Notion 失去的岁月、疫情期间几近崩溃、保持小团队以快速迭代、横向构建
Notion 失去的岁月、疫情期间几近崩溃、保持小团队以快速迭代、横向构建
“糖衣西兰花”——找到人们真正需要的产品形态
Lenny Rachitsky： 你在描述 Notion 早期的时候，把前三四年称为”失去的岁月”。
Ivan Zhao： 我们尝试了很多不同的版本。第一个版本——好，让每个人都能制作和创造自己的软件，所以我们做一个简单到更多人都能上手的开发者工具。我们试了一两年，发现大多数人其实根本不在乎。我们意识到，不如把我们的愿景藏起来——也就是让每个人都能创造软件——然后用人们真正关心的产品形态呈现出来。人们每天都在用什么工具？生产力工具。我们花了两年才意识到需要做一个生产力工具。我们把它叫做”糖衣西兰花”——人们不想吃西兰花，但人们喜欢糖，那就先给他们糖，再把西兰花藏在里面。
Lenny Rachitsky： 你觉得还有哪些关键因素帮助你找到了真正行得通的方向？
Ivan Zhao： 做产品或做生意，本质是什么？你要用户，你要收入，这是产品生意。而为某种你希望世界拥有的东西去创造，是为你的价值观而建——你有你的品味，你有你的审美。这两种能量不同，你需要找到平衡。太多你自己，就没有用户，那就只是你自己的项目。太多为了生意，你就只是在做一个同质化产品。
工具与人的可能性
Lenny Rachitsky： 你对 Notion 的理解，几乎是一种关于如何工作和存在的哲学，而不仅仅是一个生产力工具。所以我很好奇你怎么看待工具与人的潜能之间的关系。
Ivan Zhao： 工具是我们自身的延伸。一旦它们延伸了我们，一旦我们塑造了它们，一旦我们把它们带到世界上，它们就会反过来塑造我们。
关于本期嘉宾
Lenny Rachitsky： 今天的嘉宾是 Ivan Zhao。Ivan 是 Notion 的联合创始人兼 CEO。他是一位非常独特、同时也极具哲学思考的创始人，不常上播客，所以我非常高兴能让大家一窥他是如何打造出世界上最受喜爱、最受欢迎的产品之一的。
我们会聊到他把 Notion 前三四年间称为”失去的岁月”的经历，他如何通过赢得编程竞赛进入中国的好学校，打造一款成功的横向产品所带来的喜悦与痛苦，他在保持精简、追求匠心、做取舍以及领导力方面的方法，还有一个很疯狂的故事——Notion 在新冠期间差点死掉，因为所有数据都存在的那一个数据库差点满了。
成长与编程之路
Lenny Rachitsky： Ivan，非常感谢你来到这里，欢迎收听本期节目。
Ivan Zhao： 谢谢你的邀请。
Lenny Rachitsky： 我知道你不怎么上播客，所以你能来我感到非常荣幸。我想从 Ivan 的故事开始讲起。作为一家市值超过一百亿美元的科技公司的创始人，你的背景非常独特，而且我觉得很多人并不了解。比如说，你在中国的一个小镇长大，而你从那里走出来、进入科技行业的方式非常有趣。能不能跟我们聊聊你早年的经历，你是怎么走出来的？
Ivan Zhao： 好。中国的所谓小镇，其实定义上来说有四百万人，叫乌鲁木齐，在中国的西北沙漠地带。我在那里长大，后来我妈带我去了北京，中国的首都。那其实是我进入编程、写代码的契机——因为我不是本地人，要在首都的好学校就读，你得赢某种竞赛。有不同路径，可以走数学，也可以走编程，比如信息学奥赛。那时候我特别沉迷电脑游戏，所以当然选了编程这条路，这样就能整天玩电脑。我赢了一些竞赛，进了一所好学校。这就是我怎么走上编程之路的。
后来我搬到了加拿大。到加拿大之后上了大学，没有学计算机科学，因为我已经会写代码了。不过打了很多电子游戏。其实还做了很多艺术，艺术和科学都涉猎。大学毕业的时候，我发现我大多数朋友都是艺术家。他们需要做自己的网站、搭建网络作品集。而在我那个艺术朋友圈子里，我是唯一的书呆子，所以我帮他们做了三四个网站，然后意识到：“哦，原来人们不知道怎么用软件媒介、计算媒介来创作。“这让我萌生了做 Notion 这样一款产品的想法——让更多人能够为日常工作和生活创造工具、创造软件。
Lenny Rachitsky： 好，那回到进好学校这件事——要离开那个小镇（其实也不太小），你得参加一个编程竞赛。你拿了第一名还是第二名，成绩到底怎么样？
Ivan Zhao： 北京第二。
Lenny Rachitsky： 在北京，好的。
Ivan Zhao： 相当厉害了。北京是个大城市。
Lenny Rachitsky： 好的，太厉害了。我还听到过一个故事或说法，说你是看《海绵宝宝》学英语的。这是真的吗？
Ivan Zhao： 是的，是真的。我移民加拿大比较晚，16岁。我的体会是，在中国可以学英语，但通常只是语法和考试。你缺的是语境、文化。所以你得看《海绵宝宝》或者《辛普森一家》来获得对幽默的感知。你得能听懂笑话。看动画片大概是最简单的方式了。
Lenny Rachitsky： 太厉害了。你的经历中还有一个关键时刻。我不确定是那个时候还是更晚，但 Douglas Engelbart 的那篇论文对你来说是一个非常重要的转折点。
Ivan Zhao： 我在加拿大读中学最后一年的时候，在帮朋友做网站，给他们做一个创意工具。然后你就会去研究创意工具、软件、计算的历史。最终追溯到六七十年代。你就会发现，第一代计算机先驱，大致在旧金山、斯坦福一带、南湾地区，他们其实有最好的想法。对他们来说，像 Douglas Engelbart、Alan Kay、Ted Nelson 这些第一代先驱，在他们的理念中，计算不应该区分建造者和使用者。它应该是同一个媒介。Engelbart 的那篇原始论文叫《Augmenting Human Intellect》，当我读到那篇论文的时候，就觉得——天哪。如果你会做软件，如果你懂编程或设计，这是你能为他人做的杠杆率最高的事情。就是赋予他们使用计算来增强解决问题能力或智力的能力。这让我对这个问题着了迷，我想创办一家像 Notion 这样的公司。
Lenny Rachitsky： 这让我想到 Steve Jobs 那句名言——计算机是思想的自行车。
Ivan Zhao： 你知道吗，在某种奇怪的意义上，Steve Jobs 其实对此负有责任。这个故事……其实是事实，不是故事。Xerox PARC 在研发第一代个人电脑，叫 Xerox Alto。Alan Kay 是主要负责人之一。Alto 运行的是一个叫 Smalltalk 的系统，在这个系统中，用户和用户的应用之间没有界限。没有”应用程序”这个概念。一切都是可塑的，你可以改变工具。所以 Steve Jobs，那个著名的故事是，他去 Xerox PARC 看 Alto 的演示，这是他第一次看到图形用户界面，应该是头几次之一，而且他们展示的也是这个 Alto 系统——一切都可以改变。但他没有看到这其中的力量。甚至当演示人员说，“嘿，“Steve Jobs 说，“我不喜欢这个滚动条的方向。你上下滚动的时候，它不应该往相反方向滚动。“然后演示人员当场就把滚动条方向改了。
这就是最初 Smalltalk Alto 系统的力量。他只看到了图形用户界面，没有看到底层的对象或者环境的力量。随着 Steve Jobs 和 Bill Gates 这一代人把 PC、个人计算推广开来，他们坚持的是应用框架，而不是 Smalltalk 的对象框架。于是才有了我们今天所有的应用，以及我们今天所见的 SaaS 生态。
Notion 的”迷失岁月”
Lenny Rachitsky： 这种关于产品应该是什么样子的愿景，听起来非常熟悉，我们稍后会谈到你对 Notion 的思考。但让我们回到 Notion 的起点。我们之前聊天时，你描述 Notion 早期那几年的方式——你在2013年创办 Notion，距今十多年了——你把前三到四年称为 Notion 的”迷失岁月”。我觉得这对创业者来说其实非常重要，因为现在你总能听到各种数据——某公司不到两年就做到一亿美元 ARR。而像 Notion 这样规模和成功的公司，花了三四年才找到产品市场契合度，这样的故事你听到的并不多。你所说的”迷失岁月”里到底发生了什么？你是怎么坚持下来的？坚持这么久做一件不奏效的事情，确实很难。
Ivan Zhao： 因为目标始终是做一个计算工具。但这个产品到底是什么？产品很难成型。愿景在，梦想在，但产品……路径太多了。我们尝试了很多不同的版本。第一个方向是——好吧，让每个人都能制作和创造自己的软件。那我们就做一个简单到更多人都能上手的开发者工具。我们试了几年，发现其实大多数人根本不在乎。大多数人早上醒来，有一份报告要交，他们需要把工作完成，他们不在乎去创造什么软件来优化手头的事情。他们不在乎。我们给朋友试用，给投资人看，都没有引起共鸣。
但我们真的很想做那个工具，所以就继续做下去。我们的领悟是——把我们的愿景，即”每个人都能创造自己的软件”，隐藏到人们真正在乎的产品形态里。那人们每天都在用什么工具？生产力软件。所以 Notion 就变成了今天的样子。如果你使用 Notion，Notion 更多被理解为一个生产力套件，但我们的意图——你用 Notion 越深，越能发现我们的意图——它里面蕴含着无代码的开发能力，你可以用 Notion 本身来创造几乎任何类型的生产力软件。我们花了两年多才意识到这一点。实际上，世界不是像你我这样的。这个世界不是开发者、设计师的思维。这个世界只关心眼前的东西，而且非常喧嚣。
Lenny Rachitsky： 你说过一句话让我印象深刻——“Notion 的第一个版本更多是我想要的，而不是人们想要的。”
Ivan Zhao： 确实如此。所谓的成熟，就是你不再只从自己的视角看世界，而是能从外部视角看世界。在科技行业，我们当时还年轻。花了好几年，头撞南墙才意识到这一点。人们就是不在乎。
Lenny Rachitsky： 我很喜欢你这个说法——你必须把你的愿景藏在人们能理解和会用的东西背后……
Ivan Zhao： 我们管这叫”裹糖衣的西兰花”。人们不想吃西兰花，但人们喜欢糖，那就给他们糖，把西兰花藏在里面。
Lenny Rachitsky： 哇。另外我还听说，你每次都把代码全部扔掉，重新构建了很多次。每次都把代码推倒重来。
Ivan Zhao： 是的。我们花了四年才有所进展。头两年做了太多开发者导向的产品，没人关心。花了两年才意识到我们需要做的是一个生产力工具。然后又花了一年去把它做出来。但在这中间，我意识到我们的技术基础搭错了。八到十年前，计算领域的情况是这样的。现在所有的 Web 应用都跑在 React 上。在 React 胜出之前，Google 有一个竞争技术叫 Web Component。它看起来很合理——Web Component 感觉像乐高积木，像一个个构建模块，我们押注了这个技术。后来我们发现，因为它太新了，实在太不稳定。你不知道 bug 到底来自你的源代码还是底层库。我们不得不重启整个公司，从头重建所有东西。否则我们的时间就不够了。所以我们舍弃了代码库，重置了公司，这样我们才能在一个更加正统的技术基础上重新构建。
维持运转
Lenny Rachitsky： 这段时间你们到底是怎么维持运转的？很多人想继续做一个想法，但通常他们需要付账单。实际上你是怎么撑过三到四年的？我听说你妈妈在那段时间借给了你一些钱。
Ivan Zhao： 嗯，中国妈妈总能帮上忙，而且我是独生子。实际上我妈妈帮我启动了公司，因为我是加拿大人，要搬到美国需要注册一家公司。所以我妈妈帮我处理了最初的手续并筹集了资金。后来我把钱还给了她。再后来我们的钱花光了，所以我说：“妈，我能把那钱借回来过渡一下吗？“她答应了。我对此非常感激。至于我们是怎么熬过来的？怎么撑了这么久？因为你想创造的东西并不存在，也就是后来被称为 Notion 的东西。它是软件界的乐高。这东西当时并不存在。乐高本身就有乐高。你可以看到家具领域也有这种模块化的东西存在，但在可用且达到大众市场采用水平的”软件乐高”并不真正存在。你就是想让这个东西存在于世。我从小玩乐高长大，那是我唯一想要的玩具，我想把同样的创造力和趣味感带给人们每天都能使用的工具。我的联合创始人 Simon 也有同感。乐高是他每个圣诞节唯一想要的东西。
Lenny Rachitsky： 不过你们见过 Magna-Tiles 吗？我有个一岁半的孩子，Magna-Tiles 真的很好玩。它有点像乐高的前阶段产品，小孩子也能玩。
Ivan Zhao： Magna-Tiles？
Lenny Rachitsky： 对，就是那种带磁性的小塑料片，你可以很快地拼出大得多的东西。更适合婴儿，但我玩得不亦乐乎。
Ivan Zhao： 哦，我看到了。就是……嗯哼。
Lenny Rachitsky： 这是乐高的另一个版本。我喜欢你正在实时搜索它。你看起来在想：“好吧，我们的新愿景是软件界的 Magna-Tiles。”
Ivan Zhao： 现在大多数人都知道了，“哦，Magna-Tiles。“核心理念是一样的，模块化，对吧？
Lenny Rachitsky： 对，创造力。好了，回到你的故事。还有一个阶段你搬去了日本。那是怎么回事？就是为了逃离和转换心情吗？
远赴日本，推倒重来
Ivan Zhao： 对，那是在其中一次重建阶段。当时我们已经知道产品应该是什么样子——一款隐藏着乐高力量的生产力软件。但我们建在了错误的技术基础上。如果继续在错误的基础上构建，钱就会花光，公司就不复存在。所以我们决定裁掉所有人。那时候 Notion 一共五个人。裁员后只剩我和 Simon 两个人。士气显然非常低落，你得和队友们告别。于是我们想：“去一个我们从未去过的地方吧，换换风景。“日本一直在我们名单最前面。有趣的是，我们把公寓和办公室转租了出去，住在日本实际上比住在旧金山还省钱。我们那样过了一段时间。实际上我们环游世界了一段时间，就是为了换个环境，我和 Simon 每天就是写代码、做设计。那是一些最快乐的时光。每天像过生日一样。
Lenny Rachitsky： 我看到过一条数据，说你每天编码十八个小时。我听到的原话是：“我们就是写代码、写代码、写代码。然后说，嘿，去吃饭吧。吃完饭回来继续工作，然后重复。”
Ivan Zhao： 因为我和他合作得非常默契。即使在那个时候，就像你知道对方在想什么，可以非常快速地穿越问题空间——技术产品空间、设计空间——不停地塑造东西。
给坚持中的创始人的建议
Lenny Rachitsky： 那么，也许可以收束一下这个话题。对于那些正在挣扎、找不到可行方向的创始人——“我已经在一个东西上做了很久了”——我很好奇你会分享什么关于坚持下去的建议。我先列出目前听你说过的几点，看看还有没有要补充的。第一，你坚信这东西需要存在于世界上，你需要真正感受到”我需要让这成为现实”。第二是保持精简——就像你让所有人都走了，只剩下你和 Simon。还有一种几乎是抽离的感觉——去一个不同的地方，“让我们重新来过。“你认为还有哪些要素对你最终找到可行方案至关重要？
Ivan Zhao： 我和 Simon 很幸运，高处不会太高，低处不会太低，所以不知怎的并不会觉得太低落。每当我感到低落，我就去睡觉，第二天就重置了。这对我来说很幸运。一定不要害怕重置。我认为勇气非常重要，因为很多时候你在做的事情并不重要，但惯性把你推着往前走。你说的第一点——构建你希望世界拥有的东西。什么是构建产品或商业？你需要用户，你需要收入，这就是产品商业。它几乎像体育一样，市场是竞技场，然后你要优化计分卡，即为赢而建。我从小玩体育，我喜欢竞争，所以我喜欢这种模式。而为某种你希望世界拥有的东西而建，是为你的价值观而建。你有一些品味，有一些审美，有一些价值观，你希望世界上有更多这些东西。这是两种不同的能量。我其实是最近才意识到，它们真的很不一样。取决于哪天醒来，我可能会处于不同的心情，但为价值而建更持久，也更令人满足。回看我们今天正在构建的东西，回头看去，我最感骄傲的是我创造了一些忠于自我的东西，而它恰好对他人也有用，正是这一点支撑你继续前行。对于 Notion 所有那些黑暗的年头、亏损的年头来说，这感觉像是一个更持久的能量源泉，直到今天依然如此。
Lenny Rachitsky： 你这么说很有意思，因为还有这样一个层面——最初之所以不奏效，是因为你在为自己而不是为用户构建，但我听到的是，构建一个你自己仍然兴奋的东西依然重要，只是你需要在两者之间来回平衡：这是商业需要的，这是我兴奋的。
Ivan Zhao： 对，确实需要一种平衡。几乎像心理咨询一样，对吧？确实如此。你太多地为自己和自己的价值而建，却没意识到归根结底，如果你在构建一个产品和工具，它必须被他人使用，你需要创造一种平衡。太多自我，就没有用户，那你只是在做一个项目，只是做一个研究项目。而太多地为商业而建，你构建的就是一种大宗商品。那么光谱在哪里？对，这是一个永无止境的光谱，很有意思。
Lenny Rachitsky： 对，好的。让我来总结一下你分享的这些关于如何坚持、如何守住一个想法不放弃的要点。我很喜欢你说的——去睡觉就行了，很有 Brian Johnson 的风格，就像：“低落的时候就去睡一觉，明天又是新的一天。“非常简单但……
Ivan Zhao： 这就像每天一次的个人物理重置。你可以重置你的代码库，你也可以重置你的心智模型。
Lenny Rachitsky： 好。还有一点我也很喜欢——不要害怕重置，就像你刚才说的。Tobi Lutke 上过我的播客，他也说了同样的话：“要坦然接受一些沉没成本。我已经做了这么多，但我会扔掉重来，这没问题。“
更好的抽象带来进步
Ivan Zhao： 对。我觉得这不仅仅是自助式地说”不要害怕重置”——那当然也没问题。我觉得这里更有意思的一点是，你可以通过更好的抽象来创造进步。而且这种进步会以更快的速度复利增长，能比你想象的更快地追上你之前搭建的所有东西。人类不擅长用抽象或指数级的方式思考，我们习惯线性思维。但如果你重置一下，找到一个更好的方式，你就能以很小的代价把之前积累的一切快速恢复回来。
所以其实回到计算先驱那个话题，Smalltalk——最早期的系统之一，对 Notion 有巨大影响——它的代码库非常小，灵感来自 Lisp——另一种编程语言——可能也就一百来行代码。系统的核心可以非常小，但就像数学一样，它可以复利增长，可以产生复杂的行为，为你解锁巨大的价值。只要你找到了那些正确的抽象，就能追上你之前做的所有东西。你可以毫无负担地快速推倒重来。我觉得这就是重置之所以如此强大的核心所在。
Lenny Rachitsky： 我们在如今的大语言模型（LLM）的发展中，正好看到了你描述的这种现象。所有这些公司在这方面做了那么久，然后有人找到了关于如何思考系统规模化的一种抽象，于是后来者一发布，立刻就能达到那些做了几十年的公司今天的水平，因为他们正是建立在你所说的这些抽象之上的。
Ivan Zhao： 想要快速追上美国。
Lenny Rachitsky： 对，说的就是 DeepSeek。你提到的关于势头的那个观点也很关键——要警惕势头把你带向一个方向，而你无法切换到不同的方向，无法摆脱那个路径。我觉得这正是思维链（chain of thought）模型的工作方式。传统大语言模型基本上就是”下一个词、下一个词、下一个词”地生成，一旦走错了方向，就被困住了，只能沿着那条路继续走。而思维链模型现在擅长做的就是停下来想想：“等一下，让我重新思考一下。这条路真的对吗？还是我应该从头来过？“所以我觉得 AI 几乎已经悟出了你说的这个道理。
Ivan Zhao： 有意思。
产品市场契合的感觉
Lenny Rachitsky： 天哪。好，关于早期岁月的最后一个问题。大家一直在问：产品市场契合（product-market fit）到底是什么感觉？你做了三四年，那个时刻是什么？是什么样的？有什么不同的感觉让你觉得”好，这事能成”？
Ivan Zhao： 回到我和 Simon 的风格——高的时候不会特别高，低的时候不会特别低，它从来不是一种非此即彼的状态。就是”哦，不错，有人在乎我们做的东西了”。然后”哦，不错，有人主动联系我们，愿意付费了”。是一个非常渐进的上坡。也许正因为如此，早期那些真正迷茫的日子里，感觉也不会太低，因为……即使对于今天的 Notion 来说，相比于它未来可能达到的规模，现在也还是很小。所以我们就是继续往前走。这不是用里程碑式的思维来想事情，而更像是”我们能不能把脑子里的想法做出来，而且比上周做得更好一点”这种思维方式。所以不存在那种产品市场契合的”砰”一下、里程碑达成的感觉。至少我们没体验过那种感觉。
Lenny Rachitsky： 实际上我听很多创始人都这么说过。但在那个过程中，有没有哪个时刻你觉得”哦，这次不一样了”，或者”也许这次能成”？
Ivan Zhao： 我想了一下……当我们开始有收入之后，产品增长变快了。投资者开始主动找上门来。我记得有一天，我们整个办公室收到了一箱狗零食。首先，我们办公室的地址并不公开。其次，狗零食——为什么有人这么想找到我们？那个时刻我稍微停顿了一下，心想大概已经引起了足够多的关注，投资者开始找过来了。
Lenny Rachitsky： 那个狗零食是想……就是一种礼物，意思是”嘿，你应该跟我们聊聊，我们给你寄了个好玩的小礼物。”
Ivan Zhao： 对，因为我们当时在办公室里招了一个人，带了一只狗来。然后我们在 Twitter 上发了，我说”为什么这东西寄到我们办公室了？“有人真的是费了很大劲找到了我们办公室的地址，还在 Twitter 上关注了我们。
Lenny Rachitsky： 你最终拿了他们的钱吗？
Ivan Zhao： 第一次没有。
Lenny Rachitsky： 好，后来拿了。放长线钓大鱼。
Ivan Zhao： 不，没有拿。
Lenny Rachitsky： 哈哈。太棒了。我从没听过这个判断产品市场契合的标准——VC 开始越来越多地给你发消息、主动找上门来。
Ivan Zhao： 其实有一位投资人对我们帮助很大。因为在那几年里，你基本上没有任何反馈循环，就是闷头干。然后反馈循环逐渐出现了。有一阵子，哦，VC 开始敲你的门了。所以我应该跟这些人聊聊。有些人喜欢我们在做的事情。我安排了一些会面，还挺多的。后来也许并不……我意识到，我们团队里有人跟我说：“Ivan，你在干什么？你明显不需要钱。你只是在用外部验证来让自己感觉好一点。“我说：“哦，太对了。“这对我们做更好的产品没有任何帮助，真正的答案在于客户告诉我们的东西。然后我们就回去继续打造产品了。我回到了硬核的构建模式，不见任何人。狗零食的故事就发生在那个时期。然后我意识到，哦，这挺有意思的。
Lenny Rachitsky： 你提到这位投资人，说帮助很大。你愿意提一下名字吗，还是想保密——
Ivan Zhao： 哦，Shana Fisher。她在纽约。
Lenny Rachitsky： 好，记下了。
Ivan Zhao： 对，她就像另一个心理治疗师一样，对吧？
Notion 今天：精益与盈利
Lenny Rachitsky： 我想聊聊 Notion 的现状以及你经营它的方式。一个很好的衔接就是你刚才一直在说的——你们有多么精益和高效，这一直是你的重要优先级。我看到了一些数据。一个是你们已经盈利了，而且已经盈利了好几年。我甚至不确定你们有没有花掉融来的钱，我觉得大部分应该还……
Ivan Zhao： 对。
Lenny Rachitsky： 钱还在银行里。如果你在看 YouTube 的话，他在点头。你们在 ARR 超过 1000 万之前都没有招聘销售。在团队达到 50 人时才招了第一位 PM。你们一直把团队保持得很小。为什么这对你来说这么重要？现在听起来很酷，大家会说：“当然了，本来就该这样。“但在过去十年里，情况并非如此。你一直以来都是这样做的。为什么保持精简对你如此重要？
Ivan Zhao： 我觉得可以回到之前说的抽象系统的思维方式来解决问题。我觉得我们很幸运，我、Simon 和 Akshay，我们具备的技能组合大概可以运营一整家公司。就我们几个人，我能做设计，能做营销、讲故事，能完成销售交易。所以你意识到其实不需要那么多人。当你自己和招来的人都能够同时胜任很多事情时，公司自然就能保持小规模。而且大家都在做产品管理，额外的开销其实更多来自内部沟通。让所有人的想法对齐、用同样的方式看待世界，这真的很难。而那些确实需要人手的部分，也许可以通过系统、通过更好的工具来解决得更好。
Notion 本身就是一个用来构建其他工具的元工具。所以我们几乎所有东西都在 Notion 上运行。我们用同样的思维方式来构建公司。这也意外地让我们保持了较低的人头数，保持了公司的盈利，进而让你处于一个正向的循环中——你不需要每隔 18 到 24 个月就去找钱，你可以专注于打造产品。同时也因为团队小，我们内部有一个 Notion 页面叫做”人才密度”。我们不追踪人数，而是追踪人才密度、每位员工的收入。人们都想和更优秀的人一起工作，所以这是一个正向的公司成长循环。
Lenny Rachitsky： 我在想，这其中有多少其实是因为你们在成功之前经历了那么多年——“我们就是必须保持非常精简、守住现金，否则就会死掉。“你觉得那段经历是否塑造了你现在的运营理念？还是说你一直都是这样想的？
Ivan Zhao： 不，我不会说 Notion 是一家以节约成本为导向的公司。我喜欢好椅子，喜欢好家具。但我们不浪费钱。我觉得这更多是来自一种品味或者解决问题的方法。我就是相信更好的系统远胜过靠人海战术硬堆。
精益运营的建议
Lenny Rachitsky： 当人们听到保持精简和小规模这个理念时，听起来很棒——我们要超级高效、精简、聪明地花钱、保持人才密度。但实际做到很难，很难克制住不多招工程师、多招设计师的冲动。对于那些想要这样运营的人，你有什么建议？是什么让你在保持精简、工程师和设计师都比竞争对手少的情况下依然取得了成功？
Ivan Zhao： 我觉得关键是要理解抽象和系统是一条比线性曲线更好的曲线。我们在内部帮助其他人理解这一点。我们内部用了一个比喻，把 Notion 比作一辆小巴。车越小，越容易转弯，越容易加速，越容易操控。车越大，船越大，就越慢。作为公司的领导者，你来决定谁坐在你旁边的座位上。这决定了我们整辆车跑多快，也决定了你在这家公司的工作和生活体验，因为你在选择你的同座。这个比喻在公司内部很能引起共鸣，整体上帮助我们朝着让这辆车保持更小的方向优化。
Lenny Rachitsky： 我从来没听过这个比喻。
Ivan Zhao： 可能之前有人在什么地方说过吧……也可能没有。
办公空间的美学
Lenny Rachitsky： 小巴。顺着这个话题，我最近去参观了你们的办公室，注意到那里有一种非常温馨的氛围。我了解到你们长期以来有一条不穿鞋进办公室的规定，直到搬到上一个办公室才取消；你们很长一段时间都围坐在一张桌子旁吃饭；你们在选定墙漆之前试了 30 种不同的暖白色。为什么这对你来说这么重要？为什么对办公体验如此用心如此重要？
Ivan Zhao： 也许可以从两个维度来看。一个是实用的层面。你就是希望办公室成为一个待着舒服的地方。大多数办公室的顶灯感觉像医院，你看到就想：“天哪。“白色太惨白了，地板颜色太暗了。为什么不用一些奶油色调，让地板的颜色更友好？不要用顶灯，顶灯是邪恶的。让办公室感觉温馨，人们就会花更多时间待在那里，在办公空间里更有创造力，更放松。我们的愿景是让办公空间感觉像艺术工作室，或者像你的家。所以我们大部分办公家具都是家用家具。就是感觉温馨，这样人们待的时间更长，更有创造力，灵感更容易流动。
另一个层面，至少对我个人来说，看到丑的东西眼睛会难受。这更多是出于审美和价值观的层面。就像我们讨论人体工学椅——坐坏椅子会伤背。但对我来说，视觉上的不适同样存在。如果椅子看起来丑，墙壁看起来丑，那是一种伤害。所以最好不要有让人感到不适的东西。
Lenny Rachitsky： 你们的会议室命名也很有意思。
Ivan Zhao： 对，没错。我们的会议室以历史上的经典工具来命名。我举个例子：iPhone 是显而易见的一个，初代 Macintosh，各种不同形态的椅子，Lamy 2000 钢笔，东芝电饭煲，还有其他的。因为它们是灵感来源。说到底，我们在创造工具，创造一个元工具。很多人在创造工具、软件工具。而东芝电饭煲改变了一亿甚至上亿亚洲人吃米饭的方式。Sony 晶体管收音机是第一个把东西缩小到小巧又实用的。这些事物改变了人们的生活，并且延续了几十年。创造一个这样的软件产品是什么样的体验？我希望用这种方式来激发团队去思考。因为软件，尤其是科技行业，每六个月、每十二个月就是一个周期。我们很少去思考创造一些能持久的东西。我关心的是创造至少形态上能比 18 个月活得更久的产品。
Lenny Rachitsky： 你曾经发过一条推文，引用了 Steve Jobs 的一句话，当你谈到这些的时候我就想到了：“问题在于，从一个伟大的想法到一个伟大的产品之间，需要付出巨大的工匠精神。“我不知道你还记不记得发过那条推文，但当你听到这句话时你怎么想？
Ivan Zhao： 对，我觉得这里的关键词是”craft”（工匠精神）。我们公司内部的理念叫做”craft and values”——工匠与价值观。Craft 是你的技能和品味，Value 是你的个人价值观以及你看待世界的方式。Craft 这个词很有意思，它是关于把你的价值观应用到技术知识上，做出更巧妙的取舍，创造出新的、有用的东西，并且持续不断地这样做。
Ivan Zhao： 我太太经常叫我木匠。至少我在构建 Notion 时的心态训练就是这样的——“哦，我能不能把这个木柜做得更漂亮、更实用、手感更好？“这就像是你有一个美学方向，同时你有技术知识去真正把东西做出来。然后你需要在脑海中，或者在纸上，进行排列组合和取舍，最终抵达那个目标。对我来说，这就是 craft（工匠精神）。做产品，至少对我来说，就是这种感觉。做业务是这种感觉，做公司也是这种感觉。
取舍的艺术
Lenny Rachitsky： 有意思的是，我们这次对话很大一部分内容，以及你构建这家公司的思维方式，都是一种平衡——一方面是人们需要的实用、有用的东西，以及商业和务实层面；另一方面是做出让你引以为傲的东西和工匠精神。速度和质量之间始终存在这种取舍。我知道这对你来说是一个重要的主题。就谈谈取舍吧，你是怎么思考做取舍的？
Ivan Zhao： 我觉得这对产品人和做业务的人来说特别相关——天下没有免费的午餐。你不可能免费得到什么，你必须放弃一些东西。那放弃什么？本质上就是放弃在当下那个时间、那个空间里市场或用户不需要的东西。这就是做业务或做产品的工匠精神。而且市场是如此动态，尤其在 AI 出现之后。市场的优化函数在变化，所以你需要做出新的取舍，而新技术也在不断涌现。我一直觉得 AI 语言模型就像一种新的木材。它就像铝——一种新的材料。大规模民航旅行直到铝变得足够便宜，人们能够以可承受的成本制造飞机时才成为可能。计算机也是直到半导体变得……就像是需要新技术来解锁新的取舍方式，然后你还需要在技术取舍和人类行为取舍之间找到平衡。
作为人类，自从我们走出非洲以来，我们就定型了，对吧？这是一个约束，是不变的。每一代人会学一些新东西，但过了 16 岁，你就不想再学新的了。所以这些就是人的取舍、技术的取舍，还有一些宏观层面的因素。不同维度的东西交织在一起，最终汇聚成一个产品，甚至一个业务。而我觉得做产品的人、做业务的人，工作就是找到多个维度中的那个甜点，然后创造出有存在权利的东西——至少是更有持久生命力的东西。
Lenny Rachitsky： 我听到一条线索，就是新技术让原本不可能的事情变为可能。我知道你们在 AI 方面正在做一些很酷的事情，我接下来会聊到，这些正在解锁一些很棒的新想法。但在聊那个之前，我想谈谈你作为领导者这个话题。到现在你已经做了十二年左右了。
Ivan Zhao： 差不多吧，对。
领导者的成长
Lenny Rachitsky： 恕我直言，你是一个说话温和的领导者，并不符合人们心目中那种百亿美元公司 CEO 的典型形象——而且我估计你们现在的估值远不止这些了，我甚至都不知道，那大概是个旧估值。我觉得让像你这样并非经典 CEO 模样的领导者被更多人看到是很好的。我猜想，要胜任这个角色，你一定有一些不得不去学习、去培养、去主动投入的东西，而这些对你来说并不天生自然。你有哪些方面是最需要从头学起、而本来并不擅长的？
Ivan Zhao： 我想你没参加过我的商务会议或者头脑风暴环节吧。你没见过。
Lenny Rachitsky： 没见过 Ivan Zhao 的那一面。
Ivan Zhao： 对，我不会说我在工作中是那种最温和的互动方式。其实恰恰相反。我在中国长大，那里的人要直接得多，想说什么就说什么。然后你搬到加州，搬到美国，搬到西方，你会觉得哇，每个人都说一切都棒极了，一切都很好，但事实并非如此。我会说 Notion 的气质更接近东海岸而非西海岸，介于两者之间，更加直接。
要学的东西很多。我觉得早期我们谈过，世界不像你，世界不关心你，所以你必须削掉自己身上理想主义的部分，去做这个世界真正在意的事——就像给西兰花裹上糖衣，你得把西兰花藏在糖丸里面。这是一方面，更多是关于我自己的。
随着公司成长，你会意识到……我很擅长讲故事，那是一对一的影响力。但当公司壮大后，你需要成为一对多的讲故事者。那是一种技能。我之所以尽量少做播客之类的事情，其实是它们会以不同方式消耗精力。我更喜欢做产品和头脑风暴。然后你意识到，这是我必须掌握的一门技艺，为了改变我正在构建的公司和业务的形态。我把它当作一门 craft（工匠精神）来对待。就像游戏里的技能树一样，你需要先学会某些东西，才能解锁另一些，然后做出新的取舍——在你自身和业务之间权衡。不过这也很有趣。每隔十二到十八个月，Notion 就像一家新公司，或者说至少它需要我具备不同的技能组合。所以我需要不断学新东西。这是一个无限游戏，无限游戏更有意思。
Lenny Rachitsky： 我很喜欢这个想法。我喜欢你不断回到这个概念：一边是理想、价值观和愿景，是你想要做的事；另一边是你必须找到一种方式去包装它、表达它，让人们真正理解并愿意接受它。这就是你进入的方式。
Ivan Zhao： 对。人的大脑天然抗拒改变，你怎么才能进入人们的头脑？这就是最好的营销和定位所做的事情。你需要找到那个甜点切进去。同时你也要真诚。不是欺骗——欺骗是不诚实的。你可以骗别人一两次，之后就没有未来了。它必须真正联系到某种实实在在的价值创造，或者与对方的交换。所以是的，这是一门技艺。讲故事就是一个巨大的取舍维度。
Lenny Rachitsky： 我很喜欢”取舍”这个词，它一次又一次地出现。很有意思，在我们对话中这些线索反复出现。在你成长为现在这样的领导者的过程中，你觉得最大的惊喜，或者最出乎意料的部分是什么？有没有什么事情你需要学习但没想到的，或者结果和你预期不一样的？就当作一个个人成长的故事来聊聊。
回归初心
Ivan Zhao： 如果你用过过去三年的 Notion 产品，你会发现，“嘿，我们实际上发布了不少不那么好的东西。” 就在两年前。实际上去年，2024 年，我才能说我们在好的节奏下发布了高质量的东西，而且与我们的价值观一致。我们迷失了大约一年到一年半，发布了一些不符合我们价值观、不符合我个人价值观的东西。Notion，我们把 Notion 称为软件的乐高。但我们往产品里塞了非乐高的组件。我们还在处理这个问题，还在清理其中的一部分。这是一个认知上的转变——回到价值观这个问题上，就像如果你创造了这个叫产品或业务的东西，你会吸引价值观一致的人。然后如果你在竞争和收入方面过度优化，被迫引入违背你价值观的东西，那么这个系统就会出现排异反应——来自你的员工，来自你的客户。
给你一个具体的例子。项目管理在一段时间内——现在仍然是——Notion 最重要的使用场景之一。你可以通过硬编码的方式把 Sprint、里程碑这些东西直接写进产品里，做一个更好的项目管理工具，或者你可以按照 Notion 的方式来做，用乐高组件的方式。Sprint 是什么？Sprint 是一组聚合在一起的任务。所以它是一个新的乐高。引入乐高组件要难得多，也慢得多。你可以反过来直接把 Sprint 的概念硬编码到产品里。但这种方式不太适配。我花了至少一年到一年半才意识到这不是我们应该继续构建 Notion 的方式。我们应该回到最初的乐高方式来构建产品。所以我们在内部做了相当大的调整。现在感觉好多了。按照你的价值观来构建，这是最根本的一点，至少对我来说是这样。
Lenny Rachitsky： 好，我得顺着这个话题追问一下。你具体做了什么改变，才得以回到第一性原理？是你亲自介入？所谓的创始人模式就是答案？还是人员上的调整？是什么让你改变了原来的方向？
Ivan Zhao： 我会说以上都有，但最关键的是通过我们的社区和客户发布了 Sprint 产品。结果就像——这是什么东西？跟竞争对手的项目管理产品比起来功能不足，而且跟我之前说的一样，跟 Notion 其余部分也配合不好。如果你和工程师聊，他们会说，“好吧，Notion 有这么一块代码你得去碰，那部分就是很奇怪。你硬编码得太深了。” 从技术层面的各个维度来看，还有客户的反馈。你自己用的时候就觉得不对劲。” 所以还有一种说法：如果你在 Notion 内部以乐高的方式构建——无论是代码库还是产品——系统会为你服务。如果你以非乐高的方式构建，系统会与你对抗。从某种意义上说，我们在创造一个具有涌现行为的工具，通过引导这种涌现行为来释放更多价值。
Lenny Rachitsky： 所以我听到的是，你们上线之后效果不好。所有人都说，“这是什么？感觉不对。” 然后有一个醒悟的时刻——我明白了，我们在这里做错了，我们应该回到最初那个关于抽象的愿景，回到我们真正想要构建的东西。
Ivan Zhao： 这花了九个月到一年的时间才意识到。
COVID 期间的生死时刻
Lenny Rachitsky： 顺着这个方向说，人们来这个播客经常分享各种顺风顺水的故事。而这恰好是一个反例。我很好奇，在构建 Notion 的历程中，是否还有另一个危机时刻，当时情况看起来相当黯淡？
Ivan Zhao： 有的。最黯淡的时刻之一是 COVID 期间，我们的基础设施完全无法扩展。在很长一段时间里，Simon 非常擅长不做过早优化，所以在很长一段时间里，Notion 只运行在一个 Postgres 数据库实例上。我们不断找最大的机器，不停地滚动浏览，找到更大的未来机型来扩展用户量，但最终我们连 Postgres 能用的最大实例都用完了。那时候就像一个末日时钟在倒计时——我们即将真正耗尽存储 Notion 所有数据的空间，Notion 将面临全面停摆。所以我们停止了所有新功能的开发，全员上阵，公司里几乎每个工程师都在解决这个问题。最终我们解决了，但真的是险过剃头。
Lenny Rachitsky： 险到什么程度？
Ivan Zhao： 如果我没记错的话，大概只剩几周就耗尽了。而且当你逼近 Postgres 的极限时，系统行为会变得不稳定。你真的不知道哪一天会出事。我们只能尽可能快地解决分片问题。
Lenny Rachitsky： 对，我正想问，解决方案就是对数据库做分片？
Ivan Zhao： 对，分片。
Lenny Rachitsky： 好，明白了。
Ivan Zhao： 不要拖到太晚。是的。不要做过早优化，但要稍微提前规划。别拖到最后一刻。
Lenny Rachitsky： 从你意识到这个末日时钟开始到时间耗尽，中间有多久？几个月吗？
Ivan Zhao： 可能更长一些。在月的量级上，不到六个月但超过三个月，大概这样。
Lenny Rachitsky： COVID 把某些业务推向巅峰，真是又甜又苦。
Ivan Zhao： 大家都不得不使用在线生产力软件和协作工具。
Lenny Rachitsky： 对，福祸相依。说到福祸相依，这正好引出我想聊的最后一个话题——构建横向软件，以及把各种不同功能打包在一起的产品。众所周知，构建一个横向平台，同时做很多事情是非常困难的，尤其是市面上往往有针对单一功能做得非常好的点解决方案。而且很有意思的是，如果你看那些构建了横向产品的公司的时间线，它们全都花了很长时间才最终找到产品市场契合。这其实是一个非常普遍的模式。当我们聊到什么话题有意思的时候，你用的描述是”构建横向产品的喜悦与痛苦”。所以我想直接问——关于成功构建一个横向平台型产品，你学到了什么？
构建横向产品的喜悦与痛苦
Ivan Zhao： 首先，没有后悔。其次，我不想构建任何其他东西，因为回到价值观这个层面，软件的乐高还不存在，而乐高本身就是一个横向的东西。这就是我们想构建的。我们一直想做这件事。所以我们最初不是为了商业优化，而是为那个愿景而优化。
从学习的角度来说，我认为细分非常重要，因为人们可以用乐高做不同的事情。只有硬核乐高迷才在乎乐高积木本身。大多数人关心的是乐高套装盒。他们其实想要的是现成的乐高盒。当你打开盒子，整套东西就在那里了，对吧？我们在这方面学到了很多，尤其是在向更大客户拓展的过程中。有一个术语我花了一段时间才学会，叫做”解决方案”（solutions）。你需要成为企业客户的解决方案，你需要出现在他们损益表的某个位置上，为他们的业务做优化，帮助他们管理第三方风险。那就是乐高盒，不是乐高积木。细分与此相关。所以你需要转变思维方式，越往 B2B 方向走、越往更大的市场拓展，就越需要这样做。我希望我们更早做到这一点。在很长一段时间里，我过于沉浸在乐高积木的思维方式中，现在才转到了乐高盒的解决方案思维。
Lenny Rachitsky： 这个比喻太好了。我觉得即使你不是在为企业做乐高积木，仅仅是”你卖给别人的乐高盒是什么”这个想法——它如何定位？你怎么描绘它？价值在哪里？这个比喻太妙了。
Ivan Zhao： 如果你在做垂直软件，你的垂直领域自然就是那个乐高盒，对吧？你很清楚自己只面向 1% 或 2% 的市场。相当直截了当——市场在约束你，这没什么不好。如果你喜欢，你可以走那条路，但你最终会撞到市场的天花板。做横向产品的优势在于，至少在我们的领域里，没有天花板。Notion 瞄准的是整个软件市场，但你需要自己创造天花板——让你的市场推广分发体系更清晰，在用户和客户心中占据一个更明确的定位，对你的市场推广团队也是如此。这就是为什么”解决方案”是我内部最喜欢用的词之一，用来凝聚销售团队和产品团队。你要用那种思维方式思考，但同时脑子里要时刻记住，确保幕后仍然在构建乐高积木。否则，你就会把自己框死在一个局部最优的位置，就像我们当初做项目管理和 Sprint 功能时那样。
Notion 在各个品类中的排名
Lenny Rachitsky： 说到这个，我不知道你知不知道这件事。我最近做了一次调查，问我的读者最常用、最喜欢的工具是什么。调查发给了我的全部订阅用户，收到了 6500 份回复。Notion 比其他任何公司在多个品类中的排名都要靠前。比如说，我这里记了——它是仅次于 Jira 的第二大最受欢迎的项目管理工具。它是第四大最受欢迎的文档工具。这很有意思，因为你可能会觉得 Notion……Notion 以文档著称，但有趣的是，这反而是排名最低的。然后它在 CRM 中排第三，仅次于 Salesforce 和 HubSpot。
Ivan Zhao： 对，我们并没有打算做 CRM，但 CRM 本质上是什么？是关系型数据库。这就是为什么我们给用户那块乐高积木——一块关系型数据库，他们可以自己搭建 CRM。我认为一个很大的优势是，如果客户使用 Notion，他可以在一个平台上同时解决三四个用例。尤其对我们的创业公司和中等市场规模客户来说，他们对每个垂直用例的需求没有那么复杂，所以可以把所有信息集中在一个地方，对团队有利，对 AI 实际上也有利。这是一个巨大的市场变化，我们直到最近才意识到这一点。同时还能节省成本——现在越来越多人关心捆绑购买了。我们的策略是，没错，我们在项目管理排第二，在 CRM 排第几来着？第四，但我们有兴趣继续增加乐高积木，让排名在这些品类中继续攀升。这需要时间，但这就是我们的方法。
给构建横向产品创业者的建议
Lenny Rachitsky： 是的，不管你们在做什么，效果确实不错。假设有人想构建像你们这样的横向工具——现在有很多创始人正在尝试做能同时搞定很多事情的产品。对于第一个用例的选择，你有什么建议吗？你刚才提到细分，有没有什么具体的思路，比如”如果你想在一个横向工具上取得成功，就这样做”？
Ivan Zhao： 首先，我不建议这么做。
Lenny Rachitsky： 但如果让你重来，你也不会换一条路？
Ivan Zhao： 我自己不会换，但我不推荐别人这么做。问题空间太大了，没有所谓的最佳实践，但我可以分享一些对我们来说行之有效的经验。Notion 从一开始就想做一个元工具（meta tool），一个用来构建软件的工具。我们碰巧找到了文档笔记作为其中一个用例。它给了我们一个非常大的漏斗顶部——全球有超过十亿人每天都在使用这个用例，这为我们的增长提供了动力。我们内部的策略叫 B2C2B。所有这些消费者、个人用户以最简单的方式使用 Notion——在电脑或手机上记笔记、分享文档。然后他们发现，“哦，Notion 还能做更多。“它有关系型数据库的能力，你可以做任务管理，可以追踪其他事情。然后他们就把 Notion 带到了工作中。
我们一半的 B2B 客户来自先前的个人用户，其中大多数人最初就是用 Notion 来记笔记和写文档的。所以要选好切入点。至少我们碰巧找到了一个横向用例，给了我们一个很大的漏斗顶部，帮助我们发展更垂直化的企业用例。这也是我们去年推出日历产品的原因——还有哪个软件品类拥有超过十亿用户？文档笔记、日历、邮件，对吧？这也是我们现在正在做邮件产品的原因。
AI 是横向产品的天然助力
Lenny Rachitsky： 天哪。大家都小心了。然后你提到了 AI，这一点说得特别好——AI 在有数据的时候效果最好，而你们已经把所有这些内容都放在里面了，这给了你们非常多利用 AI 的有趣机会。
Ivan Zhao： 我们完全没有预料到大语言模型的出现。这对所有做工具的人来说都是一份礼物，对吧？它彻底改变了你可以加工的材料。一个发现是——你拥有一个用户每天都在使用的界面，尤其是写作和管理任务项目的时候——把大语言模型的 AI 写作能力嵌入进去非常容易。这是我们构建的第一部分。第二个发现是，AI 非常擅长推理、理解和搜索，如果所有信息都汇聚在一起，我们可以把查找和搜索做得好得多。这是我们意识到的。AI 天然适合捆绑型产品，AI 天然适合横向工具。这就是我们所说的第二阶段。第一个产品是我们的 AI 写作产品，第二个产品是 AI 问答和连接器——请查看 Notion 中的所有信息并给出答案。
我们还需要与外部连接器合作，因为有些信息还留在 Jira 中、留在 Zendesk 中，其他客户仍然依赖它们。所以我们需要构建 AI 连接器。但越来越多的信息正在回流到 Notion 核心中。我想说第三点，这个更令人兴奋——长期以来、直到现在也是，做乐高积木最大的弱点之一就是很难拼装起来。不是每个人都能从零开始拼出一套乐高。乐高世界里永远有搭建者和使用者之分。但你猜谁特别擅长拼装、组装东西？尤其是像 Sonnet 3.5 之后。AI 在写代码方面实在太厉害了。编码本质上就是组装。所以现在我们在想——天哪，过去五六年来我们一直在为知识工作构建所有这些乐高积木，如果我们直接在上面加一层 AI 编程代理，你就可以为任何垂直用例创建定制化的知识软件、定制化的代理。这是最让我兴奋的方向，而我们完全没有预料到这一点。
Lenny Rachitsky： 谢谢 AI。关于构建横向产品和捆绑，你还有什么有趣或重要的想分享的吗？不然的话，我还有最后一个问题想问你。
合久必分，分久必合
Ivan Zhao： 我觉得市场就像波浪。谁说的来着？做生意有两种方式，捆绑和拆分，对吧？总是在之字形地来回摆动。其实我最喜欢的版本是——中国有一部经典文学叫《三国演义》，是一部很棒的小说，讲的是中国三国时期的故事。这部小说开篇第一句话就是：“话说天下大势，分久必合，合久必分。“这其实一直都是捆绑与拆分的循环。这是我小时候最爱读的书之一，但商业也是同样的道理。当某一种趋势走到极致，你就能看到这种变化。
在计算机出现之前，一切工作都在纸上进行。我们的知识工作通过纸张来完成，纸张是一个完全民主化的媒介。然后 80 年代个人电脑出现了。第一波时代实际上涌现了大量应用。有早期的数据库软件 dBASE，非常有名。它从 dBASE 2 开始编号，因为这样显得更有信誉——哦，他们已经存在一段时间了。那是软件计算的第一个拆分阶段。然后微软在 90 年代把所有东西重新捆绑成一个套件。接着 SaaS 又把它拆开了。现在我们处在 SaaS 的尾声阶段。垂直化的 SaaS 多到一家公司平均要用将近一百种工具，简直疯了。所以市场正在重新转向捆绑的方向。加上 AI 和宏观环境的因素，通过捆绑能创造更多价值，至少目前如此。市场也可能再次转向。所以理解这个趋势，我觉得有助于判断你应该做垂直方案还是水平方案，因为它们做的事情不一样。
Lenny Rachitsky： 我喜欢这个故事。好，最后一个问题。你的一位早期投资人 Finn Barnes 建议我问你这个，我很好奇会聊到哪里。你多次提到过——你思考 Notion 的方式，几乎像是一种关于如何工作和生活的哲学，而不仅仅是一个生产力工具。所以我很好奇你怎么看待工具与人的潜能之间的关系，工具与人的关系，以及我们在这个世界上的生活方式。
工具是人的延伸
Ivan Zhao： 工具是我们自身的延伸。这就是为什么我们的办公室叫做 timeless tools。它们延伸了我们一点点。而一旦它们延伸了我们，一旦我们塑造了它们，一旦我们把它们带到这个世界上，它们就会反过来塑造我们。
我最喜欢的一句引用，Marshall McLuhan 说过：“我们塑造了工具，此后工具塑造了我们。“我想这对做产品或做商业来说可能太哲学了，但有一种意识是——你带给这个世界的什么东西会回来影响你、塑造你？你在延伸人性中所谓好的那一面，还是在延伸可能更零和、更负面的那一面？
对我来说，乐高代表什么？乐高是创造力，乐高是美。而软件我觉得两者都缺。它肯定缺乏很多创造力，太僵化了。所以我相信这两者都是值得放大的人性本质。你也可以做另一种商业，放大人性的另一面。Sequoia 有个著名的说法，投资七宗罪或人性的七种本能，因为它们如此强大，只要抓住它们，就能创造商业、创造产品。但至少我更愿意在软件领域放大创造力和美。对我来说，这与我的价值观一致，而且我认为至少可以引导市场、引导我们产品的用户向他们自己更好的那一面发展。
Lenny Rachitsky： 有一个与你想看到的世界的样子如此一致的产品，而且真的在运作、以这种速度增长、不断规模化，成为——怎么说呢，世界氛围的一部分，感觉一定很好吧。
Ivan Zhao： 感觉很好。是的，感觉很棒。最暖心的事情是，走到咖啡馆看到有人在用 Notion，那种感觉永远不会腻。哦，真的很好。还有看到我们社区里的人可以通过售卖 Notion 模板、Notion 应用谋生，而他们不是软件工程师。回到最初的使命——让人们创造软件，我觉得这是一件最有成就感的事情，至少作为一个工具的制作者能够体验到。
Lenny Rachitsky： 最后这一点我觉得人们没有意识到——有人在网上卖 Notion 模板，在 Etsy 和其他平台上，能赚到数百万美元。
Ivan Zhao： 咨询模板，对，而且他们不是程序员。我想说的核心就在这里——因为他们有领域专业知识，他们是 YouTuber 或创作者，有自己的生活方式品牌，懂某些东西，但他们不是软件制作者。然后他们可以用 Notion，把自己的工作流和专业知识打包成 Notion 模板，用它来赚钱。这太棒了。
Lenny Rachitsky： 对，数百万美元，太疯狂了。Ivan，在进入精简版闪电问答之前，我好奇你还有没有其他想聊的，觉得可能对大家有用的，然后我们就进入非常精彩的闪电问答。
从跨界中偷点子
Ivan Zhao： 我觉得科技圈的人，我希望更多人能跳出科技领域去偷好点子。科技圈 Hacker News、Twitter 太关注当下和眼前的东西、六个月前发生了什么，而不是关注更广阔的人类文明。如果你去读其他行业的书，你可以横向去看。如果你回溯历史，有大量的模式、形态和权衡可以借鉴，能让眼前的变得更加有趣。前人在各种领域中想出了巧妙的模式，你可以直接拿来用。我希望更多人这样做。我觉得这对产品创造者、商业创造者来说，是一个非常有意思的解决问题的方式——从科技和商业之外的领域去借鉴。至少对我来说，这非常有启发，也非常有用。
Lenny Rachitsky： 这让我想到那句话，“好的艺术家模仿，伟大的艺术家偷窃。”
Ivan Zhao： 伟大的艺术家偷窃，是的。嗯，Steve Jobs 这句话是从毕加索那里偷来的，而毕加索大概又是从更早的艺术家那里偷来的。
闪电问答
Lenny Rachitsky： 这恰好是进入我们精简版闪电问答的完美过渡。第一个问题是……顺便说一句，欢迎来到闪电问答。
Ivan Zhao： 哦，好。
Lenny Rachitsky： 第一个问题就是，你有哪几本书是你最常向别人推荐的？可以是刚才你说的那个方向的，也可以是其他的。
Ivan Zhao： 我觉得最有趣的领域是复杂系统（complex system）。你可以去搜这个词。我觉得越来越多的人开始谈论这个，但把事物当作系统、复杂系统来思考——当所有不同的东西汇聚在一起时，就会产生涌现属性（emergent properties）。谈论蚂蚁、谈论蜜蜂、谈论生命本身。仅仅用少量基本单元、少量乐高积木，就能创造出叫做生命的东西，这太迷人了。对我来说简直让人上瘾。所以我非常喜欢阅读这个领域的内容。这对创造产品非常有帮助，至少是水平产品，因为你在试图引导更小部分的能量去创造一个远大于各部分之和的整体。
Lenny Rachitsky： 有没有具体哪本书让你想到的，还是说就是那个领域很有意思？
Ivan Zhao： 就是一个值得关注的有意思的领域。
Lenny Rachitsky： 下一个问题。你最近有没有特别喜欢的电影或电视剧？
纪录片推荐
Ivan Zhao： 我喜欢看老纪录片。这可能又是另一个值得关注的领域。YouTube 上有不少。人们在七八十年代制作了非常出色的纪录片，尤其是那些老的 BBC 系列，品质极高，而且带有鲜明的观点立场。它们不再是那种泛泛的教育片，而是有方向、有品味的。可以去搜搜看。有一部非常适合入门的，叫《Connections》，主持人姓 Burke。内容是关于不同领域中的事物如何相互启发，他通常用 30 分钟或 60 分钟把一系列串联起来的故事讲完。非常适合技术人观看，强烈推荐。
Lenny Rachitsky： 我感觉在所有这些回答以及我们整场对话中，有一条非常一致的主线——涌现属性、连接、乐高积木、构建抽象。
Ivan Zhao： 对，我做过九型人格（Enneagram）测试。我的型号是 7 号，7 号——其实跟我们刚才聊的完全吻合。7 号的特点是创造性强、善于发现联系、能见森林也见树木。8 号被称为挑战者（Challenger），更偏向竞争驱动、追求极致优化。所以真正的能量来自两者的结合。
Lenny Rachitsky： 哇，全都对上了。我得去做一下这个九型人格测试。这个测试在我这播客上经常被提起。
Ivan Zhao： 对，是的。
人生信条
Lenny Rachitsky： 最后一个问题。你有没有一条人生座右铭，是你在困难时刻经常会回想、在脑海中反复提醒自己，或者推动你继续做手头事情的那种？
Ivan Zhao： 我喜欢把事情当作一种工匠精神来对待。就是不断把它做得更好。先为自己而做。如果它对你自己来说足够独特，同时对他人也有用，其他的一切自然会随之而来。
尾声
Lenny Rachitsky： Ivan，非常感谢你来参加节目。最后两个问题——大家想跟进什么的话，在网上哪里可以找到你？听众怎样才能帮到你？
Ivan Zhao： 应该可以在 Twitter 上找到我，Ivan Z-H-A-O。最有效的帮助就是给我们反馈，关于 Notion、关于我们的产品。那就是最好的支持。
Lenny Rachitsky： 最好的方式是什么？是私信你吗，Ivan，还是——
Ivan Zhao： 对，直接私信我就行。
Lenny Rachitsky： 好的。
Ivan Zhao： 私信我，那大概是最好的方式。
Lenny Rachitsky： 好。另外你们在招人，有没有特别想找的人？有什么大家应该知道的，比如有人心想”天哪，我想去那儿工作”的话？
Ivan Zhao： 我们在招异类（misfits）。所以如果你觉得自己是个异类，尤其在很多方面都出类拔萃，你想为软件构建乐高积木，你想用乐高积木的思路在 AI 上做有趣的探索，那就私信我。
Lenny Rachitsky： 太棒了。Ivan，非常感谢你来。
Ivan Zhao： 谢谢你的邀请。
Lenny Rachitsky： 大家再见。
Ivan Zhao： 再见。
Lenny Rachitsky： 非常感谢大家的收听。如果你觉得这期节目有价值，可以在 Apple Podcasts、Spotify 或你喜欢的播客应用上订阅。也请考虑给我们评分或写评论，这真的能帮助更多听众发现这个播客。你可以在 lennyspodcast.com 找到所有往期节目或了解更多关于节目的信息。下期再见。
术语表
| 原文 | 中文 |
|---|---|
| Alan Kay | Alan Kay（计算机先驱，Smalltalk 发明者，保留原文） |
| ARR | ARR（Annual Recurring Revenue，年度经常性收入，保留原文） |
| Augmenting Human Intellect | 《Augmenting Human Intellect》（Douglas Engelbart 的经典论文，保留原文） |
| B2C2B | B2C2B（从消费者到企业的增长策略，保留原文） |
| Bill Gates | Bill Gates（微软联合创始人，保留原文） |
| Brian Johnson | Brian Johnson（以长寿和健康优化著称的创业者，保留原文） |
| Burke | Burke（纪录片《Connections》主持人 James Burke 的姓氏，保留原文） |
| chain of thought | 思维链（AI 模型推理方法） |
| complex system | 复杂系统 |
| Connections | 《Connections》（James Burke 主持的 BBC 纪录片系列，保留原文） |
| craft | 工匠精神（在公司哲学语境下） |
| dBASE | dBASE（早期数据库软件，保留原文） |
| DeepSeek | DeepSeek（AI 公司/模型名，保留原文） |
| Douglas Engelbart | Douglas Engelbart（计算机先驱，鼠标发明者，保留原文） |
| emergent properties | 涌现属性 |
| Enneagram | 九型人格（性格分类系统） |
| Etsy | Etsy（在线创意商品交易平台，保留原文） |
| Finn Barnes | Finn Barnes（Notion 早期投资人，保留原文） |
| Hacker News | Hacker News（科技资讯社区，保留原文） |
| HubSpot | HubSpot（CRM/营销平台，保留原文） |
| infinite game | 无限游戏 |
| Information Olympiad | 信息学奥赛 |
| Ivan Zhao | Ivan Zhao（Notion 联合创始人兼 CEO，保留原文） |
| Jira | Jira（项目管理工具，保留原文） |
| Lamy 2000 | Lamy 2000（经典钢笔型号，保留原文） |
| Lego box | 乐高盒（套装/整体解决方案） |
| Lego brick | 乐高积木（基础组件） |
| Lenny Rachitsky | Lenny Rachitsky（播客主持人，保留原文） |
| Macintosh | Macintosh（苹果电脑产品线，保留原文） |
| Magna-Tiles | Magna-Tiles（儿童磁性拼装玩具品牌，保留原文） |
| Marshall McLuhan | Marshall McLuhan（传播学理论家，保留原文；原文转录为”Marshall MacLean”，系转录错误） |
| meta tool | 元工具 |
| misfits | 异类（指不拘常规的优秀人才） |
| Notion | Notion（知名笔记/生产力工具产品名，保留原文） |
| P&L | 损益表（Profit and Loss statement） |
| product-market fit | 产品市场契合 |
| RCS (Rich Communication Services) | RCS（富通信服务，广告段术语，正文未出现） |
| React | React（前端框架名，保留原文） |
| Salesforce | Salesforce（CRM 产品，保留原文） |
| Sequoia | Sequoia（红杉资本，知名风投机构，保留原文） |
| Shana Fisher | Shana Fisher（Notion 投资人，保留原文） |
| sharding | 分片（数据库水平拆分技术） |
| Simon | Simon（Notion 联合创始人，保留原文） |
| Smalltalk | Smalltalk（编程语言/系统名，保留原文） |
| Sonnet 3.5 | Sonnet 3.5（Claude 模型版本，保留原文；原文转录为”Sona 3.5”，系转录错误） |
| Sony transistor radio | Sony 晶体管收音机 |
| SpongeBob SquarePants | 《海绵宝宝》 |
| Sprint | Sprint（敏捷开发中的迭代周期，保留原文） |
| Steve Jobs | Steve Jobs（苹果公司联合创始人，保留原文） |
| sweet spot | 甜点（多维空间中的最优平衡点） |
| talent density | 人才密度 |
| Ted Nelson | Ted Nelson（超文本概念先驱，保留原文） |
| Tobi Lutke | Tobi Lutke（Shopify CEO，保留原文） |
| top of the funnel | 漏斗顶部（营销术语，指潜在用户入口） |
| Web Component | Web Component（Google 推出的 Web 技术，保留原文） |
| Xerox Alto | Xerox Alto（施乐研发的早期个人电脑，保留原文） |
| Xerox PARC | Xerox PARC（施乐帕洛阿尔托研究中心，保留原文） |
| Zendesk | Zendesk（客服平台，保留原文） |
| 《三国演义》 | 《三国演义》（Romance of Three Kingdoms，中国古典文学） |
| 毕加索 | Picasso（西班牙著名艺术家） |
此文档由 AI 分片翻译（translate_long_document）
Notions lost years, near collapse during COVID, staying small to move fast, building horizontal
Sugar-Coated Broccoli: Finding the Right Product Form
Lenny Rachitsky: The way you described the early years of Notion, you described the first three to four years as the lost years.
Ivan Zhao: 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 a couple of years and learned that actually most people just don’t care. Our realization is actually let’s hide our vision, which is everybody can create their software in the form factor that people do care. So what kind of tool do people use every day? Productivity software. It took us two years to realize we need to build a productivity tool. We called it sugar-coated broccoli. People don’t want to eat the broccoli but people like sugar, so it gave them the sugar then hide your broccoli inside of it.
Tools and Human Potential
Lenny Rachitsky: What other elements do you think are key to you finding something that actually ended up working?
Ivan Zhao: What is the building a product or business. You want user. You want revenue. That’s the 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. Then you’re just doing our project. And too much for business, you’re building a commodity.
About the Guest
Lenny Rachitsky: 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.
Ivan Zhao: Tools are extensions of us. And once they extend us, once we shape them, once we bring them to world, they can come back to shape us.
Growing Up and Learning to Code
Lenny Rachitsky: Today, my guest is Ivan Zhao. Ivan is the co-founder and CEO of Notion. Ivan is a really unique and also a deeply philosophical founder who doesn’t do a lot of podcasts, so I’m really excited to share a glimpse into how he built one of the most beloved and most popular products in the world.
We talk about the first three to four years of Notion that he describes as the lost years, how he was able to get into a great school in China by winning a programming contest, the joy and suffering of building a successful horizontal product, plus his approach to staying lean and craft and making trade-offs and also leadership. Also, a wild story about how Notion almost died during COVID because the one database that everything lived in almost ran out of space.
If you enjoy this podcast, don’t forget to subscribe and follow it in your favorite podcasting app or YouTube. Also, if you become a paid annual subscriber of my newsletter, you now get a year free of Notion Pro and Perplexity Pro and Superhuman and Linear and Granola. Check it out at lennysnewsletter.com. With that, I bring you Ivan Zhao.
Ivan, thank you so much for being here, and welcome to the podcast.
Ivan Zhao: Thank you for having me.
Notion’s Lost Years
Lenny Rachitsky: I know you don’t do a lot of podcasts, and so I’m very honored that you’re here. I want to start with the story of Ivan. Your background is quite unique for a founder of a $10 billion plus tech company, and I don’t think a lot of people know it. For example, you grew up in a small town in China. And the way you got out of there, the way you got into tech is pretty interesting. Can you just walk us through that early years of Ivan and how you got out there?
Ivan Zhao: Yeah. I think a small town in China, the definition, it’s actually 4 million people. It is called Urumqi. It’s in the northwest desert part of China. So I grew up there and then I moved into… My mom took me to Beijing, the capital of China. And that’s actually how I got into programming, coding, because I’m from somewhere else and in order to go into good school in the capital, you need to win some kind of competition. And there’s different paths. You can get at math or you can get at programming like Information Olympiad. I was really into computer games at the time so of course I picked the programming one so I can play computers all day long. And I win some competition and got me to a good school. So that’s how I got into programming.
Later then, I moved to Canada. When I moved to Canada, got into college, did not study computer science since I already knew how to code, but a lot of video games. Did a lot of art actually, art and science. By the time I graduated college, I realized most of my friends are artists. They need to make their websites, get web portfolio made. And I’m the only nerd in my art friend circle so I made three or four websites and realized, “Oh, actually people don’t know how to create with the software media, computing media.” So that got me into want to create a product like Notion today which it allow more people to create tools, create software for their daily work and life.
Keeping the Lights On
Lenny Rachitsky: Okay. So going back to get into a great school and to leave the small town, not so small, you had to enter a programming contest. And you placed first or second or how well did you actually do in this one?
Moving to Japan: Starting Over
Ivan Zhao: Second in Beijing.
Advice for Persevering Founders
Lenny Rachitsky: In Beijing, okay.
Better Abstraction Drives Progress
Ivan Zhao: Pretty big. Beijing is a big city.
The Feeling of Product-Market Fit
Lenny Rachitsky: Okay. Incredible. Another stat or a story I heard is that you learned English by watching SpongeBob SquarePants. Is that real?
Ivan Zhao: Yeah, it’s real. I moved to Canada pretty late, 16 years old, and what I learned is in China you can learn English but it’s typically just grammar and doing exams. What you’re missing is the context, the culture. So you have to watch SpongeBob or Simpsons to get a sense of humor essentially. You can understand jokes. Watching cartoons, it’s probably the easiest way to do that.
Notion Today: Lean and Profitable
Lenny Rachitsky: That’s amazing. And there’s another seminal moment in your path. I don’t know if it was this point or later, but the Douglas Engelbart paper ended up being a very meaningful moment for you.
Ivan Zhao: So while I was in Canada in last year of school working on trying to building website from our friends and building a creative tool for them, and then you just look into the history of a creative tool for software, for computing. Eventually arrived at 1960 and ’70s. So you realize the first generation of computing pioneers, which is around San Francisco, Stanford areas, South Bay, they actually had the best ideas. For them, people like Douglas Engelbart, Alan Kay, Ted Nelson, those first generation pioneers, for them computing, there shouldn’t be a separation between builders and users. It’s the same medium. Engelbart’s original paper called Augmenting Human Intellect, when I read that paper, it’s like holy shit. If you are making software, if you know how to code or design, this is the highest leverage thing you can do for other people. So giving them the ability to use computing to augment their problem-solving ability or their intellect, that just got me obsessed with this problem and I want to start a company like Notion.
Advice on Lean Operations
Lenny Rachitsky: It makes me think of Steve Jobs’s famous line of how the computer is a bicycle for the mind.
Ivan Zhao: You know what? Steve Jobs is actually at fault of this in some strange ways. So the story is… Actually, the fact. It’s not a story. Xerox PARC has working on the first-generation personal computers called Xerox Alto. Alan Kay was one of the main persons behind it. Alto runs down the system called Smalltalk, which is there’s no separation between users and users’ app. There’s no thing called application. Everything is malleable. You can change the tools. So when Steve Jobs, the famous story is when he went to Xerox PARC to in demo with Alto, he does not… It’s the first time he see graphic user interface, one of the first time, and it’s also they present them with this Alto system that everything could change. But he did not see the power of it. Even when people would demonstrate 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.” Then people just instantly change the scroll bar direction for him.
That’s the power of the original Smalltalk Alto system. He only saw the graphic user interface. He did not see the underlying object or the environment power. As the generation of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates made PC, personal computing, popular and they stuck with this an application framework rather than the Smalltalk object framework. Then that has all the apps we have today and has the SaaS route we have today.
Office Space Aesthetics
Lenny Rachitsky: That vision of how products should be sounds very familiar and we’ll talk about that later of how you think about Notion, but let’s assume to the beginning of Notion, when we were chatting earlier, the way you described the early years of Notion, you started Notion in 2013 and some over 10 years ago at this point, you described the first three to four years is the lost years of Notion. And I think this is actually a really big deal for founders to hear about because there’s all these companies these days, you hear these stats, they had 100 million ARR in two years, in under two years now. And you don’t hear a lot of stories of companies of your scale and success that took three to four years to find product market fit essentially. What went on during these lost years as you described them and just how did you stick with it? That’s a long time to stick with something that isn’t working.
Ivan Zhao: Because the goal is always building a computing tool. It’s like what product is this? It’s really hard to shape the product. The vision is, the dream is there, but the product is very… There’s so many paths. 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 that more people can do that. We tried that a couple of years and learned that actually most people just don’t care. The majority of people, they wake up, they have report due, they need to get their job done, they don’t care creating software to optimize whatever they’re doing. They don’t care. So we give to our friends, give to investors. It did not resonate with people.
But we really want to build that tool so we just keep going and 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. So that’s why it came to Notion today. If you use Notion, Notion are more understood as the productivity suite, but our intent, and if you use Notion, more you discover intent, which is that it has a no-code developer power into it and you can create almost any kind of productivity software using Notion itself. That took us two plus year to realize. So actually the world is not like you. The world are not developer, designer mind. That the world is they only care what’s in front of them and they’re so noisy.
The Art of Trade-Offs
Lenny Rachitsky: There’s a quote that this makes me think about where you said, “The first version of Notion was more about what I wanted than what people wanted.”
Ivan Zhao: It’s very much so because sense of maturation is you don’t see the world just from your perspective but from outside your perspective. At tech, we were young. Took us multiple years. It hit your head straight into the wall to realize that. People just don’t care.
Growing as a Leader
Lenny Rachitsky: I love the way you phrased that, that you have to hide your vision behind something that people understand and know how to use and…
Returning to Our Roots
Ivan Zhao: We call it sugar-coated broccoli. People don’t want to eat the broccoli but people like sugar, so give them the sugar then hide the broccoli inside of it.
Near Death During COVID
Lenny Rachitsky: Wow. The other thing I’ve heard is that you threw away your code every time, so you rebuilt it many times. You threw away the code each time.
Building Horizontal Products: Joy and Pain
Ivan Zhao: That’s true. Actually, it took us four year to get somewhere. First two year is that you build too much like developer product. Nobody cares. It took us two year to realize we need to build a productivity tool. Then it took another year to realize to build this out, but in the middle of that I realized we built on the wrong technical foundation. So eight, 10 years ago, there’s computing before. Right now, all the web app runs on React. Before React wins, there’s a competing technology called Web Component from Google. And it makes sense. Web Component feels like a Lego-like, the building block-like, and we’re betting on that technology. And then we realize because it’s so new, it’s just so unstable. It don’t know where the bug come from. It’s from your source code or from the underlying libraries? Then we have to restart the company, rebuild the whole thing. Otherwise, we’re going to run out of time. So we set a code base. We set a company so we can build on our own more orthodox technology foundation.
Notion’s Ranking Across Categories
Lenny Rachitsky: How did you actually stay solvent all this time? A lot of people want to keep working at an idea. Oftentimes they need to pay the bills. How practically were you able to keep working for three to four years? I know there’s a story of your mom loaning you some money during that time.
Ivan Zhao: Well, Chinese mom always can help, and I’m a single child. Yeah, actually my mom helped me kickstart the company because I’m Canadian. In order to move to US, you need to register a company. So my mom helped me with the initial and raised the money. I returned the money to her. Then we run out of the money so, “Hey mom, can I borrow that just to bridge us?” Which she did. I’m really grateful for that. How we bridged? How do you last here so long? Because the thing you want to create does not exist, which what is called Notions. It’s a Lego for software. It doesn’t quite exist. There’s a Lego for Lego. You can see that in furniture exist, but Lego for software at the usable mass market adoption level doesn’t quite exist. And you just want that thing to exist. And I grew up with Legos. It’s the only toy I ever wanted, and I want the same feeling of creativity and playfulness to the toy that people can use every day. And my co-founder, Simon, feels the same way. Lego is the only thing he wanted for every Christmas.
Advice for Horizontal Product Founders
Lenny Rachitsky: Have you guys seen Magna-Tiles though? I have a one-and-a-half-year-old and Magna-Tiles are quite delightful. I think it’s like a pre-Lego. The children can play them.
Ivan Zhao: Magna-Tile?
AI Naturally Boosts Horizontal Products
Lenny Rachitsky: Yeah. It’s like they’re little magnetic plastic planes and then you can build much bigger things really quickly. It’s more for babies, but I’m having a blast.
Convergence and Divergence Cycles
Ivan Zhao: Oh, I see it. It’s like… Uh-huh.
Lenny Rachitsky: It’s a different version of Legos. I like that you’re in real-time looking it up. You’re like, “Okay, our new vision Magna-Tiles for software.”
Tools as Extensions of Humans
Ivan Zhao: Now, most people know, “Oh, Magna-Tile.” Idea is the same. Modular, right?
Lenny Rachitsky: 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 escape and disconnect?
Borrowing Ideas Across Industries
Ivan Zhao: Yeah, that was during one of the rebuild phases. During the… We know what the product should look like. It should be a productivity software with a Lego power hiding inside of it. We build on the wrong technical foundation. And if we continue to build on the wrong ones, we’re going to run out of money. Company won’t exist. So we decided to lay off everybody. At that time, the Notion was five people. The layout I brought back to me and Simon, two people. And morale obviously there was really low. You have to say goodbye to your teammates. And so we have the idea, “Let’s just go somewhere that we’ve never been to change the scenery a little bit.” And Japan is always top on our list.
So the funny thing is if we… And we subleased our apartment and office. We’re actually making money living in Japan and then San Francisco. So we did that for a while. We actually travel around the world for a while just to change it up, me and Sam just coding every day and design every day. That’s some of the happiest moments. Birthday every day.
Lightning Q&A Round
Lenny Rachitsky: I saw a stat you’re coding 18 hours a day. Here’s the quote I heard, :We just code, code, code. Then hey, let’s go for food. Then we go eat, go back to work, and do it again.”
Favorite Documentary Recommendations
Ivan Zhao: Because me and him working so well now. Even back then, it’s like you know what each other other people are thinking and you can just cross through the problem space really quickly. The technical product space, design space, and just non-stop of shaping stuff.
Guiding Life Principles
Lenny Rachitsky: So maybe just to close out this thread, for people, for founders that are either struggling and just can’t find a thing that’s working, “I’ve been working on something for a long time,” I’m curious what advice you’d share for sticking with it. And I’ll share things I’ve heard you say so far and I’m curious if there’s something you’d add. One is you just believe this needs to exist in the world and you need to really feel this, “I need this to be a thing.” I think there’s an element of staying lean, like you’ve let everyone go and it’s just you and Simon again. There’s also this element of disconnecting almost and just going to a different location and just like, “Let’s just reset.” What other elements do you think are key to you finding something that actually ended up working?
Ivan Zhao: I’m lucky and Simon lucky that high is never too high, low is never too low for us, so somehow it wasn’t feeling too down. Whenever I feel down, I just go to sleep and next day I’m just reset. So that’s lucky for me. Definitely don’t be afraid to reset. I think courage is quite important because oftentimes you’re working on things don’t matter, but momentum just took you there. Your first point of building something you want the world to have. What is the building a product or business? You want user. You want revenue. That’s a product business. It’s almost like a sports. The market is the arena. Then you’d want to optimize the scorecard where it’s building for winning. And I grew up playing sports. I like to compete so I like that.
And building for something you want the world to have is building for your value. You have some taste. You have some aesthetic. You have some values. You want the world to have more of that. They are different energy. I realize actually fairly recently, they’re really different. Depends on which day I wake up, I might be in different mood for things, but building for value it’s more lasting and more fulfilling. Looking in the thing we’re building today and looking back, I find most proud of thing I create something authentic to myself and happen to be also useful for others, and that just keeps you going. And that feels like a more durable energy source for all those dark years, loss years during Notion, and still every day for me.
The Podcast Outro
Lenny Rachitsky: It’s interesting you say that because also there’s this aspect of it wasn’t working initially because you’re building it for yourself and not for people, but what I’m hearing is 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.
Ivan Zhao: Yeah, really a cue. Almost like a therapist, right? It’s true. You’re building too much for your own self and value without realizing at the end of the day, if you’re building a product and tool has to be used by others, you need to create a balance. Too much of yourself, then there’s no users. Then you’re just doing our project. You’re just doing a research project. And too much for a business, you’re building a commodity. So where’s the spectrum? Yeah, it’s never ending spectrum. It’s interesting.
Lenny Rachitsky: 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 I love that you said just get sleep, very Brian Johnson of you, just like, “Get some sleep when it’s a real down day. There’ll be another day tomorrow.” Really simple but…
Ivan Zhao: It’s like a daily personal physical reset. You can reset your code base. You can reset your mental model.
Lenny Rachitsky: Okay. And then there’s also, I love these points. Don’t be afraid to reset, as you just said. Tobi Lutke was on the podcast. He said the same thing. “Just be comfortable with some cost. I have done all this already and I will throw it away and start again and that’s okay.”
Ivan Zhao: Yeah. I think it’s not just a self-help way to say don’t be afraid to reset. That’s like, that’s okay, that’s fine. I think the more interesting point here, it’s like you can create progress through better abstractions. And that thing compounds faster, can catch up to all the things you build much quicker than you ever thought. Or humans are not thinking, not good at thinking in terms of abstraction or exponentials. We’re thinking in terms of linearly. If you just reset it and you find a better way to do it, you can get all the thing you have to some cost recovered really quickly.
So actually going back to the computing pioneers part, small talk, one of the first system and a huge influence for Notion was really tiny code base and inspired by Lisp, which is another programming languages and probably a hundred lines of code or something. The kernel of things could be really small, but just like math. It can compound. It can have complex behavior that unlocks so much value and things for you. But if you just find those right, you can catch up to all the things you did. You are free to lose really quickly. So I think that’s the kernel of why reset is so powerful.
Lenny Rachitsky: And we’re seeing exactly what you’re describing in LLM advancements these days. All these companies have been working on this for so long and then they’ve cracked an abstraction of how to think about scaling these systems. And now just people launch them and are immediately where the companies that have been working this for decades are today because they are building off these abstractions as you described in these.
Ivan Zhao: Trying to caught up the US really quickly.
Lenny Rachitsky: With DeepSeek, yeah. The point you also made about momentum, be weary of momentum taking you in direction and moving in a different… not being stuck to that direction is exactly the way I think the chain of thought models network actually where generally LLMs are like, next word, next word, next word, next word. And if they ever make a wrong turn, they’re stuck. They keep going from that path. And these chain of thought models are now good at just like, wait, let me 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.
Ivan Zhao: Interesting.
Lenny Rachitsky: Oh, man. Okay, last question about the early years. Everyone’s always wondering what does product market fit feel like? You worked on it for three to four years. What was the moment? What would it look like? What was different when you’re like, “Okay, this is going to work”?
Ivan Zhao: I think going back to me and Simon, high is never that high, low is never that low, it never hit us as a binary state. Just like, “Oh, good. We have people who care about this thing we make now. Oh, good. People reach out to us who are paying us.” And it’s a very gradual ramp. 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. It just they keep going, right? 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. So there’s a such movement that product market, boom, milestone achieved. Didn’t feel that way.
Lenny Rachitsky: I’ve heard that from a lot of founders actually. Was there a moment in that point of just like, “Oh, this is different,” or, “Maybe it’s going to work this time”?
Ivan Zhao: I think for a while, okay, once we start revenue, product grows faster now. Investors start knocking on the door was like, I remember one day it’s like there’s a dog food, dog treats sent to our entire office. So first of all, office wasn’t public, the address. And the dog treats, why do people want this so much? So that was a moment I paused a little bit and I guess there’s enough attraction for investors.
Lenny Rachitsky: And the dog treats were trying to… It was like a gift to be like, “Hey, you should talk to us. We’re sending this fun gift.”
Ivan Zhao: Yeah, because of the way how we just hire someone in the office as a dog. Then I think we post on Twitter or something. And I said, “Why did this show up to our office?” Someone really hustled into where we are in our office address and follow us on Twitter.
Lenny Rachitsky: Did you end up taking their money?
Ivan Zhao: Not the first time, yeah.
Lenny Rachitsky: Okay, later. Okay, it’s long game.
Ivan Zhao: No.
Lenny Rachitsky: Awesome. So I’ve never heard that before. Sign product market fit as VCs are starting to… You start getting a lot more messaging and cold outreach from VCs.
Ivan Zhao: Actually, I had one of our investor, it’s really helpful because all those years you just like there’s no feedback loop. You just go for it. Then the feedback loop gradually show up. Then for a while it’s, oh, VCs start knocking on doors. So I should talk to those people. The people like what we’re doing. I did some meetings, quite a few of meetings. Maybe it doesn’t… I realize and one of the members is saying, “Ivan, what are you doing? You clearly don’t need money. You’re just trying to feel good to do external validation about this.” And I said, “Oh, that’s so true.” It doesn’t help us make a better product and the truth is with what customer tell us. Then 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.” It’s interesting.
Lenny Rachitsky: You mentioned this investor, they said it was really helpful. Is you want to give them some credit or do you want to keep-
Ivan Zhao: Oh, Shana Fisher. She’s in New York.
Lenny Rachitsky: Okay, cool.
Ivan Zhao: Yeah, she’s like another therapist, right?
Lenny Rachitsky:
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I want to shift to talking about Notion today and the way you’ve approached it and a good segue is what you’ve been talking about right now is how lean and efficient you’ve been and how that’s been a big priority for you. So a few stats I’ve seen. One is that you guys are profitable. You’ve been profitable for a couple of years now. I don’t know if you’ve spent even the money you’ve raised. I think most of it is still in the…
Ivan Zhao: Yeah.
Lenny Rachitsky: It’s still in the bank. You’re nodding, if you’re on YouTube. You didn’t have a salesperson until you hit over 10 million ARR. You hired your first PM at 50 people. You’ve always kept the team generally really small. Why is that been important to you? It’s 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?
Ivan Zhao: I think going back to the abstraction system way of problem solving, I think we’re lucky that me and Simon and Akshay, we have the skillset you probably can run a whole company, which is a couple of us, I can design, I can do marketing, storytelling, close sales deals. So you realize you don’t need a lot. But when you can do a lot at the same time or hire people who can do that, naturally keep the company small. And you all know you’re doing product management. The overhead is actually more from internal communication. It’s really hard to get people’s mind to be aligned on things, to see the world in the same way. And the part that you do need people, maybe you can solve better through systems, through better tools.
Notion itself is a meta tool to build other tools. So we pretty much run everything on Notion. We use the same mindset to build our company. And accidentally, that keep our headcount low, keep our company profitable, which then puts you on a positive treadmill of you don’t have to go for the next 18, 24 months to find money. You can just focus on building.
And also because your team’s small, we have this internal Notion called talent density. We don’t try to track number of people but we try to track how talent-dense, revenue per employee we are. And people want to work with either more talented people. So it’s a positive company group.
Lenny Rachitsky: I wonder how much of this is actually from being around for so many years without success of, “We just have to stay very lean and save our cash because otherwise, we’ll die.” Do you think that was a formative experience to inform how you want to operate or is that always something?
Ivan Zhao: No, I wouldn’t say we’re, Notion, is a cost saving-first company. I like fancy chairs. I like furniture. But we’re not wasting money. I think it’s more just from a taste or approach to problem solving. I just believe better system is much better than brute force through people.
Lenny Rachitsky: When people hear this idea of staying lean and staying small, it sounds great or we’re going to be super efficient and lean and smart with our money and down 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? What has allowed you to actually be successful while staying lean and not having as many engineers as competitors, many designers as competitors?
Ivan Zhao: I think just understand abstraction or system is a better curve than pecan curve, right? Linear. We internally help other people and understand this. Internally we use the metaphor that Notion’s a small bus. The bus, the smaller the bus, it’s easier to turn corners, easier to accelerate, easier to maneuver. The bigger the bus it is, bigger the boat or bigger the bus, slow down. And as a leader in the company, you decide who sit around you on the bus seats. That dictates how fast our overall bus moves, dictate your work and life experience at this company because you pick your roommate, you pick your seat mates. That metaphor clicks with people inside a company and overall help us optimize to make the bus link.
Lenny Rachitsky: I’ve never heard of that metaphor before.
Ivan Zhao: It probably came up somewhere but… Or it does not.
Lenny Rachitsky: Small bus. So along these lines actually, so I visited the office recently and I noticed that it’s just a very cozy vibe. And I learned that you had a rule of no shoes in the office for a long time until the last office, that you all ate around one table for a long time, that you try 30 different shades of warm white on the walls before you chose. Why is that important to you? Why is it so important to be so thoughtful about the office experience?
Ivan Zhao: Maybe there are two dimension part of it. One is the pragmatic part. You just want office to be a pleasant experience to be at. Therefore, most office, the top light feels like hospital. You’re just like, “Oh, man.” And the white is so pale and the floor is so dark. Why use some kind of cream, make floors more friendly colors? And don’t use top light. Top light is evil. So just the office feels cozy so people spend more time. You feel more creative, more at ease in the office space.So the vision work we have is should feels like artist studio or should feel like your home. And that’s why most our office furniture are home furnitures. It just feels cozy. That’s more so people spend more time, feels more creative, juices flow better.
The other world just like 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. Does it hurt your back when you sit on bad chairs? But you have more visual improve from, at least for me from the eyes. If the chair looks ugly, the wall looks ugly, it hurts. So it’s better to not have thing that hurts.
Lenny Rachitsky: You also have a really interesting naming convention for your conference rooms.
Ivan Zhao: Yeah, that’s true. Yeah. We name our conference room after timeless tools in history. So there, I’ll give you an example. iPhone’s obvious one, original Macintosh, various different form of chairs, Lamy’s 2000 pens, Toshiba rice cookers, and other ones because they’re inspirations. They’re just like at the end of the day, we’re creating a tool. We’re creating a meta tool. A lot of people to create tools, software tools. And Toshiba rice cooker changed how people eat rice in Asia for a hundred million, tens of a hundred million people. The Sony transistor radio is the first one to shrink something small and useful for people. And those things change people’s life and last for decades. What it’s like to create a software product like that? I want to inspire my team to think that way. Because software, and especially tech, it’s every six months, every 12 months cycle. We don’t think enough about creating something that lasts. I care creating something that at least the form factor lasts longer than 18 month.
Lenny Rachitsky: 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 what do you think of when you hear that?
Ivan Zhao: Yeah, I think the key word here is craft. Internally, our company philosophy called crafts and values. Craft is your skill set, your taste. Value is your personal value and how do you see the world. Craft is interesting word. It’s like about apply your value to some technical know-how and to make more clever trade-offs to create something new and useful and just keep doing that.
My wife often refer me as a wood cabinet builder. That’s how at least my mindset training towards building Notion is like, “Oh, can I make this wood cabinet more beautiful and more useful and feels nicer on your hand?” 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 where on paper and to get there. That to me, that’s craft. And building product, to me at least, to me feels that way. Building business feels that way. Building company feels that way.
Lenny Rachitsky: It’s interesting that so much of this conversation is this and the way you think about building this company is this balance between practical, useful things people need and business and practical stuff, and then the value of building something you’re proud of and craft. And there’s always this trade-off almost of speed and quality, and I know that’s an important element for you. Just thinking about trade-offs between decisions, so talk about just trade-offs, just how you think about making a trade-off.
Ivan Zhao: Yeah, I think this is quite relevant especially for product makers and business makers is there’s no free lunch. You don’t get something for free. You have to give up something. Then what do you give up? It’s essentially you give up the right thing that market or your user wants at that given space and time. It’s just the craft of building a business or building a product. And that the market is so dynamic, especially now with AI. The optimized function for the market changes so then you need to make new trade-off and new technology emerges. I always feels like AI language model feels like a new type of wood. It feels like aluminum. It’s a new type of material. So you can make… Mass air travel wasn’t available until aluminum become cheap enough that people can make airplanes that support this at cost. And it’s like computer wasn’t there until semiconductor becomes… It’s like require new technology to unlock new way to making trade-offs, and then you need to balance the technology trade-off with human behavior trade-off.
As a human, ever since we got out of Africa, we’re set, right? That’s a constraint. It’s invariable. And every generation pick up some new things but after you’re 16 years old you don’t want to learn new things. So those are there are the people trade-off, technology trade-off. There’s some macro. There’s a different dimension of things just cooking together that come together as a product more as a business than what is that? And I think a product maker, business maker’s job is to find that sweet spot of all the multiple dimensions, then create something has a right to exist. At least it’s more durable to exist.
Lenny Rachitsky: And I’m hearing there’s 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 going to get to that is unlocking some cool new ideas. But before I get there, I want to talk about just you as a leader. At this point, you’ve been at this for 12 years, something like that.
Ivan Zhao: Like that, yeah.
Lenny Rachitsky: And if you don’t mind me saying, you’re a soft-spoken leader, which is you’re not like the archetype of what people imagine is like the CEO of a 10 billion… And I’m sure you guys are valued much more now. I don’t even know. That was probably an old valuation. I think it’s great for people to see leaders like you that are not necessarily the classic archetype of CO, and I imagine there are things you’ve had to work on and build and lean into that aren’t natural to you to step into this role of this increasingly growing, high-scale business. What are some of the areas you’ve had to most build and learn to do that didn’t come naturally to you?
Ivan Zhao: I guess you’ve never been in a business meeting or brainstorm session with me. You’re not there.
Lenny Rachitsky: Haven’t seen that side of Ivan Zhao.
Ivan Zhao: Yeah, I wouldn’t say I’m the most soft interaction person at work. It’s actually the reverse is true because I grew up in China. People way more direct. People just say what they want, say what they think. And you move to California, you move to US, you move to the West, you felt wow, everybody says everything’s wonderful, everything’s nice, but that’s not true. I would say Notion’s ethos probably more like a East Coast rather than West Coast, so somewhere in between. It’s more direct.
What do you want to learn? A bunch of things. I think the early days is we talk about that the world’s not like you. The world don’t care about you so you have to shave off the idealistic part of you to go something that’s like the world actually cares, the sugar coat of broccoli. You have to hide the broccoli within something, the sugar pills. So that’s one. That’s more self. That’s more myself.
As company grows, you realize… I’m pretty good at storytelling. So that’s a one-to-one influence. But as a company grows, you realize you need to be one-to-many storytellers. That’s a skill. The one reason I try not to do podcasts and all those things, oh, it’s actually it drains energy in a different ways. I prefer just building product and brainstorm sessions. Then you realize it’s a necessary craft for me to pick up in order to change the shape of the company, the business I’m building. I treat it like a craft. There’s some things skill that’s in the video game. You need to pick up something to unlock something else and to make new demand, you trade off with yourself and the business. That’s fun though. Every 12, 18 month, Notion’s like a new company or at least they require different skill set coming from me. So I need to pick up new things. And it’s an infinite game and infinite games are more fun.
Lenny Rachitsky: I love this idea. I love that you keep coming back to this idea of there’s the ideals and the values and the vision and what you’re trying to do, and then you have to find the way to frame it and package it so that people actually understand and want it. And that’s how you get in.
Ivan Zhao: Yeah. It’s like human minds are resistant to change, and how do you land in people’s head? Through my best word marketing and positioning are for. So you need to find the sweet spot to get in. And you also be truthful. It’s not just deceiving. So deceiving is not truthful. You can fool other people once or twice, then there’s no future. It has to be actually tied back to something genuinely the value creating or the exchange with the other person. So yeah, it’s a craft. Storytelling is the vast dimension of making trade-offs.
Lenny Rachitsky: I love this word, trade-offs. Comes up again and again too. It’s so interesting that there’s these threads that have come up again and again in our chat. Along that journey of becoming this leader that you’ve become, what would you say has maybe the biggest surprise or most unexpected part of the journey of something you’ve had to learn to do or something that didn’t turn out the way you expected? Just as a personal growth story.
Ivan Zhao: If you use the product in the past three years, you realize Notion product, you realize, “Hey, we actually ship bunch of things not so great.” Two years ago. Actually last year, 2024, is the year that I can say we ship good stuff at good velocity and good quality and align with our values. We get lost there for a year, a year and a half shipping something not according to our value, not according to my value. Notion, we call Notion is Lego for software. We ship non-Lego pieces into our product. We’re still there. We’re still cleaning up part of it. That’s a realization. It’s like going back to the value part, it’s like if you create this thing called a product or business, you attract people are value aligned to it. Then if you’re trying to optimize too much on this competition revenue side of things, forced to introducing something anti-your-value, then the system, it’s like there’s organ rejection with your employees, with your customers.
I’ll give you a concrete example. For a while and still is, project management is one of the most important use cases for Notion. And you can get a better project management tool just by hard coding things like sprints, milestones, all those things into your product, or you can do it in the way the Notion are being, through Lego pieces. What are the sprint? Sprints are clusters of a task that group together. So it’s a new Lego. So introducing Lego is much harder, slower. You can instead we hard-code a sprint concept into the product. And this doesn’t quite fit. And took me at least a year, a year and a half to realize that’s not the way we should continue building Notion. We should go back the original Lego way of building the product. So we changed quite a bit internally. Now, it feels good now. Building according to your values is the meta point, at least for me.
Lenny Rachitsky: Okay, I got to follow this thread. What is it that you changed that allowed you to come back to your first principles? Was it like you step… Is it founder mode was the answer? Is it people, personnel shift? What allowed you to change the way things were going?
Ivan Zhao: I would say all of that above, but especially 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 to doing product management and it doesn’t work well with the rest of Notion like I said. And if you talk with engineers, they’ll say, “Okay, there’s this part of Notion you have to touch the code base. That’s just weird. That’s your hardcore 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 there’s another saying that if you build in a Lego way inside Notion in the code base or product, the system work for you. If you’re building non-Lego way, the system work against you. So in some sense, we’re creating a tool that has emergent behavior, inter-channeling that emergent behavior to unlock more values.
Lenny Rachitsky: 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 abstraction vision of what we’re trying to build.
Ivan Zhao: That took nine months, a year to realize sometime.
Lenny Rachitsky: Along those lines actually, people come on this podcast and they share all these stories of things are going awesome all the time. And this was a great example of it didn’t. I’m curious if there’s another story of let’s say a crisis that you all went through when things were looking pretty bleak for Notion along the journey of building Notion.
Ivan Zhao: Yeah, one of the bleakest one, it’s when we… During COVID, we just couldn’t scale up our infrastructure. For the longest time, Simon’s really good at don’t do premature optimization, so for the longest time, we Notion runs on one instance of Postgres database. And then we find the beefiest machine. We keep scrolling, find a beefier future machine to scale our user base, but then we’re running off even the largest instance there is for Postgres. So there’s a doomsday clock that when we’re going to truly run out of this space to store everything in Notion and Notion got a complete shutdown. So we stopped building any new features, all hands on deck, almost every engineer in the company trying to solve that problem. Eventually we did, but it was a close call.
Lenny Rachitsky: How close are we talking about?
Ivan Zhao: If I recall correctly, probably in weeks running out of the time. And then as you approach the limit of what Postgres can do, behavior becomes sporadic. You really don’t know which day going to hit you. But we just need to go as fast as you can to become sharding problem.
Lenny Rachitsky: Yeah, I was going to ask, so the solution is sharding the database?
Ivan Zhao: Yeah, sharding.
Lenny Rachitsky: Okay, cool.
Ivan Zhao: Don’t do as late. Yes. Don’t do premature optimization but plan ahead a little bit. Don’t go late.
Lenny Rachitsky: How long did you have from when you launched this doomsday clock to time running out? Was that a few months?
Ivan Zhao: Maybe a bit longer. Yeah, in the month, less than six but more than three, something like that.
Lenny Rachitsky: The bittersweetness of COVID just ramping up certain businesses.
Ivan Zhao: People just run like they have to use online productivity software, collaboration tools.
Lenny Rachitsky: Yeah, blessing and a curse. Speaking of a blessing and curse, this is a great segue to where I wanted to go in the final area I want to spend time on which is building horizontal software and building software that bundles together a bunch of different stuff. Notoriously hard to build a horizontal platform that does a lot of things when there are often point solutions that are very, very good at that one thing. And it’s interesting. If you look at the timelines of companies that have built horizontal products, they all take a long time to build and finally find product market fits. It’s actually a really common pattern. And when we were talking about what would be fun to talk about, the way you described it is the joy and pain of building horizontal products. So let me just ask broadly just what have you learned about what it takes to successfully build a horizontal platform type of product?
Ivan Zhao: First of all, no regret. And second, I wouldn’t want to build anything else because going back to the value, Lego for software doesn’t exist and Lego is a horizontal thing. So that’s the thing we want to build. We always want to do that. So we did not start to optimize for business but we’re optimized for that vision.
Learning-wise, I think segmentation is quite important because people can use a Lego for different things. Only hardcore Lego fans care about Lego bricks. Most people care about Lego boxes. And they actually want the Lego box to be ready-made. When you unpack the box, the set is there for you, right? That’s what we’re learning a lot, especially move up market. There’s this term that took me a while to learn. It’s called solutions. You need to be a solution for enterprise customer, you need to sit somewhere on a P&L to optimize for their business where due third risk. That’s Lego box. It’s not a Lego brick. Segmentation related to that. So you need to shift your mindset as you more towards B2B, more towards move out market. I wish we have done earlier. For the longest time, I’ve stalled too much in the Lego brick mindset, now in the solution Lego box mindset.
Lenny Rachitsky: That’s such a good metaphor. I feel like even if you’re not building Legos for business, just this idea of what is the box that you are selling to people, how’s it being positioned? How do you picture it? What are the value? Props such a good metaphor.
Ivan Zhao: If you’re building vertical software and naturally your vertical is the box, right? So you know you have 1 or 2% of your selling to. Pretty straightforward that your market constrains you and no judgment. People like you, you can go that way, but then you just hit the wall off the market. The advantage of building horizontal, there’s no wall, at least for in our space. We, Notion, go after entire software market, but then you need to create a wall yourself. So to make your go-to-market distribution, to create the spot in people’s mind, your customer’s mind more clearly for them and for your go-to-market teams. That’s why where solutions is one of my favorite word internally to rally the sales team or the product team. You think that way, but then you need to hold in your head, make sure you’re still building bricks behind the scene. Otherwise, you pigeonhole yourself into the best spot, like what we did with project management sprints features.
Lenny Rachitsky: 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’ve got 6,500 people filling out the survey. And Notion more than any other company placed very highly in many categories. For example, I have the notes here, it was the second most popular project management tool after Jira. It was the fourth most popular docs. Which is interesting because you think Notion would… Notion is known for docs and it’s interesting, that was the lowest one actually. And then it was third in CRM, just behind Salesforce and HubSpot.
Ivan Zhao: Yeah, we did not intend to build CRM, but what is a CRM is relational database. That’s why we give people that brick. That’s a relational database and they can build CRM themselves. I think the good advantage is if a customer use Notion, they can address those three, four use cases in one place. Especially for our startup mid-market companies, their need for each of the vertical use case is not as complex so they can have all the information in one place, good for their teams, good for AI actually. That’s a huge market change that’s like we did not expect until recently. And save their costs, which is more and more people care about the bundling purchase nowadays. And our approach for that is, yes, we’re number two in project management, number what? Number four in CRM, but we’re interested in more bricks to make us number… Move up the categories in ranking. So it just takes time, but that’s our approach.
Lenny Rachitsky: Yeah. Well, it’s working whatever you’re doing there. So say someone is trying to build a horizontal tool like yours. There’s a lot of founders that are trying to build something that can do a lot of things really well. Do you have any advice for that first use case? Just figuring out something that initially works like you’re talking about segmentation, is there something there of like, “Do this if you want to find any success with a horizontal tool”?
Ivan Zhao: First, I wouldn’t recommend it.
Lenny Rachitsky: But you wouldn’t do it differently?
Ivan Zhao: I wouldn’t do it differently myself, but I wouldn’t recommend it. It’s a problem. The problem space too large to have best practice, but I can share something that’s relevant for us. Notion, we always want to build a meta tool, a tool to build the lack of our software. We somehow stand up upon document notes as one use case. And that just gave us a large top of the funnel that there’s a 1 billion plus people use this use case every day. So that fuels our growth. We call our internal strategy called B2C2B. All those consumers, personal user use Notion for the most simple way you can use a computer or your phone, which is note-taking or document-sharing. And then they realize, “Oh, Notion can do more of that.” There’s relational database power, you can do tasks, you can manage track other things. Then they bring Notion to work.
Half our B2B customers coming from prior personal users, and most of them are using Notion for notes and talk in the first place. So pick. Well, at least we stumble upon a use case, a horizontal use case to give us a large top of funnel that help us grow our more verticalized enterprise use cases, and that’s the reason where we ship a calendar product last year because which other category of software has 1 billion plus users? There’s document notes, there’s calendar, there’s email, right? That’s why we’re also working on the email product right now.
Lenny Rachitsky: Yeah, man. Watch out, everyone. And then you mentioned AI and it’s such a good point that AI is best when it has data. And the fact that you have all of this stuff already in there gives you a lot of really interesting opportunities to leverage AI.
Ivan Zhao: We definitely did not expect language model. It’s such a gift for everybody building tools, right? Complete change the material you can work with. One realization, it’s you have a surface area that people spend daily work with, especially during writing and managing your tasks and project. It’s really easy to slice the language model writing AI capability into it. So that’s the first part we built. That realization is AI is so good at reasoning and understanding and searching things, and we can do a much better job of finding and searching things if all the information are together. That’s what we realized. AI is really good with bundled offerings. AI is really good with horizontal tools. So that’s the second phase, we call it. The first product was our AI writer product. Second product is AI Q&A or connectors. Please look at all the information in Notion and give your answer.
And then we also need to work with the external connector because there’s things that are living in Jira, living in Zendesk that other customers still rely on. So we need to build AI connectors. But more and more information coming back to the Notion core. I would say the third one, which is even more fascinating, it’s for the longest time and it’s still is one of the biggest weaknesses of building for Legos, it’s hard to piece together. It’s not everybody can put together a Lego set from scratch. There’s always the builders and user with the Legos. But guess who is really good at piecing things together, assemble things? Especially things like since Sona 3.5. AI is so bad at writing code. Coding is just assembling things together. So now we’re looking at holy shit, we spent the last five, six year building all those Lego blocks for knowledge work. If we’re just putting AI coding agent on top of it, you can create any kind of knowledge, customer software, customer agent for whatever your vertical use cases you need. So that’s the most fascinating approach for me, and we did not expect this at all.
Lenny Rachitsky: Thank you, AI. Is there anything else along the lines of building horizontal products and bundling that you think is interesting to share or important? Otherwise, I have one last question I want to ask you.
Ivan Zhao: I think market is like waves. There’s… Who said this? There’s two-way to build business, bundling and bundling, right? There’s too much of a zig and the zag. Actually, my favorite version of this is there’s a classic Chinese literature called Romance of Three Kingdoms. It’s great novel. It talked about the three kingdom era of China and the opening sentence of this novel, it’s, “Empires long united must divide, long divided must unite.” That has always been bundling, unbundling. It’s one of my favorite book to read when I was a kid, but business works same way. When there’s too much, you can see this.
It’s like before computers, everything works on paper. Our knowledge work are done through papers is fully democratized medium. Then PC happens during the ’80s. The first era is a piece there actually are so many applications. There’s early database software, dBASE, it’s quite famous. It started dBASE 2 because it gives them credibility. Oh, they have been stick around for some time. So that’s the first unbundling phase of software computing. Then Microsoft bundled everything back into one suite in the ’90s. Then the SaaS unbundled it. Now, we’re at the tail end of SaaS. There’s so many verticalized SaaS average company to use almost a hundred tools. It’s madness. So there’s more the market shifting towards more a bundling approach. And with AI and with the macro, so there’s more value to be created through bundling, at least for now. The market could shift again. So understand this trend, I think, helpful to see should you build a vertical solution or should you build horizontal solution because it does different things.
Lenny Rachitsky: I love that story. Okay, so last question. Something that one of your early investors, Finn Barnes, suggested to ask you. I’m curious where this goes. There’s this, and you’ve touched on this a number of times, just the way you think about Notion, it’s almost like a philosophy of how to work and be versus just a productivity tool. And so I’m just curious how you think about the relationship between tools and human potential and humans and how we live in the world.
Ivan Zhao: The tools are extensions of us. That’s why our office room named as timeless tools. They extend us a little bit. And once they extend us, once we shape them, once we bring them to world, they can come back to shape us.
One of my favorite quotes like the Marshall MacLean quotes, “We shape our tools. Then after, our tools shape us.” I think that’s probably too philosophical for building product or business, but there is a sense thinking what are you bringing to the world that will come back to bite you or shape you? And are you extending the part, the so-called good part of human nature, or are you extending the part that might be more zero-sum, might be more negative, right?
For me, what is Legos? Lego is creativity. Lego is beauty. Software to me feels like lacking both. It’s definitely lacking a lot of creativity. It’s so rigid. So I believe both are human nature that worth amplifying. You can build another business that amplifies a different part of human nature. There was Sequoia famously invests in seven sins or seven human natures of human because they’re so powerful if you just latch onto them, you can create a business, you can create a product. But at least I prefer to amplify creativity and beauty in the domain of software. To me, that’s aligned with my values and I think can at least shape the market, shape our user of our product towards the better part of themself.
Lenny Rachitsky: It must feel so good to have a product that is so aligned with the way you want to see the world and actually working and growing at this rate and scaling and becoming this, I don’t know, part of the ether of the world.
Ivan Zhao: It feels good. Yeah, it feels good that some of the most heartwarming thing is still it never gets old when you walk by coffee shop and see people using Notion. Oh, it feels good. And it feels good that we see people in our community can create a living selling Notion template, Notion apps, that they’re not a software engineer. And going back to the original mission of when people create software, I think that’s one of the most fulfilling thing, at least as a maker of tools can experience.
Lenny Rachitsky: That last point, I think people don’t realize, so people are making millions of dollars selling Notion templates on the internet like at Etsy and other places.
Ivan Zhao: Consulting templates, yeah, and they’re not programmers. I think I would say that’s the heart of that because their domain expertise, they’re YouTubers or creators. They have lifestyle brand. They know certain things but they’re not makers of software. Then they can use Notion, package their workflows and expertise into Notion and templates and make limit with it. It’s awesome, all that.
Lenny Rachitsky: Yeah, millions of dollars is it’s crazy. Ivan, before we get to 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 a very exciting lightning round.
Ivan Zhao: I think people in tech, I wish more people look beyond tech to steal good ideas. It’s like Tech Hacker News Twitter are so focused on the now and what’s in front of it, what happened six months ago, versus humanity. If you just read books in other industry, you can look sideways. If you go back to history, there’s a massive amount of patterns and shapes and trade-offs you can steal from and you can make what’s in front of you much more interesting. You could give you… People figure out clever patterns in whatever domain in the past. You can just take in front of you. And I wish more people do that. I think it would be a very interesting way for product makers, business maker to solve the problem in front of them by stealing outside of from the domain of tech and business. So at least it’s very inspiring, very useful for me personally.
Lenny Rachitsky: It makes me think of the quote, “Good artist copy. Great artists steal.”
Ivan Zhao: Great artists steal, yeah. Well, Steve Jobs stole that from Picasso or something who stole from former artist probably.
Lenny Rachitsky: Well, this is actually an amazing segue to our very abridged lightning round. And the first question is… And by the way, welcome to the lightning round.
Ivan Zhao: Oh, okay.
Lenny Rachitsky: 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 could just be generally.
Ivan Zhao: I think the domain that are interesting the most is the complex system domain. You can look up the term. I think more and more people talk about this, but thinking a system, complex system when all the different things merge together, it creates emergent properties. Talking about ants, talk about beads, talk about life itself. It’s just so fascinating how do with few primitives, few Lego bricks, you can create a thing called life. That thing just, it’s sugar for me. So I love reading in that domain. And this is really helpful for create product, at least a horizontal product because you’re trying to channel the energy, smaller parts to create something that the sum is much larger than its parts.
Lenny Rachitsky: Is there a specific book that comes to mind or is it just generally that’s a cool area?
Ivan Zhao: That’s a cool area to your attention to.
Lenny Rachitsky: Next question. Do you have a favorite recent movie or TV show you’ve really enjoyed?
Ivan Zhao: I like to watch old documentaries. Maybe this is another area or category too. There’s quite a few on YouTube. People make really good documentary in the ’80s, in the ’70s. That’s like all the old BBC ones, they’re just excellent and they have a strong opinion in them. It’s no longer just general education thing. They have a direction. They have a taste. Go look it up. Oh, yeah. One is a really good one to get started called Connections. I think it’s called but the gentleman’s name is Burke. It’s about how different things from different domains inspire other domains, and usually he used 30 minutes or 60 minutes to chain together a bunch of connection of stories. It’s really good for technologists to watch. Highly recommend.
Lenny Rachitsky: I feel a very consistent pattern throughout all of these answers and your entire conversation of just emerging properties, connections, Legos, building abstractions.
Ivan Zhao: Yeah, I think I did Enneagram. My Enneagram, it’s 7 and 7. 7 is, it is actually perfect with what we just talking about. 7 is creative, finding connection, see the forest and tree. 8 is they call Challenger. It’s like competitive AR optimizing. So true energy accessing me.
Lenny Rachitsky: Oh, wow. It’s all makes sense. I got to take this Enneagram. This comes up a bunch on this podcast.
Ivan Zhao: Right, yeah.
Lenny Rachitsky: Final question. Do you have a life motto that you often think back to, that you often repeat in your head of just like when times are hard or just to keep going with something you’re working on that you find useful?
Ivan Zhao: I like to think things as a craft. You just make it better. Make for yourself. If it’s unique enough for yourself and useful for others, things will follow.
Lenny Rachitsky: Ivan, thank you so much for being here. Two final questions, working folks find you online if they want to follow-up on anything, and then how can listeners be useful to you?
Ivan Zhao: Probably find on me on Twitter, Ivan Z-H-A-O. It’s helpful give us feedback about Notion, about our product. That’s the best help.
Lenny Rachitsky: What’s the best way to do that? Is it like DM, Ivan, or is it-
Ivan Zhao: Yeah, just DM me.
Lenny Rachitsky: Okay.
Ivan Zhao: DM me. Yeah, that’s probably the best way.
Lenny Rachitsky: Okay. Oh boy, here you go. And then you guys are hiring. Anything specific you’re looking for? Anything people should know if they’re like, “Oh shit, I want to go work here”?
Ivan Zhao: We’re trying to hire misfits. So if you think you’re a misfit, if you’re exceptional at many things especially, you want to build Lego for software, you want to take interesting spin on AI with Lego for software, then DM me.
Lenny Rachitsky: Amazing. Ivan, thank you so much for being here.
Ivan Zhao: Thank you for having me.
Lenny Rachitsky: Bye, everyone.
Ivan Zhao: Bye.
Lenny Rachitsky: 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 at lennyspodcast.com. See you in the next episode.
Glossary
| English | 中文 |
|---|---|
| Alan Kay | Alan Kay（计算机先驱，Smalltalk 发明者，保留原文） |
| ARR | ARR（Annual Recurring Revenue，年度经常性收入，保留原文） |
| Augmenting Human Intellect | 《Augmenting Human Intellect》（Douglas Engelbart 的经典论文，保留原文） |
| B2C2B | B2C2B（从消费者到企业的增长策略，保留原文） |
| Bill Gates | Bill Gates（微软联合创始人，保留原文） |
| Brian Johnson | Brian Johnson（以长寿和健康优化著称的创业者，保留原文） |
| Burke | Burke（纪录片《Connections》主持人 James Burke 的姓氏，保留原文） |
| chain of thought | 思维链（AI 模型推理方法） |
| complex system | 复杂系统 |
| Connections | 《Connections》（James Burke 主持的 BBC 纪录片系列，保留原文） |
| craft | 工匠精神（在公司哲学语境下） |
| dBASE | dBASE（早期数据库软件，保留原文） |
| DeepSeek | DeepSeek（AI 公司/模型名，保留原文） |
| Douglas Engelbart | Douglas Engelbart（计算机先驱，鼠标发明者，保留原文） |
| emergent properties | 涌现属性 |
| Enneagram | 九型人格（性格分类系统） |
| Etsy | Etsy（在线创意商品交易平台，保留原文） |
| Finn Barnes | Finn Barnes（Notion 早期投资人，保留原文） |
| Hacker News | Hacker News（科技资讯社区，保留原文） |
| HubSpot | HubSpot（CRM/营销平台，保留原文） |
| infinite game | 无限游戏 |
| Information Olympiad | 信息学奥赛 |
| Ivan Zhao | Ivan Zhao（Notion 联合创始人兼 CEO，保留原文） |
| Jira | Jira（项目管理工具，保留原文） |
| Lamy 2000 | Lamy 2000（经典钢笔型号，保留原文） |
| Lego box | 乐高盒（套装/整体解决方案） |
| Lego brick | 乐高积木（基础组件） |
| Lenny Rachitsky | Lenny Rachitsky（播客主持人，保留原文） |
| Macintosh | Macintosh（苹果电脑产品线，保留原文） |
| Magna-Tiles | Magna-Tiles（儿童磁性拼装玩具品牌，保留原文） |
| Marshall McLuhan | Marshall McLuhan（传播学理论家，保留原文；原文转录为”Marshall MacLean”，系转录错误） |
| meta tool | 元工具 |
| misfits | 异类（指不拘常规的优秀人才） |
| Notion | Notion（知名笔记/生产力工具产品名，保留原文） |
| P&L | 损益表（Profit and Loss statement） |
| product-market fit | 产品市场契合 |
| RCS (Rich Communication Services) | RCS（富通信服务，广告段术语，正文未出现） |
| React | React（前端框架名，保留原文） |
| Salesforce | Salesforce（CRM 产品，保留原文） |
| Sequoia | Sequoia（红杉资本，知名风投机构，保留原文） |
| Shana Fisher | Shana Fisher（Notion 投资人，保留原文） |
| sharding | 分片（数据库水平拆分技术） |
| Simon | Simon（Notion 联合创始人，保留原文） |
| Smalltalk | Smalltalk（编程语言/系统名，保留原文） |
| Sonnet 3.5 | Sonnet 3.5（Claude 模型版本，保留原文；原文转录为”Sona 3.5”，系转录错误） |
| Sony transistor radio | Sony 晶体管收音机 |
| SpongeBob SquarePants | 《海绵宝宝》 |
| Sprint | Sprint（敏捷开发中的迭代周期，保留原文） |
| Steve Jobs | Steve Jobs（苹果公司联合创始人，保留原文） |
| sweet spot | 甜点（多维空间中的最优平衡点） |
| talent density | 人才密度 |
| Ted Nelson | Ted Nelson（超文本概念先驱，保留原文） |
| Tobi Lutke | Tobi Lutke（Shopify CEO，保留原文） |
| top of the funnel | 漏斗顶部（营销术语，指潜在用户入口） |
| Web Component | Web Component（Google 推出的 Web 技术，保留原文） |
| Xerox Alto | Xerox Alto（施乐研发的早期个人电脑，保留原文） |
| Xerox PARC | Xerox PARC（施乐帕洛阿尔托研究中心，保留原文） |
| Zendesk | Zendesk（客服平台，保留原文） |
| 《三国演义》 | 《三国演义》（Romance of Three Kingdoms，中国古典文学） |
| 毕加索 | Picasso（西班牙著名艺术家） |
Reformatted by reformat_english.py