✳flâneur — a map of the web's best reading

Notion CEO Ivan Zhao: Augmenting Human Intellect | Sequoia Capital

sequoiacap.com · 5,920 words · saved by 1 readers

In 2015, Notion co-founders Simon Last and Ivan Zhao had removed from their lives anything that wasn’t writing code and eating noodles. Three years into building their startup, they scrapped the code powering their app. They were running out of money. They’d just laid off their only colleagues. And to stretch what money they had left, they’d moved from San Francisco to Kyoto, Japan, which was less than half as expensive. In the downstairs of a rented two-story house so small that only a traditional Shoji screen separated their bedrooms, Zhao says they spent 18 hours a day at their laptops, not bothering to dress, clean or cook. “We were just, code, code, code,” Zhao remembers. “Then, ‘Hey, let’s go out for food.’ Then, we go eat, go back to work, and do it again.” Neither man could speak or read Japanese, but Zhao is from China, and he could read the menus well enough for them to figure out “beef” or “chicken.” (About 70 percent of the writing, Japanese Kanji, was similar to the Chines

Augmenting Human Intellect, No Code Required Published October 13, 2022 By Megan Finnerty Megan Finnerty is a journalist and storytelling coach. Megan was part of the team that won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for explanatory journalism; and her methods have helped more than 7,000 people tell stories in front of more than 100,000 people. She feels strongly about cocktails and NPR. Photography: CAYCE CLIFFORD Notion’s co-founders are growing an enduring business by nurturing the creative community. Published October 13, 2022 By Megan Finnerty Megan Finnerty is a journalist and storytelling coach. Me

Explore this link on the map →

saved by

related reading