Lenny’s Podcast83 min
Notion’s lost years, its near collapse during Covid, staying small to move fast, the joy and suffering of building horizontal, more
Ivan Zhao · Mar 6, 2025
Key learnings
- Hide a grand vision inside a product people already want: Notion's 'sugar-coated broccoli' approach meant shipping familiar…
- Test whether your early adoption comes from real users, not just from your own taste: Ivan warns that building too much for…
- Don't be afraid to reset the codebase when the foundation is wrong, and favor better abstractions, since a small core can…