❝Story09:00
How Steve Jobs Saw the GUI at Xerox PARC but Missed the Real Power
Ivan recounts the origin of personal computing at Xerox PARC, where Alan Kay's Smalltalk/Alto system had no separation between users and applications and everything was malleable. When Steve Jobs visited, he only registered the graphical user interface, not the underlying object-oriented environment where users could reshape their own tools. That miss, Ivan argues, locked the industry into the rigid application framework we still live with today.
- Xerox Alto ran Smalltalk, where there was no such thing as an 'application' and everything could be changed by the user
- In the demo, engineers instantly reversed the scroll bar direction for Jobs to show the system's malleability
- Jobs took away the graphic user interface but not the object-oriented power beneath it
- That framing led to the app-based, SaaS world Notion is now pushing back against
“you know what Steve Jobs is actually at fault of this in some strange ways”
“he only saw the graphic user interface he did not see the underlying object orent the environment power”
#computing-history#xerox-parc#steve-jobs#product-philosophy
❝Story10:30
Notion's Lost Years and Learning to Hide the Vision
Notion spent its first three to four years — the 'Lost Years' — building an easy developer tool so everyone could make their own software, and discovered most people simply didn't care. The team realized they had to hide that vision inside a form factor people actually use every day: productivity software. Ivan frames it as feeding people sugar with the broccoli hidden inside.
- The first version was a developer tool; after a couple of years they learned most people don't want to create software
- The fix was to hide the 'everyone can create software' vision inside a productivity suite people already understand
- It took two-plus years just to realize they needed to build a productivity tool
- The maturation was seeing the world from outside their own perspective, not just their own
“learned that actually most people just don't care”
“people don't want to eat the broccoli but people like sugar so give them the sugar”
#product-market-fit#founder-lessons#notion#vision
❝Story13:30
Why Notion Threw Away Its Codebase Over a Bad Tech Bet
Ivan explains that Notion rebuilt itself repeatedly, and one reset was purely technical: they had bet on Google's Web Components before React won, and the immaturity made bugs impossible to trace. Rather than run out of time on a broken foundation, they reset the codebase and effectively the company. It took four years total to get somewhere.
- First two years were spent over-building a developer product nobody wanted
- They bet on Web Components, an unstable pre-React technology where bug sources were untraceable
- The choice was to rebuild the whole thing or run out of time
- They reset the codebase and the company to build on the right technical foundation
“before react wins there's a competing technology called Web component from Google”
“then we have to restart a company otherwise rebuild the whole thing otherwise we're going to run out of time”
#engineering#tech-bets#startups#resets
❝Story15:00
How Ivan's Mom Kept Notion Alive
Staying solvent through the Lost Years partly came down to family. Ivan's mother helped him register a company (required for a Canadian to move to the US) and raise the initial money, which he later returned. When Notion ran out of cash again, he asked her to lend it back to bridge the gap.
- As a Canadian, Ivan needed a registered US company to move, and his mom helped kickstart it
- He returned that initial money, then had to ask to borrow it again when they ran out
- His mother's bridge loan kept the company going during the cashless years
“then we run out the money so hey Mom can I borrow that just to bridge us”
#founder-story#funding#notion#survival
❝Story17:00
Laying Off Everyone and Coding in Japan
During one of the rebuilds, Notion laid off its entire team, shrinking from five people back to just Ivan and Simon. To change the scenery and reset morale, the two moved to Japan — and by subletting their SF apartment and office, they actually made money while living there. Ivan describes non-stop coding and design as some of the happiest days.
- Notion cut from five people back to the two founders during a rebuild
- They moved to Japan to change the scenario after a low-morale layoff
- Subletting their apartment and office meant they made money living abroad
- The two coded and designed non-stop, moving through the problem space fast because they knew each other's thinking
“at that time notion was five people we lay off everybody back to me and samon two people”
“we sub leas our apartment and office we're actually making money living in Japan”
#founder-story#layoffs#resilience#remote
❝Story49:30
The Covid Doomsday Clock: When One Postgres Instance Almost Killed Notion
Ivan tells the story of Notion nearly dying during Covid. For years the whole product ran on a single Postgres instance, scaled by moving to ever-bigger machines — until they hit the largest instance available and started running out of space to store everything. A 'Doomsday Clock' began counting down to a full shutdown; every engineer dropped feature work to shard the database, and they cleared it with maybe three-to-six months to spare.
- Notion ran on one Postgres instance, scaling only by finding a bigger machine
- They hit the largest available instance and faced running out of storage entirely
- As they neared the limit, behavior became sporadic and unpredictable
- All hands stopped building features to shard the database; the runway was three-to-six months
“for the longest time we notion runs on one instance of postris database”
“a Doomsday Clock that when we're going to trly run out this space to store everything in notion and notion got completely shut down”
#infrastructure#scaling#postgres#crisis