ivan zhao

When I talk to people who have been building software since the 90s their biggest surprise about the B2B software market is just how big it has become. This is the difference in the Netscape versus Notion story. The internet was so much smaller in the 90s that there was just only so much room to run. Notion will not face that problem. In my opinion... See more

I write this recognizing that it sounds crazy to say that Notion, one of the hottest, most high profile startups might be underrated. I’ve been thinking about my experience using Notion and I am beginning to think I underestimated how much of my workflow Notion could devour. The more I use Notion, the more I see it as an existential threat to just ... See more

I think this ultimately ends up being a yes/and scenario. Microsoft is going to do Microsoft and will capture large swaths of the market simply by copying Notion’s brilliance. Notion will have a strong bottom’s up and community driven sales motion that enables them to grow for a long, long time.

After many years of building and tens of millions of users, Notion now describes itself this way: “Every department’s work. In one tool.”  You can almost feel their internal struggle with language—the search for the right words. How can you describe something that is genuinely novel? What happens when something is so fundamentally different th... See more