

20:50 Uh. I realize Actually fairly recently, like they're really different. Depends on which day I wake up I might I might be in a different mood for it, thanks. But building for value, it's more lasting and more fulfilling. Looking at

21:04 in the thing we're building today and looking looking back. I find most proud of saying like or create something that fanted to myself. and how happen to be also useful for others. And that just keeps you going. And that feels like a more

21:17 durable energy source. for all those dark years, lost years, during ocean and still every day for me. It's interesting you say that because there's also the There's this aspect of it wasn't working initially because you're building it for yourself. And not for people.

21:32 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 and here's the thing I'm excited about. Yeah, really a cue, almost like a therapist. Uh it's true. Like you've really 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.

21:58 You're just doing a art project. You're just doing a research project, right? Uh And too much for a business, you're getting a commodity. Right, so w where's the spectrum? Um

22:11 Yeah. It's it's a it's never ending Spectron. Um That's interesting.

22:16 Yeah. Okay. So I'll summarize some of those things you shared of just how to stick with it and 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 date. There'll be another day tomorrow. Really simple, but it's like a daily personal physical reset, right? You can reset your code base, you can reset your Mental model. Okay. And then there's also uh I love these points. Don't be afraid to kinda reset, as you just said, like

22:44 Uh, Toby Lucky was on the podcast, he said the same thing, just Be comfortable with some cost. I've done all this already. And I will throw it away and start again and that's okay. Yeah. I think It's not just like a self helpful way to say don't be afraid to reset. That's like

23:01 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 in compounds faster, it can catch up to all the things you build much quicker than you ever thought. Right, or humans are not thinking

23:15 Not good at thinking in terms of abstraction or the exponentials. We're thinking in terms are linearly. And If you're just resetting and you found a better way to do it. You can't get all the thing you have the sound cost recovered really quickly.

23:29 So Actually going back to the computing pioneers part like Smalltalk the f one of the first system and a huge influence for Notion was to release tiny code base. And inspired by Lisp. which is not a programming languages and probably like a hundred lines of code or something.

23:46 Right. The kernel of things could be really small. But just like math. It can compound. You can't you can't have complex behavior that unlocks so much Value and

23:56 Things for you. Uh you should just find those right. You can catch up to all the thing you did. You are free to lose Really quickly.

24:05 So I think that's the The Kerner of Why reset is so powerful. Yeah, and we're seeing exactly what you're describing in LM advancements these days.

24:14 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 miss these systems and now just people launch them and are immediately where the companies that have been working on us for decades are today. Because that they are building off these abstractions, as you described in these

24:33 Yeah, like for trying to cut up the US really quickly for Deep Seat. Yeah. Yeah. The point you also made about momentum, like be afra be weary 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

24:51 Next word, next word, next word, next word. 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 has almost figured out exactly what you're describing.

25:06 They should stay. Oh man. Okay. Last question about the early years. Everyone's always wondering what does park product market fit feel like? You but you worked on it for three to four years. What was kind of the moment? What did f what it would it look like? How what was different when you're like, Oh, okay, this is gonna work. I think going back to me and Sam at high is never that high, lowest never that low, it never hit me hit us as like a finer estate.

25:27 Just kinda like oh. Good. We have people who care about this thing we make now. Oh good, people are Um Reach out to us or

25:36 paying us and it's it's a kind of very gradual rep. 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.

25:54 Um It just They keep going. It's it's a it's a less of a milestone way to thinking about things. It's more just like Can we do the same that's in our head and better than we did last week? Way of thinking about things.

26:07 So And never is there's a such movement that product markets phone. Milestone cheat. That one I've heard that from a lot of founders actually.

26:16 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. I think For a while like okay, once we start revenue. Product growth.

26:29 Faster now. Investors start knocking on the door with like I remember one day like There's a dog food. Dark food.

26:38 Ah. Doctorate sent entire ma tener office. So first of all, office wasn't public the address and the doctor is like why do people want this so much? Right. So I that was a moment I paused a little bit. Um Um I guess there's enough attraction for investors. Um

26:55 And the doc treats were trying to can it was like a gift to be like, Hey you should talk to us, we're sending this fun gift. Yeah,'cause of the way how we just hire someone in the office as a dog, then we're I think we'd post on Twitter or something. Why did this show up to our office? Someone really hustled into uh where we are uh our office address and Follow us on Twitter. So Did you end up taking their money?

27:19 Not the first time. Yeah. Okay. If we long game. No. Awesome. So that's that's I've never heard that before. Sign and product market fitness VCs are starting to you start getting a lot more messaging and Cold outreach from VCs.

27:33 So actually I had um One other investor is really helpful. Because all those years you you sort of just like There's no feedback loop. You just go for a then the feet will gradually show up.

27:49 Then you s oh then it for a while, V C star knocking on doors, so Um I I should talk to those people, the people like what we're doing. Right. I do some meetings, quite a good meeting, maybe a dozen, never last. And one of them are just saying, like, Ivan, what are you doing? Like you cleared only money.

28:05 Um It do you just try 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

28:18 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. You mentioned this investor they said was really helpful is you wanna give them uh some credit

28:34 Or do you want to be a little bit more than you're going to Shauna Fisher. She's saying New York. Uh. Cool. Yeah, she's like um Another therapist. Right?

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29:53 Dom Slash Lenny. I wanna shift to talking about notion today and the way you've approached it and Uh a good segue is what you've been talking about right now is how Lean and efficient. You've

30:05 Ben. And how that's been a big priority for you. So a few stats I've scene. 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 Yeah. Yeah, still in the bank. You're nodding if you're on YouTube.

30:22 Uh you didn't have a salesperson until you hit over ten million ARR. You hired your first PM at like fifty 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?

30:43 I think going back to the abstraction system we're problem solving. I think we're lucky that Me and Simon and Akshay

30:55 We have the skill set. You probably can run the whole company which is Couple of us, I can call, I can design. I can do marketing. Storytelling talk talking sell close sales deals.

31:07 So you sort of realize you don't need a lot and But when you can Uh or hire people who can't do that. Naturally keep

31:17 The company's small. And You all know. You're doing product management. the the overc overhead is actually more from internal communication.

31:27 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 systems, through better tools.

31:39 Like notion itself is a meta tool to tool to build out a tool, so we Pretty much run everything on Notion. We use the same mindset to build our company. Um And accidentally that keep our heck on low.

31:52 Keep our And which stand the put you on the positive treadmill off you don't have to go for the next eighteen, twenty four months to find money, you just have to you can just focus on

32:03 And also Because her team's small. Uh We we have this internal notion called talent density. Right.

32:14 number of people but we're try to track how talent dense revenue per employee, uh we are. And people want to work with other more talented people. So Um

32:25 It's it's a c positive compounding. I wonder how much of this is actually from being around for so many years without success of j we just have to stay very lean and save our c cash because or 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 like that.

32:44 Cost saving first company. Like I like fancy chairs I like furniture. But we're not like Wasting money. I think we'll uh

32:55 It's more just from A taste or approach to problem solving. I w I just believe better system that's much better than Proof for through. People.

33:05 When people hear this idea of staying lean and and you know, staying small, it like it sounds great of co yeah, or like we're gonna be super efficient and lean and smart with our money and down and 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 competitors. I think just understand

33:31 Abstraction or system is a better curve than Concurve, right? Linear. I don't think We internal help other people and understand this. Internally we we we use the metaphor the notion is a small bus. The bus.

33:46 The the the smaller the bus is 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 slowed down. And as a leader in the company You decide who sit around you on the bus seat. Right. Dictates how fast our overall boss moves.

34:04 Dictate your work and life experience at this company because you're you pick your roommate, you pick your seatmates. Um That metaphor clicks with people. Inside a company. And And overall help us to optimize the make the bus tight.

34:19 Yeah, the bust thing. I've never heard of that metaphor before. It probably came up somewhere. Or Small bus. 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

34:35 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 try thirty different uh shades of warm white on the walls before he chose. Why is that important to you? Why is it so important to be so thoughtful about the office experience?

34:53 Maybe that there are two dimension part of it. One is um One is the the pragmatic part, you just want office to yeah, pleasant experience. To be at um Therefore.

35:05 Most often as a top life feels like a hospital. I'm just like, Oh man. And then the white is so pale and then the floor is so dark. Like Don't use the Why use some kind of cream? Make Florida

35:17 Friendly colours. Don't use top life, top that 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? So the visual we we have is she feels like artist studio. What's your favorite like your home?

35:33 That's why most of our f office furniture are home furniture. I just felt cozy. That's more of so people spend more time, it was more creative. Juices flow better. At least personally for me, it hurts the eyes if you just see ugly things. It's more from a value aesthetic front. It's like we talk about ergonomic chairs.

35:53 Is does it hurt your back when you sit on bat chairs? But you have more visual info from at least for me from the eyes. If the ug the chair looks ugly, the wall looks ugly, it hurts. So Better not have thing that hurts. You also have a really interesting naming convention for your uh conference rooms. Yeah, true. Yeah. We name our conference room after timeless tools.

36:14 And history. So there are um Give you one example. Iphones obvious one, original Macintosh. Um There's different form of chairs. Lammi's

36:24 Two thousand pence. Um Uh Toshiba rice cookers and other ones. Um Um Because there are inspirations. They're just like

36:34 At the end of they were creating a tool. Uh creating a meta tour, a lot of people to create tours. Suffer towards. And Toshiba rice cooker changed how people eat rice.

36:45 In Asia for For a hundred million of the Tens of a hundred million people, right? the Sony transistor radio is the first one to shrink semicombature to something small and useful for people.

36:56 And those things change people's life and last for decades. What is it like to create a software product like that? I want to inspire my team to think that way. 'Cause it's like software in and especially tech. It's just Every six months every

37:09 Time on cycle, they don't We don't think enough about Create something that lasts. Uh I care creating something that's

37:17 At least the form factor lasts longer. And how we can mark. 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?

37:36 Yeah, I think the key word here is craft. But internally you are company philosophy called Craft and Values. Craft it's like Your skill set, your taste.

37:47 Value is like your personal value and how do you see the world. Um Craft's interesting world. It's kinda like about Apply your value. To some technical know how.

38:00 And to make more clever trade offs to create something new. And useful. Um And just keep doing that at it. Like my wife.

38:11 Of refer me like as a What Cabinet Builder? I can that's how I at least in my mindset training towards building notion, it's like, Oh, can I make this what captain and More beautiful and more useful and feels nicer on your hand. Uh.

38:26 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. That's to me, that's craft and more building product to me, at least.

38:40 To me feels that way. I think this in the feels that way. But then company feels that way. It's interesting that so much of this conversation is this and the way you think about building this company, this balance between Practical.

38:52 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.

39:05 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. Yeah, I think this is quite relevant, especially for product. Makers. I'm business makers. It's the there's no free lunch.

39:23 You don't get something. For free. You have to give up something. Uh Um Then what do you give up?

39:31 It's sensationally. then it are you give up the right thing that market where you your user once at that given space and time. It's kinda just the craft of building business or building a product. And that the market is so dynamic, especially now with Air like the

39:48 The that the optimized function for the market changes. So then you need to make new trade off and new technology merges, right? I I always feel it's like AI. Language model feels like a new type of wood.

40:01 It felt like aluminum. It's a new type of material. Yeah. Like Mass Air travel wasn't available until aluminum become cheap enough that people can make airplanes that s support this.

40:14 Right? And a cost. And It's like Computer wasn't there until semiconductor becomes like

40:22 Rely require new technology to unlock new way to making trade offs. And then you're then you need to balance the technology trade out with Human behavior trade offers, whereas We're not

40:35 It's a human effort ever since we are got on Africa we're sort of set. Right. That's like a constraint, it's like a variable. And every generation pick up some new thing, but after you're sixteen years old, you don't want to learn new things. So those are like the people trade off, technology trade off. There's some kind of macro

40:52 There's a different dimension of things just cooking together, that come together. As a product resident. I'm more like business. Then what is that? And

41:01 I think A product maker, business maker's job is to find a screen spots. Of all the mul multiple dimensions. then create something has the right to exist. At least it's more durable.

41:13 Two excess. 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 ideas. Uh, but before I get there, I want to talk about just you as a as a leader. At this point you've been at this for twelve years, something like that. Not like that. Yeah.

41:32 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 ten billion and I'm sure you guys are valued much more now even though that that was probably a old valuation. Uh I think it's great for people to see leaders like you that are not necessarily the classic archetype of CO. And

41:54 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 of this Increasingly growing. high scale business. What are some of the areas you've had to most build and and learn to do that then come naturally to you? Yeah, I guess you've never been in a business meeting or brainstorm session with me when I thought.

42:18 Yeah, I wouldn't think the most uh Soft interaction person. At work. Um It's actually the reverse is true,'cause you grew up in Ch I grew up in China People way more direct.

42:29 People just like say what they want, say what they think, right? So And you move to California, move to US or move to the West, felt wow, everybody says Everything's wonderful, everything's nice, but that's not true. Uh Um

42:43 I would say Notion's Ethos probably more like a East Coast. Rather than West Coast. So somewhere in between. Right. It's more direct. Um What do I need to learn? Um

42:54 Bunch things. I think the early days is like We talk about that the world's not like you. The world don't care about you. So you just like

43:02 You sort of have to shave off the idealistic part of you. To do something that's like the war actually cares. Does sugarcoat of broccoli have to hydro broccoli within some amount of sugar pills. Right. So Um That's one that's more self. That's about myself.

43:20 As company grow, you realise. I'm pretty good at storytelling, so it's like that's like a one to one influence. Um As a company grow, you realize You need to be one too many storytellers.

43:31 That's a scale like I Th one reason I try not to do pockets and all this is that oh it's actually n trains energy mean in a different ways, right? I prefer just Building product and Brainstorm sessions.

43:44 Then you realize it's a necessary craft for me to pick up. In order to change the shape of company the business I'm building. I treat it like a craft. Like there's some things gas in the video game. You need to pick up something to unlock something else and to make a new demand.

44:00 With yourself and the business. I um That's kinda fun, though. Every Every twelve, eighteen month notions like a new company.

44:09 Mm. These are require different Kind of Skill type. Coming from me.

44:14 So I need to pick up new things. It's an infinite game. And even the games are more fun. I love this idea. 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

44:28 Uh frame it and and package it so that people actually understand and want it. And that's how you get in. Mm-hmm. Human minds. are resistant to change.

44:40 And How do you land in people's head? True. But that's for marketing and positioning are for right. So The sweet spot.

44:50 To get in. Um And you also be truthful. It's not just deceiving. So deceiving is not truthful. You can fool other people once or twice, then it's there's no future. It has to be

45:00 actually tie back to something genuinely The value creating. Or or the exchange with the other person. So Yeah, it's a craft. It's like there's that market storytelling is a dimension the vast dimension.

45:13 Making trade off. Yeah, I love this where 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

45:28 part of the journey of something you've had to learn to do or something that didn't turn out the way expected, just as a personal Growth. Story. If you use the product in the past three years. You realise Notion product, you realise like

45:42 Hey, we actually ship bunch things not so great. Click. Two years ago. Right. Is that actually last year, twenty twenty four, is the year that we sh

45:50 I can say We ship good stuff at good velocity and good quality and align with our values. We sort of got lost there for a year, year and a half, shipping something not according to our value. Not according to my value. Thanks.

46:03 Notion we call notion is Lego for software. Or sort of ship non Lego pieces into our product. It's still there. We're still cleaning up. Part of it. Um

46:12 That's a realization. It's like going back to the value part. It's like If you create this thing called product or business, you attract people are value aligned to it. then if you're trying to optimize too much on this competition

46:28 Revenue side of things. Forced to introducing something entire value. Uh then you the system it's like There's organ rejection.

46:37 With your Employees. With your customers. Right. I give you a concrete example, um

46:45 For a while and still is. Project management is one of the most important use cases. For no shame. And you can get to project man a better project management tool just by hard coding Things like

46:56 Sprints uh milestones, all those things into your product. Right. Or You can do it in the the way that no trans are being through Lego pieces. Okay, what are the sprint? Sprint's a clusters of

47:09 a task that group together. So it's it's a new Lego, so yeah. Introducing Lego is much harder. Slower. Um

47:17 You can Instead we hard code the sprint concept into the product. And did it become Doesn't quite fit. Right.

47:24 And took us took me uh at least a year, a year and a half to realise. That's not the way it We should continue building those we should build. Go back to the original Lego with the product. Um

47:36 So we changed quite a bit internally and now it feels good now. Yeah. And according to your value is the better point. At least for me. Okay, I gotta follow this thread. What is it that you changed that allowed you to come back to your

47:47 First principles was it like you step is it founder mode? Uh it was the answer is it People personnel shift, is it y what allowed you to change? The way things were going. I always say of that above.

48:00 But especially you just release the sprint product. through our community and customers, then it's like what is this? It's like Underpowered. compared to other competitor products and to doing product management. And

48:13 It doesn't work well with the rest of the notion, like we said. And If you talk to engineers, okay, there's this part of notion you have to patch the cop base that's just weird, right? That's you harkle too much into it. From all the dimension technical front, calling a customer And when you use the thing it just doesn't feel right. So

48:30 Um There's another saying that if you're building the Lego wear inside Notion in the code base or Prada The system. Work. For you.

48:39 If you put in non legal way, the system works against you. So In some sense We're creating the tool. That

48:47 has an emergent behavior, you need to channel in that emergent behavior to unlock more value. 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. It shouldn't take like nine nine months a year to realise.

49:08 Mm. Yeah. Along those lines actually. Uh

49:14 People come on this podcast and they share all these stories of things are going on awesome all the time and we're like this was a great example if 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. Oh building notion.

49:31 Yeah, one of the bleakest one it's when we um During Covet We just couldn't scale up our infrastructure. There's pretty Um

49:41 For the longest time, like Sam is really good at don't do premature optimization. So for the longest time we're notion runs on one instance of Postgres database. And we're then we find a beefy machine, we keep scrolling and find a beefier, beefier machine to scale our user base. But then we're running out of the That even the largest instance there is for it.

50:00 Oh, squares. So there's a doomsday clock that when we're gonna truly run out of this space to store everything in Notion, then Notion I'll completely shut down. R So we stop building any new features. All hands on deck, every eng almost every engineer in the company. Trying to solve that problem. Um

50:17 Eventually we did. But it's was it was a close call. Like how close are we talking about? If I recall correctly, you're probably in weeks. And then as you

50:27 Approach the limit of what Postgres can do. behavior becomes sporadic. You just you don't really don't know which day gonna hit you. But you would just need to go as fast as you can. to to become shard sharding problem. Yeah, I was gonna ask, so the solution is sharding the database. Yeah. Okay. Cool.

50:44 Y yes, don't do premature optimization, but plan ahead a little bit. Don't do all we How long did you have from when you s launched this doomsday clock to time running out? Was it like a few months? Maybe a bit longer. Yeah, in the month. Less than six, but more than three. Something like that. The bittersweetness of Covid just ramping up

51:02 Certain businesses. Yeah, people just run like they have to use online productivity software. Right. Collaboration towards the thing and a curse. Speaking of a blessing and curse, this is a great segue to where I wanted to go in kind of the final Area I wanna spend time on which is Building horizontal.

51:16 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 off it's interesting if you look at the timelines of companies that have built

51:33 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 describe it is like the joy and pain of building horizontal products.

51:48 So let me just ask broadly, just what have you learned about what it takes to successfully build a horizontal platform type of product. First of all, no request. And second I wouldn't want to build anything else. Because like

52:02 Going back to the value. Lego s for software doesn't exist and Lego's a horizontal thing. So that's the thing we wanna go. We always want to do that. So We did not start to optimize for business, but we optimized for that.

52:17 Yeah. Um Learning wise. I think segmentation is quite important. Because people can use Lego for different things.

52:25 Only hardcore Lego fans care about. Like all Rix. Most people care about Lego boxes. And they actually want the Lego box to be ready made when you Um

52:36 on package box the set is there for you. Right. That's where we're learning a lot, especially move up market. There's a this term uh took me a while to learn. It's called solutions. You need to be a solution for enterprise customer. You can need to sit somewhere on a P L.

52:51 to optimize for their business were due to risk. Um That's Lego box. It's not a Lego brick. Um

52:58 Related segmentation related to that. So You to shift your mindset as you More towards B to B. Um more towards move our market. Uh, I wish we'd have done it earlier.

53:09 For the longest time I've still too much in the Lego brick minds and not in the solution Lego box, man. 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 how's it being positioned? How do you picture it, what are the value props?

53:27 Such a good metaphor. If you're building vertical software and actually Your vertical is the box, right? So you know you have one or two persona you're selling to Um Pretty straightforward that your market constraints you.

53:40 And And no judgment people like to You can go it that way, but then you hit the s you hit the wall of the market. the the advantage of building horizontal there's no wall, at least for in our space, we there shouldn't go after entire software market. But then you need to create a wall yourself.

53:56 So to make your go to market distribution to create that The spot in people's mind, your customer mind more clearly. For them and for your code market teams. That's why it works. I uh solution is one of my favorite words internally to rally the sales team or the product team will think that way. But then you need to hold in your head make sure

54:15 you're still building bricks behind the scene. Otherwise you're pigeonhol yourself into Uh uh the best but like what we did with uh Project management sprints futures.

54:25 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 it went out to my entire subscriber base. We got sixty five hundred people filling out the survey. And Notion more than any other company placed very highly in many categories. For example, it was I have in the notes here, yeah. It was the second most popular project management tool.

54:47 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. Yeah. It's we did not intend to build CRM, but

55:05 What is a CRM as re relational database? Um That's why we give people that break. That's a relational database and they can both hear and themselves. Um

55:14 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 knee for each of the vertical I think.

55:26 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

55:37 We did not expect until recently, right? Um and save their cost, which is um More and more people care about the bundling purchase nowadays. Um And Our approach for that is like

55:50 Yes, we're number two in project management, number what number four in CRM. But we're gonna introduce in more bricks. To make us number Move on to the categories. In ranking.

56:01 So it just takes time, but that's our approach. Yeah, well it's working, whatever you're doing there. 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.

56:16 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. First I wouldn't recommend it. But you wouldn't do it differently. Uh I wouldn't do differently myself, but

56:34 I wouldn't recommend it. There's it's it's a problem the problem space too large to have a uh best practice but I I can share something that's relevant for us Like No sure, we always want to build a meta tool. a tool to build and the the lack of her software.

56:49 We somehow stun up upon document notes as one use case. Um That just gave us a large top of the funnel. That there's a one billion plus people use this use case every day. So Um

57:02 That feels our growth with we call our internal strategy called B to C to B. August consumers Personal user use notion. For the most simple way you can use a computer or your phone which is No taking or talking or sharing.

57:15 And And then they realized oh notion can do more than that. There's relational database power, you can do tasks, you can manage track other things. Then they bring notion to work. Half our B to B customers. Uh coming from prior

57:28 Personal users. And lot a lot most of them are using Notion for notes and talk in the first place. So Pick. Well, at least we stomp upon a use case, a horizontal use case to give us a large type of funnel.

57:41 The help us grow are more verticalized. Uh enterprise use cases. And that's the reason where um We ship a calendar product last year because which other is a category of software has one billion plus user, there's document notes. There is the calendar.

57:57 Email. Right. That's why we're also working on a email product right now. Yeah man. Watch out, everyone. And then you mentioned AI. I and that's such a good point that AI is best when it has data.

58:10 And the fact that you have all of this stuff already in there. gives you a lot of really interesting opportunities to leverage AI. We definitely not expect Like a small. Uh.

58:21 It's such a gift for her. Everybody building tools, right? Completely change the the material you can work with. Um One realization it's

58:31 You have a surface area that people spend daily work with. Especially doing writing and managing your task and project. Uh. It's really easy to slice the language model writing AI capability into it. So that's the first primary build.

58:46 Then the realization is Yeah, it's so good at reasoning and understanding and searching things. And And it's be we can do a much better job of finding and searching things if all the information are together. That's what realise AI is really good with bundled

59:03 offerings. Yeah, it's really good with horizontal tools. So that's a second phase. We call it the first product was our AI writer product, second product is AI Q and A or connectors. Um Please take out all the information notion and give your answer.

59:17 Okay. Um And then we also need to work with the external uh c connector because there's things that living in Jura living in Zendesk that other customers still rely on so we need to build AI connectors. Um, but more and more and more information coming back to the notion core.

59:33 I will see 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 half a piece together.

59:47 It's not everybody can But they got their legos have 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

59:58 Yeah. Since Sana three point five. Yeah, so bad writing code. Coding is just a sample of things together. So Now we're looking at it.

1:00:07 Holy shit, we spent the last five, six years building all those Lego blocks for knowledge work. Um If we're just putting it Yeah, yeah.

1:00:16 coding agent on top of it, you can have Create any kind of knowledge. Customer software, customer agent. For whatever your vertical use cases. Need.

1:00:26 So That's the most fascinating approach. From me. And we did not expect this at all.

1:00:31 Yeah. Thank you, AI. Is there anything else along the lines of building horizontal products and bundling that you think is interesting to share important? Otherwise I have one last question I want to ask you. I think Marcus kinda like waves.

1:00:46 There's a Who said this? There's two way to build business bundling and bundling. Right. There's too much of a zagging to Zach. Actually my favorite version of this is like um In um there's a classic Chinese literature called Romance of Three Kingdoms.

1:01:01 Um It's great novel. It talk about the three kingdom era of China. And the opening sentence of this novel. Uh it's

1:01:09 Empires Long United Must divide. Land divided. Must unite.

1:01:16 As has always been. Bundling, I'm bundling. Uh it's one of my favorite um books to read when I was a kid. Um but business works the same way, right? W when there's too much Um you can sort of see this. It's like If we're computers, everything works on paper.

1:01:34 A knowledge work are down through papers. is fully democratized medium. Then PC happens. They were in the eighties.

1:01:42 The first error is a piece there. Actually there are so many applications. There is a Early database software like D Base is quite famous. It starts at the base two. Because

1:01:53 it give them credibility. Oh, they have been stick around for some time. Right. So that's the first Unbundling face off. Software computing. Them. Microsoft bundle everything back into at one.

1:02:04 Sweet in the nineties. Then fast unbundled it. Now we're sort of at the tail end of SAS. There's just so many verticalized SAS. Average company to use like Almost a hundred tools.

1:02:14 It's not It's kind of math is. Right. So There's more the market shifting towards more a bundling approach. And with AI.

1:02:23 And with a macro. So There's more value to be created through bundling. Um At least

1:02:30 For now. But the market could shift again. So understand this trend, I think how full So see, should you be a vertical solution or should it be a horizontal solution? Because it does different things. I love that story.

1:02:41 Okay, so last question, and something that uh one of your early investors, Finn Barnes, suggested asking. I'm curious where this goes. There's this kinda And you've we've kinda touched on this a number of times this the the way you think about notion, it's almost like a philosophy of how to work and be versus just a productivity tool.

1:02:59 And so I'm just curious how you think about the relationship between tools And human potential in humans and how we live in the world. Tools are Extensions of us.

1:03:12 That's why our office room name out of timeless tools there just Expands us a little bit. Right. Um And once they extend that

1:03:22 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 McClung quote, is like We shape our toes.

1:03:34 They're after our tools shape us. Um I think that's probably too philosophical for building part of our business. But there it's There's a sense

1:03:45 thinking like what are you bringing to the world? That will come back to Bite you or shape you. Um And are you extending

1:03:55 the part the so called good part of human nature. Where are you c is then in the part that's I know might be more zero sum. might be more negative. Right.

1:04:04 Um For me What is the Lego? Lego is Creativity.

1:04:10 Like us beauty. Um Software to me feels like lacking both. It's definitely lacking a lot of creativity uh creativity. It's so rich it. So

1:04:21 I believe both are human nature that worth amplify. you can build another business that um different part of human nature, right? There was quite famously investing Seven since were 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

1:04:40 But At least I prefer to amplify creativity and beauty in the domain of software. to me that's a line with my values, and I think At least shape that.

1:04:52 Shake. The market ship our user of a product. Um towards the better part of themselves. Must feel so good to have

1:05:00 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 ether of the world. Feels good. Yeah, feels good that Some of the most heartwarming thing is still and never I guess oh it's like when you walk by coffee shop and see people using Notion though.

1:05:21 Feels good. And feels good that uh We'll see people in our community can create the living selling notion template and notion apps that they're not a software engineer. And going back to the original mission of More people create software. I think that's one of the most fulfilling things.

1:05:35 Uh At least that's a maker of tools can experience. That last point I think people don't realize uh so people are making millions of dollars selling Notion templates. Uh on the internet like on Etsy and other places. Consulting templates, yeah. It's like

1:05:50 And they're not programmers. I think that's the I would see that's the heart of it because Their domain expertise. They they have Like they're YouTubers or creators, they have lifestyle brand, they know certain things, but they're not makers of software.

1:06:04 And they can use Notion package. Their workflow is an expertine to Notion. App and templates and make limit with it. Um It's awesome.

1:06:13 No. Yeah, like millions of dollars. It's crazy. 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

1:06:30 I wish more people look beyond. T. To still get ideas. Uh It's like

1:06:37 Tak. Hacker News Twitter are So focus on the now and what's in front of it, what happened six months ago. Right. No.

1:06:45 Versus humanity If you ch just rebooks in other industry, you can't. Look sideways. If you go back to history, there's a massive amount of patterns and shapes and trade offs you can steal from.

1:06:58 Um And you can make what's in front of you much more interesting. Like people figure out clever patterns in whatever domain the past that you can just take in front of you. Right. And And

1:07:10 I wish more people do that. I think it would be a very interesting way for Pra makers a business maker to Solve the problem in front of them. By stealing outside of the from the domain attacking business. So

1:07:22 Uh at least very inspir very useful for me personally. Makes me think of uh the quote Good artists copy great artists steal. We are still. Picasso still oh Steve Jobs spell that from Picasso or something. Who's still from somewhere else. Probably. 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

1:07:51 generally. I think the domain that are interesting the most Is the complex system domain. It's like it's Um

1:08:02 You you can look up the term like I think more and more people talk about this about thinking a system. No complex system when all the different things merged together, it creates emergent properties. Talking about ants, talk about beads. Talk about life itself.

1:08:17 It's just so fascinating. Right. How to With few primitives. few legal breaks, you can create a thing called life. Uh

1:08:25 Nothing just it's it's it's trigger for me. So I love readings in that on me. Um And it's really helpful. for create product at least a horizontal product because you're trying to channel the energy. Use smaller parts to create something.

1:08:40 That The sum is much larger than its parts. Is there a specific book that comes to mind or is it just generally that's a cool That's a that's a query to attach it to. Uh, next question. Do you have a favorite recent movie or TV show you've really enjoyed?

1:08:55 I like to watch old documentaries. Uh maybe this is another area or category to There's quite a few on YouTube. Like people make a really good documentary in the eighties, in the seventies. That's like all the old BPC ones, they're just excellent. And they have a strong opinion in them. And no longer just like general education thing, no. They have a

1:09:17 They have a Direction. They're They have a taste. Um

1:09:22 Like. Um Oh one oh yeah, one that's a really good one to guest are called connections. Um Uh I think it's called but the gentleman's name is Burke. Um It's about how different things from different domains inspire other domains.

1:09:37 And usually he used thirty minutes or six uh sixty minutes. to chain together a bunch of connection of stories. Um it is really good for technologists too. To watch. Highly recommend.

1:09:49 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. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I think I did Enneagram by Enneagram it's seven and eight. Seven is like uh It's actually perfect with what we just talk about. Seven is like

1:10:10 Creative commit finding connection. See the four centre. A it's They call challenger is like Competitive.

1:10:19 They are optimizing so through energy excess seeing me. Oh wow. This all makes sense. I gotta take those enagrams comes up a bunch on this podcast. Right. Yeah. Uh final question. Diva Life motto that you often

1:10:33 think back to you that you often repeat in your head of just like when times are hard. Or just a Keep going with something you're working on that you find useful. I like to think things as a craft. It's you just make up better.

1:10:45 Make for yourself. If it's unique enough for yourself and useful for others. Sense we'll follow. 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

1:10:58 How can listeners be useful to you? Probably find out me on Twitter. Ivan H Z H A O Um He's helpful for me.

1:11:07 Give us feedback about Notion about a product. That's the best. That's how. What's the best way to do that? Is it like DM Ivan or is it Yeah, just DM me.

1:11:15 Okay. Yeah, that's the probably the best way. Okay, oh boy, here you go. Uh and then you guys are hiring. Anything specific you're looking for? Anything people should know if they're like oh shit I wanna go work here. We're trying to hire Misfits. So if you think you're a misfit.

1:11:31 If you're Exceptional and many things specially. Um You want to build like O for software. You want to

1:11:39 take interesting spin on AI with Lego for software. And me. Amazing. Ivan. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for having me.

1:11:49 Bye, everyone. I Thank you so much for listening. If you found this valuable, you can subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Also, please consider giving us a rating or leaving a review, as that really helps other listeners find the podcast. You can find all past episodes or learn more about the show.

1:12:10 at Lenny's podcast dot com. See you in the next episode.

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