Aug. 4, 2025 · show notes

ABOUT THIS EPISODE

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

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

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IN THIS EPISODE

Ivan Zhao

Joubin Mirzadegan

Fuzzy Khosrowshahi

Eric Clapton

Matt MacInni

Steve Job

Douglas Engelbart

Alan Kay

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SHOW NOTES 🔗

00:00:00Trailer

00:00:41Introduction

00:01:23Burrito kind of person

00:08:04Care about craft

00:15:09Deep simplicity

00:22:45The culture

00:26:46Starting with no English

00:30:46There needs to be more

00:42:37Refactoring yourself

00:50:28There's a human in there

00:59:33Repetitive but fun

01:09:27Starting with somebody

01:10:23Outside Notion

01:12:00Hiring and management

01:17:16Schedule, exercise, reading

01:19:30Tech is never distributed evenly

01:26:37Who Notion is hiring

01:27:25What “grit” means to Ivan

01:28:04Outro

TRANSCRIPT 🔗

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