Lenny’s Podcast: Ivan Zhao (Notion CEO) on Lost Years, Staying Small, Building Horizontal, and the Joy & Suffering of Craft | Summary

Episode Theme:
A deep dive with Ivan Zhao, CEO and co-founder of Notion, exploring the philosophy, backstory, struggles, and triumphs behind building one of the world’s most beloved productivity tools. Topics covered include Notion’s “lost years,” the art and hardship of building a horizontal product, the importance of craft, leading a lean company, and Ivan’s high-level reflections on tools, values, and human potential.

Ivan Zhao’s Journey: Coding Roots and Creative Vision

[05:16–09:04]

• Early Life and Education:

  • Grew up in Urumqi (Xinjiang, China), a “small” city of 4 million, later moved to Beijing and then Canada.
  • Got into programming by winning a contest to secure a spot in a prestigious Beijing school, inspired by a love for computer games.
  • “I was really into computer games at the time, so of course I picked the programming one so I can play with computers all day long…” [05:40]

• Creative Influences:

  • Blended programming with an art education in Canada.
  • Realized that many artists struggled to create with software, which inspired the idea for a tool enabling anyone to build software.

• Philosophical Alignment:

  • Profoundly influenced by Douglas Engelbart’s vision (“Augmenting Human Intellect”), Alan Kay, and Ted Nelson.
  • “Augmenting Human Intellect—when I read that paper, it’s like, holy shit. If you know how to code or design, this is the highest leverage thing you can do for other people.” [08:23]

The “Lost Years”: Notion’s Search for Product-Market Fit

[00:00, 11:33–18:27]

• Initial Missteps:

  • Notion started in 2013 with an initial “developer tool for everyone” approach—did not resonate with most people.
  • “Most people… wake up, they have report due, they need to get their job done, they don’t care [about building custom software]…” [11:56]

• Broccoli and Sugar Analogy:

  • Decided to “hide the broccoli in the sugar”—offer a familiar productivity tool on the surface, embedding flexible, no-code “Lego” abilities under the hood.

“We call it a sugar called the broccoli. People don’t want to eat the broccoli, but people like sugar, so give them the sugar, hide your broccoli inside of it.”
— Ivan Zhao [00:31/13:46]

• Technical Resets:

  • Multiple total rewrites, including shifting from Google’s unstable Web Component technology to a more stable foundation.
  • “You can create progress through better abstractions and that compounds faster… you can catch up to all the things you’ve built much quicker.” [22:53]

• Lean Survival and Family Support:

  • Stayed afloat with minimal hires, founder sacrifices, and help from Ivan’s mother.
  • “Well, Chinese mom always can help… My mom helped me kickstart the company…” [15:24]

Product-Market Fit: A Gradual Realization

[25:07–27:33]

• No Single Breakthrough:
  • “It never hit us as a binary state. Just kind of like, oh good, we have people who care… It’s a very gradual ramp.” [25:20]
  • Signs included user revenue, VC inbound, and quirky moments such as investors sending dog treats to the office. [26:23]

Staying Small to Move Fast

[30:43–34:27]

• Philosophy of Lean Teams:

  • Notion runs with high talent density and minimal headcount:
    • “When you can do a lot at the same time or hire people who can, you naturally keep the company small.” [30:43]
  • Avoids bloated internal communication—favours competence, system design, and leveraging Notion itself for operations.
  • “Internally we use the metaphor: Notion is a small bus… the smaller, the easier to turn corners, accelerate, and maneuver.” [33:29]

• Culture and Environment:

  • Focus on a cozy, home-like office—careful attention to detail, comfort, and aesthetics.
  • “If the chair looks ugly, the wall looks ugly, it hurts.” [36:01]

Notion’s Core Principle: Craft, Values, and Trade-offs

[37:21–41:14]

• Emphasis on Craft:

  • Inspired by physical craftsmanship—“My wife refers to me as a wood cabinet builder…” [37:36]
  • Key company values: craft (skill, taste, trade-offs) and value (authentic principles and values).

• Balancing Business and Vision:

  • Must combine personal vision with user needs—a constant tension.
  • “If you build too much for yourself… there’s no users; too much for business, you’re building a commodity.” [21:41]

• On Trade-offs:

  • “There’s no free lunch. You have to give up something… Are you giving up the right thing?” [39:13]
  • Adapting to new tech (like AI) is like gaining a new “material” to work with, demanding new trade-offs. [41:14]

The Joy and Pain of Building Horizontal Products

[51:55–58:17]

• Horizontal Platform Challenges:

  • Hard to serve many use cases—most customers want pre-packaged solutions (“Lego boxes”), not loose abstractions (“Lego bricks”).
  • “Only hardcore LEGO fans care about LEGO bricks. Most people care about LEGO boxes.” [52:38]

• Advice:

  • Segmentation is key—find a broad entry point (notes, docs) and let users discover depth.
  • Notion’s growth rooted in B2C2B: users adopt for personal notes/docs, then bring it to work (and up-market).

• Bundling and Market Trends:

  • “Empire long united must divide; long divided must unite.” (Romance of the Three Kingdoms)
    • Business cycles oscillate between bundling and unbundling.
  • “With so many SaaS tools, there’s madness… now the market’s shifting towards more bundling, and with AI and macro[trends], more value created through bundling—for now.” [60:43]

Leadership, Growth, and Missteps

[41:31–49:10]

• Leadership Style:

  • Ivan describes himself as direct, not the archetypal loud tech CEO.
  • “I wouldn't say I’m the most soft interaction person at work… Notion’s etho is probably more East Coast than West Coast.” [42:17]

• Personal/Organizational Growth:

  • Ivan had to learn storytelling at scale (one-to-many), and balance delegating with maintaining values.
  • Realized the dangers of optimizing too much for business at the expense of first principles, especially during an unsuccessful foray into “hardcoded” project management features.
  • “If [the product] isn’t built according to your values, there’s organ rejection with your employees, with your customers.” [46:13]

• Brush with Collapse:

  • Covid-era near-death: Notion almost failed when their one Postgres database ran out of space—solved by urgent, company-wide sharding.
  • “There was a doomsday clock… in weeks we’d run out of space and Notion would completely shut down.” [49:31]

AI, Notion’s Future, and the Power of Tools

[58:17–64:58]

• AI as Platform Opportunity:

  • AI enables reasoning, searching, and assembling—makes Notion’s “loose Legos” more accessible, as AI can assemble workflows and tools from components.
  • “Guess who is really good at piecing things together… AI is so good at writing code, assembling things together.” [59:21]

• The Philosophy of Tools:

  • “Tools are extensions of us… We shape our tools; thereafter our tools shape us.” [63:08]
  • Ivan prefers to amplify creativity and beauty through Notion: “That’s aligned with my values… and it shapes our users towards the better part of themselves.” [64:03]

Notable Quotes & Stories

• On “Sugar and Broccoli”:
  “People don’t want to eat the broccoli, but people like sugar, so give them the sugar, hide your broccoli inside of it.” — Ivan [13:46]

• On Craft:
  “My wife often refers to me as a wood cabinet builder… That’s my mindset toward building Notion.” [37:36]

• On Product-Market Fit:
  “It never hit us as a binary state. Just kind of like, oh good, people care now…” [25:20]

• On Organizational Design:
  “Notion is a small bus… The smaller the bus, the easier to turn corners.” [33:29]

• On Dog Treats Signalling Investor Interest:
  “One day… dog treats sent to our office. Someone hustled into where we are—just to reach out.” [26:23]

• On Tools Shaping Humanity:
  “We shape our tools; thereafter our tools shape us.” [63:08]

Books, Media, and Final Advice

[67:44–71:00]

• Book Recommendations:

  • The “complex systems” domain—how simple primitives can combine into emergent phenomena; e.g., Connections by James Burke (documentary series).

• Life Motto:

  • “Think of things as a craft—you just make it better for yourself. If it’s unique enough for yourself and useful for others, things will follow.” [70:41]

• Final Thought:

  • “I wish more people look beyond tech… There’s a massive amount of patterns you can steal from history and apply to your problems.” [66:27]

Key Timestamps for Reference

• 00:31 / 13:46 — “Sugar and broccoli” analogy
• 05:40 — Ivan’s programming contest story
• 08:23 — Engelbart’s “Augmenting Human Intellect” effect on Ivan
• 22:53 — The value of abstraction and resets
• 25:20 — The vague, gradual reality of product-market fit
• 26:23 — Dog treats from investors, a quirky sign of traction
• 33:29 — “Notion is a small bus” metaphor for company structure
• 37:36 — Craft, woodworking, and product philosophy
• 49:31 — Near-collapse during COVID database scaling crisis
• 52:38 — “Lego boxes vs. bricks” and horizontal product lessons
• 59:21 — AI as the assembler of “Lego bricks”
• 63:08 — Marshall McLuhan: “We shape our tools; thereafter our tools shape us.”

For Listeners: Who Should Work at Notion?

• Ivan: “We’re trying to hire misfits. So if you think you’re a misfit, if you are exceptional at many things, especially you want to build Lego for software… DM me.” [71:28]

Tone:
Curious, self-effacing, philosophical, and practical—a blend of product builder’s candor and craftsperson’s pride. Ivan Zhao’s approach is about creating durable, beautiful tools that enable creativity, grounded in deep respect for history, abstraction, and human potential.