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. Facebook gives people the power to share and makes the world more open and connected. 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. 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 . Ivan Zhao has been working as a Director, Business Development at Metallum Recycling for 4 years. Ivan Zhao Founder at Notion Labs. ivzhao has one repository available. View Site. They need to do pixels, they need to do UX, they need to at least be able to code React. "We . Career Achievements Investments Ivan Zhao is currently reading Blockchain Chicken Farm: And Other Stories of Tech in China's Countryside by Xiaowei Wang (Goodreads Author) bookshelves: currently-reading Want to Read Rate this book 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars Sep 30, 2021 10:35AM See all 11 books that Ivan is reading rss Ivan's Recent Updates A brand-new code base is always happy. 2023 InVisionApp Inc. Allrightsreserved. Notion, Maker of Collaboration Software, Raises $50 Million, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/01/technology/notion-startup-fund-raising.html. Herein, we report a new synthetic approach for the synthesis of chloro- and bromofuroxans. 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. Collaborate in real time on a digital whiteboard. We recently interviewed him to learn the origin story of Notion, and to get his take on the evolving nature of work . And then he decided to drop out of school and just work on this full time with me, remembers Zhao. Just look at Slack. You dont need to clean up the whole thing. For the next six months, the company stopped building new features and instead focused on strengthening its infrastructure and migrating to multiple databases. Sometimes something is really hard to code. The latter earned her several awards, including the Golden Globe for best director. Then, Hey, lets go out for food. Then, we go eat, go back to work, and do it again. Neither man could speak or read Japanese, but Zhao is from China, and he could read the menus well enough for them to figure out beef or chicken. (About 70 percent of the writing, Japanese Kanji, was similar to the Chinese Hanzi he grew up reading.). He. A Ivan Zaho is a Founder at Notion based in San Francisco, California. 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. This topic is getting popular again. The present comes from the past. Its great that people believe in the company and believe in me. He was kind enough to take it, Kothari says. 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. Then from there, the tool that people used to think and work is Microsoft Office and it was one monolithic tool, maybe with a suite of different programs. And since everyone thinks and works differently, this means tools need to be very flexible. I want Notion, or a company like Notion, to catch that wave. He currently resides in Philadelphia. Notionist: Your source for tips and education for this powerful productivity tool, Notion Made Simple: A must learning investment for success with this tool, How Valentin Perez amplifies his creativity with Notion, Notion boosts user productivity 20-30%, survey shows, 10 ways you can use Notion to be wickedly creative, Ivan Zhao reflects on the thinking behind Notion. But it wont always look like this, says Zhao and Kothari. For a two- or three-year window, Notion was high on our list of companies that we admired from afar, Vernal says. In 2015, productivity tool Notion nearly died. And now the pendulum is swinging back towards something more bundled up again. Previously, he was the Editor-in-Chief of Adobes 99U and a founder of Technically Media. 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. About four months ago, CEO Ivan Zhao moved his 25-strong team from another Mission office to this new, "secret" location wedged among residences along a tree-lined street. Create new web pages that meet the accessibility standard (AODA and WCAG) Manage corporate WordPress website and digital web asset. See also Other Works | Publicity Listings | Official Sites View agent, publicist, legal and company contact details on IMDbPro It was not really a product, Zhao says. In the early days, 40 years ago, when personal computing started, the lines were blurry. 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. In another move toward ubiquity, Notion launched the beta version of its public API in 2021, enabling developers to connect Notion to payment systems and customer relationship managers, further rooting it in a workplace software ecosystem. Frey: What has changed in the nature of work that has created the need for a tool like Notion? That traction attracted venture capitalists and others who wanted to invest in Notion last year. 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. Zhao: In college, I did freelance work for friends who wanted to build their own websites, and I saw a couple of things. * Notion's Enterprise Success with Community RootsIvan Zhao(Notion, Co-founder and CEO): Notion, the popular maker of productivity and collaboration tools, . Youre really left with a completely blank, fresh space designed to feel like a breath of fresh air and spacious opportunity to think deeply. New Zealand Ivan Zhao Managing Director Guangzhou. 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. His major research interest focuses on autoimmune renal diseases, prevention and treatment of CKD. The team was only about eight people, but he had just the person in mind to call to help them grow into their next phase. People are used to working in shared documents and project spaces, and constantly communicating with their colleagues through various channels. Already today, some Notion-adjacent businesses are making more than $1 million a year by designing clever templates. Notions office is devoid of the typical start-up tchotchkes and clutter. Kothari was born and raised in Ahmedabad, a city of 8 million in Indias western Gujarat state. Kothari and Zhao think a lot about those big enterprises. Instead, they found a small group of really die-hard fans that carried the product with them. Most people, he reasoned, wake up and want to use their computers to browse the internet, to write or to solve a work problem. Competition to tell a compelling story to big companies is fierce. They were running out of money. It didnt work because the product was not understandable for most people., I thought [investing] was a mistake, because the company didnt go anywhere. Despite its success, Notions tiny 14-person team has remained heads down and somewhat mercurial. Fundamentally, Notion is a tool to solve peoples problems. 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. They picked Kyoto, almost on a whim, and subleased their spaces in San Francisco. The 32-year-old founder of Notion says, all while regularly dropping mentions of computing legends Alan Kay and Douglas Engelbart as his inspiration. How far along is Notion on its journey? The tide turned that same year when Mr. Zhao released Notions software product. And at that pointit was really just the ambition of the project that resonated with me, Kothari says. The ambition of Zhao and his team at Notion cant be contained in any single decade. And we did all sorts of really wonky projects. Today, Zhao estimates Notion can consistently replace about a dozen pieces of software like project-management or list-making tools. Congcong Pei, Yu Zeng, Liang Zhao, Jing Zhao, Jingjing Wan. Its like if you studied physics in high school and college and you didnt know who Newton is. That said, increasingly, teams need ways to work better together that dont require a ton of time spent in in-person meetings (which slows everyone down), and a way to keep communication focused and action-oriented. It was very intense and focused. Export. And I was like, This sounds amazing, Kothari remembers with a laugh. Microsoft Office did that in the 90s. It would be Kotharis first investment. It was unstable. Simon is a designer and engineer residing in SanFrancisco. They neednt have worried, and they havent spent it. 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. Notions design also distinguishes it, with a restrained, black-and-not-quite-white aesthetic. 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. In San Francisco, while Zhao still believed he was right about his grand vision, he realized he was wrong about his market. He says this helped him understand how to make Notion more useful, and it gave him a sense of Notions growing communitypeople smitten with the minimalist aesthetic, or who loved customizing templates to make book-reading logs or skincare diaries. 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. 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. Most everyone has to download an app or run a piece of software to accomplish a task. Zhao was born in Beijing as Zhao Ting. 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. Why would I do that? How do you answer cynicism with curiosity? And Notions mission is about software tool-making. Even if those tools just look like black-and-not-quite-white document editors at first. Zhao had cold-emailed Herzberg, saying he was a fan of how Slack built its product and brand, and, impressed by the energy in the email, she invited him to drop by the office. For example, they want to make Notion capable of publishing into varied content management systems with one click of a button. It became how people think, how people communicated. The founders have time to dress properly, and even enjoy the occasional home-cooked meal. We got a lot of traction there. Soon, tech insiders, people involved with Y Combinator and other startup incubators, were using it. In a moment of uncertainty, Mr. Kothari said, financing is a signal of stability, which is important for us.. 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. Joint/Adjunct . 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. 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. In a perfect world, Zhao sees the next iteration of Notion as changing life as profoundly as the iPhone changed peoples personal and work habits. It was pretty much all hands on deck, Kothari says. Zhao was unfazed by this success. 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. Create press releases and blog posts and keep . Location. Per Vulture, she grew up as "a rebellious child and a poor student," but her father become a top executive at successful steel company Shougang Group. However, when they rolled out this new Notion to their friends, they saw the framework theyd chosen to build with, a Google web framework called Web Component, crashed constantly. 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. Nobody knows how to learn how to do them properly. That keeps our workflow really quick. Vernal remembers Notions first few offices had a no-shoes policy, and when he sent Sequoia partners to learn about the company, he would remind them to wear good socks. There is a whole Notion-adjacent economy, filled with quirky templates, like this album credit tracker for Beyonces Renaissance, created by Notion-optimization consultant Frances Odera Matthews. 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 was positively received by Product Hunt and rated #1 Product of the Month. We shook hands, [I had to show] I am not a crazy person.. I marveled to myself, Who is this man? He is so discerning and so curious. Herzberg liked Zhao so much that she downloaded Notion immediately. Vernal tells a story about Zhao pitching Sequoia by walking through the last 50 years of computing history, with a narrative arc showing Notion as the next step in decades of iterations. And we want to do this in a way that will help people think more clearly and collaborate with each other better. Take product ideas from planning to launch and every step in between. Join Facebook to connect with Ivan Zhao and others you may know. Thats useful. But within a year or so, he left Inkling and started to assemble his team. The first version of Notion was a tool that non-coders could use to make their own apps. Art at auction worldwide, auction results, prices, biography and art market information by artprice.com. He also developed an appreciation for aesthetics as a student of traditional Chinese watercolor. Zhao: Yes, absolutely. 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. By Alexa von Tobel, Founder and managing partner, Inspired Capital @. Theyd just laid off their only colleagues. Notions innovation was letting users configure views of those databases in customizable ways, so different people could see the same information presented in different ways. When the world changed, they changed their mind, she said. Growth has been rapid since the 2021 investments. Zhao reached out and asked Last for a meeting. Jani Zhao's age is 30. International model who is known for having earned representation from several different agencies including Stacey Castro Media and . A year later, Zhao posted on the blog Hacker News that he was moving to San Francisco to find a job. Zhao Zhao Biography. 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. Related Investments Aliases N/A. 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. And to stretch what money they had left, theyd moved from San Francisco to Kyoto, Japan, which was less than half as expensive. 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 That allowed the start-up to garner new funding. Their angel investment money dwindling, they faced a brutal choice: Fire their fledgling team of 4 and start over, or run out of cash. Just click the "Edit page" button at the bottom of the page or learn more in the Biography submission guide. BIO. Use first principles thinking, what some people call systems thinking. Dont base your approach just on copying and tweaking a little bit what other people have done. The key to healthy culture and productivity is over-communication and true understanding of what everyone is working on and why its important. He envisioned a tool that could turn the world into a community of no-code software builders. 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. Companies in Career N/A. The iPhone totally opened up creation, Zhao says. Good luck finding a picture of Ivan online. I thought [investing] was a mistake, because the company didnt go anywhere, he says. In enterprise software alone, people use a whole portfolio of software tools, and most of them have very narrow use cases. But, in many ways, their biggest challenges are still ahead. As Notions features become more robust, the tools we make with it will become more complex. Bleary from the night before, Notion team members suddenly had to explain to their roommates, spouses and kids that they had to work. Menu. At that time, they declined to meet any venture capitalists or discuss acquiring a higher valuation.. Not only does this make all of your teams work easier to find, access, and dig into every day, it also increases transparency and the flow of information throughout teams. People use Notion in place of note-taking apps, collaboration services or writing software, and they pay a monthly fee of $4 to $20 each for extra features like more security and storage. More about Ivan Zhao Selected links Ivan Zhao - Founder - Notion | LinkedIn Do you need to know more about Ivan Zhao? Jani Zhao was born on the 19th of October, 1992. Chuck Frey: If you had to summarize what Notion is and what it represents in 10 words or less, how would you describe it? Not necessarily capital. He says his artist friends helped him hone his sense of aesthetics, watching movies with his film studies friends, helping his then-girlfriend and her friends with fashion school portfolios. Kothari said he thought it had a beautiful, clean design, and he happened to be looking for a designer. Zhao saw these people as members of a community, offering them early access to new features, face time with Notion team members and the opportunity to give input on features. Those people have taste; they just dont have good tools., I was like, Holy shit. The killer feature is that it is what you make of it.. Your email address will not be published. We try to give people a blank canvas that lets them arrange their thoughts in ways that are most helpful to them. Biography of Ivan Zhao Last update: November 30, 2022 Career Ivan Zhao is currently Chief Executive Officer at Notion Labs - View - Notion Labs org chart Create your alert to follow the career of Ivan Zhao. His first job was six months of answering support-desk tickets. 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. We want to give more people the ability to build the tools they actually want and need without having to code. 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. A328 David P Rall Building. Its like, everybody can be a designer. Look at how the business history of the past couple of decades. One of the biggest holes we fill is the information gap that emerges on teams that work across too many tools without visibility. Just dream of a piece of software, and you should just be able to build that using Notion.. To make Notion more competitive, the company recently acquired the calendaring company Cron, the software-building company Flowdash, and the cloud integration and workflow automation platform Automate.io. Three years into building their startup, they scrapped the code powering their app. Then the internet came along towards the mid-to-late nineties and that sort of breaks apart the monopoly of Microsoft. "We're unique in the way that we're already where you work," Zhao told me. When the medium is so new, people have entire green fields in front of them, and there is less thinking about business. Notion had previously been valued at $800 million. He was who Notion needed. Originally from Beijing, China, Chloe Zhao was born on 31 March 1982 . 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