Representative appearances

• Collison Brothers Join, Bill Gurley Joins (Gurlin' Down A Dream)

  Guest on the show, CEO of Notion, discussing Custom Agents.

• Make with Notion 2025: How to Build Tools That Shape Civilizations (Alan Kay & Ivan Zhao)

  Before we start, I'd like to do a quick introduction about Alan K. So, who knows what this is? Raise your hand.

• Ivan Zhao & Simon Last’s $10B Notion Story 💼🔥

  These co-founders raised $275 million to make employees feel safe enough to join the company even though they didn't actually need it. Ivan Xiao and Simon Last launched Notion in 2013 to create a tool that can do anything you can do with paper. It was initially built to help non-coders make their own apps. But by 2015, Notion was on the brink of collapse. People didn't understand or need the product, and the company ran out of money. So Ivan and Simon had to lay off their entire team and sublet their San Francisco office. Ivan and Simon moved to Kyoto in Japan to cut costs and took a $150,000 loan from Ivan's mother. They spent 18 hours a day coding and would only take breaks to eat noodles. They eventually rebuilt Notion from scratch to make it a more userfriendly productivity tool. In 2016, after months of intense work, they launched Notion 1.0 on Product Hunt. The new version became the most popular app on Product Hunt and gained traction. Within weeks, Notion became profitable and its user base grew on word of mouth alone. Students used it for taking notes, entrepreneurs for organizing their startups, and artists for showcasing their portfolios. By 2019, Notion had reached its first million users. In 2021, the company raised $275 million from CO2 Management and Sequoia to ensure its team's job stability and innovation. In July 2024, it reached $100 million users and is now valued at $10 billion. Sign up to our free newsletter to get the deep dive Ivan and Simon used to save Notion.

• Why Taste Alone Isn’t Enough to Build

  Speaker and guest on the podcast, discussing his personal experience as a software maker and filing bugs.

• The Anti-Interview Approach at Notion

  Speaker and guest on the channel discussing Notion's hiring philosophy; identified by voice and context of the series.