Notion has users in countries including Russia, Japan and Germany. Lastly, there’s a lot of transparency that comes from storing all your knowledge, information and work in one place that your entire team can see and access. It serves as an all-in-one workspace for note-taking, task management, and project management. So they called Sarah Cannon, an investor at Index Ventures who had been courting Notion for over a year. INFORMATION SHEET. The app can be accessed via most web browsers. Zhao: We’ve heard from a number of people that Notion’s very minimalist, lightweight feel encourages people to write more — even if it’s just jotting down ideas. Zhao: Yes, absolutely. Also, as you use the product, you’ll notice that a lot of features only appear on hover, or that you only receive notifications when someone mentions you or something specific requires your attention. People think fast, so they should be able to capture and restructure their thoughts fast too. In its own words, Notion was built to bring together many of the tools/functionality we use at work to one place, reducing the number of … 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. Notion was founded by Ivan Zhao. With more people working remotely now and turning to such products, new customer sign-ups hit a new high for Notion in recent weeks. Notion started off in 2016 with Ivan Zhao. Whitepages people search is the most trusted directory. The current Notion is actually 2+ years in the making. Notion is a collaboration platform with modified markdown support that integrates kanban boards, tasks, wikis, and databases. Mr. Kothari said Notion could have easily raised more than $50 million, but that amount gives the company at least 10 years of financing to operate. Akshay Kothari: [Notion co-founders Ivan Zhao and Simon Last] started Notion six years ago and that’s when I invested. While many are cutting staff and slashing costs as they reel from the outbreak’s fallout, others have experienced a surge in demand. In June 2018, almost exactly a year after the beta of Notion’s iOS app went live, Notion unveiled its long-awaited Android app. “A lot of people are moving from Evernote to Notion,” says Ivan Zhao, Notion’s co-founder and CEO. India's Richest Tag them by department, assign them to specific people, even give them due dates if you want. Bartender ... Ivan Zhao Founder at Notion. The app can be accessed via most web browsers. In enterprise software alone, people use a whole portfolio of software tools, and most of them have very narrow use cases. Zhao: We believe more people should be able to modify the tools they use in their everyday lives and work. Liked by Ivan Zhao. We want Notion to be as light and simple as you want to be, with the power to do complex things only if and when you want to. Zhao: There are so many apps these days. Notion wants to challenge this status quo. Different good or different bad? This is not surprising if you consider how these tools evolved. Notion’s 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. It quickly caught on among techies and early adopters at companies like Samsung and Hearst. Ivan has 2 jobs listed on their profile. That has since quadrupled, Mr. Kothari said. Notion, Maker of Collaboration Software, Raises $50 Million. Zhao is a designer and his philosophies has found its way into every nook and cranny of Notion. More in Internet and Social. “Adding another person doesn’t necessarily give you a higher-quality ‘Moby Dick.’ It doesn’t even necessarily make it faster.”. That traction attracted venture capitalists and others who wanted to invest in Notion last year. Zhao: We think tools should mimic the way people’s brains work. Join now to see all activity Experience. We started with Notion 1.0, which was all about docs and notes, and then introduced 2.0 with databases in the spring of 2018. Notion has hired seven salespeople, who will not be able to visit clients in person while social distancing is in effect. It will be better because it won’t have to serve the agenda of the great evil overlord Salesforce, it will serve you. But really, there haven’t been many big changes to our essential work software in decades. The app blends everyday work apps into one. It seemed wrong that only a few people with the ability to code could build websites and other software tools. By early last year, Notion had nearly one million users. Notion started in 2012 as Canopy Technologies. Notion is for notes, tasks, wikis, and databases. The ambition of Zhao and his team at Notion can’t be contained in any single decade. A note back then from Notion founder Ivan Zhao: “Notion wants to challenge this status quo of ‘software as silos.’ For the 1.0 release, we are bundling real-time documents, wiki-like organization, and lightweight tasks into a unified tool that can handle pretty much all your team's knowledge needs – … People can dive into notes from other people’s meetings, or search for past campaigns to understand how to create a new one, just to name a couple of examples. 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 in Internet and Social. We recently interviewed him to learn the origin story of Notion, and to get his take on the evolving nature of work today and how his modular masterpiece enables it. Frey: What’s the origin story of Notion? It serves as an all-in-one workspace for note-taking, task management, and project management. “When the world changed, they changed their mind,” she said. In this way, you get to see how what you’re working on fits into the greater whole. — Ivan Zhao, Co-founder of Notion. The start-up is now in a tricky stage of building on its growth with more established customers. Growth of carbon emissions is becoming an ever-growing problem in this day and age. For example, Zhao has always stressed the use of design permutations: for every user flow, Zhao constantly iterates on design elements until he was confident that he had fully optimized the design. On Wednesday, Notion said it raised $50 million from Index Ventures and other investors that valued it at $2 billion. Your email address will not be published. The company was founded in 2013 and is headquartered in San Francisco, California. View phone numbers, addresses, public records, background check reports and possible arrest records for Ivan Zhao. That said, increasingly, teams need ways to work better together that don’t require a ton of time spent in in-person meetings (which slows everyone down), and a way to keep communication focused and action-oriented. Founded by Chris Prucha, Ivan Zhao, Wai Lam, and Simon Last, Notion also hired former LinkedIn India head Akshay Kothari as COO last year. And since everyone thinks and works differently, this means tools need to be very flexible. Not only does this make all of your team’s work easier to find, access, and dig into every day, it also increases transparency and the flow of information throughout teams. People eager to work there have gone to surprising lengths for attention — one recently sent a package of cupcakes decorated with his own face and the words “Hire me!”. Frey: How does Notion help teams brainstorm and innovate better? [8] “It’s not trying to be everything to everyone,” Justin Watt, MetaLab’s director of operations and marketing, said of the software. Only those who can code, and sometimes not even them. I had sold my previous company and I … -Ivan Zhao. While many start-ups grapple with the fallout from the pandemic, this San Francisco company raised more cash to survive. “‘Moby Dick’ is written by one person,” he said. Ivan Zhao, the founder of Notion, has created a tool that is remarkably unique: It helps users gain clarity and be more productive in their work – yet each one can design a unique workspace that’s tailored to his or her needs. This is how the notion was pitched. Ivan Zhao, over 4 years ago (edited over 4 years ago ) To be honest we don't have a methodology. “The killer feature is that it is what you make of it.”. Notion is emblematic of the kind of technology start-up that may be in a position to survive the shakeout in Silicon Valley. In a moment of uncertainty, Mr. Kothari said, “financing is a signal of stability, which is important for us.”. The tide turned that same year when Mr. Zhao released Notion’s software product. INFORMATION SHEET. Notion was founded by Ivan Zhao. Product Hunt describes Notion as the new Quip. See you next week for the Todoist CEO, Amir. Ivan's Twitter: follow him Notion: Get it here Learn Notion from Scratch: here On 6th May, we have Todoist CEO Amir ready to interview - stay tuned! Notion vs Trel­lo: Which Project Man­age­ment Tool Is Bet­ter For You. We still write documents that mimic paper. One of the biggest holes we fill is the information gap that emerges on teams that work across too many tools without visibility. Prior to joining LinkedIn, Kothari had previously sold Pulse News to the professional social network company for $90 million in 2013. If you would have been part of the tech community you would have definitely run into Notion at one point or the other. Frey: What holes does Notion fill that existing productivity, information management and collaboration tools weren’t addressing? It also introduced a new price-point of $4 per month aimed at personal users. Mr. Zhao said he was wary of bloat slowing the start-up down and degrading the quality of its product. It reinforces organizations to make sure all work being done by everyone rolls up to the same main objectives, and provides transparency for everyone into what’s going on and who is doing what at all times. Special Guest: Ivan Zhao. This is impossible for most teams to achieve because people are doing work in all kinds of places that aren’t connected, and people don’t think to share. Ivan Zhao started Notion, a productivity software start-up that has made money since 2018, in 2013. This made Notion significantly more affordable than Evernote, which at that time cost $70 per year. America's Richest Self-Made Women. Its founders, Ivan Zhao and Simon Last, had built their app on a suboptimal tech stack, and it crashed constantly.Their angel investment money dwindling, they faced a brutal choice: Fire their fledgling team of 4 and start over, or run out of cash. 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. We try to give people a blank canvas that lets them arrange their thoughts in ways that are most helpful to them. Notion is definitively a huge contender to every state-of-the-art collaboration product out there. Since last May, its users have organized more than 180 meet-ups in 21 countries and 52 cities. So that’s one thing. The company has stayed small, with 42 employees. Notion has intended to make the personal plan free since last year, said Ivan Zhao, Notion’s CEO. 2) it breaks traditional productivity software into blocks — text, lists, tasks, databases, images, etc. It's largely just learning via making – listening to what people want, and fitting the things we want around it. And we still store them in file cabinets — only now it’s all digital. It was started by Ivan Zhao, and is headquartered in San Francisco. The app blends everyday work apps into one. The company was founded in 2013 and is headquartered in San Francisco, California. People are used to working in shared documents and project spaces, and constantly communicating with their colleagues through various channels. Beyond that, the fact that you can add any variety of things to Notion docs — images, videos, embeds from 400+ other apps — means you can cobble together a lot of different modes of expression, inspiration pieces, and creative ideas in one place. Frey: How does Notion help individuals and teams to manage their tasks and projects better? Notion is a note-taking and collaboration application for your notes, tasks, wikis, and databases. We think the pendulum is swinging back to a bundled solution. Its tools help office workers, now quarantined in their homes, work together more seamlessly. You’re not sure but it is definitely different. The 32-year-old founder of Notion says, all while regularly dropping mentions of computing legends Alan Kay and Douglas Engelbart as his inspiration. Today, we chat with Ivan Zhao, the co-founder at Notion - a fast growing productivity software INFORMATION SHEET Ivan's Twitter: follow him Notion: Get it here Learn Notion from Scratch: here Thanks to Ivan for having me in the office to interview him. Your email address will not be published. About this Episode Today, we chat with Ivan Zhao, the co-founder at Notion - a fast growing productivity software . We also built in mechanisms like drag and drop so it’s easy and intuitive to rearrange your thoughts once they are “down on paper,” so to speak. You can view this kind of database as a Kanban board if that helps you visualize tasks better. Zhao: The all-in-one nature of Notion is very special. MetaLab said it used Notion to present work to clients and to collect their feedback all in one place, among other tasks. That allowed the start-up to garner new funding. The company declined to disclose its revenue, but said it had made money since 2018. In 2015, productivity tool Notion nearly died. Zhao: In Notion, you can create multiple layers of tasks so that it’s possible for everyone to see everyone’s tasks team-wide at the top level, and then drill down into individuals’ tasks at the most granular level. Also, the software that so many of us used every day couldn’t be modified at all. We wanted to create a space that was as distraction-free as humanly possible. The fund-raising was completed in 36 hours last week after the virus pushed Ivan Zhao, Notion’s founder and chief executive, and Akshay Kothari, Notion’s chief operating officer, to rethink their previous position of not relying too much on venture capital. 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. 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 you’ve been using, and work alongside your team in the same spot, and. Mr. Zhao started Notion after graduating from the University of British Columbia and working at Inkling, a document-sharing start-up in San Francisco. Notion’s office is devoid of the typical start-up tchotchkes and clutter. Investors spent months banging on the door of Notion's San Francisco office, and when the company took $50 million in funding in April, it valued Notion at $2 billion. Required fields are marked *. Notion had previously been valued at $800 million. In the future, Notion will be tackling this even more directly — giving people even more capability to shape the tools they use for an increasingly wider variety of applications. You’re really left with a completely blank, fresh space designed to feel like a breath of fresh air and spacious opportunity to think deeply. 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. Ivan Zhao: Tools that let you work the way your brain works. After you sign up on Notion with your Google account you are brought to a pre-configured workspace and it’s immediately clear this is not Quip; it’s different. Zhao: In college, I did freelance work for friends who wanted to build their own websites, and I saw a couple of things. China's Richest. There’s been kind of a big unbundling where the old guard like Microsoft Office has been broken down into many separate apps for documents, spreadsheets, notes, etc. Your first encounter with Notion will be perplexing. Frey: What has changed in the nature of work that has created the need for a tool like Notion? Ivan's Twitter: follow him Notion: Get it here Learn Notion from Scratch: here Thanks to Ivan for having me in the office to interview him. How did it come to be? One of the lucky ones is Notion, a workplace productivity start-up based in San Francisco, whose tools help people organize and track their work. Notion had previously been valued at $800 million. “Financing is a signal of stability, which is important for us,” said Akshay Kothari, Notion’s head of operations. Ivan Zhao is Co-founder and CEO of Notion, the all-in-one workspace for notes, documents, wikis, projects, and collaboration. See others named Ivan Zhao And we want to do this in a way that will help people think more clearly and collaborate with each other better. Chuck Frey: If you had to summarize what Notion is and what it represents in 10 words or less, how would you describe it? But the company delayed it amid a surge in usage related to … View Ivan Zhao’s profile on LinkedIn, the world’s largest professional community. Before the most recent funding, Notion, which was founded in 2013, had raised $17 million. About this Episode On Monday, we'll be interviewing Ivan Zhao, co-founder at Notion all about his story and vision. San Francisco, CA. Notion is for notes, tasks, wikis, and databases. Ivan Zhao, over 4 years ago (edited over 4 years ago) To be honest we don't have a methodology. SAN FRANCISCO — The spread of the coronavirus has meant feast or famine for technology start-ups. — so you can easily build and stack them however you want to solve your problems your own way (made easier with drag and drop, etc.). Was that intentional? At one point, Notion ran dangerously low on cash and laid off four employees. And you can filter it to see just your tasks or a colleague’s tasks. A lot of our functionality has been designed in service to that. Ram Shriram, a venture capitalist who invested in Notion in 2013, said that at many businesses, “a lot of the products we use were designed in the 1990s.” There is room for new workplace tools that take advantage of the internet and other advances so people can collaborate and have the most up-to-date data while they work, he said. In this way, Notion lets you capitalize on all of your institutional history and knowledge to keep doing new, exciting things. Zhao: Teams are increasingly tech-savvy, with things like shortcuts and working collaboratively becoming second nature. Quip’s mission is to be your living document, the next logical step in the iteration o… The fund-raising was completed in 36 hours last week after the virus pushed Ivan Zhao, Notion’s founder and chief executive, and Akshay Kothari, Notion’s chief operating officer, to rethink their previous position of … We’re all using tools that proscribe very specific workflows that rarely match the way we wish we could think, learn and work. In 2016, Mr. Zhao borrowed $150,000 from his mother to keep the start-up afloat. A designer by training, Ivan founded the company in 2016 to make it possible for everyone in the world to create the tools they need without knowing how to code. Founded by Chris Prucha, Ivan Zhao, Jessica Lam, and Simon Last in 2016, Notion is backed by investors that include Elad Gil, Felicis Ventures, First Round Capital, Sequoia Capital, and Thibaud Elziere and is headquartered in San Francisco, California. Ivan Zhao reflects on the thinking behind Notion Chuck Frey April 20, 2019 Interviews No Comments Ivan Zhao, the founder of Notion, has created a tool that is remarkably unique: It helps users gain clarity and be more productive in their work – yet each one can design a unique workspace that’s tailored to his or her needs. There’s a short history of this (and how it influenced Notion) here. It's largely just learning via making – listening to what people want, and fitting the things we want around it. The key to healthy culture and productivity is over-communication and true understanding of what everyone is working on and why it’s important. 1,502 Followers, 1,039 Following, 170 Posts - See Instagram photos and videos from Ivan Zhao (@ivanhzhao) We’re continuing to grow our functionality, and are excited about what’s ahead in 2019. Notion a singular tool that handles all your work outside email and Slack. Even as the company has grown stateside, though — at this point, CEO Ivan Zhao said, every week is Notion's biggest week of growth ever — it's boomed even faster internationally. Notion is also profitable. Notion gives you a bird’s eye view of everything your team is working on and then lets you drill down into the smallest details if and when you want. 77 others named Ivan Zhao are on LinkedIn. The current Notion is actually 2+ years in the making. We want to give more people the ability to build the tools they actually want and need without having to code. Frey: Notion’s interface seems to do a great job of “getting out of the way” so users can focus on what they want to create. He initially raised $2 million, which he spent on developing a product over several years. That’s why all of Notion’s functionality fades to the back as soon as you start typing. Last year, Notion expanded its service to larger corporate clients, who typically need armies of sales representatives and who negotiate complicated contracts. Frey: What’s your vision for how tools can help people to create and express their ideas better? The best way to do this is to create a database of all tasks across your entire team and organization. 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.