They wanted to make software that could empower a global community of everyday people to make their own apps and tools without having to write code, all to unlock new levels of creativity and productivity. He currently resides in Philadelphia. In 2012, as he prepared to graduate, many of his friends needed online portfolios. A lot of our functionality has been designed in service to that. Notions stark black-and-white product offers templates of checklists and projects for, say, bringing on new hires, tracking product development, or managing editorial calendars for marketers. Then, I realized, it doesnt make sense. UX Designer - Corporate Marketing. When the world changed, they changed their mind, she said. Art at auction worldwide, auction results, prices, biography and art market information by artprice.com. You can view this kind of database as a Kanban board if that helps you visualize tasks better. So for a company like Notion, we dont need to do anything just to pick up those ideas and execute. Notions office is devoid of the typical start-up tchotchkes and clutter. In enterprise software alone, people use a whole portfolio of software tools, and most of them have very narrow use cases. Jani Zhao's age is 30. International model who is known for having earned representation from several different agencies including Stacey Castro Media and . The ambition of Zhao and his team at Notion cant be contained in any single decade. Its almost like you have a brand-new houseyou can decorate however you want, versus the old house, you have to clean, repaint the walls and all that.. History. She grew up in her hometown as an ordinary kid without any serious expectations of making a career in the show business. Ivan Zhao Founder at Notion . He was kind enough to take it, Kothari says. So thats one thing. With more people working remotely now and turning to such products, new customer sign-ups hit a new high for Notion in recent weeks. And then I consciously dont do that), why the company is only hiring designers who can code, and why he thinks SaaS is a winner-take-all game won by those who truly appreciate the computer screen as a brand new medium. And at that pointit was really just the ambition of the project that resonated with me, Kothari says. As an electrical engineer, I was like, Oh my God! Sean Blanda is the Editorial Director for InVision. Meet the whiteboard transforming the way teams work together. Ivan Zhao Hey there, I'm Ivan! At its most basic, Notion enables people to use just one interface to make, edit and customize documents; to manage projects; to create information-sharing wikis; and to design all kinds of charts and tables. Inside Design: How would you recommend designers start learning about the philosophical underpinnings that guide your thinking? Self-driven, highly motivated engineering student seeking to impact society starting from its structural foundations.<br><br>"Take the best that exists and make it better" - Henry Royce<br><br> | Learn more about Ivan Zhao's work experience, education, connections & more by visiting their profile on LinkedIn Publisher. Specifically, ChatGPT and Microsoft's new version of Bing have gotten a lot of attention. Tag them by department, assign them to specific people, even give them due dates if you want. He and Zhao met up, just as they always had. It seemed wrong that only a few people with the ability to code could build websites and other software tools. This matters because the software-replacement opportunity is massive: companies with more than 2,000 employees use an average of 175 pieces of software, and smaller companies use an average of 73, according to Oktas 2021 Business at Work study. Some of the earliest team members had already departed, and retaining the rest was growing more untenable by the day. And how do you go to the far edge of that? Even better luck trying to invest in his company: We spoke to the designer/founder (who was born in China before moving to Canada as child) about why designers should get their inspiration from other fields (One thing I personally do is go on Dribbble and look at whats popular. It was probably one of the best investments we made, says Kothari. He identifies as a gay man and is not out at work (only because he's still a student! Also, the software that so many of us used every day couldnt be modified at all. Ivan Zhao Biography It looks like we don't have any Biography for Ivan Zhao yet. Youre really left with a completely blank, fresh space designed to feel like a breath of fresh air and spacious opportunity to think deeply. The first version of Notion was a tool that non-coders could use to make their own apps. Ivan Zhao Founder at Notion San Francisco, California, United States 7K followers 500+ connections Join to view profile Notion Company Website Activity I spent most of my 2022 planning my. is a journalist and storytelling coach. We also built in mechanisms like drag and drop so its easy and intuitive to rearrange your thoughts once they are down on paper, so to speak. Frey: Notions interface seems to do a great job of getting out of the way so users can focus on what they want to create. The Notion community ballooned in March 2018 when David Pierce, then the personal technology columnist at The Wall Street Journal, wrote a glowing review of Notion 2.0. Per Vulture, she grew up as "a rebellious child and a poor student," but her father become a top executive at successful steel company Shougang Group. But within a year or so, he left Inkling and started to assemble his team. In 2015, Notion co-founders Simon Last and Ivan Zhao had removed from their lives anything that wasnt writing code and eating noodles. Good luck finding a picture of Ivan online. It would be Kotharis first investment. In a perfect world, Zhao sees the next iteration of Notion as changing life as profoundly as the iPhone changed peoples personal and work habits. Yue Zhao Visit Yue Zhao's profile on the York Research Database to: See a full list of publications; Browse activities and projects; Explore connections, collaborators, related work and more; Profile Biography. 1988-1991 - Team Leader with Centro-Svilluppo Materiali (Centre for Materials Development). MetaLab said it used Notion to present work to clients and to collect their feedback all in one place, among other tasks. Furoxans are potentially useful heteroaromatic units in pharmaceuticals and agrichemicals. Use first principles thinking, what some people call systems thinking. Dont base your approach just on copying and tweaking a little bit what other people have done. Before the most recent funding, Notion, which was founded in 2013, had raised $17 million. In another move toward ubiquity, Notion launched the beta version of its public API in 2021, enabling developers to connect Notion to payment systems and customer relationship managers, further rooting it in a workplace software ecosystem. After graduating in 2007 with a degree in electrical engineering, he worked for an alum at a Los Altos, California, investment firm. Its brown, Zhao says, pointing to what very much looks like the white background of a Notion page pulled up on a laptop. When you hire the fifth, what will you be you looking for? There is a before and an after. To grow the user base enough to drive this change, Zhao says it will take more than 18 months, of course: In the next 5 to 10 years, Notion could be the front-end infrastructure for the world. They dont write hyper-specific code to do a clever, unique thing an individual person wants to do. It quickly caught on among techies and early adopters at companies like Samsung and Hearst. Nova Zelndia. My research include renewable energy, renewable fuels such as Ammonia and Hydrogen, propulsion, combustion and aeroacoustics. Its like if you studied physics in high school and college and you didnt know who Newton is. Create digital wireframes and prototypes for corporate website and landing pages. He envisioned a tool that could turn the world into a community of no-code software builders. What do you think is going to happen with digital products? Metallum Recycling is part of the HR & Staffing industry, and located in North Carolina, United States. Lasts dad visited to appraise Zhao, perhaps suspecting the men were doing things like sneaking into bars. Your email address will not be published. Its a modular product that aims to put the power of software in the hands of non-coders. He saw the idea of people being able to make their own software as integral to their ability to be creative, to shape their own environments, to create culture and value. Notions design also distinguishes it, with a restrained, black-and-not-quite-white aesthetic. YouTube sets this cookie to store the video preferences of the user using embedded YouTube video. Zhaos vision of creating a community of people empowered to make computers help them be more creative and productive has remained constant. We try to give people a blank canvas that lets them arrange their thoughts in ways that are most helpful to them. Anyone can read what you share. I dont know. People use Notion in place of note-taking apps, collaboration services or writing software, and they pay a monthly fee of $4 to $20 each for extra features like more security and storage. Theres no final pixel-perfect design. While humans were routinely using computers to do this kind of work by the early 2010s, when Zhao was reading this paper, he saw that a crucial element of Engelbarts vision was still missing. Study some history of computing stuff or pioneers of the seventies or sixties. Its not trying to be everything to everyone, Justin Watt, MetaLabs director of operations and marketing, said of the software. Ivan Zhao - Systems Engineer and Support Lead - Recreational Services | LinkedIn Ivan Zhao Good person with cybersecurity personality for life Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand 303 followers 300. Topics of Influence N/A. She was head of enterprise sales at Slack when she met Zhao, who visited the offices often to learn from the companys startup journey and lay the groundwork to make Slack Notions first integration. It almost ran out of money.. Zhao: In Notion, you can create multiple layers of tasks so that its possible for everyone to see everyones tasks team-wide at the top level, and then drill down into individuals tasks at the most granular level. BIO. Or sometimes something is really easy to implement but its really hard to design. The team was only about eight people, but he had just the person in mind to call to help them grow into their next phase. You can be a designer. The two believed Notion was worth this effort because they were trying to make it into something that would revolutionize peoples relationships with computers and software. When the work was done, the company celebrated with Zoom karaoke, complete with custom lyrics to Amazing Grace. Zhao, of course, has a copy stored on one of his Notion workspaces. more Claim Embed. Zhao chose Inkling instead. To do this, within the next 18 months or so, they will improve Notions project management capabilities, among other features, giving the software the final Lego bricks it needs to take on most SaaS companies, says Zhao. We just launched the 1.0 a couple weeks ago, which you can play with the web/Mac app at notion.so (and. Ivan Zhao NZ Country HR Leader @ Honeywell, Professional Coach, helping people and organisations grow through driving continuous learning. Theyd just laid off their only colleagues. Zhao: We believe more people should be able to modify the tools they use in their everyday lives and work. They were consumed with reinventing a piece of software called Notion, and if they couldnt figure out how to turn it into an everyday tool people would want to run on their computers or smartphones, they would have laid off their friends, burned through millions in angel investment and wasted years of their lives for nothing. 2. He also developed an appreciation for aesthetics as a student of traditional Chinese watercolor. Add a bio, trivia, and more. Notions innovation was letting users configure views of those databases in customizable ways, so different people could see the same information presented in different ways. Zhao remembers sneaking Last into a nearby bar, the Trick Dog. He says his artist friends helped him hone his sense of aesthetics, watching movies with his film studies friends, helping his then-girlfriend and her friends with fashion school portfolios. Those people have taste; they just dont have good tools., I was like, Holy shit. Bugs came from everywhere, Zhao says. Dr Zhao's field of sub-specialization is in Vitreo-Retinal disease and he performs retina surgery for conditions such as retinal detachment, macular holes and epiretinal membranes, diabetic eye disease (tractional retinal detachment, vitreous hemorrhage) and vitreomacular traction. As the world pivoted to remote work, signups grew. Zhao reached out and asked Last for a meeting. Every day of the pandemic added more users, and they were running out of database storage. It was more for nerdy tech crowds. We realized, in order to be a big software tool, we have to start from a product that is already ubiquitous, that people recognize, and hide the tool-making, hide the programming ability, like how you sugarcoat broccoli. And Notions mission is about software tool-making. Even if those tools just look like black-and-not-quite-white document editors at first. The more you can encourage people to share, and the more you can coax ideas and information out of their heads, the better off your team will be long-term. He. Theres no legacy code. So its less about where we are today, but its like, we want to be the place where future companies are operating. That said, with the new investment money, Notion and its backers also want it to be the place companies are operating today. He talked to thousands of customers and grew to understand the use cases and depth of the productsetting him up, he says, to figure out how to build out the rest of Notion. Right now very few of us can. It shared a bathroom with a coffee shop, so Last would go in the coffee shop and come out via the bathroom into the bar. Frey: How are the needs of work teams evolving, and how does Notion reflect that direction? Find Ivan's email address, mobile number, work history, and more. And theyre the future Fortune 500 companies, he says. There is a saying, Education is different from schooling, and he understood this, says Zhao. Not necessarily capital. And since everyone thinks and works differently, this means tools need to be very flexible. At one point, Notion ran dangerously low on cash and laid off four employees. In the right hands, using Notion feels for non-developers like finally gaining the superpowers of a developer who can set up their own custom software. Notion has hired seven salespeople, who will not be able to visit clients in person while social distancing is in effect. That summer, Kothari, one of Notions angel investors, was working for LinkedIn in India, and was visiting San Francisco. Its like, everybody can be a designer. Zhao says that 68 percent of the most recent Y Combinator class ran their companies on Notion. Ivan Pavlov Biographical . But, in many ways, their biggest challenges are still ahead. Facebook gives people the power to share and makes the world more open and connected. The headline read: The Only App You Need for Work-Life Productivity. The article called the updated version a rare renaissance app. This new version featured new project management capabilities and relational databases, the kinds of everyday tables and spreadsheets that power countless projects and companies. They did this, Zhao says, by building relationships with power users. Mr. Zhao started Notion after graduating from the University of British Columbia and working at Inkling, a document-sharing start-up in San Francisco. industry Computer Software. We just launched the 1.0 a couple weeks ago, which you can play with the web/Mac app at notion.so (and we are hiring!) New Zealand Ivan Zhao Managing Director Guangzhou. Zhao was trying to make good on ideas that he describes as romantic, ones developed by his idols: tech pioneers Alan Kay, Ted Nelson and Douglas Engelbart. We got a lot of traction there. Soon, tech insiders, people involved with Y Combinator and other startup incubators, were using it. Vernal tells a story about Zhao pitching Sequoia by walking through the last 50 years of computing history, with a narrative arc showing Notion as the next step in decades of iterations. Its still case by case. Is this the simplest mental model we can use? In March 2016, after the year in Kyoto testing iterations of Notions functionality and design, endlessly pulling up pages on the design software Figma, Zhao editing in one area, Last finessing elsewhere, they launched Notion 1.0. In the future, Notion will be tackling this even more directly giving people even more capability to shape the tools they use for an increasingly wider variety of applications. His parents sacrificed to send him to school in America, so Kothari says he did nothing but study when he got to Purdue University in Indiana. Ivan Petrovich Pavlov (September 14, 1849 - February 27, 1936) was a Nobel Prize-winning physiologist best known for his classical conditioning experiments with dogs. Inside Design: When making Notion, do you ever see whats possible and think: I want to push us all the way over here! but you realize you cant quite yet? On the west coast of Canada he learned English from watching Spongebob Squarepants., Zhao attended the University of British Columbia, and, figuring he already understood computer science, focused on cognitive science and art, having picked up photography his senior year of high school. At this stage were blocked by our internal process, our team, and distribution. Lets just reset this. Now just the two of them, Zhao and Last wanted to go somewhere cheaper than San Francisco, and somewhere theyd never visited. The ambition of Zhao and his team at Notion can't be contained in any single decade. The capital is not going to add another Moby Dick directly. By Alexa von Tobel, Founder and managing partner, Inspired Capital @. People can dive into notes from other peoples meetings, or search for past campaigns to understand how to create a new one, just to name a couple of examples. Zhao remembers the day when he suddenly started making money from it in $.99 cent increments. It was a crucible moment. And I was like, This sounds amazing, Kothari remembers with a laugh. Today, they are transitioning as a business from a startup to a mature company, and transitioning as a product from a tool with a cult followingthe kind that people namedrop in Twitter profiles to show tech-design credto a tool used by the worlds largest companies. Zhao: Teams are increasingly tech-savvy, with things like shortcuts and working collaboratively becoming second nature. The tones are neutral and warm. When he was in high school, his mom wanted more for his education, so she moved them to Vancouver. (Kothari still has the email.). But somewhere during her high school days, she became increasingly interested in a career in films and TV. A year later, Zhao posted on the blog Hacker News that he was moving to San Francisco to find a job. Its a story about how for years before Notion, so many pieces of software were just digitized versions of analog office toolstypewriters, file cabinets, desktop ledgers replaced by online document editors, databases and spreadsheets. 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. To give you some background, our goal with Notion is to create the general purpose work tool for a post-file, post-MS Office world. Mr. Zhao said he was wary of bloat slowing the start-up down and degrading the quality of its product. Biography of Ivan Zhao Last update: November 30, 2022 Career Ivan Zhao is currently Chief Executive Officer at Notion Labs - View - Notion Labs org chart Create your alert to follow the career of Ivan Zhao. Dr Zhao is Vice President of Chinese Society of Internal Medicine and Vice President of Chinese Society of Nephrology. Inside Design: Youve spoken about how designers should look sideways to other fields for inspiration. President of Beijing Society of Immunology. Come on! The 32-year-old founder of Notion says, all while regularly dropping mentions of computing legends Alan Kay and Douglas Engelbart as his inspiration. After a year, he didnt get the H-1B visa hed need to stay working in America. Just look at Slack. Movies. Get the Notion Mastery Course*: https://bit.ly/3rNMSRD Discover Notion here: https://bit.ly/3Ammn9B Get Notion templates from Easlo: https://gum. An Alloy Platform of DualFingerprints for HighPerformance Stroke Screening. 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