Ivan Zhao: preference

Transcript context

…Haven't seen that side of Ivan Zhao. Yeah, I wouldn't say I'm the most soft interaction person at work. It's actually the reverse is true because I grew up in China. People way more direct. People just say what they want, say what they think. And you move to California, you move to US, you move to the West, you felt wow, everybody says everything's wonderful, everything's nice, but that's not true. I would say Notion's ethos probably more like a East Coast rather than West Coast, so somewhere in between. It's more direct. What do you want to learn? A bunch of things. I think the early days is we talk about that the world's not like you. The world don't care about you so you have to shave off the idealistic part of you to go something that's like the world actually cares, the sugar coat of broccoli. You have to hide the broccoli within something, the sugar pills. So that's one. That's more self. That's more myself. As company grows, you realize... I'm pretty good at storytelling. So that's a one-to-one influence. But as a company grows, you realize you need to be one-to-many storytellers. That's a skill. The one reason I try not to do podcasts and all those things, oh, it's actually it drains energy in a different ways. I prefer just building product and brainstorm sessions. Then you realize it's a necessary craft for me to pick up in order to change the shape of the company, the business I'm building. I treat it like a craft. There's some things skill that's in the video game. You need to pick up something to unlock something else and to make new demand, you trade off with yourself and the business. That's fun though. Every 12, 18 month, Notion's like a new company or at least they require different skill set coming from me. So I need to pick up new things. And it's an infinite game and infinite games are more fun. I love this idea. I love that you keep coming back to this idea of there's the ideals and the values and the vision and what you're trying to do, and then you have to find the way to frame it and package it so that people actually understand and want it. And that's how you get in.…

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