Notion's Lost Years: From Near-Collapse to Building the Future of Work

Notion's journey destroys that comfortable narrative entirely. Ivan Zhao's company didn't stumble into product-market fit through fortunate timing or viral growth hacks—they clawed their way out of what Ivan calls "the lost years" through a combination of stubborn vision, systematic thinking, and the kind of perseverance that borders on obsession.

What emerges from Ivan's reflection on this journey is a masterclass in a different kind of entrepreneurship—one that prioritizes craft over growth metrics, systems thinking over feature velocity, and long-term vision over quarterly milestones. The philosophical implications run deeper than startup strategy. Notion's horizontal approach to software—building tools that users can configure for any workflow rather than prescriptive applications for specific use cases—represents a fundamental belief about human potential and creativity.

Key Takeaways

Notion survived "lost years" of multiple complete code rewrites and product resets by maintaining unwavering conviction in their horizontal software vision while "sugar-coating the broccoli" to make complex tools accessible to mainstream users
The company nearly collapsed during COVID when their single database architecture approached capacity limits with only weeks to spare, forcing rapid infrastructure scaling that revealed their deep user dependence and product-market fit
Strategic decisions to stay small and prioritize systems over headcount enabled Notion to serve millions of users with a fraction of the team size typical for companies of similar scale, demonstrating efficiency advantages of thoughtful organizational design
Building horizontal software requires accepting the "joys and pains" of infinite user creativity, where success depends on creating flexible foundations rather than prescriptive workflows, demanding different product development approaches than vertical solutions
Ivan's philosophy of "craft and values" as foundational elements prioritizes long-term thinking and aesthetic sensibility over rapid feature development, creating sustainable competitive advantages through attention to detail and user experience quality
Community-led growth strategies proved more effective than traditional marketing for horizontal products, as users naturally showcase creative applications that inspire others while building authentic advocacy that scales organically
The approach of hiding transformative vision behind immediately useful functionality—"sugar-coating the broccoli"—enables revolutionary products to gain adoption before users understand their full potential, reducing resistance to paradigm shifts
Perseverance through apparent failure periods becomes essential for breakthrough innovation, as truly transformative products often require market education and user behavior changes that take years to materialize before achieving sudden acceleration

Timeline Overview

00:00–04:41 — Introduction to Ivan Zhao: Background introduction covering Notion's current success and setting stage for untold story of struggles, near-collapse, and unconventional journey to product-market fit
04:41–07:46 — Ivan's early life and education: Growing up in small Chinese town, moving to Canada for education, early exposure to technology and design thinking that shaped his approach to building products
07:46–10:49 — Discovering the vision for Notion: The foundational insight about horizontal software and giving users power to build their own tools, early prototypes and vision crystallization for transformative productivity platform
10:49–13:56 — The lost years of Notion: Multiple product resets, complete code rewrites, struggling to find market fit while maintaining conviction in core vision, financial challenges and uncertainty during development phase
13:56–17:14 — Rebuilding and perseverance: Strategic decisions to rebuild codebase from scratch, maintaining team morale through uncertainty, balancing vision with practical market needs and user feedback integration
17:14–18:53 — Layoffs and company morale: Difficult decisions to reduce team size, maintaining culture and motivation through financial constraints, lessons about organizational resilience during challenging periods
18:53–25:08 — Advice for startup founders: Key insights about perseverance, balancing vision with market reality, importance of craft and systems thinking, strategies for surviving extended development cycles without traditional metrics
25:08–29:56 — Product-market fit: Recognition of breakthrough moments, understanding when horizontal products achieve market validation, difference between initial adoption and true product-market fit for complex tools
29:56–34:27 — Staying lean and efficient: Philosophy of systems over headcount, scaling through intelligent automation rather than team expansion, maintaining small team advantages while serving millions of users
34:27–37:20 — Creating a unique office culture: Physical space design reflecting company values, balancing craft with productivity, creating environments that support both individual focus and collaborative innovation
37:20–38:44 — Craft and values: the foundation of Notion's philosophy: Deep commitment to aesthetic sensibility and technical excellence, balancing artistic vision with business pragmatism, long-term thinking over short-term optimization
38:44–41:24 — Navigating tradeoffs in product and business building: Decision-making frameworks for horizontal products, balancing complexity with usability, strategic choices about feature development and market positioning
41:24–49:11 — Leadership and personal growth: Ivan's evolution as CEO and leader, learning to balance technical vision with business leadership, personal development through company challenges and successes
49:11–51:08 — Challenges and crises: lessons from Notion's journey: COVID database crisis revealing user dependence, infrastructure scaling under pressure, organizational resilience through unexpected challenges and rapid problem-solving
51:08–01:02:40 — Building horizontal software: joys and pains: Philosophy of user empowerment through flexible tools, challenges of infinite use cases, product development strategies for platforms versus applications
01:02:40–01:06:17 — Philosophy of tools and human potential: Vision of technology as enablement for human creativity, beliefs about user capability and autonomy, long-term implications of horizontal software for productivity and work
01:06:17–END — Lightning round and final thoughts: Personal insights, recommended resources, advice for founders building transformative products, reflections on journey and future vision for Notion

The Lost Years: Building in the Wilderness of User Indifference

Notion's "lost years" represent a period of multiple complete product resets and code rewrites while maintaining unwavering conviction in a vision that seemed increasingly disconnected from market reality. Ivan describes this time as essential preparation for building horizontal software, even though it appeared like wasted effort to outside observers and strained the company's resources to breaking points.
The philosophical challenge of building horizontal software meant that traditional product-market fit signals didn't apply, as users needed to discover creative applications themselves rather than being guided through predetermined workflows. This required accepting extended periods of apparent stagnation while users gradually understood the platform's potential.
Strategic decisions during this period prioritized foundational systems and architectural integrity over feature velocity or user growth metrics, creating technical debt that could support infinite scalability rather than optimizing for immediate user acquisition. This approach demanded extraordinary patience and conviction from both founders and early employees.
The psychological toll of building against conventional wisdom while watching resources dwindle required developing internal metrics of progress that weren't reflected in traditional startup success indicators. Ivan learned to measure advancement through user creativity and platform capability rather than revenue growth or user adoption rates.
Market education became a parallel challenge to product development, as potential users needed to understand entirely new categories of software interaction rather than adapting familiar workflows to new tools. This educational burden extended the time to product-market fit while building deeper user engagement once adoption occurred.
The persistence through apparent failure periods ultimately became Notion's greatest competitive advantage, as competitors focused on faster-growing vertical applications while Notion quietly built infrastructure for horizontal creativity that would prove impossible to replicate quickly once market demand materialized.

The COVID Crisis: When Success Nearly Became Catastrophe

Notion's near-collapse during COVID resulted from architectural decisions made during the lost years when infinite scalability seemed like a distant concern, as their single database architecture approached capacity limits with only weeks to spare before complete system failure. This crisis revealed both the depth of user dependence they had built and the urgent need for infrastructure transformation.
The technical challenge of scaling a horizontal platform under extreme time pressure required making architectural decisions that could support millions of users across infinite use cases while maintaining data integrity and system performance. The successful resolution demonstrated the team's technical capabilities while exposing dangerous assumptions about growth patterns.
User behavior during the pandemic created unprecedented demand for flexible productivity tools as remote work forced organizations to adapt quickly to new workflows, overwhelming Notion's infrastructure while simultaneously validating their horizontal approach to software design. The crisis became an accidental stress test of both technical systems and product-market fit.
The response to the crisis required rapid team coordination and decision-making under extreme pressure, testing organizational resilience and technical expertise while maintaining user trust during system instability. The successful navigation of this challenge proved the team's capability to handle large-scale operations.
Infrastructure scaling solutions implemented during the crisis established foundations for future growth while learning critical lessons about horizontal platform architecture that informed subsequent technical decisions. The experience transformed crisis into strategic advantage through forced infrastructure maturation.
The timing of the crisis coincided with market validation of horizontal productivity tools as organizations worldwide sought flexible solutions for rapidly changing work environments, turning potential catastrophe into accelerated growth opportunity once technical challenges were resolved.

Systems Over Headcount: The Philosophy of Intelligent Scaling

Notion's approach to staying lean while serving millions of users demonstrates how intelligent systems design can create productivity advantages that scale more effectively than traditional headcount expansion. Ivan's philosophy prioritizes automation and thoughtful architecture over hiring additional team members to handle increased operational complexity.
The decision to remain small forces creative problem-solving and systems thinking that larger teams might avoid through brute force solutions, creating competitive advantages through efficiency and organizational agility that become difficult for competitors to replicate as they scale traditionally.
Operational efficiency through small team coordination enables faster decision-making and more cohesive product vision than organizations fragmented across multiple departments and communication layers. This streamlined approach maintains startup agility while serving enterprise-scale user bases.
Technical architecture decisions during the early years prioritized scalability and automation over manual processes, anticipating future growth while maintaining lean operations through intelligent system design rather than proportional workforce expansion. This foresight created sustainable competitive advantages.
Team member versatility becomes essential when maintaining small teams at scale, requiring individuals who can contribute across multiple domains rather than specialized roles that fragment responsibility and require additional coordination overhead. This generalist approach improves organizational resilience.
Resource allocation strategies focus on high-leverage activities and strategic investments rather than incremental headcount additions, ensuring that growth investments create disproportionate value rather than proportional cost increases that erode competitive advantages over time.

Sugar-Coating the Broccoli: Making Revolutionary Tools Accessible

Ivan's strategy of "sugar-coating the broccoli" involves hiding transformative capabilities behind immediately useful functionality, allowing users to discover advanced features organically rather than being overwhelmed by the platform's full complexity during initial adoption. This approach reduces resistance to paradigm shifts while enabling gradual sophistication.
The challenge of horizontal software adoption requires balancing infinite flexibility with intuitive onboarding, as new users need immediate value while advanced users require deep customization capabilities. Sugar-coating enables this dual optimization through progressive disclosure of platform capabilities.
Market positioning strategies emphasize familiar use cases and workflows to gain initial adoption before revealing the platform's true potential for workflow transformation, allowing users to build confidence with simple applications before attempting complex customizations that might initially seem intimidating.
User education through practical examples and templates provides scaffolding for discovering advanced capabilities, enabling self-directed learning that feels empowering rather than overwhelming while building deeper platform engagement over time. This approach scales user sophistication without requiring proportional support resources.
The psychological aspects of tool adoption favor familiar patterns initially, with revolutionary capabilities being accepted gradually as users build confidence and understanding through successful experiences with simpler applications. Sugar-coating respects this psychological progression while maintaining long-term vision.
Product development implications include designing simple entry points that connect to sophisticated capabilities, ensuring that basic functionality provides genuine value while serving as gateways to advanced features that differentiate the platform from simpler alternatives.

Building Horizontal: The Philosophy of User Empowerment

Horizontal software philosophy fundamentally believes in user creativity and capability, designing tools that enable infinite applications rather than prescriptive workflows that limit user autonomy. This approach requires different product development strategies than vertical solutions optimized for specific use cases.
The "joys and pains" of building horizontal platforms include witnessing extraordinary user creativity while accepting responsibility for enabling every possible workflow, creating technical and design challenges that don't exist when building focused applications with predetermined user paths.
Product development for horizontal platforms requires building foundational capabilities that can support unanticipated use cases rather than optimizing specific workflows, demanding architectural thinking and systems design that prioritizes flexibility over efficiency for particular applications.
User community dynamics become essential for horizontal platforms as users teach each other creative applications and share templates that extend the platform's apparent capabilities, creating network effects through knowledge sharing rather than traditional social features.
Market positioning challenges include communicating value propositions that apply across infinite use cases rather than highlighting specific benefits for particular workflows, requiring marketing approaches that emphasize potential and flexibility rather than predetermined outcomes.
Competitive advantages emerge through user investment in customized workflows that create switching costs beyond traditional software metrics, as users develop sophisticated configurations that would be difficult to recreate on alternative platforms, building moats through user creativity rather than proprietary features.

Craft and Values: The Foundation of Sustainable Innovation

Ivan's commitment to craft as a foundational principle prioritizes aesthetic sensibility and technical excellence over rapid feature development, creating sustainable competitive advantages through attention to detail and user experience quality that compound over time rather than diminishing through competitive pressure.
Values-driven decision-making provides consistent frameworks for navigating tradeoffs between short-term optimization and long-term vision, enabling organizational coherence during rapid growth while maintaining product quality and user trust that support sustainable business development.
The balance between artistic vision and business pragmatism requires developing organizational cultures that respect both creative excellence and market reality, allowing teams to pursue ambitious goals while remaining grounded in user needs and competitive dynamics.
Long-term thinking advantages become apparent when craft-focused organizations build capabilities that competitors cannot easily replicate through increased spending or team expansion, as aesthetic sensibility and technical excellence require cultural development rather than resource allocation.
Design philosophy integration throughout organizational decision-making creates coherent user experiences that extend beyond interface design to include business model choices, customer support approaches, and strategic positioning that reinforce brand values and user trust.
Sustainability advantages emerge when craft-focused approaches create user loyalty and advocacy that reduces customer acquisition costs while increasing lifetime value, demonstrating how values-driven development can create superior business outcomes over optimization-focused alternatives.

Community-Led Growth: Scaling Through User Creativity

Notion's community-led growth strategy leverages user creativity to demonstrate platform capabilities more effectively than traditional marketing, as authentic use cases created by real users provide credible evidence of value while inspiring others to explore similar applications.
User-generated content through templates, tutorials, and showcase examples creates scalable onboarding resources that require minimal company investment while providing more relevant and inspiring guidance than professionally produced materials, building community engagement while reducing support costs.
Network effects through knowledge sharing enable users to teach each other advanced techniques and creative applications, creating value that scales with user base size while reducing the company's educational burden and building stronger user community bonds.
Organic advocacy emerges when users become genuinely excited about their customized workflows and want to share their productivity improvements with others, creating authentic word-of-mouth marketing that carries more credibility than traditional promotional approaches.
Platform evangelism develops naturally when users invest significant time in customizing workflows and discovering creative applications, as their personal investment creates emotional attachment and desire to validate their choices through recruiting others to the platform.
Growth strategy implications include investing in community infrastructure and user empowerment tools rather than traditional marketing channels, recognizing that horizontal platforms benefit more from user creativity showcases than feature-focused promotional campaigns.

Common Questions

Q: How did Notion survive the "lost years" without traditional metrics of success?
A: By maintaining conviction in their horizontal software vision while measuring progress through user creativity and platform capability rather than conventional growth metrics.

Q: What does "sugar-coating the broccoli" mean in product development?
A: Hiding transformative capabilities behind immediately useful functionality, allowing users to discover advanced features organically rather than being overwhelmed initially.

Q: How can companies scale efficiently without proportional headcount growth?
A: By prioritizing intelligent systems design and automation over manual processes, enabling small teams to serve large user bases through thoughtful architecture.

Q: What makes building horizontal software different from vertical applications?
A: Horizontal platforms must support infinite use cases and user creativity rather than optimizing specific workflows, requiring different technical and design approaches.

Q: How do you maintain craft and values while scaling rapidly?
A: By establishing clear decision-making frameworks that prioritize long-term vision over short-term optimization, ensuring organizational coherence during growth.

The Deeper Lesson: Redefining Success in the Age of Instant Everything

Notion's journey forces a fundamental reconsideration of how we measure progress and define success in technology innovation. In an ecosystem obsessed with rapid scaling, viral growth, and quarterly milestones, Ivan Zhao's story reveals the profound limitations of conventional startup wisdom when applied to truly transformative products.

The "lost years" weren't lost at all—they were essential incubation for building something that couldn't be rushed, optimized, or growth-hacked into existence. While competitors focused on faster-growing vertical applications with clearer metrics and more predictable user journeys, Notion quietly built infrastructure for human creativity that would prove impossible to replicate once market demand materialized.

This approach requires a different kind of entrepreneurial courage: the willingness to appear unsuccessful while building the foundations for extraordinary impact. It demands patience in an impatient world, craft in an efficiency-obsessed culture, and vision that extends beyond the next funding round or quarterly board meeting. Most critically, it requires believing in user potential rather than user limitations.

The philosophical implications extend beyond startup strategy to fundamental questions about technology's role in human creativity and productivity. Notion's horizontal approach represents a bet that people want tools for thinking rather than applications for doing—platforms that enhance human capability rather than replacing human judgment. This vision of technology as enablement rather than automation offers a compelling alternative to the prevailing narrative of AI displacement and algorithmic optimization.

For founders contemplating similar journeys, Notion's story provides both inspiration and warning. The path of building transformative platforms demands extraordinary personal cost, organizational resilience, and market patience that few venture-backed environments support. Yet for those willing to sacrifice conventional growth for deeper impact, it demonstrates how apparent weaknesses can become unassailable strengths when aligned with genuine vision and executed with relentless craft.

The ultimate lesson transcends business strategy to touch something more fundamental about human potential and technological possibility. In a world increasingly shaped by predetermined workflows and algorithmic optimization, Notion proves that there remains space for tools that trust users to build their own solutions, platforms that prioritize flexibility over efficiency, and companies that measure success through user empowerment rather than engagement metrics.

Ivan Zhao's journey suggests that the most important innovations emerge not from optimizing existing categories but from reimagining the fundamental relationship between humans and their tools. In choosing to build horizontal rather than vertical, craft over velocity, and systems over headcount, Notion demonstrates how patient vision and technical excellence can create entirely new possibilities for human creativity and organizational capability.

Notion's story reveals how apparent weaknesses—slow growth, product complexity, organizational stubbornness—can become defining strengths when aligned with genuine vision and executed with extraordinary craft.