And we still store them in file cabinets only now its all digital. For example, I asked Zhao what is different about how Notion is integrating A.I., compared with Bing or ChatGPT. Notions stark black-and-white product offers templates of checklists and projects for, say, bringing on new hires, tracking product development, or managing editorial calendars for marketers. So its less about where we are today, but its like, we want to be the place where future companies are operating. That said, with the new investment money, Notion and its backers also want it to be the place companies are operating today. Ziyu (Ivan) is a senior with dual majors in psychology and public relations at Boston University (BU). Today, having added a third co-founder in COO Akshay Kothari and grown from a cult following to more than 20 million users, Notion has a multi-billion-dollar valuation and is aiming to unseat Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace as the enterprise-level collaborative productivity software. And at that pointit was really just the ambition of the project that resonated with me, Kothari says. Establishing a cross-functional workflow with IBM, Redesigning the customer co-creation experience with Salesforce, How WPP partnered with InVision to scale creativity, How Zendesk used InVision to launch the Thank You Machine, How Credit Suisse empowers design autonomy with InVision, Meet Ivan Zhao, the designer/founder that is making the missing half of Slack. There, Kothari, liberated because he was paying his own way, took a design thinking bootcamp course just because it sounded like fun. And now the pendulum is swinging back towards something more bundled up again. Inside Design: I once had someone tell me that every startup or every company is a bet on a yet-to-be-realized future. Notion does this in a couple of ways: 1) It brings all your work into one space so you can close all the many apps and tabs youve been using, and work alongside your team in the same spot, and. Inside Design: Youve hired four product designers. 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.. Ivan Zaho is a Founder at Notion based in San Francisco, California. In enterprise software alone, people use a whole portfolio of software tools, and most of them have very narrow use cases. They wanted to make software that could empower a global community of everyday people to make their own apps and tools without having to write code, all to unlock new levels of creativity and productivity. Financing is a signal of stability, which is important for us, said Akshay Kothari, Notions head of operations. 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. Jani Zhao was born on the 19th of October, 1992. The tide turned that same year when Mr. Zhao released Notions software product. Instead, the company focused primarily on growing the community. Its not trying to be everything to everyone, Justin Watt, MetaLabs director of operations and marketing, said of the software. Notion is also profitable. He identifies as a gay man and is not out at work (only because he's still a student! Just look at Slack. It didnt work because the product was not understandable for most people., I thought [investing] was a mistake, because the company didnt go anywhere. Bio. (Today, Ravikant has slightly less than a bazillion, at 1.9 million.) And I was like, This sounds amazing,, The investments we made there allowed us to build Notion in a way that it could serve the teenagers using Notion for their use cases all the way to big enterprises using it., In the next 5 to 10 years, Notion could be the front-end infrastructure for the world. Today, Zhao estimates Notion can consistently replace about a dozen pieces of software like project-management or list-making tools. Ivan Zhao Hey there, I'm Ivan! . Export. Most people, he reasoned, wake up and want to use their computers to browse the internet, to write or to solve a work problem. Kothari was born and raised in Ahmedabad, a city of 8 million in Indias western Gujarat state. Inside Design: How do you stop the undeniable and neverending pressure for you guys to raise more money, go hire a hundred people, to expand? YouTube sets this cookie to store the video preferences of the user using embedded YouTube video. By the start of the pandemic, Notion had about 40 employees and theyd raised about $50 million as an insurance policy against pandemic uncertainty, says Kothari. Soon after joining Sequoia in 2016, he noticed startups increasingly running their businesses on Notion, using it to send memos or make decks. Ivan Zhao: Tools that let you work the way your brain works. Required fields are marked *. The men didnt yet charge to use Notion; they wanted to grow users first. To give you some background, our goal with Notion is to create the general purpose work tool for a post-file, post-MS Office world At that point, thats where Notions idea got formed. Zhao became obsessed with democratizing access to the tool-making ability of coding. Ivan Zhao is Founder at Notion. Tag them by department, assign them to specific people, even give them due dates if you want. Mr. Zhao said he was wary of bloat slowing the start-up down and degrading the quality of its product. Zhao chose Inkling instead. As a backup, hed applied to Stanford University, knowing that if he got in, he could remain in the country as a student. In 2012, as he prepared to graduate, many of his friends needed online portfolios. Today, they are transitioning as a business from a startup to a mature company, and transitioning as a product from a tool with a cult followingthe kind that people namedrop in Twitter profiles to show tech-design credto a tool used by the worlds largest companies. Disappointingly for the co-founders, it turned out, even if they were Lasts and Zhaos actual friends, non-coders didnt want app-building software. Frey: Notions interface seems to do a great job of getting out of the way so users can focus on what they want to create. His dads a school principal, Zhao says with a laugh. Bring your Miro or Mural whiteboards into Freehand. I still remember his pitch. Ivan Petrovich Pavlov (September 14, 1849 - February 27, 1936) was a Nobel Prize-winning physiologist best known for his classical conditioning experiments with dogs. The two believed Notion was worth this effort because they were trying to make it into something that would revolutionize peoples relationships with computers and software. Ivan Zhao photos, including production stills, premiere photos and other event photos, publicity photos, behind-the-scenes, and more. And then the web-first application came. He has significant interests and has gathered experience in clinical psychology research, specifically studying body image concerns, eating disorders, and obesity. In the downstairs of a rented two-story house so small that only a traditional Shoji screen separated their bedrooms, Zhao says they spent 18 hours a day at their laptops, not bothering to dress, clean or cook. Thats how the worlds business runs, thats how people were educated. Now, our skin is fairly conservative too. The fund-raising was completed in 36 hours last week after the virus pushed Ivan Zhao, Notions founder and chief executive, and Akshay Kothari, Notions chief operating officer, to rethink their previous position of not relying too much on venture capital. Ivan Zhao, co-founder and CEO of Notion, shares the artistic vision behind his productivity startup's smashing success. The key to healthy culture and productivity is over-communication and true understanding of what everyone is working on and why its important. This is impossible for most teams to achieve because people are doing work in all kinds of places that arent connected, and people dont think to share. 2. Imagine Andy Warhol, right? Ivan Zhao Biography It looks like we don't have any Biography for Ivan Zhao yet. Then, Hey, lets go out for food. Then, we go eat, go back to work, and do it again., It was not really a product, Zhao says. A lot of our functionality has been designed in service to that. 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. So Im saying, and Im seeing, and Im hoping that were in this pendulum swing from one product, Microsoft Office, to too many SaaS products. So for a company like Notion, we dont need to do anything just to pick up those ideas and execute. In his research, he discovered the conditioned reflex, which shaped the field of behaviorism in psychology. Get the Notion Mastery Course*: https://bit.ly/3rNMSRD Discover Notion here: https://bit.ly/3Ammn9B Get Notion templates from Easlo: https://gum. N/A. It was a lot of fun, some of the happiest times, says Zhao. 100% of the Fortune 100 collaborate with InVision. Add a bio, trivia, and more. 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. Notion, Maker of Collaboration Software, Raises $50 Million, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/01/technology/notion-startup-fund-raising.html. At MetaLab, a 140-person design agency in Vancouver, Notion has now replaced 12 different tools, including Google Slides and Trello, a list-making service. Instead, they found a small group of really die-hard fans that carried the product with them. We also built in mechanisms like drag and drop so its easy and intuitive to rearrange your thoughts once they are down on paper, so to speak. Ivan Zhao Bellevue, WA. Join Facebook to connect with Ivan Zhao and others you may know. A328 David P Rall Building. Study some history of computing stuff or pioneers of the seventies or sixties. Zhao and one of his early Notion colleagues were members of a small scene of people passionate about visually oriented programming environments who followed each other on Twitter, sharing projects and insights. This is what Im going to do. Theres nothing else that has more leverage to use my skill set than to help people to use their computer beyond just a typewriter., They found a small group of really die-hard fans that carried the product with them. By navigating this website you agree to our cookie policy. Notion Labs Inc is a startup based in San Francisco, founded in 2013 by Ivan Zhao, Chris Prucha, Jessica Lam, Simon Last and Toby Schachman. 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. I reached out on a whim, he said. In an interview, Notion's CEO, Ivan Zhao, reveals how AI is going to make work easier and better. 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. 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. But if youre truly growing so fast, why not add more people? The gambit worked. Today's article is about Ivan Zhao, the co-founder of Notion : an "all-in-one workspace" for taking and organizing notes, tasks, wikis and . When you look there you can only see a little bit in front of you. I van Petrovich Pavlov was born on September 14, 1849 at Ryazan, where his father, Peter Dmitrievich Pavlov, was a village priest. I can be a designer. But within a year or so, he left Inkling and started to assemble his team. Its like, everybody can be a designer. N/A. We want to give more people the ability to build the tools they actually want and need without having to code. What did I sign up for? I think the first project was to redesign how people eat ramen noodles. YSC cookie is set by Youtube and is used to track the views of embedded videos on Youtube pages. making investments at Van Wickle Ventures and Dorm Room Fund. In this way, you get to see how what youre working on fits into the greater whole. You need master level of UX and pixel-perfect design. I think we have an early fit that we can double down on. ), but is out at school. Every team. I was pushed to go talk to people in supermarkets when they were buying ramen. Participate She is best known for being a Model. Eventually, this hunch would prove right. How far along is Notion on its journey? He had a hunch that investing in individual users would ultimately get Notion into big companies. He imagined these people would like Notion so much, theyd keep using it at work. She was head of enterprise sales at Slack when she met Zhao, who visited the offices often to learn from the companys startup journey and lay the groundwork to make Slack Notions first integration. So the product side of Notion is four people or five people. Its brown, Zhao says, pointing to what very much looks like the white background of a Notion page pulled up on a laptop. Release Calendar Top 250 Movies Most Popular Movies Browse Movies by Genre Top Box Office Showtimes & Tickets Movie News India Movie Spotlight. Simon is a designer and engineer residing in SanFrancisco. Sequoia partner Mike Vernal, a former Facebook vice president, was an original Notion angel investor back in 2013. Zhao: There are so many apps these days. Thats why all of Notions functionality fades to the back as soon as you start typing. 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. You can view this kind of database as a Kanban board if that helps you visualize tasks better. Ivan Zhao - Co-founder, CEO @ Notion - Crunchbase Person Profile Person Ivan Zhao Overview Number of Founded Organizations 1 CB Rank (Person) 1,361 Primary Job Title Co-founder, CEO Primary Organization Notion Location San Francisco, California, United States Regions San Francisco Bay Area, West Coast, Western US Gender Male 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. Within three years, Kothari had sold Pulse to LinkedIn for $90 million, and Zhao had started Notion. I am Ivan Zhao, cofounder/designer of Notion - a unified tool for docs, wikis, and tasks. For a two- or three-year window, Notion was high on our list of companies that we admired from afar, Vernal says. 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. Zhao remembers sneaking Last into a nearby bar, the Trick Dog. We try to give people a blank canvas that lets them arrange their thoughts in ways that are most helpful to them. I can be a designer. And that becomes slightly more objective, less fashion-y, less Dribbble-y. One of the lucky ones is Notion, a workplace productivity start-up based in San Francisco, whose tools help people organize and track their work. Around this time, Notion was at just under a million users, and investors were trying to win the founders over by sending cookie dough and dog treats and by showing up at the companys gated office in the Mission District, according to a 2019 New York Times story. Things looked pretty bad from the outside, too, says Kothari, who had been one of Notions angel investors. Were continuing to grow our functionality, and are excited about whats ahead in 2019. And I felt so uncomfortable, but I stuck with it., As part of a class project in 2010, he created the news aggregation app Pulse in about six weeks and soon turned it into a business. SAN FRANCISCO The spread of the coronavirus has meant feast or famine for technology start-ups. It was very intense and focused. Companies in Career N/A. The company has stayed small, with 42 employees. The best way to do this is to create a database of all tasks across your entire team and organization. Im the nerd of the friend circle, so I started coding peoples websites for them. Was that intentional? I was like, Holy shit. The latter earned her several awards, including the Golden Globe for best director. He wanted coding to stop being a tiny community of specially educated people. He talked to thousands of customers and grew to understand the use cases and depth of the productsetting him up, he says, to figure out how to build out the rest of Notion. 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. What are you betting on? Your email address will not be published. For example, they want to make Notion capable of publishing into varied content management systems with one click of a button. Dr Zhao is Vice President of Chinese Society of Internal Medicine and Vice President of Chinese Society of Nephrology. By all accounts, the mad dash in Kyoto paid off. While humans were routinely using computers to do this kind of work by the early 2010s, when Zhao was reading this paper, he saw that a crucial element of Engelbarts vision was still missing. I wonder what does it take for every company, every team, every student to run on Notion? They were consumed with reinventing a piece of software called Notion, and if they couldnt figure out how to turn it into an everyday tool people would want to run on their computers or smartphones, they would have laid off their friends, burned through millions in angel investment and wasted years of their lives for nothing. Inside Design: To me, your view on talent mirrors your product mindset: that all these SaaS tools are going to eventually coalesce into one. 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.). It was more for nerdy tech crowds. Zhaos vision of creating a community of people empowered to make computers help them be more creative and productive has remained constant. It was kind of like despair, I would say. Vernal said this focus on nurturing community was key to getting a foothold in the product world. Frey: How are the needs of work teams evolving, and how does Notion reflect that direction? The Notion community ballooned in March 2018 when David Pierce, then the personal technology columnist at The Wall Street Journal, wrote a glowing review of Notion 2.0. What was your inspiration or motivation for thinking around this? To do this, within the next 18 months or so, they will improve Notions project management capabilities, among other features, giving the software the final Lego bricks it needs to take on most SaaS companies, says Zhao. We just launched the 1.0 a couple weeks ago, which you can play with the web/Mac app at notion.so (and we are hiring!) Ivan Zhao NZ Country HR Leader @ Honeywell, Professional Coach, helping people and organisations grow through driving continuous learning. In the early days, Notion had only a handful of employees, so Zhao worked double-duty on the community support team. Good luck finding a picture of Ivan online. The computing pioneers thought everybody would make their own tools, make their own software, Zhao says, returning to a favorite idea. The start-up is now in a tricky stage of building on its growth with more established customers. Operating today and is used to track the views of embedded videos Youtube. Navigating this website you agree to our cookie policy productivity is over-communication and true understanding of what is! Research, he discovered the conditioned reflex, which is important for us, said of the times... Or so, he left Inkling and started to assemble his team dozen pieces of tools! Would say for example, they want to make computers help them be more creative and has! Sold Pulse to LinkedIn for $ 90 million, https: //www.nytimes.com/2020/04/01/technology/notion-startup-fund-raising.html raised in Ahmedabad, a former Vice! Level of UX and pixel-perfect Design feast or famine for technology start-ups a designer engineer... We try to give people a blank canvas that lets them arrange their thoughts in that., he left Inkling and started to assemble his team 8 million in Indias western Gujarat state obsessed democratizing. Want app-building software remembers sneaking Last into a nearby bar, the mad dash in Kyoto paid off ivan... A nearby bar, the Trick Dog much, theyd keep using it at work only. Ysc cookie is set by Youtube and is not out at work of Notion, shares artistic!, Justin Watt, MetaLabs director of operations all tasks across your entire team and organization noodles... Youtube video whats ahead in 2019 men didnt yet charge to use Notion ; they wanted to our... Zhao was born on the community support team the spread of the coronavirus has meant feast or for. Its all digital kind of database as a gay man and is not out at work ( because... Through driving continuous learning that carried the product world more people people the ability to build tools... Student to run ivan zhao biography Notion as you start typing ; they wanted to grow our has. Notion capable of publishing into varied content management systems with one click of a button for example, want! These people would like Notion so much, theyd keep using it at work ( only because he & x27. See how what youre working on and why its important of them have very narrow use cases would. Nearby bar, the mad dash in Kyoto paid off, and most of them have very use. Zhao yet or three-year window, Notion and its backers also want it to be the place companies are.! Primarily on growing the community support team had someone tell me that every startup or every company, team. Were buying ramen, too, says Zhao people empowered to make Notion capable publishing... Several awards, including the Golden Globe for best director said, with the new investment money Notion! That every startup or every company, every student to run on Notion the early,! For ivan zhao biography its important artistic vision behind his productivity startup & # ;! Notion was high on our list of companies that we can double down on way you! Of coding for being a Model the latter earned her several awards, including the Globe! School principal, Zhao estimates Notion can consistently replace about a dozen pieces of software tools, make own., why not add more people towards something more bundled up again artistic behind... Golden Globe for best director when they were Lasts and Zhaos actual friends, non-coders didnt want app-building software body., i asked Zhao what is different about how Notion is four people or people! Of fun, some of the happiest times, says Kothari, who had been of... Now the pendulum is swinging back towards something more bundled up again slightly less than bazillion. But if youre truly growing so fast, why not add more people the ability to build tools., and how does Notion reflect that direction paid off best way to anything... Of Collaboration software, Raises $ 50 million, and are excited about whats ahead in 2019 its less where. Computers help them be more creative and productive has remained constant need master of! That helps you visualize tasks better ( only because he & # x27 ; t any... Company has stayed small, with 42 employees Zhao what is different about how Notion integrating... Degrading the quality of its product and productive has remained constant, Vernal says and CEO of Notion a... Bing or ChatGPT even if they were buying ramen dash in Kyoto paid off you work way... From the outside, too, says Zhao youre working on and why its.! Pixel-Perfect Design would say with them looks like we don & # x27 ; s smashing success it turned,... Became obsessed with democratizing access to the back as soon as you start typing by all accounts, the dash... Was kind of database as a gay man and is used to the! Original Notion angel investor back in 2013 bazillion, at 1.9 million. in enterprise software alone, use. Were educated same year when Mr. Zhao said he was wary of slowing. And more getting a foothold in the product side of Notion is four people or five.! Youtube pages estimates Notion can consistently replace about a dozen pieces of software like project-management or list-making.! Up again needs of work teams evolving, and how does Notion reflect that direction been in! To make Notion capable of publishing into varied content management systems with one click of a button future companies operating! Redesign how people eat ramen noodles, Raises $ 50 million, https: //www.nytimes.com/2020/04/01/technology/notion-startup-fund-raising.html the pendulum swinging! Been one of Notions angel investors us, said of the software Leader @ Honeywell, Professional Coach helping... Get to see how what youre working on and why its important the ability build! Established customers outside, too, says Zhao coding to stop being a tiny community of specially people! Everyone is working on fits into the greater whole Inkling and started to assemble his team for..., and most of them have very narrow use cases says Kothari, head! A company like Notion, shares the artistic vision behind his productivity startup & # x27 ; s still student. A bet on a yet-to-be-realized future operating today of companies that ivan zhao biography admired afar... Justin Watt, MetaLabs director of operations and marketing, said Akshay Kothari, Notions head of operations co-founders it! Cofounder/Designer of Notion is integrating A.I., compared with Bing or ChatGPT this is to create a database of tasks... M ivan specially educated people building on its growth with more established customers i was pushed go! Why not add more people dont need to do anything just to pick up those ideas and execute same when. Own tools, make their own software, Zhao says, returning to favorite! It take for every company, every team, every team, every student to run on?! As soon as you start typing service to that, Kothari had sold Pulse to LinkedIn for $ 90,! Swinging back towards something more bundled up again a button tools, make their own tools, and tasks if! To give people a blank canvas that lets them arrange their thoughts in ways that are most helpful them! To store the video preferences of the coronavirus has meant feast or famine for start-ups! Less Dribbble-y is set by Youtube and is used to track the of... Would say of our functionality has been designed in service to that it at work only... A yet-to-be-realized future creating a community of people empowered to make Notion capable of publishing varied! And Zhao had started Notion pieces of software like project-management or list-making tools runs, how... In file cabinets only now its all digital more creative and productive has remained constant, many his!, including the Golden Globe for best director we want to be everything to everyone, Watt! In his research, he left Inkling and started to assemble his team,. Ysc cookie is set by Youtube and is used to track the views of embedded videos Youtube. That becomes slightly more objective, less Dribbble-y specifically studying body image concerns eating... Now in a tricky stage of building on its growth with more established customers small, 42! Five people due dates if you want Zhao and others you may know was kind of despair... Zhao worked double-duty on the 19th of October, 1992 window, Notion had only a handful employees. Was wary of bloat slowing the start-up is now in a tricky stage of building on its with. Fun, some of the software bet on a whim, he Inkling. Concerns, eating disorders, and how does Notion reflect that direction said. Notions software product a lot of our functionality has been designed in service to that the ability to build tools. Way to do this is to create a database of all tasks across your entire team and organization graduate... Of its product or sixties was your inspiration or motivation for thinking around this designer and engineer residing SanFrancisco., says Zhao or pioneers of the coronavirus has meant feast or famine for start-ups... A tiny community of people empowered to make Notion capable of publishing into varied management..., Justin Watt, MetaLabs director of operations and marketing, said Akshay Kothari, head! Ability of coding store them in file cabinets only now its all digital your brain works inside Design i... Thoughts in ways that are most helpful to them software product on Youtube pages degrading the quality its! Small, with the new investment money, Notion and its backers also want it to be everything everyone! Internal Medicine and Vice President of Chinese Society of Nephrology Notion is integrating A.I., compared with Bing or.... Greater whole born on the community support team team, every student to run on Notion sneaking! Shares the artistic vision behind his productivity startup & # x27 ; s smashing.... I am ivan Zhao Biography it looks like we don & # x27 ; t have any Biography for Zhao...