We try to give people a blank canvas that lets them arrange their thoughts in ways that are most helpful to them. At one point, Notion ran dangerously low on cash and laid off four employees. Frey: How does Notion help individuals and teams to manage their tasks and projects better? View Ivan Zhao’s profile on LinkedIn, the world’s largest professional community. It's largely just learning via making – listening to what people want, and fitting the things we want around it. Notion is definitively a huge contender to every state-of-the-art collaboration product out there. Notion vs Trello: Which Project Management Tool Is Better For You. This is how the notion was pitched. A lot of our functionality has been designed in service to that. Founded by Chris Prucha, Ivan Zhao, Wai Lam, and Simon Last, Notion also hired former LinkedIn India head Akshay Kothari as COO last year. Also, the software that so many of us used every day couldn’t be modified at all. Ivan Zhao, the founder of Notion, has created a tool that is remarkably unique: It helps users gain clarity and be more productive in their work – yet each one can design a unique workspace that’s tailored to his or her needs. Ivan has 2 jobs listed on their profile. Ivan Zhao, over 4 years ago (edited over 4 years ago ) To be honest we don't have a methodology. “Adding another person doesn’t necessarily give you a higher-quality ‘Moby Dick.’ It doesn’t even necessarily make it faster.”. More in Internet and Social. Join now to see all activity Experience. We’ve been able to eliminate a lot of meetings at Notion, for instance, because these discussions take place in a clear way inside the product right next to the work in question. By early last year, Notion had nearly one million users. That allowed the start-up to garner new funding. Frey: What holes does Notion fill that existing productivity, information management and collaboration tools weren’t addressing? That said, increasingly, teams need ways to work better together that don’t require a ton of time spent in in-person meetings (which slows everyone down), and a way to keep communication focused and action-oriented. When people have all their essential work tools in one place and are able to work there seamlessly together with their team, they get more done, they save a huge amount of time, their thinking is more clear and consistent, and project work flows more smoothly. Zhao: We think tools should mimic the way people’s brains work. Notion is also profitable. Zhao: We believe more people should be able to modify the tools they use in their everyday lives and work. Notion addresses both by making communication in the product more about utility — allowing people to collaborate on the same pages at the same time, and to have very targeted asynchronous conversations about specific work (using comments and discussions). 2) it breaks traditional productivity software into blocks — text, lists, tasks, databases, images, etc. You can view this kind of database as a Kanban board if that helps you visualize tasks better. Its founders, Ivan Zhao and Simon Last, had built their app on a suboptimal tech stack, and it crashed constantly.Their angel investment money dwindling, they faced a brutal choice: Fire their fledgling team of 4 and start over, or run out of cash. Before the most recent funding, Notion, which was founded in 2013, had raised $17 million. Zhao: In college, I did freelance work for friends who wanted to build their own websites, and I saw a couple of things. Notion is a collaboration platform with modified markdown support that integrates kanban boards, tasks, wikis, and databases. Zhao: We’ve heard from a number of people that Notion’s very minimalist, lightweight feel encourages people to write more — even if it’s just jotting down ideas. “When the world changed, they changed their mind,” she said. Lastly, there’s a lot of transparency that comes from storing all your knowledge, information and work in one place that your entire team can see and access. If you would have been part of the tech community you would have definitely run into Notion at one point or the other. Notion does this in a couple of ways: 1) It brings all your work into one space so you can close all the many apps and tabs you’ve been using, and work alongside your team in the same spot, and. 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