Notion’s lost years, near collapse during COVID, staying small to move fast, building horizontal

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 rewrites 3. Why Notion prioritized systems over headcount, keeping the team small and focused even at scale 4. Why Ivan believes in craft and…