ivan zhao

But for the new wave of horizontal software tools like Notion, Airtable and Roam, the magic is in their flexibility. By providing the “no-code” building blocks, these startups enable consumers to create their own personalised experience. This creates a "complexity gap".

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

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

The problem was simple, but the solution was anything but. After several fits and starts, lessons learned the hard way, and five years of bootstrapping (building a business that relied on revenue rather than venture capital), we built a multifaceted business. The Behance Network grew to enable more than twelve million creative professionals to show

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