Notion's lost years, near collapse during COVID, staying small to move fast, building horizontal

Key ideas

Zhao argues founders should wrap an ignored vision inside something people want, reset without fear, stay small through systems, and balance market demands against personal values.

From a machine transcript of the audio. Quotes link to the moment they are said.

1. 1

   Hide the vision inside what people want

   Zhao says Notion's first two-plus years went into a developer tool that most people ignored, because they just want to finish the work in front of them. The fix was to keep the goal of letting everyone make software but package it as productivity software, which he compares to hiding broccoli in sugar.

2. 2

   Resets work because abstractions compound

   Zhao recounts cutting Notion from five people to himself and Simon after a bet on an unstable technical foundation threatened to run out the money. He argues the case for resetting goes beyond courage: a better abstraction can recover abandoned work faster than linear intuition expects.

3. 3

   Balance building to win with building for values

   Zhao separates building to win in a market from building to put your own taste and values into the world, and says the second is the more durable source of energy. He warns that too much self yields something with no users and too much business yields a commodity. He cites hard-coded sprint features as a case where chasing competition against Notion's values drew rejection from employees and customers.

4. 4

   Keep the bus small

   Zhao says most overhead comes from internal communication, so he prefers solving problems through systems and tools over adding people. Internally he uses the image of a small bus that turns and accelerates easily, with leaders choosing who sits on it. He says this kept Notion profitable and spared it from constant fundraising.

5. 5

   Sell the Lego box, keep making bricks

   Zhao says he would not recommend building a horizontal product, though he would not choose differently for himself. He says most customers, especially enterprises, want a finished solution rather than building blocks, and he wishes he had shifted to that mindset earlier while still building bricks behind the scenes. Notes and docs gave Notion a wide top of funnel, with personal users bringing it to work.

In Ivan’s words

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