They knew they needed to move Notion onto multiple databases, but they hadnt prioritized it. It seemed wrong that only a few people with the ability to code could build websites and other software tools. Front-end stuff you can be taught, its not that hard, right? Notion leaders focus on explaining how, for the everyday office worker, it can be used out of the box. People and teams can customize it to greater and greater degrees, but average users can install it and start working immediately, using templates in the Notion catalog. Youre really left with a completely blank, fresh space designed to feel like a breath of fresh air and spacious opportunity to think deeply. Originally from Beijing, China, Chloe Zhao was born on 31 March 1982 . He refers to Kothari as a human stem cell, a person who can spot any need in the company, design a plan to do the work, master the work and then eventually hire the right person to lead the new team doing that work. What do you think is going to happen with digital products? As he readied Notion for a 2.0 version, Zhao would also reply to users directly on Twitter, building community there by showing that real people were behind the product. Their plan involved asking the famed entrepreneur and investor Naval Ravikant, who had invested in Notion early, to wake up at midnight, when the new days list opened, and to tweet to his followers to vote for Notion on Product Hunt. In the future, Notion will be tackling this even more directly giving people even more capability to shape the tools they use for an increasingly wider variety of applications. Ivan Zhao Hey there, I'm Ivan! His parents sacrificed to send him to school in America, so Kothari says he did nothing but study when he got to Purdue University in Indiana. The latter earned her several awards, including the Golden Globe for best director. Sequoia Capital partner Dannie Herzberg is proud to be among Notions power users, running her work life on it. For two years, Kothari did all kinds of jobs, built out playbooks and hired leaders to run the new teams, before moving on to the next business need. 3,234 Followers, 1,367 Following, 180 Posts - See Instagram photos and videos from Ivan Zhao (@ivanhzhao) Then, on New Years Day in 2021, as Notion workers were relaxing at home, Kothari and Zhao started getting alerts saying Notion had crashed. So you dont have to go out there to hunt for whats new. History. And I was like, This sounds amazing, Kothari remembers with a laugh. Mr. Zhao started Notion after graduating from the University of British Columbia and working at Inkling, a document-sharing start-up in San Francisco. Be the first to contribute! As a backup, hed applied to Stanford University, knowing that if he got in, he could remain in the country as a student. Inside Design: I know you take pride in keeping small and nimble. And then the web-first application came. He had a hunch that investing in individual users would ultimately get Notion into big companies. He also developed an appreciation for aesthetics as a student of traditional Chinese watercolor. Before the most recent funding, Notion, which was founded in 2013, had raised $17 million. The gambit worked. Come on! The 32-year-old founder of Notion says, all while regularly dropping mentions of computing legends Alan Kay and Douglas Engelbart as his inspiration. The key to healthy culture and productivity is over-communication and true understanding of what everyone is working on and why its important. Zhao: Weve heard from a number of people that Notions very minimalist, lightweight feel encourages people to write more even if its just jotting down ideas. We can reproduce that. Enjoy the read! You have all these other planes of vision. I dont know. You can view this kind of database as a Kanban board if that helps you visualize tasks better. It was kind of like despair, I would say. Add a bio, trivia, and more. 111 Tw Alexander Dr. Research Triangle Park, NC 27709. A portrait of Engelbart hangs prominently in a first-floor hallway. And its flexibility can be used by project managers, productivity superfans, recruiters, executives, product teamspretty much anyone who needs to use computers to get things done (but cant code). Wired wrote about it, and the Apple App Store featured it. Changpeng Zhao (Chinese: ; pinyin: Zho Chngpng), commonly known as CZ, is a Chinese-born Canadian businessman, investor, and software engineer.Zhao is the co-founder and CEO of Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume as of July 2022.. Zhao refers to overhead fluorescent lighting as hell. He chose all the furniture and finishes, putting as much thought into the offices as he has into the product. Find Ivan's email address, mobile number, work history, and more. These men saw computers as a way to help humans be more imaginative, more creative, more capable of leveraging intelligence in ways not yet imagined. Then Bill Gates won, so Microsoft Windows runs everywhere. Those early ideas are really pure. On Wednesday, Notion said it raised $50 million from Index Ventures and other investors that valued it at $2 billion. The first version of Notion was a tool that non-coders could use to make their own apps. Megan Finnerty is a journalist and storytelling coach. It almost ran out of money.. This is not surprising if you consider how these tools evolved. I almost never had that feeling before, Zhao remembers. ! he says with a laugh. Published October 13, 2022. Just dream of a piece of software, and you should just be able to build that using Notion., I thought it was the single best pitch Id ever seen in my time here, a work of art. Its a story about how for years before Notion, so many pieces of software were just digitized versions of analog office toolstypewriters, file cabinets, desktop ledgers replaced by online document editors, databases and spreadsheets. Today, Zhao estimates Notion can consistently replace about a dozen pieces of software like project-management or list-making tools. Zhao: Teams are increasingly tech-savvy, with things like shortcuts and working collaboratively becoming second nature. Participate Ivan Zhao is also currently the CEO of the company. Microsoft Office did that in the 90s. Follow their code on GitHub. Specifically, ChatGPT and Microsoft's new version of Bing have gotten a lot of attention. His impression of founders flocking to Notion is more than anecdotal. Topics of Influence N/A. Their bright, loft-style offices have sisal mat floor coverings, Michel Ducaroys famously curving Togo couches and Alvar Aaltos iconic, simple wooden Artek stools. When the world changed, they changed their mind, she said. By Alexa von Tobel, Founder and managing partner, Inspired Capital @. The best way to do this is to create a database of all tasks across your entire team and organization. designer cofounder technology Notion addresses both by making communication in the product more about utility allowing people to collaborate on the same pages at the same time, and to have very targeted asynchronous conversations about specific work (using comments and discussions). Also, as you use the product, youll notice that a lot of features only appear on hover, or that you only receive notifications when someone mentions you or something specific requires your attention. We recently interviewed him to learn the origin story of Notion, and to get his take on the evolving nature of work today and how his modular masterpiece enables it. We started with Notion 1.0, which was all about docs and notes, and then introduced 2.0 with databases in the spring of 2018. The company has stayed small, with 42 employees. Notion is staking a claim in a market dominated by giantsMicrosoft and Google, with more than 2 billion users between them. Theres no legacy code. Zhao: The all-in-one nature of Notion is very special. Just click the "Edit page" button at the bottom of the page or learn more in the Biography submission guide. Not necessarily capital. Its really hard to find good people that can do all those, right? Ivan Zhao is the co-founder of Notion. Their angel investment money dwindling, they faced a brutal choice: Fire their fledgling team of 4 and start over, or run out of cash. Get the Notion Mastery Course*: https://bit.ly/3rNMSRD Discover Notion here: https://bit.ly/3Ammn9B Get Notion templates from Easlo: https://gum. This matters because the software-replacement opportunity is massive: companies with more than 2,000 employees use an average of 175 pieces of software, and smaller companies use an average of 73, according to Oktas 2021 Business at Work study. Lets just reset this. Now just the two of them, Zhao and Last wanted to go somewhere cheaper than San Francisco, and somewhere theyd never visited. About Ivan Zhao: Ivan is a senior at Brown University studying Applied Math and Computer Science. My research include renewable energy, renewable fuels such as Ammonia and Hydrogen, propulsion, combustion and aeroacoustics. But Shana Fisher, an investor at Third Kind Venture Capital who had earlier backed the start-up, cautioned Mr. Zhao about raising too much capital because it could be distracting. Ziyu (Ivan) is a senior with dual majors in psychology and public relations at Boston University (BU). He saw the idea of people being able to make their own software as integral to their ability to be creative, to shape their own environments, to create culture and value. It became how people think, how people communicated. We try to give people a blank canvas that lets them arrange their thoughts in ways that are most helpful to them. Its almost like you have a brand-new houseyou can decorate however you want, versus the old house, you have to clean, repaint the walls and all that.. After more than a year of pandemic lockdowns, high school and college students started streamlining the overlap of remote school and remote friendship by using Notion to organize their livesand they were talking about it on TikTok. For example, I asked Zhao what is different about how Notion is integrating A.I., compared with Bing or ChatGPT. . Simon is a designer and engineer residing in SanFrancisco. But if you step back and look at history you have the entire world history to look at. 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