Ivan Zhao
22 statements across 1 episodes · 12 bullish · 2 bearish · 1 people on the record · first statement Mar 6, 2025 by Ivan Zhao · said 10 times in 5 episodes since 2022 · across every show →
On the record as a speaker too: Ivan Zhao's record, appearances and statements → this page counts the times other people say the name.
Mentions by year
brought up most by Matt McGinnis (3), Camille Ricketts (3), Lenny Rachitsky (1), Guillermo Rauch (1), Grant Lee (1), Claire Butler (1)
tap a year for its mentions
2025 5 mentions in 3 episodes 2 per episode
- “I deliberately understaff every project” | Leadership lessons from Rippling’s $16B journey
- “Dumbest idea I’ve heard” to $100M ARR: Inside the rise of Gamma | Grant Lee (co-founder)
- Everyone’s an engineer now: Inside v0’s mission to create 100 million builders | Guillermo Rauch
- every mention in 2025, scene by scene →
2023 1 mention in 1 episode
2022 4 mentions in 1 episode
Everything said about Ivan Zhao, oldest first
Mar 6, 2025 positive
Zhao: Non-modular software development causes the system to work against you
“If you're building the Lego inside Notion in the code base or product, the system work for you. If you're building non-legal way, the system works against you. So in some sense, we're creating a tool that has an emergent behavior. You need to channel in that e…”
Mar 6, 2025
Mar 6, 2025 negative
Mar 6, 2025 bullish
Zhao: Notion tracks revenue per employee instead of total headcount
“We have this internal notion called talent density, right? Which we're not, we don't try to track number of people, but we try to track how talent dense revenue per employee we are, and people want to work with other more talented people. So it's a positive co…”
Mar 6, 2025 positive
Zhao: Smaller teams accelerate and maneuver faster than large organizations
“The bus, the smaller the bus is easier to turn corners, easier to accelerate, easier to maneuver. The bigger the bus it is, it just, like, bigger the boat, bigger the bus, slow down. And as a leader in the company, you decide who sit around you on the bus seat…”
Mar 6, 2025
Zhao: Notion was initially kickstarted and bridged by his mother's loans
“My mom helped me, well, actually, my mom helped me kickstart a company, because I'm Canadian. In order to move to U.S., you need to, like, register a company. So my mom helped you with the initial, and they raised the money, and I sort of returned the money to…”
Mar 6, 2025 positive
Zhao: AI language models function like new raw materials enabling novel trade-offs
“I always feel like AI language model feels like a new type of wood. It's filled like aluminum as a new type of material, right? So you can make like mass air travel wasn't available until aluminum become cheap enough that people can make airplanes that support…”
Mar 6, 2025 positive
Zhao: Resetting around superior abstractions recovers sunk costs exponentially fast
“You can create progress through better abstractions, and that thing compounds faster. It can catch up to all the things you build much quicker than you ever thought, right? Or humans are not thinking, not good at thinking in terms of abstraction or the exponen…”
Mar 6, 2025
Mar 6, 2025 positive
Zhao: Notion was built to let non-technical people create custom software
“I made three or four websites and realized, oh, actually people don't know how to create with the software media, computing media. So that got me to want to create a product like Notion today, which is a lot more people to create tools, create software for the…”
Mar 6, 2025
Mar 6, 2025 negative
Zhao: Violating core values for revenue triggers employee and customer rejection
“If you create this thing called a product or business, you attract people are value aligned to it. Then if you're trying to optimize too much on this competition, revenue side of things forced to introducing something entire value. Then you, the system, it's l…”
Mar 6, 2025
Mar 6, 2025
Zhao: Organizational overhead stems mainly from internal communication alignment
“It's the over overhead is actually more from internal communication, right? It's really hard to get people's mind to be aligned on things to see the world in the same way. And the part that you do need people, maybe you can solve better through systems or bett…”
Mar 6, 2025 positive
Mar 6, 2025
Mar 6, 2025 neutral
Mar 6, 2025 positive
Zhao: Learned English and Western humor from SpongeBob and The Simpsons
“Yeah, it's real. I moved to Canada pretty late 16 years ago, and what I learned is, yeah, in, in China, you can learn English, but it is typically just grammar and doing exams. What you're missing is the context, the culture. So you have to watch SpongeBob or …”
Mar 6, 2025 positive
Zhao: Horizontal software requires artificially constrained positioning to sell effectively
“The advantage of building horizontal, there's no wall, at least for in our space, we know shouldn't go after entire software market, but then you need to create a wall yourself. So to make your go-to-market distribution, to create the spot in people's mind, yo…”
Mar 6, 2025 positive
Mar 6, 2025 bullish
Zhao: The software market is shifting from vertical SaaS back to bundling
“Now we're sort of at the tail end of SAS. There's so many verticalized SAS average company to use like almost a hundred tools. It's not. It's kind of madness, right? So there's more, the market shifting towards more of a bundling approach. And with AI, and wit…”