🚀 Notion: Featuring founder takeaways from Ivan Zhao
Featuring stories from Notion Founder Ivan Zhao!
NOTE: This is part 2 of our #NotionPartner series
This week we are featuring founder takeaways from Notion founder Ivan Zhao! And if you are a startup, Notion is offering the chance for you to get started with up to $1000 in credit!
⚾ The Elevator Pitch:
Notion is a digital office that combines note-taking, document sharing, project management, and wikis in one tool. It’s so flexible that teams can tailor their workflows to work how they want to and in turn, they can focus less on documenting the past, and more on crafting the future.
For high-growth startups and tech companies, Notion is one tool for your entire company to share knowledge, ship projects, and collaborate. Keep everyone aligned from scoping to launch day.
👇 The Drop Down
Site: https://ntn.so/dailydropout
Founded: 2012
Traction: 90% of Forbes Cloud 100 companies and over 50% of YC startups use Notion
📖 Founder takeaways
In 2015, collaborative workspace Notion nearly died. Its founders, Ivan Zhao and Simon Last, had built their app on a suboptimal tech stack, and it crashed constantly. So they sublet their San Francisco office and moved to a cheaper city where they could focus: Kyoto.
“Neither of us spoke Japanese and nobody there spoke English, so all we did was code in our underwear all day” - Ivan
☝️ Create many variations, then choose one
“Our general philosophy is to go crazy with permutations. If the taste is there, which you can grow by studying typography and the giants of industry, you can churn out versions until you find the best one.” - Ivan
To this day, we employ this method of endless iteration to make decisions. Designers create multiple versions of any deliverable, as do copywriters, engineers, and even the in-house illustrator. Stay loose, hash out a bunch of rough drafts, and embrace big ideas. You’ll inevitably find the best option. This practice is the reason Notion’s brand is so distinct.
🏛️ Build institutional knowledge as you go
Given our early history, we have special appreciation for institutional memory — what has been tried before, what worked and what didn’t. As far as we’re concerned, nothing should ever be deleted. Here at Notion, we use our own platform as a way to keep track of our institutional knowledge as we grow.
✅ Think about tools and the future of work
Most people have 15 tabs open: one for email, one for Slack, one for Google Docs, and so on… And while each tool serves a purpose, it has been a 21st duck-tape solution to the complex and intertwined tasks we encounter each day. In the past 20 years, little has changed for these tools until Notion came along. Notion allows you to solve your problems your way, bounded only by your imagination.
🤝 Get Involved with Notion
Check out Notion’s Startups Program and get up to $1000 discounted here!
Start the new year right with these Notion templates!