How Notion Reimagined Productivity Tools | Ivan Zhao

Ivan Zhao joins Joubin Mirzadegan on Grit to break down how the company’s minimalist design became a strategic edge in a world overwhelmed by bloated software. He shares why the AI agent still hasn’t arrived, and how Notion’s modular approach might be the closest thing to making it real. Guest: Ivan Zhao, co-founder and CEO of Notion Chapters: 00:00 Trailer 00:41 Introduction 01:23 Burrito kind of person 08:04 Care about craft 15:09 Deep simplicity 22:45 The culture 26:46 Starting with no English 30:46 There needs to be more 42:37 Refactoring yourself 50:28 There's a human in there 59:33 Repetitive but fun 01:09:27 Starting with somebody 01:10:23 Outside Notion 01:12:00 Hiring and management 01:17:16 Schedule, exercise, reading 01:19:30 Tech is never distributed evenly 01:26:37 Who Notion is hiring 01:27:25 What “grit” means to Ivan 01:28:04 Outro Mentioned in this episode: Fuzzy Khosrowshahi, Airbnb, Sequoia Capital, Linear, Figma, Apple, Things, Microsoft, BMW, Lumiere, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, Rippling, Matt MacInnis, Inkling, Steve Jobs, Douglas Engelbart, Alan Kay, Bill Gates, OpenAI ChatGPT, Y Combinator, Andrej Karpathy, Toby Schachman, Simon Last, Spotify, Slack Connect with Ivan Zhao X: https://x.com/ivanhzhao LinkedIn:   / ivanhzhao   Connect with Joubin X: https://x.com/Joubinmir LinkedIn:   / joubin-mirzadegan-66186854   Email: grit@kleinerperkins.com Learn more about Kleiner Perkins: https://www.kleinerperkins.com/