Notion’s lost years, its near collapse during Covid, staying small to move fast, the joy and suffering of building horizontal, more | Ivan Zhao (CEO and co-founder)
March 6, 2025
AI Summary
5 min readIvan Zhao, co-founder and CEO of Notion, shares how the company navigated early product failures, infrastructure crises, and the challenges of building a horizontal "Lego for software" while staying lean and true to its vision of enabling more people to create custom tools.
Lost Years and Product Pivots
Notion's first three to four years were "lost years," starting with a developer tool that few cared about, as most users prioritized daily tasks over software creation. The team realized they needed to "hide" their vision—everyone creating software—inside a familiar productivity tool, dubbed "sugar-coated broccoli." They rebuilt the codebase multiple times, including after betting on unstable Web Components, and reset by laying off the five-person team to just founders, traveling to Japan, and coding 18 hours daily. Progress came through better abstractions, allowing quick recovery despite discards, with product-market fit emerging gradually via user payments and investor interest rather than a sharp milestone.
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What you'll learn
- 1 *(00:05) **Notion's "Lost Years" and Pivots***
- 2 *(00:04:47) **Ivan's Background and Inspirations***
- 3 *(00:15:25) **Perseverance Tactics: Lean Survival and Resets***
- 4 *(00:25:20) **Product-Market Fit Signals and Staying Lean***
- 5 *(00:34:25) **Culture, Craft, and Trade-offs***
- 6 *(00:41:32) **Leadership Evolution and Course Corrections***
- 7 *(00:49:31) **Near-Death Crises: COVID Database Meltdown***
+ Full timestamped outline available in the app
Show Notes
Ivan Zhao is the co-founder and CEO of Notion. Ivan shares the untold story of Notion, from nearly running out of database space during Covid to finding product-market fit after several “lost years,” and the hard-won lessons along the way.
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What you’ll learn:
1. Why you sometimes need to “hide your vision” behind something people actually want—what Ivan calls “sugar-coating the broccoli”
2. How Ivan and his co-founder persevered through multiple product resets and complete code rewrites
3. Why Notion prioritized systems over headcount, keeping the team small and focused even at scale
4. Why Ivan believes in craft and values as the foundation for product development, balancing technical excellence with aesthetic sensibility
5. The surprising story of how Notion nearly collapsed during Covid when their single database almost ran out of space with only weeks to spare
6. Community-led growth tactics
7. Ivan’s unique journey from a small town in China
8. Much more
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Find the transcript at: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/inside-notion-ivan-zhao
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Where to find Ivan Zhao:
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ivanhzhao/
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Where to find Lenny:
• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com
• X: https://twitter.com/lennysan
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/
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In this episode, we cover:
(00:00) Introduction to Ivan Zhao
(04:41) Ivan’s early life and education
(07:46) Discovering the vision for Notion
(10:49) The lost years of Notion
(13:56) Rebuilding and perseverance
(17:14) Layoffs and company morale
(18:53) Advice for startup founders
(25:08) Product-market fit
(29:56) Staying lean and efficient
(34:27) Creating a unique office culture
(37:20) Craft and values: the foundation of Notion’s philosophy
(38:44) Navigating tradeoffs in product and business building
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