Transcription
Agent is a buzz word. Agent really
hasn't happened in knowledge work yet.
And notion is one of the few companies
in the past five plus years actually
been consolidating those contacts and
tools. This allow us to build knowledge
work agents. The difference between your
taste and ability to describe there's a
gap and ability to make there's another
gap. If you're a software maker you
actually know what the bugs are. I know
how things are roughly made. So I can
describe it and I know how to fix it.
Computing are just like reading and
writing. It's a medium that you can
shape. But until recently, computing is
by and large the medium that only the
programmer class can shape. When I
learned about that idea, that got me to
Darn Ocean.
[Music]
Welcome to Grit. I'm Juven, partner at
Kleiner Perkins, a show where we go
beyond the highlight reel and explore
the personal and professional challenges
of building history-making companies.
Today on the show, we have Ivan Zhao,
co-founder and CEO of Notion, the
workspace that reimagines how millions
of people organize, collaborate, and
build. I would describe Ivan as an
artist of technology, a deep thinker
around systems and tools that I think
really reflects the conversation that we
had today. Enjoy the episode. You strike
me as someone that generally does like
you look awesome. Like I've seen videos
of you before like you always your
presentation is very thought thought
through.
>> Oh, thank you.
>> So I'm surprised you didn't care.
>> I care but the effort reward probably
not worth it.
>> Yeah.
>> Like I'm not fancy. I like fashion but
I'm not fancy. Uh like I'm burrito guy.
If someone take me to a like five course
Michelin style dinner, I prefer the
burrito instead.
>> Why?
>> Um just simpler. Yeah. You know, uh all
your food is one place rather than you
have to wait for like 3 hours.
>> So it's the time.
>> Time is part of it. I would say um a
little bit too subtle the flavor. Maybe
I prefer like simple food in front of
you. You can just see everything.
Uh
maybe it's heavier flavor,
>> but time is probably the best the
biggest difference.
>> It's time for me too. I'm not a
Michelin. I like nice food, but I don't
like fancy food.
>> Generally,
>> if there's a white tablecloth,
>> it's already almost in my mind just too
fancy.
>> You can have white tablecloth, but still
fun. Like you go to a French restaurant,
white tablecloth, but fairly there could
be simple kind, right?
>> That's true. But it sometimes it takes
too long. Like usually
>> like we use white tablecloth at home.
>> My wife Yeah. My wife uh trained me into
uh white tablecloth
>> at at the dinner table.
>> Yeah, we uh at dinner table we have
proper tablecloth. White tablecloth. Uh
we have we eat proper calories and even
we were we don't cook at home but when
we wear a Door Dash we put into a proper
plates and with proper napkins and eat
on a white tablecloth.
>> What ethnicity is she?
>> She's Iranian.
>> I knew it. I'm I'm
>> Oh, you're Iranian.
>> I knew it.
>> How do you know that?
>> That's such a Persian thing to do.
>> Why? I did.
>> Well, like there's a
there is a formality in Persian culture,
especially around food.
>> What's your last name?
>> Madagon.
>> Mazardon. Okay.
>> Uh like they're definitely like food is
a
real ritual in Persian culture, as I'm
sure you've now.
>> I actually don't like Persian food that
much.
>> No way.
>> That's the joke that we just got
married. Uh
>> congrats. six months ago. One of the um
joke in the wedding speech we talk about
is how much I don't like Persian food
and uh and our CTO in and not he's also
Persian too. So that become a company
joke at this point.
>> So your wife is Persian, your CTO is
Persian and you don't like Persian food.
>> I don't. It's a little bit too bland.
They go back to the burrito point,
right?
>> The flavors aren't loud enough.
>> Yeah. Like Indian food is like a louder
version of Persian food. More flavorful.
There's no spice in Pers There's no
nothing spicy in Persian food.
>> Pretty pretty subtle. No.
>> Huh.
>> Yeah.
>> And so, can I revisit the white
tablecloth thing?
>> Go for it. Yeah.
>> Was that uh weird for you? Like when she
first started putting white tablecloth
down on the dinner table?
>> No, she's uh
it's like good evolution, right? like I
have to like go from college dorm room
to working then now like adoing a little
bit and that's a I see that's a step of
evolution wasn't too weird like she I
used to be Airbnb person and she she she
get me out of Airbnb or become a hotel
person then
>> everything's come full circle
>> kind of yeah well before in college like
I'm just Airbnb right so there wasn't a
hotel before that
>> yeah
when you were cuz you lived in Japan
right?
>> Uh for a couple summers. Yeah.
>> Didn't pick up the language.
>> No, Japanese it's uh I wouldn't say
necessarily too easy and it wasn't that
long a time. Um
um
but the the writing system they share a
lot of um Chinese uh born race. So share
a lot of writing characters with Chinese
and I can read quite a bit like a 20% of
the time 30% of the time.
>> Okay. So you roughly get a sense like,
oh, what is this book about or what is
the menu? Is it a chicken dish or is a
beef dish? No,
that's useful.
>> Is your style inspired by any of these
cultures?
>> You mean my personal style?
>> Your personal style?
>> No. Uh,
how do I got into clothes?
I was doing a lot of art in college. So
I did um I did science and art. So the
art part you you hang out with art
people, fashion and style you part of
it. And I during college student budget
buying designer clothes on eBay, right?
Uh yeah.
And it just stuck maybe. Do people at
work also think like, oh yeah, Ivan
dress is pretty cool?
>> They do. People do. Yeah. And people
also know that I'm a burrito person. So
>> it's I don't think it's a contradictory.
>> What do you mean?
>> Well, you could care about style, but
you also you also simp you could also be
simple at the same time, right? You
don't have to be you care about style
and fashion, but necessarily means
you're um you like five course dinner. I
have heard you can tell me if this is
true or not. I can't remember. Did I
read it somewhere?
You were you went to a meeting? I don't
know if it was with a VC or somebody and
you started like feeling the table like
uh like like is that true?
>> It's true. Yeah. I think I was from um
uh Danny Fernandez. He was at the Slack
back then. Uh
>> at Slack
>> and he became he went to Sequoa later.
She went to Sequoa. I I think I was
commenting on their new office. Slack
new office.
And what like you actually felt?
>> Well, you pay attention to the to the
surrounding, right? Uh I like to touch
things. So if it's a fabric, I sometimes
I just like to touch it, understand it.
And here you can tell, okay, this is
laminated. So
uh it's okay table.
>> Not the fanciest.
>> It doesn't need to be fancy, but it
could be
>> oak.
>> It could be wood, right? Proper wood
will be make a difference.
>> Yeah. Um
>> we need a new table.
>> Probably need a new table. Little bit
dark here. Little dark.
>> I like the dark.
>> Could be dark but not gray. I wouldn't
say I guess clim probably grayish color.
>> Yeah.
>> You know, it's actually funny. I was
thinking like I can't remember the last
time I ever wondered before a guest
walked in what the guest would think of
the room until you were about to walk in
and I thought, I bet you Ivan's going to
like judge what the room feels like.
stretching a little bit, but it doesn't
matter. Let me turn off my phone. Yeah,
>> that's fine. Born in tech, so
>> that's right.
>> Yeah. When you walk into your office,
the notion office, it's right here,
right downtown.
>> We just moved like a month ago, two
months ago. Yeah.
>> When you walk into that office, do you
have the same
judgment?
>> Um, I do. It's still work in progress.
And I would say we're in the middle of
renovating it.
It's more polished than I would like.
There's more gloss than the quality is
higher than I would like for it to be or
at least the glossy level.
>> What do you mean? Give me an example. Um
what the wood if you if you go to come
to our office we um it's like an I'm
going after a 19
early 1900 craftsman style a lot of wood
and there's a wood paneling wings
coating up to this high and there's
little shelves coming out. You can put
play, you can put books, you can put um
interesting things on top. So, feels
like not typical like a um tech office
and the wood material it's shinier than
I would like. back then the wood it
doesn't it's doesn't it wasn't that
shine as today's wood but it wasn't has
so much premier right so uh that's a
difference and it's another difference
is like I prefer things to live in a
little bit so feels like a little more
low-key if you have a too I believe you
have too good office your business go
down because you're not focused on the
right thing right so the feeling that
the office should be lived in should be
malible you can you should be able to
move things around you don't take the
office space too seriously even so that
the materials are honest. Um the vibe is
good. Um
yeah.
>> So
can I play this forward a little bit?
>> Go for it.
>> You have all these observations about
the office. It's a new office. It's not
to your It's not exactly what you want.
>> We are renovating it. So it's our
responsibility,
>> right? But like are people in the
company that are responsible for this
not like
how is Ivan care like does he not have
other things to care about right now?
Like how is he commenting on the
specificity of the veneer of this piece
of wood?
>> Well, first of all, I was the one picked
the wood initially. So I think there's a
difference between production and
sample, right? Um and people do know I
care a lot about this and uh it doesn't
take too much of my time. This is
something I can make judgment just like
a walking here. I can make it doesn't
take you too much time whether you for
you to decide whether you like a bar
when you're walking or not.
>> Right? So doing judgment of choice of
materials
take that amount of time for me. So,
and at some point I can't help it. It's
just like you can't if there's a loud
noise, you can't help but to hear it. If
there's aesthetically
not a great environment, but you can't
help but to see it. And but when you
make the room good, people feel it,
right? Most people before they join
Ocean, we try to invite candidates and
work from our office or come to our
office, meet more people in person and
often time that's one of the no the
selling feature for joining a company
because people do see we do care so much
about a lot of details, a lot of craft
including our people, including our
environment
and if the wood doesn't get fixed
>> does it drive you nuts? You know, I'll
just get used to it. I think it's too
late to fix it. So, because we already
put out the wood on three floors, that's
going to cost a lot and takes a lot of
time. So,
>> so you can just move on past that.
>> Yeah.
>> It won't drive you nuts.
>> I'm pretty pragmatic.
>> Okay.
and in the product in the notion because
the notion product itself is
uh I don't know there's got to be awards
that you've gotten for design and beauty
and aesthetics like it's it's well it's
it is the defining feature of the
product in my opinion is in many ways
it's it's a beautiful it's a beautiful
product it's beautiful software are you
even more attentive
>> in software
Probably yes. Uh I probably I'm good at
picking up bugs like like when things
off a little bit I can sense it. I feel
it. Um right before taking the car here
I was uh filing a bug about when you're
typing in the title of a page. It's a
little bit laggier than when you're
typing in the body.
Um it's so just it's common because when
you're typing a title, the title
probably need to render into different
many different places in notion. So you
trigger more rendering somewhere.
Therefore laggier than when you're
typing in the body of the page, right?
Uh
and there are probably like couple
hundred millisecond difference. But when
you just use the product every day, you
live in it just like you live in office.
You notice those things. If like in a
bizarro world some random great CEO came
in off the street and was using the
product knew it do you think they would
be able to feel in the way that a
founder does
in aggregate people can feel may they
might not be able to articulate just
like when you walk in the nice room
you'll be able to feel you like a bar
when walking when you like into a
restaurant you like the ambient but you
cannot why you like it, right? The
difference between your taste and
ability to describe, there's a gap and
ability to make, there's another gap.
So, I would say if you're a software
maker, uh you actually know what the
bugs are. Like I know, oh, probably
because in the title you're going to
render in more places, therefore that
caused the bug. I know how things are
roughly made, so I can describe it and I
can hopefully know how to fix it. Um,
for furniture, like for office, you
probably know it feels great, but you
don't know why. But if you pay attention
to interior, through architecture, you
can tell the why, right? But I cannot
make furniture. I'm not a furniture
maker, but I can sort of tell which
style I like, why I like it, which style
I want my office to feel like. Is there
a world where, going back to your
burrito comment, maybe like you need
some form of deep simplicity when
everything else is so consuming for you?
Like when you think about such
depth of detail about the world, whether
it's your company, the physical spaces
that you occupy. H,
>> that's a good point. I never thought
that way.
>> Yeah, you have to make some tradeoffs.
Food is the place I like.
I like food, but I'm not very like fancy
fancy foodie.
>> Yeah.
>> What else do I make trade-offs? Um,
food is definitely one. At the same
time, it's not everything is like you
mentioned notion care about craft. We're
pretty pragmatic. We're not a 10 out of
10. Like we are probably a seven out of
10. 6.5, seven out of 10. And I'm happy
with that. Like happy zone for me
probably is 7.5. But if you push that
too far, at least I believe if you push
that too far,
you're optimizing too much for the craft
and maybe beauty, but not enough for the
business and utility. So there's a
balance here.
Is that balance scientific or is it all
taste?
>> Well, scientific are going to reflecting
your revenue and growth. Yeah.
>> Right. Um,
and the taste part is more personal.
Like
>> you just I wouldn't be proud putting
something that's know one out of 10 in
terms of craft and detail, but great
business. Um,
yes, the notion
like there's a balance there, right? I
wanted to put out something I'm proud
of. Are there other maybe just using
this framing that I just came up with on
the simplicity around food, do you have
other areas of life that maybe you've
never thought about it this way, but
that counterbalance
some of these other things.
Like I'm not a super organized person by
default. Like I'm very detailed person
but I prefer not to do the organization.
>> Give me an example
>> like the way I use notion myself. People
must think I have a very elaborate
database relate to the other database
that track all everything. I'm just a
one page of the check boxes right I'm
not a productivity person. Uh
yeah, let's uh keep things rather. I
still use notebook, paper, notebooks to
write down things, but it's not in the
most organized way. Um
that's one example.
>> Are there
companies other software that you think
when you use them that they deeply care
about craft? Yeah, there are there are
ones that better than notion.
I would say uh
linear is a good one. The issue
tracking, bug tracking for engineer
product. Um
it's pretty specific in terms of use
cases, but they put a lot of they care a
lot of detail. Care a lot of detail,
right? It's fast. Uh it feels good. No.
Um
the vintage Apple definitely
it's like the OS of Apple the phone is
still one of the best crafted detailed
product even still is um
I think it's becomes really tricky when
you have to take care of a large surface
area and having high craft it's easier
to create a jewelries
like designer love to mention this to-do
app called things. It's like a German
made to-do app that can only do like 10
features in the product. Not a lot, but
everything feels great, right? Uh,
relatively speaking, it's easier to
build that then build something much
more complex like a notion, like a
linear, which is much larger surface
area to take care of. So, how do you
make that trade-off? It's really tricky.
>> I'm curious, and not because I play for
the home team, but like where would you
put Figma in that spectrum? Because in
many ways Figma's scope continues to
increase.
>> Yeah, I would say Figma
similar to notion. So maybe like if
notion is like a seven 6.5,
Figma is probably a seven. I will put
linear in terms of craft on like 8.5.
Figma has a lot of scope.
>> Yeah. uh the surface area keep expanding
with the new products but I think Dylan
and the team will have sim have a
similar trade-off problem right that you
need to ship features you need to
refactor your features uh it's a lot of
surface area versus just make everything
really detailed delightful
um
yeah if you go on design Twitter there's
endless complaints how can you make it
better and do you think that it's just
like a natural evolution of life where
If notion is still around in 50 years,
it will just be uglier.
>> Entropy erodess everything including
software. Uh
like if you open
like one of the most one of the most
used ubiquitous
living software is probably Microsoft
Word, right? If you open on the Windows
version, there's just so much in there.
there's a layers of layers of
functionality and people's needs and
wants packed into that thing, right? Um
there's almost so much you can do with
it. So reset is very necessary.
If you don't reset,
it's really hard to build something
that's simple, shrink the surface area,
then still provide a utility
and still provide high craft. Otherwise,
you probably increase your surface area
tube. Continue to provide feature and
utility. You drop your craft. Something
like that.
Yeah, it's tricky.
>> It's very tricky.
>> Yeah.
>> Probably why there aren't that many
companies that you would put in the
pantheon of
>> We look up to hardware. We look up to
So, in if you come to our notion office,
our conference room are named after
physical tools.
So, um, iPhones being one of them, one
of the greats, right? Um,
uh, the the original BMW 3 series,
right? um um Toshiba rice cookers, Sony
transistor radio, Singer sewing machines
um like those tools they at least the
class of those tools last decades
sometimes 100 plus years and they they
don't change their form factor too much
because they really find something that
really works for people and like Toshiba
rice cooker change 100 million plus
people how do they eat rice every day
right so transistor video they figure
out how to shrink transistor into
something small so they can provide
portable sound for people in the late
50s and 60s.
No, it's the same thing. They figure out
Walkman is same story. So like figure
out interesting tradeoffs with the new
material and create a form factor and
usually that form factor can last two
decades, three decade, no five decades
sometimes.
>> Do you think you're born with a certain
taste or do you think taste is learned?
Meaning I'll give you a specific example
like if someone joined notion 10 years
ago would they have a similar taste to
you 10 years later?
>> They're a designer at notion been
working there like four or five years
they pick up we pick up similar things
like like uh notion design team looks
like we all many of us like La Mer's
clothes like um
pick up similar fashion you influence
that that osmosis. I like that word a
lot.
>> So definitely can be learned.
>> Uh how fast you're learning depends on
probably on you and the culture,
>> right? Um how much is born?
Like when you were a kid, would your
parents have described you as having
taste?
>> I was born and raised in China. Not much
taste there. Yeah. Uh,
I think I wanted to not wanted to be I
know I'm a little bit different growing
up like I play sports. Um, I was good
with cl good with school and
>> or not.
>> Yes. Doing both.
>> You were good at school and sports.
>> Yes. Uh, and do a lot of different
things outside the classrooms. Right.
So, um, but I wouldn't say I had
aesthetic growing up. I did a lot of
watercolor paintings. I did Chinese
calligraphy but was not like fashionably
dressed or something right.
>> Uh and after moving to Canada when I was
17 and uh
at first I realized my I don't know the
language so I need to really soak up
like you you learn how to read and write
English in China but you did not learn
how to speak or understand the context.
So I have to watch a lot of TV to uh
understand the context like Spongebobs
and Simpsons. That's one. Great.
>> Once you understand the joke, you truly
understand the language and the culture.
So language number one. And another
realization is like I don't know much
about the western culture.
>> So um
there is this book called allmusic.com
or something. He have all the ranking of
class good albums throughout like past
maybe 100 years. So I just went down
this book and all the fivestar rating
albums I just find them on the internet
and listen to them. Not all of them but
many of them going through the Beatles,
the Rolling Stones, Eric Claptons of the
world from classic rock to uh different
jazz uh uh
>> to understand culture, American culture,
>> understand music. So I went down this
list of the past many decades music all
the five star read many of the five star
rating albums did that um
my first year college roommates was uh
she really into jazz she actually proper
me introduced me into jazz so I did did
the same thing for jazz albums um uh I
also had a roommate she's a film major
film study major so we went down all the
criterion collection the movies. So do
all the
in some sense like a pre-training for
yourself going through all the great in
ter music and movies. Uh movies actually
give you a lot of aesthetics like
because you can watch how people dress,
how they behave, the details, the
architecture.
Uh
I I was doing photography at the time.
So learning a lot of how to take photos
from movies and pick up a lot of your
word aesthetic stuff from movies.
So those are roughly my pre-trains for
aesthetic side of things.
>> When did you come states side?
>> Uh 12 years ago. 13 years ago. 12 years.
Yeah.
>> How old were you? So you did college in
the in
>> in Canada.
>> In Canada. And then you came after that.
>> Uh yes. Uh so couple years high school
college. I at UBCU in Vancouver. So my
mom took me to Vancouver. Then the um
last year of college wanted to start uh
notion essentially. Didn't know what
it's called back then. Not exactly the
same product but idea is the same. And
uh in order to move down here because
I'm Canadian I need to figure out my
visa. So I work at a company um for
about a year and a half.
>> Inkling.
>> Inkling. And uh
>> Matt McKinnis's company.
>> Yes. Uh he's my first boss. My only
boss,
>> Mckinn.
>> McKinnus.
>> Quite the first boss to have.
>> Yeah. His first check into notion, too.
>> You're kidding me.
>> Yeah. I was telling him like, hey, I'm
like
>> McKinnis, for those that don't know, is
the now COO of
>> replay, right? So, um before he started
a company called Inkling, which is about
um publishing, desktop publishing. And
um cuz uh last year college I was sort
of like okay I want to start a company
and I want to move to the United States
cuz this is where people start
companies. I put my portfolio under
Hacker News and a lot of people reached
out including Matt and uh uh
and I came down here interview a bunch
of companies decided to join Matt
because uh inkling because it's the
closest to notion and I also tell him
like told him hey I want I'll work here
for a year or two figure out my visa and
I'll start my own and uh he's very
supportive actually he put on the first
check into notion. He introduced me to
all the investor connections like make
you really understand how Silicon Valley
works to people just pay it forward.
>> Wow.
>> Yeah.
>> And you told him when you were moving
here, hey, I have this idea of this
company.
Wasn't called notion, but it was in the
general direction of what you thought
the company would be. You thought
Inkling was the closest one of the
closest comparisons that you could find
to what that business was doing to what
you wanted to do and you said, "Hey, I'm
going to do a tour of duty here and then
I'm going to go start notion."
>> I wouldn't call tour duty. I'm It's like
I'm trying to figure out my visa here.
It's harder to raise money than harder
to figure out the visas than to raise
money. Uh yeah. So I figure took me a
while to write a business plan. a a fake
business plan to get the visa.
But then eventually I did then he helped
me to start a company.
>> And during that time that year and a
half, how was your English at that
point?
>> Oh, it's fine. Yeah.
>> Did you not consider
staying at Inkling? Like did you not
think, okay, now that I've seen Inkling,
there's all these other companies that
are interesting. I'm meeting all these
cool people that are doing other things.
like it's it strikes me as a little bit
strong willed to move from China,
not speaking English, learn our culture
through
movies and music basically and then your
friends that you met there and then
basically put your flag in the ground
that you're going to start this company
and then stick to your word that you're
going to whose inkling basically is a
way to get your visa and then see that
through.
Yeah. You weren't tempted to deviate
from
the plan. I mean, how often does
somebody have a plan? They just it turns
into reality.
Um,
but the intention is never to join a
company or start a company. The
intention to build a thing that doesn't
quite exist,
right? That's the intent and only only
way to do it to start your company to
build it.
>> And what were you using in I guess
college that made you feel like there
needs to be more?
>> The one
that really inspired me was um
discover the early ideas of computing
like where this industry came from.
Most people don't know. Most people
working in tech they don't know where
tech come modern tech come from. Modern
tech come from um this group of people
the hippie generation 60s7s not far from
here on the west coast San Francisco
Stanford area those are the people who
took drugs assets and know that same
generation apply the same thinking to uh
this device we call computing.
So back in the context
computers computings are roomsiz
calculators.
There are people are now don't don't use
much beyond calculating taxes or even
before that ballistic missile
trajectories
that's what it's used for. And this
hippie generation say wait a second if
you just put a monitor in front of those
roomsiz computers which back then it
only printing out papers right back and
forth there's no displays there's not
interactive you can create a new medium
out of this you can make this thing be
interactive
and that's why this mouse was invented
in that generation
and that created this computing industry
this like multi- tens of trillion dollar
industry that drives the world today. It
wasn't like that, right? And and
so this is our industry. Most people
don't know the history of it. And even
even fewer people understand the intent
of that. The original generation's
intent. Their intent was computing are
just like reading and writing. It's a
medium that we can pick up.
We can shape it just like you can write
out your English sentences. You can
freeze it however you like. Some really
good people can be a poet. Some people
can be a novelist or you can use for
business work. It's a medium that you
can shape.
Computing could be a medium that
everyone can shape too.
And um
but today by and large we're in AI era.
So the the story changed a little bit in
the past few years but until recently
computing is by and large the medium
that only the programmer class can shape
almost programmers are kind of like the
scribes of the modern era only few
people can read and write.
So that's not original intent. The
intent of the 60s7s generation is
computing software is a medium everybody
can shape and create whatever tools they
need to do solve whatever problem they
want just like you can use English to
for all kinds of purposes. Um when I
learned about that idea, I remember
reading those early papers by people
like Alan K who was invented one of the
inventor of the first personal computers
or Douglas Anglebar who was more famous
for inventing the mouse but his intent
is actually the purest um realized this
is the most one of the most powerful
things yet to be realized and I want to
build a product company whatever that is
to work on this idea. um that got me to
want to move to Silicon Valley um to
start Ocean.
It's kind of like uh Steve Jobs is part
of that generation and you know when his
daughter
first writes Lisa on the Mac
and he goes
he gets delighted
because she's expressing
what he wants the computer to do which
is that a little girl can write her name
I guess with a mouse
>> probably. Yeah. From the movie or
something.
>> Yeah.
>> Yeah. the the Macintosh and the Lisa
before that was it's one of the first
graphic user interface based computers
for mass market and the idea come from
uh Steve Jobs almost 10 years ago before
that visit Xerox Park a lot of the
people I described Anglebar Alen K they
are they those people work at park at
that time not angle but Alen K's people
and when Steve Jobs saw it they said wow
computer should be interactive computer
should be graphic based, right? So he
took a lot of this idea and want to
create Macintosh or creating Lisa with
um but even he admit he did not copy the
whole thing.
So the famous story is they show him
three things. Um first is graphic user
interface. He think that's the best
thing ever invented. He also he saw that
and took them. He they show him
networking computer park computer
network together. Maybe there's like
dozens or low hundreds of them together.
He didn't see that. So Macintosh was
standalone floppy drive.
The most I would say nuance one is
object or environment.
He didn't see that too. That's the
intent I was expressing earlier is allow
computer to be like Lego like object-
like people can take apart put it put it
back together without being programmers
he didn't see that one so in a sense
Steve Jobs and Bill Gates generation
popularized computer by putting PC on
every desk at home but they lock
computing lock software into this
application prison that's is easier for
people to understand in some ways but a
lot more rigid cap the ceiling of how
far you can go with your software. So
that created a dual class of application
software makers which are programmers
and application users which are the rest
of us.
>> And do you think you mentioned three
years ago with the AI stuff things have
changed? Do you think now
we're going back to the original essence
of what the hippies would have wanted,
which is,
you know, like
I am in
whatever replet lovable
building stuff in natural language.
>> It's hard to say that's
the 6070 generation original intent.
It's it's um
>> Well, do you think we've gone back to
the
accessibility
that that that the industry was intended
to that it was striving for
technically?
Yes, it opens more like more people can
vibe coding and I think it's more
important to think
I think it's more profound than that. I
think
and I don't think anybody sort of know
the right answer. What I mean by that is
we always have an interesting
relationship with the tools and medium
we use. So um in the in right now we're
in this transition from one major medium
of the classic computing to this new
medium of this more squishy more
language model based more AI based
computing. We're in the right in the
middle of this and and you when you do
this medium transition, you sort of
people tend to use the new medium like
the old media. Let me give you a couple
examples like um when TV just happened
people are sitting on the television do
radio's speech right treated like uh the
old medium radio when um telephone just
happened which replaced telegram people
initially only use telephone as a very
parsimmonious short speeches notes right
just transmitting informations like they
don't do gossip they don't chitchat with
their friends they put a telephone in a
very formal place in their house that if
someone rang the telephone at night time
someone died right it's a very formal
right um when car just invented people
don't know what to do with it put a flag
that someone with a flag in front of
card right it's a very we tend to use
the old medium like the old media tend
to use the new medium like the old
medium in the beginning I think we're in
the same phase with AI
like if you put together net side by
side charges
UI next to a Google UI. It's kind of
similar search box and give you some
answers, right? Um, but there's way more
you can do with the language model with
AI. We just haven't fully figured out
how yet. And the best way we can do that
is through the lens of the old medium.
Uh, which is generating the answer or
generating the code your knowgen
examples. um maybe take us half a decade
a decade to figure out how to use this
but we're in this interesting transition
point and I think
this language model started AI medium
it's probably as revolutionary as the
computing medium
so my guess has a different question and
answers that the original computing
pioneers were thinking about with the
computing media
What that if that that is I don't know
but I feels they're
close to same order magnitude
and they're different.
>> I remember when the public cloud first
came about.
That was the industry that I was in my
whole career until I I joined Kleiner.
And
in the beginning
it was the same feeling of oh my god
like look at all the advantages that we
can get as a business right you're not
racking and stacking servers and data
centers
but everybody was porting their
pre-existing applications with all of
those dependencies and trying to shove
them into AWS
and you know like it took years But
eventually folks kind of realized, oh,
we need to rewrite these things from the
ground up. And then there's an entire
ecosystem
built around that that needs to to be
born.
And you know I think if you if you
believe that in this analogy
and maybe that pole of technology is
even stronger in this case
I also think that's probably why on the
one hand there is like more
entrepreneurship and excitement about
starting new companies and on the other
hand there is more fear
that you're going to be one of those old
applications that's about to be
rewritten Because fundamentally all of
your dependencies are a native or a
foreign language to what's happening
moving forward.
>> Yeah. The entire chessboard is redrawn,
right? The ingredients
we used to build tools, there's a brand
new alien type of ingredient type of
wood show up our doorstep. Everybody
trying to figure out what to do with it.
Right. That's the exciting part. Is it
exciting for you or is it
nerve-wracking?
Meaning, if the world continued to exist
three years ago in the same way that it
did, there wouldn't be an existential
risk for notion
of somebody building the entire stack
from the ground up.
Now,
I think the question for you, like any
incumbent, which is weird to think of
you as an incumbent, but nonetheless an
incumbent in this era, can you
refactor
yourself? Do you need to, if you did,
what would that look like? The existing
UX paradigms that you've been building
on, do those need to change?
>> I think a lot of things will change, but
probably most thing will change. And the
question different company will answer
this question differently. I would say
notion classic SAS vertical SAS company
will answer this question very
differently from let's say like us
notion because our starting position our
intent is very different from just
vertical cloud-based SAS companies. So
maybe think about what's our strategy
right because we were inspired by early
computing pioneers. We want to make
software malleable and tinkerable for
end users. In the past five six years,
we've been consolidating different
vertical SAS into one tools.
So start with document editing knowledge
project management most those Lego
blocks for knowledge work we're taking
them out one by one and putting into
notion.
So did and most recently calendar and
mail right. So by and large we have most
the knowledge uh software building
blocks for SAS. So our SAS error
strategy is consolidating those tools
into one platform.
And there turned out this is really good
for AI
because AI needs the context and tools
to be together.
We've been spent five plus years
consolidating this onto one place. Now
allow us to build automated not no
longer just providing tools for our
customer but automate the work for our
customer providing those building block
in the form of knowledge work agents
actually do the work for them right so
if you think about this like the agent
is a buzz word agent happens essentially
software that do work for you right
agent happened first in customer support
vertical
and most recently in last year we're
will happen in coding vertical agent
really hasn't happened in knowledge work
yet. Why is that? Right? Because the
tools and context for knowledge work are
really spread out.
Tools and context for coding is actually
if you think about it fairly
self-contained, right? Most for coding
agents all the contexts are in the
GitHub repos in one place. plain text
file easy to read and write and the
tools it needs to use are reading and
writing those files so it's very
self-contained so easier to create
coding agents extremely difficult to
create knowledge work agent because
knowledge work today are those a dozen
different tasks that you and me do
across a dozen different apps
and notion is one of the few companies
in the past five plus years actually
been consolidating those contacts and
tools right and So you no longer need to
like go to different places to do the
different things all the Lego blocks in
one place. This allow us to build
knowledge work agents and this is what
we're working on right now and give us a
quite a good head start
but then they have to be bought in to
the notion ecosystem end to end
otherwise the agent will probably
struggle to hop out of the documents
that it can't see. No, not necessarily
like we have um we work with external
contacts too, right? Which last month we
just launched our enterprise search
product. So ran on notion integrate with
10 plus different external contacts from
the Google stack to Microsoft stack,
Alassian stacks, right? We work across
all of them. You can search across them
and you can aggregate and do knowledge
work across all of them. And when you
think about the organization of your
company relative to the product that you
want to deliver,
has your thinking evolved over the last
few years around the organization of the
company?
>> I think many organization need to like
how to build AI products is
fundamentally different from building
classic software. The analogy I like to
use it's it's more like um
it's more akin to brewing beer and
building bridges.
The classic software
it's you sort of can engineer anything
you can imagine right so like the how do
people build software in the past 20
years you either do the white combinator
style follow your customers or you can
do the Steve Job style you have a vision
you don't listen to customer because you
know better right the both start with
some kind of end then you spec out what
the design is and engineer build it
language model actually work differently
you cannot build everything you can
imagine
often time take you 70 80% there and
never close that gap of remaining 20%.
We actually learned this the hard lesson
right we we try to build a knowledge
work agent a year and a half ago we with
all the ingredients are there on the
notion Lego side but the language model
doesn't fully the model wasn't fully
ready you can't really force it right so
it's more like brewing beer that you
have to create the right envir
environment just channel the east to let
them do their work and this changes the
sequence of how the the software
development process in a sense so you
have to experiment a lot. You put design
engineer side by side together and with
the data with the right context and just
keep trying things and see what sticks
versus the old way is more like
waterfallish from your vision or
customer need work backwards
and I think it took took us a while to
realize this. I think many other company
are also realizing this even larger
company like it's really hard for them
to once the company gets large hard to
shift this way of building software and
with the beer analogy I actually really
like that the beer versus the bridge if
you're brewing beer what you're
basically saying is look there's some
ingredients that go into this they're
not ever exactly the same and then or
maybe they are and then what comes comes
out is a slightly tasting different
tasting beer. Is that what you mean by
the beer analogy? Beer analogy that
means it's organic. Therefore, you don't
fully control it. You cannot tell the
east, hey east, please taste that way.
Right? You cannot force it. You have to
channel the model. The wisdom and
capabilities is inside this model.
Sometimes it does can build the thing in
your head. Sometimes it doesn't. But the
best thing you can do is just try and
see if the channel you can channel
towards it. You cannot force it. Versus
classic way of building software, you
can pretty much build anything in your
Figma file. Maybe it take three months,
might take six months, but you can get
there.
For beer, you might never get there.
That's why if you go on Twitter, there's
so many cool demos, but that now harder
to find real product because to be a
real product, you need to close the gap
of remaining 20 30%. That's the biggest
difference. Is there a world where
you're right, we've done some of the
lower hanging fruit use cases today,
coding,
customer success.
Is there a world where we're
overestimating
in the near term
moving into some of these other
periphery agentic like systems that we
would like to automate is just going to
take longer and it's going to be harder
than what we thought probably um
like who did like Andre Kaparthi
talk about he saw self-driving car 10
years ago right took 10 years to go
through all the corner cases and system
bureaucracy or human bureaucracy to get
there. Um likely will be in the same not
likely but very likely will be similar
with knowledge work agents. Um
but when you play with this language
model the underlying capability you know
is it's just so powerful. It's so
different. It's a there's a human in
there.
It can do more and more of the things
than we do.
And uh then it's trying to figure out
the the tooling around it, the stack
around it, how to unleash this
capability. And then there's the
organizational side of thing, go to
market side of thing. How do you help
your customer to understand it so they
can adopt it? They can evolve their
organization for it. And that probably
even slower, right? But you know that
the nucleus of this, the capability is
there. And the capability, the funny
thing is the capability gets better
every three-ish month. doesn't see no
chance to stop. It's pretty interesting.
>> What do you mean there's a human in
there?
>> I think this is the largest shift for
all software company like a SAS cloud
software company. It's transitioning
from selling tools to facilitate work to
providing the work itself.
The tools is providing the tools for
other person to use to do some business
need.
But now language model is have more and
more of a human capability to reason to
think to understand
right through largely through text.
So software company what they can do is
to not only providing the tools but
providing the human sitting behind the
tool as a package.
You sort of see this in customer
support, right? It's no longer just make
your support agents more efficient. It's
actually doing the support.
You see this in um coding agents, right?
It's no longer just like IDE to help
your developer tap completion but
actually to for provide a final output.
We haven't seen this for knowledge work
yet. We haven't seen for many other
sector of knowledge work yet but we're
going to see the more and more of them.
um like we're building product for this
right like last you can see early shape
of this last month we launched three AI
product enterprise search is one of the
thing I mentioned right it's pretty baby
hop pretty straightforward you don't
have to find read 20 articles to find
the answer to generate answer for you um
research so you don't have to synthesize
and write a report you draft a report
based on all your internal content and
data right used to something can take
you hours now you can download in five
minutes that's another baby half of
knowledge work and the third one is a
meeting notes right you don't have to be
typed all the meeting notes now piece
together the notion legos of calendar
and documents and with some AI Lego of
transcription and summary you can have
the notes better than any human can
write so those are some of the most
fundamental knowledge work chunks that
used to take people a lot of effort Now
AI can do this not provide not only
providing the tool but providing the
work that human used to do.
>> And those three products, how much
easier did it feel for you to build
those three products
in the last year than it would
previously have to build just to build
the product?
>> I would say um it's definitely a huge
advantage going back to your question.
How is notion positioned in this? Right?
Because using the meeting notes as
example, we build a product in two
months because we already have the
building blocks for this. We have a
collab collaborative document surface
area. That's one of the best building
blocks. We have a calendar product so we
know your meetings when you should start
meeting push notification on that.
That's another building blocks we have.
Right? Um now we can bring in the
building block of uh AI transcription
and AI summary. Those four building
blocks together allow us to ship um one
of the best-in-class AD meeting notes
product under two month because we
already have this and we have your
context. So all your knowledge the rest
of your company knowledge also lives in
notion and this and work with enterprise
search after you finish the meeting or
during your meetings you can ask
questions where hey what's the someone
so and so talk about in previous meeting
you can do that again compounding right
we can consolidate tools so in the SAS
era we consolidate tools so uh their
company could be more productive like
comp customers like one a good example
recently ramp fully move on to notion we
reduce their tooling cost by 70%.
And but most importantly, it's not just
the cost of the tools. The company can
ship things much faster. Imagine each
employee at RAMP has those three four AI
agents out of the box. All work
seamlessly with the rest notion and res
employee. That's a lot of productivity
gain, right? That's still a SAS era
value proposition. Reducing tool cost
and increase productivity. AI even in my
opinion dialed us this up even more
because language model wants the context
and tools to be together.
It's no longer just human business buyer
prefer this. The model itself we keep
hearing the term context window context
window because language model want the
context to be together so they can start
thinking and problem solving for you
together. Right? So if you the context
is fragmented like the SAS era it's like
it sort of works because human is the
glue right you go to your slack read
some snippet messages go to your notion
go to your Google docs go to your jura
and go to your email back and forth all
the context is stored in your brain it's
really hard for AI to do that right
human barely get it to work so it's so
if anything AI prefer the context to to
be together tools to be together and we
have the context and tools together of
one of the few platform out there can do
this. That's why I'm saying we're quite
well positioned to build the knowledge
organation that yet to exist.
>> Mhm. As you think about moving into this
really next era of notion, would you
agree it feels like a completely
different step function moment in time
for the company to move through?
Like in the early days of the company,
correct me if I'm wrong, but you were
searching for product market fit for
years,
>> four or five years.
>> Four or five years. You hired a team,
then you had to fire the team, then you
and your co-founder move to Japan,
which I guess everything comes full
circle as you go back to Japan with an
eye patch. Um, is then you go whole up
for a year in an apartment. A year? Is
it a year
>> rebuilding this? Yeah.
>> Um, maybe two years. Two years. You two,
three of you, two or three of you,
>> two of us
>> are holed up in an apartment in Japan
for two years.
>> Two, we hold up for two years. We've
been traveling where we spend the two
summers in Japan. Back to SF
>> and that was to get from one version of
the product which was maybe crappy, not
good enough, wasn't getting adoption to
what then became notion,
right? Mhm.
>> I don't know. Like do you uh when you
went back to Japan,
did you feel like
do I need to do that again? Like do I do
I need to how do I find clarity?
Especially now when
you know like you raised at whatever $10
billion like you have how many like
thousands of employees?
>> No. So close to a thousand.
>> A thousand employees. Yeah. there's like
there's more to lose now. How do you
I don't know. Do do you think about like
uh what it takes to maybe reunderwite
all of your mental models?
>> It's funny cuz I just got back from
Japan and um one of the Nintendo trip
was um
we had an event with the mayor of Kyoto.
>> Cool.
>> Yeah. Kyoto was the city that Sam and I
spent two summers in and um and Kyoto
mayor heard about our story. So uh so
the setup tech conference then we did a
fireside chat with the mayor and I will
talk about how much is a full story come
back to Kyoto. If you ask me one day
I'll be meeting the mayor and talk about
that story I would say wow that would be
crazy but here we are right uh in a
sense the same question for the I would
say the entire software industry
like the the chess board is different
and material is really different um the
SAS area is in some sense very boring
very steady right
you you figure out your product market
fit you figure out your go to market
hire our sales team done AI era it's
there's a lot of fog of war and that
make the game a lot more fun, a lot more
exciting. You have you can go all the
dimension. Nobody know what the right
answer is. Um I think we're in that
position and we have one of the most
unique
hand of cars because what we did in the
SAS era by consolidating
>> and allow us to do something really
unique like we just talked about and uh
it's re revoring for myself in a sense
to think about like what you can build
with this all the Legos in the SAS era
and this new type of Legos as AI.
It's almost like how long have you been
building ocean for?
>> 10 plus years.
>> Like uh you probably can't admit this to
me,
but like
you know pre AI you're 8 years in.
It's a slog. Like 8 years of doing
anything basically your entire adult
life.
You're probably tired. Like to your
point like it was kind of boring. and
you've been doing the same thing in a
less dynamic game for a really long
time.
I it I wonder for a lot of founders that
have been doing what you've been doing
for the in the SAS era for as long as
they have for some they'll probably pack
up and go home but for others maybe it's
like a
you know I wonder if it breathes new
life into you like it it it gives you
notion is one of the we built one of the
first no application for AI product and
we got this convictions pretty
interesting because um Sam and I were
friends with OpenAI folks and we got
early access GPD4
and that was late 2022
and what we saw is like the world will
be very different. There's a human
packaged inside of this and we actually
lock oursel into a hotel room in Mexico
and for a week and a half build the
first version of AI product and we
actually launched a month before CHAGPT
happened. So because this is like when
you build things
when the ingredient changes there's just
so much excitement like what new thing
can you build with this right there's a
lot of things become really was really
hard impossible before what you never
thought about that before now you can't
think about that way that's a lot of
fulfillment for people who build tools
>> so you did do your redo of
>> we did Kyoto
>> did yeah we did the Kyoto thing in
Cancun this time
>> in Cancun you two in the hotel room
>> which Yeah, I was still in the hotel
room. Uh
>> different rooms now.
>> Yeah. Uh there some funny photos cuz
like in Cancun in Mexico you cannot
drink tap water, right? So we're just
being uh coding for a week and a half
dur during a company retreat actually.
Um so whole company was there for the
week to do a retreat and we skipped all
the events except the opening keynote.
>> Are you serious?
>> Yeah. Because we're just because we
thought everybody else got early access
to GPD4 too. like, "Holy [ __ ] the the
race is on. Let's just get out as as
fast as possible." It turns out, no, we
were one of the first one to get access.
>> So, the company is doing dinners,
lunches, probably like awards and
celebrations
and you and your co-founder are nowhere
to be found.
>> People know we're hacking on things.
>> Are you serious?
>> Yeah. I I did a keynote. Of course, I
need to give a speech at
>> the opening keynote keynote. Uh, and I
did a closing dinners uh, toast, but
besides that, we're just coding for the
entire week. We actually stayed longer
because we want to finish the prototype.
Uh, people know we're working on things.
>> Are you kidding?
>> No, it's understandable.
>> You would like come out I assume you
would come out of the hotel and check in
with the team and then come back.
>> No, we're just in the hotel rooms.
>> Like you didn't leave the room. Um, of
course when we leave for dinner or food
or something, but most of the time we're
just hacking on things. Yeah, there's a
entire table packed water bottle at the
end of it. Then we take a photo because
it's so amusing. And so you would go out
for dinner on the hotel property or
something and then you'd come back and
then you'd work into the night and then
you wake up,
>> do it again
>> while everybody else is whatever. Like I
assume there are other partners there
too. So everyone's partners are there.
Uh, no. There wasn't parters. So, all
the employees are there. They're all
having fun. I It's part work, part fun.
>> Part work, part fun.
>> Yeah. And you had no interest.
>> Yeah. Guess it's like the once you see
language 4 level, it just the world will
be different, right? And that's the
excitement.
>> That's incredible.
>> It's fun to build things with this.
>> It is fun.
>> Mhm.
When you moved from Vancouver,
went to Inkling,
left McKinnus. He's McKinnus is going to
get a good laugh out of this. Left
McKinnus. Actually, he's going to be
just fine. He's a first investor. He'll
be fine.
>> Oh, it's more than fine.
>> He was actually check number one.
>> Yeah, check number one. Yeah.
>> Yeah, he's fine.
>> Yeah, he's fine. Then you go to move to
San Francisco for with you you you meet
your co-founder.
>> Uh I think I said I start by myself.
>> Yeah.
>> Then um there's another person Toby. Uh
my mom actually helped with initial
funding to get the visa because you need
some like put on some cash to get the
visa, right? Uh she helped with it. Then
Toby joined, then Simon joined. Uh, and
Toby left after the year. Uh, then just
me and Simon. And we went up to fiveish
people, went back to to then me and
Simon for a while.
>> Then you went to Tokyo.
>> Then two of us went to Kyoto.
>> Yeah.
>> And we did that. We travel Kyoto.
Um, Sicily, Hawaii. Simon loves to swim.
So we usually go to place that he can
swim, Cancun included. Uh uh we did that
for like a year and a half two years and
finished rebuilding notion
>> and you were equally as convicted during
those years that this had to exist.
>> I think earlier your question is like
how does it feel working on something
like like a same thing for over again
for so long? Um
first of all it has to exist. So if it
doesn't exist, it's there's a joy and
focus to help you just working in that
thing. And second, if you're just
building this thing, it there's like um
it's fun building things, but you get
you get lost in the flow state. You just
it's somewhat repetitive, but it's also
really fun, right? And that can just can
keep going as long as there is. Um
like the funny is like if you look at
Spotify annual report right towards the
end of year Spotify give you how many
hours of music do you listen that year
um sometime it shows like how many hours
you listen previous year right so if if
I look at mines and the years that I was
coding and designing in the weeds with
Simon during those Kyoto Japan years I
spent I listen to so much music because
I would just be coding and listening to
music. Nowadays, when you run company,
you have to be in meetings all the time.
So, that bar is actually a lot lower. Uh
different type of flow states.
>> Do you find yourself craving
the flow state of what it was like
>> listening to music?
>> Oh, definitely do. Yeah. Like I haven't
properly coordinate
when you're coding.
Uh but I'm better at design. Yeah, it's
it's but it's like I don't have kids.
People say when you have kids it's it
might inter be interruptive to your flow
state but it's very gratifying when you
see when you're zooming out a little
bit, right? So building a company is
probably like having a kids. There's a
lot of things at coming at you but in
aggregate that thing is really
fulfilling.
>> Do you want kids? Oh, yeah.
>> You do?
>> Yeah. We're going to have kids. Yeah.
>> And do you worry about the trade-off of
what that means for the company, for
your first kid?
>> I have a really capable wife. We'll
figure stuff out.
>> Yeah.
>> It will definitely People say you get
more efficient, more focused, right? Do
you have kids?
>> Not yet.
>> I will.
>> So, uh,
we'll find a balance. when you started
it on your own, why didn't you have why
didn't you start it with somebody?
>> I had an idea already.
I can code and I can design. I can write
a know a business business plan to get
my visa. So I can do most things. I
don't need other people
in and sometimes Simon and I two of us
can do most things a company needs. So
that allow us the notion to stay really
small and we sort of hire people in that
shape. So our designer can code because
we want people to make holistic
trade-off in their head right both the
design context and engineer context. Um
that also help the company to stay lean
and stay small. So we're not thousands
of people
or highund a thousand people.
>> I cannot wait to see
what you do if can I ask you maybe a
different question I'm just fascinated
if notion went public and you had the
whatever if notion got bought it doesn't
matter if you walked away from notion
what would you be doing
I would get bored
>> but what do you think you would do to
fill your time I might do architecture
like I I would love to
build buildings
Creating physical products would be fun.
Probably architecture.
Like my wife and I love interior designs
for our offices or for our home.
Architecture is like a more adult
version of that.
>> I read somewhere that you get support
tickets sent to your phone. Does that
still happen?
>> Yeah, it's on my phone. So if you just
like right here, send us tickets.
Yeah.
>> Oh, it like actually pops up.
>> Mhm.
>> It's uh
>> How many tickets are there right now?
>> I don't know.
>> That looked like a lot. Like meaning not
that oh there's a bunch of people filing
bugs, but every time if you're away from
your phone for an hour
in my lock screen, it wouldn't send me
buzz push notification.
>> I know. But when you open it, when you
open your phone,
>> there'll be oneish thing on the very
top. So I got a rough impression of
what's going on, right? It's like
ambient like you get you care about your
office, you care about your customer,
you let the ambient thing to come at
you. Uh it wouldn't bother me. It
wouldn't buzz my watch, but we're just
passing by. You get something.
>> You strike me as someone that might have
unique management styles.
>> I wouldn't say I have unique management
style.
>> So you do you have the patience for a
one-on-one?
>> Oh, I do. Yeah, I do one-on- ones for uh
like my staff team, but they are all
very excellent mature leaders. They all
much better manager leaders
>> experience than I have been.
>> Yeah.
>> So, they're very I don't need to manage
them in a sense.
>> When you interview
>> Mhm.
>> how do you interview?
>> I do spend a lot of effort with
interviewing.
Um that's something I care and treat
consider one of my crafts.
First of all having a normal
conversation.
So when you usually people come to
interview they we we call a business
jacket is on. You need to take off their
virtual business jacket. You make sure
the other person understand you are a
human and you see them as a human and
you are here to find find a match. It's
not here to judge. It's not here to
critique or exam
and and I because end of the day like
it's like fundamentally it's a match
right you have your value you have your
skill um your craft we have company has
a value and company has to craft a skill
for that role you figure out a match the
best thing is to be very honest with
each other both take out the business
jacket and spend an hour to find a match
and um so then a normal conversation
then we do a lot of references and a lot
of back channels. Okay. So one hour or
you have a panel of four or five people
that's only four or five hours is it's
very like blind person touching elephant
you can't get the full picture. But if
you have bad channels those people spend
years with the other candidate you have
a a better picture.
Then to find a match
>> and what are you
are you steering the conversation in a
certain direction
what are you what where are you
exploring with a candidate
>> depends on if you if I'm interviewing
for their craft and or their values like
if it's a product design intro I usually
go deep on the craft a little bit just
get a sense like from talking about
craft you get a sense their value too,
right? Um, but if it's a value, then you
we have few values in the company. I
want to probe around and see like how
does the person match with our values.
There's not it's not um procedural. It's
usually just a bag of different
questions or tricks and you just follow
your notes after that. It's otherwise
it's too checklisty. You don't get the
real out of it. You don't get a realness
out of it.
>> Yeah, that's how I feel about doing this
podcast. Yeah,
>> people walk in with a business jacket
and the goal is to take that off as
quickly as possible, but actually have a
normal conversation.
>> Like I like to start this by don't
telling me we're starting this, we'll
just go right into it.
>> Right. Right.
>> Right.
>> Yeah. It's very good.
>> Do you have other crafts? Do you have
other things that you think of as a
craft, personal or professional, whether
it's in your in your job or in your home
life or whatever it is that you also
treat like a craft?
>> I like I like to think about
going back to the why AI is so
fascinating
like philosophy. It's philosophy
or history the overlapping ground of
both. It's something my wife and I spend
time reading. Like we had a philosophy
tutor during co um every weekend if
we're not working, we usually reading
books in history or philosophy. Um she's
actually spent so much time in
philosophy nowadays. She's almost like
taking a uh like a master or PhD on it
on her own, right? So um
but I think that going back to the AI
topic it's like like we're in you almost
practice this right like we're in this
bridging grounded from one type of
medium which is classic software classic
computing to this new AI power computing
what do you do with that right you can
read about how the past mediums like I
talk about the telephone telegram of the
world transition
And now by building notion I have a
front row seat to experiment to see what
happens and to see what sticks right. So
I find that really satisfying going back
to your like hey does AI makes you be a
different type builder? Yes, because
it's finally we have this like shift
from old medium to new medium and you
can build with a new medium and my
interest or learning in the history and
philosophy of the past allow you to
apply that a little bit not fully
otherwise be too much like armchair
philosophy but you you can at least
guide your direction of company a little
bit
>> and maybe just one or two more like on
the personal side I'm very fas
fascinated with like
how do you run a day? Like how are you
organizing your days? Do those days have
a specific shape around a time, an end,
a start,
physical activity, food, like h how do
those things all
>> Yeah, it's not too fancy. I'm more on
burrito than side than the uh Michelin
star side. Um
like we have staff meeting. Uh,
>> what time are you awake?
>> 7 6:30 7ish.
>> What time are you in bed?
>> M last night I was jeliked, but
typically 11:30.
>> Okay.
>> I sleep 7 hours. Um, I usually try to do
some exercise in the morning. I was
running this morning. Um, like this
morning for example, I woke up. I try
not to let my Slack notification I turn
off notification on my Slack and emails.
I go to them. Don't let them come to me.
A really important thing will come to my
text messages and um this morning I was
trying to do some writing. I flushed out
some of this ideas we just talked about,
right? Um and uh I did couple hours
writing, did not finish it. Then going
back to uh Slack and emails and um did a
run ran for uh two and a half miles and
uh take a shower and got got here. You
wrote first. You woke up, wrote, then
you then you ran.
>> I woke up, make a tea for myself, make a
coffee for my wife.
>> Uhhuh.
>> Then I try to write.
>> And are you like do you like uh do you
need to turn your brain off at night to
go to sleep? Like do you have to do
something to get away from work?
>> Usually my I'm on my phone all the time.
I try to read before I go to bed. you
read some philosophy or history.
>> Uh that's on weekends. Um I'm trying to
read like last night we were learning
about this Japanese um woodcut master
from early 1900s.
So how woodcut blockers are made and uh
it's pretty complex procedural. We're
watching a little bit YouTube videos and
we we're looking at uh books and uh yeah
we talk about it then we fall asleep. I
think there's more con more more pro
than con because fundamentally it's
we're living in Silicon Valley South
Park is one of the center of this place
right um it's a human endeavor and a lot
of the craft of trade like the practice
you learn from other people like how do
you work with language model nobody
knows until we're start to figure out
how to work with this new things you
learn from talking with other founders
talking with people who building with is
how to build a company. We sort of know
this a little bit more through the SAS
era now. Now it's a complete different
game with the AI era, right? You learn
from other people. They happen to all
live in San Francisco. There's no others
to live in the city, so you have to hang
out with them too, right?
>> Isn't it crazy? Like I don't know if you
experienced this when you were in Japan
but I was in the east coast for the 4th
of July and
uh I was with friends and uh you know
one afternoon
some question came up and I opened up
Chachi PT and I just started talking to
it and everyone's like what are you
doing and I'm like just hold on a second
and then you know starts talking back
and they're like
what is that and I'm like, "Oh, it's
OpenAI." And they're like, "Yeah, but
like you talk to it." And I'm like,
"Yeah, all the time."
And right then and there I realized
like, "Oh, we live in this crazy like
they're not from like outer space. This
is like I'm on the east coast of the US,
you know?" And they were like, and
somebody was like, "So I can just talk
to I'm" I'm like, "Yeah." And by the
way, the more you talk to it and the
more information you give it, the more
thoughtful it'll respond to you.
And I just had a almost like an outer
body experience, no pun intended,
because
sometimes you forget what kind of world
we live in in this
seven miles of a city.
>> Yeah. Well, probably plus a little bit
more Berkeley and that's true. Yeah. Um
well technologies never distribute
evenly the it dissipate right and the
the epicenter is here and we are people
self- select to be living in this region
so they tend to pick up new things
quickly. Um to my earlier point like
we're in this very interesting shift of
of new tools and
old tools and new tools and we're in the
new camp because we're the fact that
we're here we're living working and
living in tech. Uh
yeah the world will be very
I think it will be very very different.
So you sort of can
it's like a knowledge work. This is the
thing I'm been reading and thinking a
lot. So it will be very different. Um it
might take some time for the technology
to truly dissipate to get into
organization for them to talk. But like
if you think about
you can sort of see this in coding agent
a little bit right like Simon my
co-founder
in the past few months he still codes
every he's still one of the most
productive programmer in the company but
um but he doesn't manage he just like to
build things. Um but in the past few
months he hasn't coded
uh for a few month now.
So if you walk by his desk, he's kind of
like managing five, six different
windows of coding agent do the work for
him, right? And it's like our
relationship with information with work
is changing evolving towards that like
you no longer do the work but you're
managing agent to do the work. But that
I think that's one part. I think the
bigger part is the scale that
information and work can go through a
person and company will also increase.
It's almost like
it's almost like you go into a small
town or small no going to a very packed
European city like Florence where
everything is packed in that small part.
You can walk from one end to another in
20 30 minutes versus a larger city like
know Dallas where Houston it's made for
cars much further you cannot walk
anymore but scale and speed is much
grander
and sometimes our relationship with
information is moving towards that
right someone like Simon can going
through manage output way more things uh
than just if He handcoded handcrafted
everything by himself.
Um I think we're this region is probably
the first to realize that and coding is
probably one of the first to realize
that too and will go to your friends on
the east coast working in different
industries different sectors. Uh how
long that take I don't think anybody
knows but it's the it's the shape of
things to come. This is why I think
timing matters so much and so often
things can be right but mistimed that
come from Silicon Valley because you
know let's take the example that you
shared of getting the early version of
the uh GPT model.
You thought oh my god I'm late. So he
spent a week and a half in Cancun. Hold
up. You realize not only are you late
nobody even has access to this thing
yet. you know, and so it is a good
reminder that boy are we early.
We're still so so early. And so many of
these tools like like a whatever the
expression is, the redwood falls in a
forest and nobody hears it.
Better make sure that when the tools
people are ready when the tools are
ready.
Well, if people are not ready
and sometimes bureaucracy is a good
thing
and because it can slow down things,
allow the rest of the world to digest to
take time, right? Silicon Valley people
are so open-minded. Hippie starts here,
tech boom starts here. We're just taking
the new things like no tomorrow. But
that might not be the best thing. It's
like it's
by the time you are 20 some 25 years old
you sort of don't want to learn new
things and that could be good could be
bad
right but all organizations all personal
thing need to adopt a new tools going
through this things have personal system
bureaucracy against new things um
I think with this AI wave we don't know
but it will be
it could slow things down a little bit
but it might be necess necessary? No.
>> Thank you for doing this. Are you um are
you hiring?
>> Yeah, always hiring.
>> Anywhere where Kyoto?
>> Um we have a Tokyo office. We don't have
a Kyoto office. Yeah. But Tokyo office
for sales. So um if you're product
engineer design, we have office in um SF
and New York and Hydro by India. Um so
we're hiring those locations for product
engineering design. Other offices, we
have Dublin, Ireland for sales. Um,
Sydney, we just opened an office
recently. Tokyo. So, uh, we're opening
Paris, Munich, and London this year,
too, for sales.
>> Extremely busy.
>> Well, our customer base is 80%
international, so we have that's why we
have to travel a lot to meet them.
>> Yeah.
When you hear the word grit, what do you
think of
>> grit? Um, I really like the work rate.
>> Why?
>> It's generally a positive human
characteristic.
Like you go through things, doesn't
matter the up and downs, you allow
whatever you believe to compound.
Usually takes many years, a long time to
compound and create something unique out
of the other end, right? Um grid is the
characteristic
to to allow that happen to allow
compounding
and compounding creates something
beautiful usually useful.
>> I love that answer.
I love this. I love this conversation.
Thank you.
>> Oh, I'm glad.
>> This is delightful. I appreciate you
doing this.
That's it for now. If you like the
episode, please leave us a review or go
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Thanks for listening.