Ivan Zhao on Notion’s “Lost Years,” Surviving Near Collapse, and Building for Creativity
“People don’t want to eat broccoli. But if you hide the broccoli in sugar, they’ll eat it.”
That’s how Ivan Zhao, co-founder and CEO of Notion, explains the early pivot that saved the company.
In a rare, deeply personal conversation on Lenny’s Podcast, Zhao opened up about the first three to four years of Notion — a stretch he calls the “lost years.” They were years without product-market fit, without growth, and sometimes, without enough money to keep going. And yet, they were the years that shaped Notion’s DNA.
From Developer Dream to Productivity Trojan Horse
When Zhao and co-founder Simon Last launched Notion in 2013, their vision was grand:
“Everybody can create their own software.”
The first product was a developer tool designed to make that possible. The problem?
“Most people just don’t care,” Zhao admits. People wanted to get work done, not build custom tools to make their work easier.
So Zhao and Last hid their vision inside something people already cared about: productivity software.
“We call it sugar-coated broccoli. People don’t want broccoli, but they’ll eat it if it’s wrapped in sugar.”
The pivot worked. Notion became a familiar-seeming notes-and-docs app that secretly contained the “LEGO bricks” for building custom software.
The Courage to Reset
That pivot was only part of the story. Technical missteps nearly sunk the company. Betting on Google’s early Web Components tech left Notion unstable and unscalable. Zhao made the painful call to throw away the codebase and rebuild from scratch.
Resetting wasn’t just technical — it was financial. The team shrank from five to just Zhao and Last. They decamped to Japan to cut costs and work in isolation, coding 18-hour days.
“Don’t be afraid to reset. If you find a better abstraction, you can catch up faster than you think.”
Zhao’s resilience came from two mindsets:
- Never too high, never too low. A bad day was solved by a good night’s sleep.
- Build for your values. Balance what you want to see in the world with what users actually need.
The COVID Close Call
Even after Notion’s growth took off, danger lurked. During the pandemic, usage spiked — and their entire infrastructure ran on a single Postgres database. They were weeks away from maxing out capacity.
The company halted feature work, put every engineer on scaling, and barely avoided total shutdown.
Lesson learned: “Don’t do premature optimization, but plan ahead a little.”
Why Staying Small Matters
While most startups scaled teams aggressively after funding, Notion stayed lean: no salespeople until $10M ARR, first PM at 50 employees, profitable for years.
“The smaller the bus, the faster it turns. You choose who sits next to you.”
This philosophy extends to their office design — warm lighting, home furniture, even a no-shoes policy in earlier offices. Craftsmanship in environment mirrors craftsmanship in product.
The Joy and Pain of Horizontal Products
Notion’s ambition — being the “LEGO for software” — means building a horizontal tool that can be used for docs, project management, CRM, and more. This approach brings freedom and complexity.
Most customers want LEGO boxes (ready-made solutions), not just bricks. Serving both requires careful segmentation.
The breakout strategy? Start with a huge top-of-funnel use case (notes and docs), then expand into other workflows as users discover the hidden bricks.
AI: The Unexpected Gift
Zhao didn’t anticipate how perfectly AI would fit Notion’s model. Large language models can now:
- Write inside Notion (AI Writer).
- Search and reason across all a user’s data (AI Q&A).
- Assemble custom tools from Notion’s bricks — lowering the barrier for non-developers.
AI might finally make Zhao’s original vision — letting anyone create software — a mass-market reality.
Tools Shape Us
Zhao’s product philosophy is grounded in Marshall McLuhan’s idea:
“We shape our tools, and thereafter our tools shape us.”
For him, the goal is to amplify creativity and beauty — qualities often missing from software.
“It feels good when someone makes a living selling Notion templates without writing code. That’s the mission.”
Key Takeaways for Founders
- Hide the vision in something people already want. Trojan-horse your way to adoption.
- Be willing to burn it down. The right abstraction can help you catch up faster than years of incremental progress.
- Small teams move faster. Design your “bus” carefully — talent density beats headcount.
- Balance values and business. Too much of either leads to failure.
- Segment your market. Know when to offer LEGO bricks and when to offer the box.
- Ride technology shifts. AI turned Notion’s long-term bet into a near-term advantage.
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