Notion’s Ivan Zhao: The Refounder

By Sequoia Capital

Categories: VC, Startup

Summary

Notion's Ivan Zhao pioneered 'refounding'—completely restarting the company around new technologies (2015 in Kyoto for product-market fit, 2023 in Cancun for AI)—proving SaaS companies can transform into AI-native organizations by reorganizing around jazz band principles rather than traditional management hierarchies.

Key Takeaways

  1. Notion stayed intentionally small (sub-10 people in 2019) and profitable, resisting venture pressure to scale headcount. This default-alive posture gave them flexibility to delay hiring professional managers until product-market fit was secure.
  2. Delayed building a traditional sales team by 5+ years, attempting to 'first principle' a new PLG model instead. In hindsight, this was a mistake—founders need both product innovation AND functional expertise (sales, marketing, engineering) earlier.
  3. Hiring 'been there done that' executives during growth phase (including CTOs) helped define Notion's DNA, but AI forced a complete organizational rethink—classic functional boundaries between roles no longer work with new technology.
  4. Created 'jazz band not marching band' culture to attract talent that thrives in ambiguity. AI moment (past 2-3 years) amplified this: more generalist, improvisation-oriented people outperform traditional specialists in AI-native contexts.
  5. Notion is pioneering a new CEO operating mode beyond 'founder mode'—AI-native compensation, organization design, and decision-making that mirrors Jack Dorsey and Brian Armstrong's approaches. Call it 'Jasmo' or algorithmic-first leadership.

Related topics

Transcript Excerpt

We start a mantra in the company. We want to be a jazz band, not a marching band. I love that. >> It's like a self-reflecting value thing. It's auto equilibrium with me. So, it's like, okay, I'm a jazz band person. So, we've been hiring more and more jazz band person. Also, AI happened in the past two two and a half years. So, more jazzband people can really shine during this moment. >> Okay. So, we had manager mode, we have founder mode. There's this new mode. What should we call it? >> Jasmo, maybe. >> That's not bad actually. Hey everybody. Today we have Ivan Jawan, the co-founder and CEO of Notion. I like to think of him as the refounder. Uh he started the company a long time ago and in 2015 he didn't have part of market fit. He and his co-founder moved to Kyoto of all places and kind …

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