Hello everyone and welcome back to the keep productive YouTube channel, it is francesco here
and today we will be interviewing the notion co-founders both Ivan, Zhao and
Simon last so we'll be interviewing them today
the first one will be Ivan and Roman who is one of the illustrators at notion lovely chap and then followed by
Symons interview as well
so you can listen to what notion are working on right now also a bit about their plans for the future and I guess their
Values in brain around what is happening with notion at the moment? So I hope you enjoy this future
Feel free to leave some comments and enjoy. Thank you very much and I'll talk to you guys super duper soon Cheers
And
Today on I'm at the EnOcean offices
With Ivan the CEO of notion. It's good to help you. Yeah. Well so good to have you be here
Thank you, it's my actual first ever interview with person say wow, it's weird to do they print format
Yeah, but most of them have done like over zoom so it's so different
Yeah
And obviously you've been working very hard all of the team and it's quite nice to visit here and see all the guys in person
We actually have Roman Roman who does all their brilliant illustrations
which is quite weird because I was when I came in I was like
Yeah
Whatever. Oh, no
No, it's not a day
There it's really nice. They're really brilliant pieces
Say Ivan, maybe for those who don't know who you are. Um, feel free to introduce yourself
I'm one of the cofounders of notion and
I've been I've been working on this for the pretty much my entire adult mature adult life
Yeah, yeah, it's good and as your sort of role as CEO, what do you do day to day I would say
Work transitioning from Wiley's I'm transitioning from building notional product into building notion the business
Yeah the company. Yeah, so that means a lot
Of recruiting amount of planning a lot of the long-term
Business model part of the notion. Yeah. Yeah the same time still involved with no products
I yeah brand in the market. Yes. Fantastic
and
obviously
nations a very new concept
And obviously the productivity speights been around for a while
Maybe it sounds like a brief outline of the story that you guys have been on
I've been working on this for six seven years
So how it ties with me personally was I
Graduate college
yan'er and
Most of my friends are harvest. Okay, so
I'm the only tech person who can uh who can make websites. Yeah
Become the de-facto webpage portfolio builder for all my voice
human artists friends who are graduating via college at that time and after working on a lot of
Work websites for them for foley web sites, like this doesn't make any sense. Those people are visual. They are creative
Yeah, they just don't have the tools to build their
Mmm to build for the web. Really? Yeah as a medium so and
From so that I wonder at that time. I wanted to build up the best web page builder
yeah, but from looking into the history of tools the history of web page the web is so
Realized it's actually not as simple wise
Much there's a much grander and more meaningful problem behind it
Yeah, most people can now modify the tools that use you have computers and they are
Computer for them are just like appliances like toaster. Yeah encourage and there's 20 button they can push them
That's it. And
From there. I may be realized by the way builder tools that allows everybody to clear their own
Tool in the old productivity tool own thinking space working space with their computer. Yeah
That's the genesis that is my personal staff of getting how to clean ocean
Yeah, and and how long have we been into the sort of art space
Was it the fact that you were with loads of artists at college that inspired you while I?
Studied cognitive science. Oh
I doubt but I do my minor in like photography. Yeah did a lot of visual art and
My girlfriend at the time was fashion designer. And so I proposed my friends artists
Yeah, I wouldn't say they inspire me
how notion is in the fact that have to build portfolio websites for didn't push me to think about the difference between
people who can
Code can query software. Yeah, like programmers universes. Most people who cannot
Yeah, that's 99% of people who use computers can now create your own tools. That's it. You have to add the mercy of
using a nose tool create by Evernote designers or a
Proper management tool created by fellow designers the engineers they can operate their own version of it. Yeah, and
You say if you almost like enabling people to do those things, which is quite insane, right?
the higher the more romantic idea behind ocean is
What is the world looks like if everybody have to tote it perfectly fits their needs? Yeah, everybody
Can almost become a software maker without coding? Yeah feel they're only perfect tools for whatever problem
They have that had whether it means organizing their personal life. Yeah, organizing their company left giving
Collaboration. Yeah
Yes, I think this is probably one of the most meaningful thing. I can be working out. Definitely
Yeah, and and that's what I've only seen from like from the videos
I've done and the community that have been around it like the amount of use that people applied it like I think some a
Chat message me a couple days ago. He's using it to track
His heart rate and all the data around his heart, which is helping us help massively
And it's amazing to see those. I mean, it must be amazing for you to be able to see like the
Ridiculous and the most amazing ways people are using their crazy
Yeah
and it's not what we
thought how to do initially we are finally building a tool that
We didn't theis specifically are we going to build at all? So other people can track their heart roof? Yeah
More thinking. Well, most people cannot have the perfect software to do what they want. For example track their heart rate, whatever it is
That's it. Yeah, let's create a meta tool. Yeah
Ii water that's really important that has to be meta so people can quit whatever. These are diabetic really heart rate
What what here they wanna track whatever
that's what's that pretty amazing about it and and obviously like
Notion a moment. You've grown teamed your growing product and
Where do you see the company growing as the next sale year or two years? What's your focus the focus for us is still
The part. Yeah, I would say
we're at
The are really early stage of them
Really they realized what the potential of this direction or product can do? Yeah, and
and
we
Yes, we need to build out the team
No doubt the business to support a but are still so much though in terms of like notion 2.0 version 3.0
They're people point out. No, that's really really fun. Yeah, it's super exciting. Yeah
and
Just is rounding thing. What is your personal favorite motion feature Wow
They're so many
I
Actually use I think this this is not very well knowing if you press come in a slash
Yeah anywhere, you can bring up the slash come in menu
just oh, yeah, so carefully conceptually the way we design notion I
Think some early HCI
papers talked about this we're thinking about software is
Separating between nouns and verbs. Yeah
each Pilate notion the little
Capture capsule of the content he has it now so the noun could be different types now. It could be a text block
It's most simplest
Even an entry in the table is enough. Yeah and everything every contents amount in but then if you right click you
WordPress slashing any text you bring up this action menu. Yeah, and those are the verbs you can apply to the nouns
Yeah and selection if you select drag to multiple select it means okay. I want to apply to action to all this thing
I'm selecting the blue box. And so
Command and slash it's essentially just print up the verbs
Actually, you can apply to whatever lounge you're currently selected. Yeah, and it's a really quick way for me to think about
This is the thing ideas the thousand capturing. I want to do something to them later turning into from bullets into checkboxes
Yeah from cold coke locking to normal text or something. Yeah, very happy. Yeah, very definitely inner
thank you for taking the time out to I do this podcast and the oven thing for
The listeners to go away indeed. I
To do what? We're enjoy
I think a lot of people in the notion community are listening this podcast. Yeah, there's large overlap
I just want to say that I would really appreciate
The notion couldn't be build without early adopters by even guys. It's like
You know, we feed on the feedback from you guys. We really take it seriously
Every inbound message from the income and feed that into directly or Prada map
Yeah, and your support on Twitter and social media is really appreciated. Thank you guys. Yeah, that's nice message
Thank you
and thank you a room for listening go and
We'll have some more content here from the nation offices personally. Thanks very much
Begin well, okay, so
Originally, it was originally a third co-founder. Okay this guy
Toby Shakman
and
I I met Toby on Twitter originally because we had a mutual interest in visual programming languages and kind of
Democratizing programming. So at the time I was obsessed with making
Visual programming environments for children. Yeah, and
Until he was kind of making like visual programming environments for artists
and so I was a fan of his him in on Twitter and then I
I was out here for an internship in the South Bay
and
Within a couple hours of meeting
Toby I've been having it convinced me to quit the internship and to
Spend at least the rest of the summer working on ocean and then a couple weeks after that I decided to
drop out of school and
Yeah, yeah, there's a whole prehistory of notion in which yeah, so I mean in the
In the early days, we didn't really know we were doing at all
I mean, yeah and notion was much more of a research project and kind of company. Really. Yeah
All we were really working from was kind of a vague
Aspiration to like democratize programming into micronized computing in some way. Yeah and
We built a few prototypes
along those lines that
Weren't really good products, but we're kind of interesting. Yeah in some ways
Yeah, it took us a long time to narrow in on kind of documents, you know
wiki all the all more practical
sort of practical business
Focus on it. Yeah
Simon's day-to-day work is mainly on product
when when people come to our office, they often say that it's
simultaneously relaxed but also very intense and
And I really like that contradiction at me. It kind of sums up a lot about us
we're we're very relaxed and
Open and comfortable with each other. But also, you know, very focused on what we're trying to accomplish and you know
Even though we have an open office, sometimes it's like a librarian here because we're all you know drilling away
We're trying to we're trying to accomplish. Yeah
It's good, that's definite help people work anyway, and then how do you use my
Used the Web Clipper probably a twenty times a day. Yeah on my phone, especially
Whenever someone tells me about something in a conversation, I try to actually write it down. Otherwise, it just flips out of your mind
So I have I have a database for movies
links books
Video games to play and I have kind of a personal brain. I didn't base where I just keep all my notes
Yes, yeah actually Rotten Tomatoes is better but yeah, yeah
The images I cooked a bit nicer from yeah Rotten Tomatoes
And if you ever you yet find someone
Yeah, yeah, it's been happening more and more happens all the time these days yeah, which is
very strange freaky
Yeah, I'm still not really used to it yet
Yeah
So getting is that yes, it's it's it's obviously great to see something that you built
yeah, actually be out in the world and
Well
Ultimately we
We we draw back from our original inspirations of you know, the the early computing pioneers like Engelbart Alan Kay Licklider
and we want to chip away at that that big goal of you know, I've mentioned human intellect or
democratizing computing and programming in some way so that regular people can
Make computers actually do things for them. Yeah