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Podcast: Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
Episode: 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)
Description: 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.—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 rewrites3. Why Notion prioritized systems over headcount, keeping the team small and focused even at scale<...