Megan Finnerty is a journalist and storytelling coach. Ivan Zhao is on Facebook. Metallum Recycling. While many start-ups grapple with the fallout from the pandemic, this San Francisco company raised more cash to survive. Even though he had started Notion to help humans use computers for more than word processing, he realized this new version would have to be just that, only built with some flexible tool-making capabilities layered incloser to, he imagined, the kind of software his idols had once envisioned. This reality is not only expensive for businesses, but it has all of their employees jumping and context switching between many apps and tabs all day long just to complete single projects. Wired wrote about it, and the Apple App Store featured it. Mr. Kothari said Notion could have easily raised more than $50 million, but that amount gives the company at least 10 years of financing to operate. . This is not surprising if you consider how these tools evolved. 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. Only those who can code, and sometimes not even them. And multiple other people told me that was one of the best pitches that they had seen at Sequoia.That story he told to Sequoia is the one Zhao started piecing together in college, when he read Engelbarts paper about how humans could someday use computers to become more powerful problem solvers. The ambition of Zhao and his team at Notion can't be contained in any single decade. He also developed an appreciation for aesthetics as a student of traditional Chinese watercolor. It can be a product that is as powerful as those five different SaaS tools. Its like, everybody can be a designer. Weve been able to eliminate a lot of meetings at Notion, for instance, because these discussions take place in a clear way inside the product right next to the work in question. And you can filter it to see just your tasks or a colleagues tasks. Three years into building their startup, they scrapped the code powering their app. What do you think is going to happen with digital products? Inside Design: As the founder, how close does this version of Notion match the one in your mind? Self-driven, highly motivated engineering student seeking to impact society starting from its structural foundations.<br><br>"Take the best that exists and make it better" - Henry Royce<br><br> | Learn more about Ivan Zhao's work experience, education, connections & more by visiting their profile on LinkedIn Eventually, this hunch would prove right. 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. One of the biggest holes we fill is the information gap that emerges on teams that work across too many tools without visibility. Theres no final pixel-perfect design. 3,234 Followers, 1,367 Following, 180 Posts - See Instagram photos and videos from Ivan Zhao (@ivanhzhao) I van Petrovich Pavlov was born on September 14, 1849 at Ryazan, where his father, Peter Dmitrievich Pavlov, was a village priest. For example, they want to make Notion capable of publishing into varied content management systems with one click of a button. He imagined these people would like Notion so much, theyd keep using it at work. Ivan Pavlov, in full Ivan Petrovich Pavlov, (born September 14 [September 26, New Style], 1849, Ryazan, Russiadied February 27, 1936, Leningrad [now St. Petersburg]), Russian physiologist known chiefly for his development of the concept of the conditioned reflex. As an electrical engineer, I was like, Oh my God! Ivan Zhao Founder at Notion Labs. The start-up is now in a tricky stage of building on its growth with more established customers. At its most basic, Notion enables people to use just one interface to make, edit and customize documents; to manage projects; to create information-sharing wikis; and to design all kinds of charts and tables. Ram Shriram, a venture capitalist who invested in Notion in 2013, said that at many businesses, a lot of the products we use were designed in the 1990s. There is room for new workplace tools that take advantage of the internet and other advances so people can collaborate and have the most up-to-date data while they work, he said. Do you view the same happening to a designers career? Zhao was born in Beijing as Zhao Ting. He came to the Slack office, which was brand new and very nicely designed in this midcentury-modern way. The company declined to disclose its revenue, but said it had made money since 2018. Ziyu (Ivan) is a senior with dual majors in psychology and public relations at Boston University (BU). More about Ivan Zhao Selected links Ivan Zhao - Founder - Notion | LinkedIn Do you need to know more about Ivan Zhao? Notion is also profitable. Also, the software that so many of us used every day couldnt be modified at all. The more you can encourage people to share, and the more you can coax ideas and information out of their heads, the better off your team will be long-term. Then, on New Years Day in 2021, as Notion workers were relaxing at home, Kothari and Zhao started getting alerts saying Notion had crashed. At one point, Notion ran dangerously low on cash and laid off four employees. April 1, 2020. www.nytimes.com. Ivan Zhao NZ Country HR Leader @ Honeywell, Professional Coach, helping people and organisations grow through driving continuous learning. Engelbart conceived of computers as a way to increase humanitys capacity to solve complex problems, not to just run computations, which was the bulk of computer work at the time. Last had joined Notion while in college, so as the older founder, Zhao was left to decide how to save the business: And that feels likefuck it. He has over 320 original manuscripts published in . Be the first to contribute! And then he decided to drop out of school and just work on this full time with me, remembers Zhao. Related Investments Aliases N/A. Kothari and Zhao talk about this moment as still the early innings of Notion, and see Notion 1.0 as about lists, Notion 2.0 as about databases and the upcoming Notion 3.0 as about whole workflows. And since everyone thinks and works differently, this means tools need to be very flexible. When he was in high school, his mom wanted more for his education, so she moved them to Vancouver. In this conversation, Jason talks with Notion's CEO, Ivan Zhao, about what the new AI features mean, and how they might just fu Show Undigital Podcast, Ep An Interview with Notion's CEO Ivan Zhao - Feb 22, 2023 Steve Jobs, Bill Gates they copied Xerox PARC. 2. Jani Zhao was born on the 19th of October, 1992. Then the internet came along towards the mid-to-late nineties and that sort of breaks apart the monopoly of Microsoft. What are you betting on? This topic is getting popular again. His dads a school principal, Zhao says with a laugh. When people have all their essential work tools in one place and are able to work there seamlessly together with their team, they get more done, they save a huge amount of time, their thinking is more clear and consistent, and project work flows more smoothly. They looked for ways to cultivate the community at every step along the way., Then, I realized, it doesnt make sense. Just dream of a piece of software, and you should just be able to build that using Notion.. So for a company like Notion, we dont need to do anything just to pick up those ideas and execute. Over the years, Kothari rose through the ranks at LinkedIn, becoming vice president of product and moving to Indias tech center, Bengaluru, to help run LinkedIn India as it expanded. President of Beijing Society of Immunology. 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. Were continuing to grow our functionality, and are excited about whats ahead in 2019. Meet the whiteboard transforming the way teams work together. Stop looking at Dribbble. In his research, he discovered the conditioned reflex, which shaped the field of behaviorism in psychology. Frey: Whats the origin story of Notion? And that becomes slightly more objective, less fashion-y, less Dribbble-y. See also Other Works | Publicity Listings | Official Sites View agent, publicist, legal and company contact details on IMDbPro Those people have taste; they just dont have good tools., Around this time, Zhao read a 1962 paper by Engelbart called Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework that crystallized his thinking. I dont know. With more people working remotely now and turning to such products, new customer sign-ups hit a new high for Notion in recent weeks. Zhao was trying to make good on ideas that he describes as romantic, ones developed by his idols: tech pioneers Alan Kay, Ted Nelson and Douglas Engelbart. Theres a short history of this (and how it influenced Notion) here. So you dont have to go out there to hunt for whats new. Were all using tools that proscribe very specific workflows that rarely match the way we wish we could think, learn and work. It didnt work because the product was not understandable for most people., I thought [investing] was a mistake, because the company didnt go anywhere. Theyd just laid off their only colleagues. He initially raised $2 million, which he. After graduating in 2007 with a degree in electrical engineering, he worked for an alum at a Los Altos, California, investment firm. In this way, you get to see how what youre working on fits into the greater whole. 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. In March 2018, Notion 2.0 was released. Notion had previously been valued at $800 million. Inside Design: I know you take pride in keeping small and nimble. And we want to do this in a way that will help people think more clearly and collaborate with each other better. Create press releases and blog posts and keep . But somewhere during her high school days, she became increasingly interested in a career in films and TV. You can view this kind of database as a Kanban board if that helps you visualize tasks better. And now the pendulum is swinging back towards something more bundled up again. (Kothari still has the email.). Zhaos vision of creating a community of people empowered to make computers help them be more creative and productive has remained constant. The computing pioneers thought everybody would make their own tools, make their own software, Zhao says, returning to a favorite idea. Read More Contact Ivan Zaho's Phone Number and Email Last Update 1/12/2023 1:37 AM Email i***@makenotion.com Engage via Email Contact Number (***) ***-**** Engage via Phone Mobile Number (***) ***-**** Engage via Mobile Company Notion Test Drive ZoomInfo's Directories It was kind of like despair, I would say. In 2016, Mr. Zhao borrowed $150,000 from his mother to keep the start-up afloat. But if you step back and look at history you have the entire world history to look at. Zhao looked at his portfolio, which featured, among other things, code that enabled peoplekids, presumablyto add body parts to a creature based on their answers to either/or logic gates. The key to healthy culture and productivity is over-communication and true understanding of what everyone is working on and why its important. The intention, at least for me, is a much larger market. Its tools help office workers, now quarantined in their homes, work together more seamlessly. This version had Notions iconic, black-and-not-quite-white look, and the ability to do word processing, of course, as well as to make drag-and-drop to-do lists and wikis, and it had more than 30 document templates for things like product roadmaps. It is also building new features into its software like options for dictating who can access and edit documents to satisfy larger companies legal, security and compliance requirements. Notion gives you a birds eye view of everything your team is working on and then lets you drill down into the smallest details if and when you want. View Ivan Zhao's business profile as Co-Founder and CEO at Lookbooks. So by the time the men met up in 2018, Kothari had built new processes, teams and cultures inside a company with thousands of employees all over the world. Before the most recent funding, Notion, which was founded in 2013, had raised $17 million. The ambition of Zhao and his team at Notion cant be contained in any single decade. But it wont always look like this, says Zhao and Kothari. Jani Zhao's age is 30. International model who is known for having earned representation from several different agencies including Stacey Castro Media and . Notion is emblematic of the kind of technology start-up that may be in a position to survive the shakeout in Silicon Valley. History. Even better luck trying to invest in his company: We spoke to the designer/founder (who was born in China before moving to Canada as child) about why designers should get their inspiration from other fields (One thing I personally do is go on Dribbble and look at whats popular. He said, art is whatever you can get away with.. New Zealand Ivan Zhao Managing Director Guangzhou. Other startups are working to build out similar capabilities; in 2021, Google Workplace added something like Notions interconnectivity with the launch of Smart Canvas, and Microsoft has done the same for 365 with its Fluid Framework upgrade. And thats one way. Ivan Zhao Bellevue, WA. 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. Thats why all of Notions functionality fades to the back as soon as you start typing. Notion, Maker of Collaboration Software, Raises $50 Million. Inside Design: How would you recommend designers start learning about the philosophical underpinnings that guide your thinking? I wonder what does it take for every company, every team, every student to run on Notion? "We're unique in the way that we're already where you work," Zhao told me. Most everyone has to download an app or run a piece of software to accomplish a task. Look at how the business history of the past couple of decades. Some of the earliest team members had already departed, and retaining the rest was growing more untenable by the day. The iPhone totally opened up creation, Zhao says. By navigating this website you agree to our cookie policy. so you can easily build and stack them however you want to solve your problems your own way (made easier with drag and drop, etc.). Get the Notion Mastery Course*: https://bit.ly/3rNMSRD Discover Notion here: https://bit.ly/3Ammn9B Get Notion templates from Easlo: https://gum. Or sometimes something is really easy to implement but its really hard to design. A brand-new code base is always happy. 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. The 20-somethings didnt mind the drudgery or the lack of personal space. Soon after joining Sequoia in 2016, he noticed startups increasingly running their businesses on Notion, using it to send memos or make decks. 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