Ivan Zhao: evaluation

Transcript context

…When people hear this idea of staying lean and staying small, it sounds great or we're going to be super efficient and lean and smart with our money and down dense. It's very hard to do and it's very hard not to hire more engineers, more designers. What advice do you have for folks that want to operate this way? What has allowed you to actually be successful while staying lean and not having as many engineers as competitors, many designers as competitors? I think just understand abstraction or system is a better curve than pecan curve, right? Linear. We internally help other people and understand this. Internally we use the metaphor that Notion's a small bus. The bus, the smaller the bus, it's easier to turn corners, easier to accelerate, easier to maneuver. The bigger the bus it is, bigger the boat or bigger the bus, slow down. And as a leader in the company, you decide who sit around you on the bus seats. That dictates how fast our overall bus moves, dictate your work and life experience at this company because you pick your roommate, you pick your seat mates. That metaphor clicks with people inside a company and overall help us optimize to make the bus link. I've never heard of that metaphor before.…

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