Megan was part of the team that won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for explanatory journalism; and her methods have helped more than 7,000 people tell stories in front of more than 100,000 people. Sequoia partner Mike Vernal, a former Facebook vice president, was an original Notion angel investor back in 2013. Ivan Zhao is currently reading Blockchain Chicken Farm: And Other Stories of Tech in China's Countryside by Xiaowei Wang (Goodreads Author) bookshelves: currently-reading Want to Read Rate this book 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars Sep 30, 2021 10:35AM See all 11 books that Ivan is reading rss Ivan's Recent Updates Then, on New Years Day in 2021, as Notion workers were relaxing at home, Kothari and Zhao started getting alerts saying Notion had crashed. The iPhone totally opened up creation, Zhao says. You can be a designer. Theyd just laid off their only colleagues. Katie. In the right hands, using Notion feels for non-developers like finally gaining the superpowers of a developer who can set up their own custom software. Kothari and Zhao talk about this moment as still the early innings of Notion, and see Notion 1.0 as about lists, Notion 2.0 as about databases and the upcoming Notion 3.0 as about whole workflows. Theyd seen it coming, says Zhao, like a Doomsday clock. A328 David P Rall Building. The romantic goal is: Can we make tools that allow people to use computers like a new medium? Zhao reached out and asked Last for a meeting. In 2016, Mr. Zhao borrowed $150,000 from his mother to keep the start-up afloat. Im betting on that most people can create their own tools. Ivan Zhao Managing Director Guangzhou. If it doesnt feel good, then well go back to code and go back to design. 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. Growth has been rapid since the 2021 investments. We can reproduce that. She grew up in her hometown as an ordinary kid without any serious expectations of making a career in the show business. At that time, they declined to meet any venture capitalists or discuss acquiring a higher valuation.. Sequoia led Notions 2021 round of $250 million. 3,234 Followers, 1,367 Following, 180 Posts - See Instagram photos and videos from Ivan Zhao (@ivanhzhao) 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. So Im saying, and Im seeing, and Im hoping that were in this pendulum swing from one product, Microsoft Office, to too many SaaS products. His parents sacrificed to send him to school in America, so Kothari says he did nothing but study when he got to Purdue University in Indiana. About. There, Kothari, liberated because he was paying his own way, took a design thinking bootcamp course just because it sounded like fun. An Alloy Platform of DualFingerprints for HighPerformance Stroke Screening. Ivan Pavlov, in full Ivan Petrovich Pavlov, (born September 14 [September 26, New Style], 1849, Ryazan, Russiadied February 27, 1936, Leningrad [now St. Petersburg]), Russian physiologist known chiefly for his development of the concept of the conditioned reflex. One of the reasons its so popular is that it chains together all the notifications and the communications of the SaaS products together, right? 1988-1991 - Team Leader with Centro-Svilluppo Materiali (Centre for Materials Development). ! he says with a laugh. You distill from something not in the circular place you are living but look in a plane outside of what you are working. 2) it breaks traditional productivity software into blocks text, lists, tasks, databases, images, etc. They were running out of money. Even though he had started Notion to help humans use computers for more than word processing, he realized this new version would have to be just that, only built with some flexible tool-making capabilities layered incloser to, he imagined, the kind of software his idols had once envisioned. 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 thats tailored to his or her needs. They neednt have worried, and they havent spent it. For a two- or three-year window, Notion was high on our list of companies that we admired from afar, Vernal says. Zhao was trying to make good on ideas that he describes as romantic, ones developed by his idols: tech pioneers Alan Kay, Ted Nelson and Douglas Engelbart. They did this, Zhao says, by building relationships with power users. 111 Tw Alexander Dr. Research Triangle Park, NC 27709. I can be a designer. Inside Design: How do you stop the undeniable and neverending pressure for you guys to raise more money, go hire a hundred people, to expand? Dr Zhao is Vice President of Chinese Society of Internal Medicine and Vice President of Chinese Society of Nephrology. A cookie set by YouTube to measure bandwidth that determines whether the user gets the new or old player interface. Zhao saw these people as members of a community, offering them early access to new features, face time with Notion team members and the opportunity to give input on features. These men saw computers as a way to help humans be more imaginative, more creative, more capable of leveraging intelligence in ways not yet imagined. Come on! The 32-year-old founder of Notion says, all while regularly dropping mentions of computing legends Alan Kay and Douglas Engelbart as his inspiration. I think we have an early fit that we can double down on. Required fields are marked *. Notions design also distinguishes it, with a restrained, black-and-not-quite-white aesthetic. Create press releases and blog posts and keep . Welcome to my portfolio. I argue thats the only way to solve a problem. In a moment of uncertainty, Mr. Kothari said, financing is a signal of stability, which is important for us.. Simon is a designer and engineer residing in SanFrancisco. Theyre all kind of ugly, right? He made maybe five websites. The men didnt yet charge to use Notion; they wanted to grow users first. But really, there havent been many big changes to our essential work software in decades. We got a lot of traction there. Soon, tech insiders, people involved with Y Combinator and other startup incubators, were using it. This is not surprising if you consider how these tools evolved. Lets just reset this. Now just the two of them, Zhao and Last wanted to go somewhere cheaper than San Francisco, and somewhere theyd never visited. We shook hands, [I had to show] I am not a crazy person.. Notion is also profitable. I thought [investing] was a mistake, because the company didnt go anywhere, he says. Erin Griffith. SAN FRANCISCO The spread of the coronavirus has meant feast or famine for technology start-ups. He talked to thousands of customers and grew to understand the use cases and depth of the productsetting him up, he says, to figure out how to build out the rest of Notion. Hes out there, just trying to democratize software, make it so that everybody can put these building blocks together. Kothari said he was so impressed with the scope of Zhaos vision that he thought about Notion for months after the pitch, ultimately calling him and offering Zhao a bigger investment. Id never had a guest come to the office and touch the tables, and appreciate the quality of the leather of the chairs. Zhao was also recently tapped to direct @marvel's upcoming film The Eternals, making her the third woman, and only the second woman of colour to handle a major movie in the superhero boom Join . Prof. DAN ZHAO Biography I am currently the Director of Master Engineering Studies and Chair of Research Committee in University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand. The tide turned that same year when Mr. Zhao released Notions software product. We try to give people a blank canvas that lets them arrange their thoughts in ways that are most helpful to them. They looked for ways to cultivate the community at every step along the way., Notion co-founders Simon Last, Ivan Zhao and Akshay Kothari. Inspired by the progressive ideas which D. I. Pisarev, the most eminent of the Russian literary critics of the 1860's and I. M. Sechenov . Kothari remembers that when Zhao posted, he shared a game app hed developed in 2010 called Three Degrees of Wikipedia, which is no longer available. In viral videos, Gen Z power users would show off the ways theyd customized Notion to help them get more out of their hobbies and to collaborate on school projects. The Notion community ballooned in March 2018 when David Pierce, then the personal technology columnist at The Wall Street Journal, wrote a glowing review of Notion 2.0. Take a step back, and see how you can fundamentally solve it. Frey: Notions interface seems to do a great job of getting out of the way so users can focus on what they want to create. Use first principles thinking, what some people call systems thinking. Dont base your approach just on copying and tweaking a little bit what other people have done. Front-end stuff you can be taught, its not that hard, right? I am Ivan Zhao, cofounder/designer of Notion - a unified tool for docs, wikis, and tasks. 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. Jani Zhao was born on the 19th of October, 1992. Last had joined Notion while in college, so as the older founder, Zhao was left to decide how to save the business: And that feels likefuck it. Ivan's interest in coding and programming started during his childhood. The 32-year-old founder of Notion says, all while regularly dropping mentions of computing legends Alan Kay and Douglas Engelbart as his inspiration. Also, as you use the product, youll 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. And then the web-first application came. Today, Zhao estimates Notion can consistently replace about a dozen pieces of software like project-management or list-making tools. What do you think is going to happen with digital products? Movies. In 2015, Notion co-founders Simon Last and Ivan Zhao had removed from their lives anything that wasn't writing code and eating noodles. I wonder what does it take for every company, every team, every student to run on Notion? Its founders, Ivan Zhao and Simon Last, had built their app on a suboptimal tech stack, and it crashed constantly. The product with the most votes in 24 hours earns additional promotion, as well as international tech-community hype. How high is the bar to be considered good at a skill? And until more people could do that, Zhao felt that the real promise of human-computer interaction would be limited to the creativity of coders, who tend to write software that solves their own problems, or they write software that people will pay to use. Instead, the company focused primarily on growing the community. Guannan Zhang, Jing Wang, Ivan S. Maksymov, Andrew D. Greentree, Jiming Hu, Aiguo . View Site. Jani Zhao's age is 30. International model who is known for having earned representation from several different agencies including Stacey Castro Media and . It became how people think, how people communicated. And you can filter it to see just your tasks or a colleagues tasks. Were continuing to grow our functionality, and are excited about whats ahead in 2019. Vernal said this focus on nurturing community was key to getting a foothold in the product world. It didnt work because the product was not understandable for most people. Notion leaders focus on explaining how, for the everyday office worker, it can be used out of the box. People and teams can customize it to greater and greater degrees, but average users can install it and start working immediately, using templates in the Notion catalog. notion.so. The best way to do this is to create a database of all tasks across your entire team and organization. He identifies as a gay man and is not out at work (only because he's still a student! Despite its success, Notions tiny 14-person team has remained heads down and somewhat mercurial. If you've paid much attention over the last few weeks, you may have noticed that AI is having a moment. And Notions mission is about software tool-making. Even if those tools just look like black-and-not-quite-white document editors at first. supporting ecosystems at Entrepreneurship Program, BRIC and Tea Time. That said, increasingly, teams need ways to work better together that dont require a ton of time spent in in-person meetings (which slows everyone down), and a way to keep communication focused and action-oriented. Right now very few of us can. Some of the earliest team members had already departed, and retaining the rest was growing more untenable by the day. Before the most recent funding, Notion, which was founded in 2013, had raised $17 million. Zhao: In Notion, you can create multiple layers of tasks so that its possible for everyone to see everyones tasks team-wide at the top level, and then drill down into individuals tasks at the most granular level. Notion had previously been valued at $800 million. N/A. Then Bill Gates won, so Microsoft Windows runs everywhere. Enjoy the read! In this way, Notion lets you capitalize on all of your institutional history and knowledge to keep doing new, exciting things. Herein, we report a new synthetic approach for the synthesis of chloro- and bromofuroxans. Zhao had cold-emailed Herzberg, saying he was a fan of how Slack built its product and brand, and, impressed by the energy in the email, she invited him to drop by the office. He and Zhao met up, just as they always had. At MetaLab, a 140-person design agency in Vancouver, Notion has now replaced 12 different tools, including Google Slides and Trello, a list-making service. She feels strongly about cocktails and NPR. Things looked pretty bad from the outside, too, says Kothari, who had been one of Notions angel investors. And there were no good tools, Zhao said. Biography of Ivan Zhao Last update: November 30, 2022 Career Ivan Zhao is currently Chief Executive Officer at Notion Labs - View - Notion Labs org chart Create your alert to follow the career of Ivan Zhao. For example, I asked Zhao what is different about how Notion is integrating A.I., compared with Bing or ChatGPT. Dr Ivan SEAH Yu Jun . Related Markets 2. We think the pendulum is swinging back to a bundled solution. We realized, in order to be a big software tool, we have to start from a product that is already ubiquitous, that people recognize, and hide the tool-making, hide the programming ability, like how you sugarcoat broccoli. Lastly, theres 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. Even better luck trying to invest in his company: We spoke to the designer/founder (who was born in China before moving to Canada as child) about why designers should get their inspiration from other fields (One thing I personally do is go on Dribbble and look at whats popular. Today, billions of us use computers, yet only 0.34 percent of the global population are software developers. His first job was six months of answering support-desk tickets. 100% of the Fortune 100 collaborate with InVision. Inside Design: As the founder, how close does this version of Notion match the one in your mind? These were the kind of people who took it upon themselves to translate the Notion user guide into Korean because it was only available in English; who ran the Notion subreddit, now with 200,000 subscribers, and who ran the Notion Facebook groups in Korea and the Middle East, both with tens of thousands of members. When the work was done, the company celebrated with Zoom karaoke, complete with custom lyrics to Amazing Grace. Zhao, of course, has a copy stored on one of his Notion workspaces. Those are really good ideas and theres a lot of then. Its not trying to be everything to everyone, Justin Watt, MetaLabs director of operations and marketing, said of the software. He graduated in cognitive science and fine arts and worked at a software company named Inkling, before establishing Notion. It set itself apart from competitorswhich also include Dropbox, Atlassian and Oraclethrough a growing set of clever, built-for-purpose templates such as to-do lists, product roadmaps and client databases. Notion has hired seven salespeople, who will not be able to visit clients in person while social distancing is in effect. Per Vulture, she grew up as "a rebellious child and a poor student," but her father become a top executive at successful steel company Shougang Group. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. That keeps our workflow really quick. And if thats the goal, were still really early with that. A Ivan Zaho is a Founder at Notion based in San Francisco, California. So for a company like Notion, we dont need to do anything just to pick up those ideas and execute. Its like 90% perfect. Engelbart conceived of computers as a way to increase humanitys capacity to solve complex problems, not to just run computations, which was the bulk of computer work at the time. President of Beijing Society of Immunology. He has over 320 original manuscripts published in . This version had Notions iconic, black-and-not-quite-white look, and the ability to do word processing, of course, as well as to make drag-and-drop to-do lists and wikis, and it had more than 30 document templates for things like product roadmaps. Other startups are working to build out similar capabilities; in 2021, Google Workplace added something like Notions interconnectivity with the launch of Smart Canvas, and Microsoft has done the same for 365 with its Fluid Framework upgrade. industry Computer Software. Its still case by case. Notions 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. Each person were looking for will be similar to what we have now. I was pushed to go talk to people in supermarkets when they were buying ramen. Colleagues N/A. While humans were routinely using computers to do this kind of work by the early 2010s, when Zhao was reading this paper, he saw that a crucial element of Engelbarts vision was still missing. Now, our skin is fairly conservative too. Mr. Zhao started Notion after graduating from the University of British Columbia and working at Inkling, a document-sharing start-up in San Francisco. Theres no final pixel-perfect design. By navigating this website you agree to our cookie policy. Ivan Zhao: Tools that let you work the way your brain works. In his research, he discovered the conditioned reflex, which shaped the field of behaviorism in psychology. Moby Dick is written by one person, he said. Notion is staking a claim in a market dominated by giantsMicrosoft and Google, with more than 2 billion users between them. The site was down for four nerve-wracking hours. Notion has users in countries including Russia, Japan and Germany. But within a year or so, he left Inkling and started to assemble his team. She starred alongside Joana Solnado and Margarida Vilanova in the 2009 television series Sentimentos. Career Achievements Investments UX Designer - Corporate Marketing. But, UX and pixel-perfect design take some longer time. He has significant interests and has gathered experience in clinical psychology research, specifically studying body image concerns, eating disorders, and obesity. To do this, within the next 18 months or so, they will improve Notions project management capabilities, among other features, giving the software the final Lego bricks it needs to take on most SaaS companies, says Zhao. Inside Design: Youve hired four product designers. Nov 2021 - Present1 year 4 months. 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. To give you some background, our goal with Notion is to create the general purpose work tool for a post-file, post-MS Office world Zhao: tools that allow people to use computers like a new ivan zhao biography to! Software company named Inkling, before establishing Notion - team Leader with Centro-Svilluppo Materiali ( Centre Materials... For will be similar to what we have an early fit that we can double down.... 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