[SNIPPET] Ivan Zhao - The computing mistake that inspired Notion

We are the average of the people we spend the most time with. My name is Mathieu Stefani, and I invite entrepreneurs, athletes, and artists to raise my average and yours. Just before we begin this episode, I'll switch to French for a brief moment to thank my sponsors. I believe all of this makes me understand how I think the Notion UI, I don't know, you explain me how did it start? Maybe we'll go briefly into this period in between the exhibits and the start of Notion. But it makes me understand how different was the design of Notion because it was very different than everything. And it was kind of very— It's always been very simple, like Back to basics at some point.

Yeah.

Was it influenced by all of these things you believe? Was it you or was it someone else's influence?

It was me. What's the influence? We try to be— we try to be very orthodox.

It is. Yeah.

We try to be not innovative. Because there's different ways you can push idea into the— push new design into the world. Like if you push too much, then people can't absorb all of it.

Hmm.

So then the version of Notion that's running online right now, it's like it took us 4 or 5 years to get there. Like in the earlier version, we tried a lot of innovation, a lot of differences, different ideas. It's too new, it's too different. So as we keep iterating on this, we get better at, okay, let's just make the core thing, the core UI very simple and very familiar, very unorthodox, very orthodox. So if you look at Notion today, there's a left sidebar, just looks like your Mac Finder's left sidebar.

Yeah, yeah.

Right. And but that's— but behind the scenes, there's somewhat innovation. It brings all your content, your data in your company, your business, one place. That's sort of the new invention back then. Newish.

It was the idea, the original, the idea. Yeah. Was that the idea to put everything from the company?

That's one of the ideas. Well, the idea is actually bigger than that. The idea, it's about computing. It's going back. So maybe going jump back to the— so In college, started doing art, did some science. And then last year, my school at UBC, at college, I started learning about the history of computing. So like the way I got into it, it's like we are all graduating college, right? So I need to make website for my own photos. I need to make website for my then ex-girlfriend's website. She's a fashion designer. She needs to make portfolio websites. Her friend needs portfolio website. So I start making websites for a lot of my friends. I'm the only nerd in my friend circle.

Was that WordPress or something?

No, just clean HTML. Yeah. And then the realization is like, oh, maybe I need to make a tool so other people can make websites because WordPress is kind of limited. Not limited. It's like more, more for blog. Then there's like Weebly and Wix back then. It's like, I think Wix is still around. that's kind of constrained. You cannot make very freeform websites, right? And so I started looking to— let me build a tool for you all.

Kind of a Squarespace.

Kind of Squarespace, but more free.

Okay.

Right. It's like a Figma meets Squarespace.

Okay.

I want to build that. And from building that, I realized, wait a second, let me learn more about the history of the web. Right. And from learning the history of the web, wait a second, let me learn about history of computers.

Wow, that's a very deep way of thinking. Yeah, it's interesting, right? So like, and then realize, holy shit, that's not a very American way of thinking. I would say it is not. I would say it would be more like a problem solution, you know, whatever. Not like, what's the history of the whole thing? You know?

Yeah, I'm kind of like history. I like the— yeah, the looking history side of things. But looking at the history of computing, you realize Those people back in the '60s and '70s has the best ideas, the best ideas about what to do with that machine. And somehow we messed it up in the '80s.

Okay.

Yeah.

What were those best ideas like?

It's the computing should almost be like reading and writing, should be like a medium.

Mm-hmm.

Right? Like you asked me, should you teach your kids how to program?

Right.

It's like it's asking me— it's as if you ask me, like, should I, should I teach my kids how to read and write French? You don't, you don't ask me that question.

Yeah, right.

So in the first generation computing pioneers in the '60s, and they thought about making computing as if it's writing, you got to make it simpler and simpler. So but you still require learning, still require people to anticipate, participate. But once you master the medium, you can do anything you want with the computers. Yeah. So that's why if you think about Notion, if you understand the basic notion, a company, a person, a business can use Notion to make some of the most powerful software for their business.

From Notion.

From Notion. It's inspired by those ideas. what inspired them, that generation, is like, if you think about, right, trace back to time, computers back then was like room-sized calculator in the basement of like you put a punch card in, go grab a sandwich, come back, the number—

Plus 2, 4. But it took you like, yeah, 3 days.

But you can do really fancy calculation, but it's only just numbers for calculations, counting things, right? And this like '60s generation, A lot of them on the West Coast, they like that. They took acid. They're that hippie generation in San Francisco, right? Then they say, oh, wait, wait a second, let's put a display, a TV, a radar display actually next to this big machines. Now the computer can talk back to you without you have to wait for the printing card.

Yeah.

And it could be real time. And that's why people invented the mouse.

Okay.

And that— and this gentleman, Douglas Engelbart, he invented the mouse because now Now you have a display, you need to be able to point to things on the display. He tried so many different things. He tried like light pen, he tried like different type of touching devices. The mouse is the best because your blood flow downwards. You can do this for hours at a time. If you do a light pen, you get tired.

Hmm.

There's many other, they do a lot of real research to figure out what's the good form factor, HCI, human-computer interaction. What are the good, way the human computer can interact to, to so become a very medium-like back and forth. That bandwidth is high.

I get it.

Yeah. And, and they create computing system in the back in the day, in the '60s, '70s. It's like everybody can change the software they use.

But it was not very consumer. I think it was, it was still a very niche, right?

It was just for I mean, it's actually the original one of the— some of early idea designed for kids.

All right.

Yeah. So the other gentleman, Alan Kay, he, he wrote a paper in the late '60s, '70s, talk about how do you create a medium, allow kids to learn while they're young so they become a mind amplification medium for them as they grow up.

Okay.

Just like you learn to read French or English or Chinese when you are, you know, grade 1, grade 2. And once you learn to become— you can be a poet, you can be a businessman, you can be anything you want with the language. What is that with another medium like that's called computing?

Wow.

It's, it's very—

it's amazing.

Those ideas are very fundamental and quite powerful, right? It's like it's not natural that we go through a school system to learn, sit down there for 5 years, 6, however long in French education system, and to learn how to write. It's not normal. It's, it's very unnatural.

Yeah, yeah, very unnatural.

But it's very powerful. But what is that for another medium? Right. And that's the big idea of that generation.

Coming back to what you said is when I ask you this question is, did you say that how to create empathy with the machine? Was that what you use? Yeah. Yeah.

But that's, Yeah, that's less profound than—

Okay.

Yeah, but the big idea here is that we had the opportunity to create a medium that's in general net good. You can say that reading and writing in general, it's net good for humanity. You can say that, right? It's like very disruptive. You create a lot of different things, but in general, it's something that makes humans more full. And computing could be something make human more full.

Yeah.

And, and so they create computing system that's very easy to modify, just like reading and writing, very easy to modify. Early days, there wasn't such a strong notion of applications because we are so used to applications.

Yeah, yeah, you're right.

Right. This is largely invention of the '80s. Before the one of the first computing systems, Xerox Alto, they run operating system Smalltalk. It's a programming language slash operating system slash application all in one. And its network has all the almost most things that modern computer has, if not more. And there's a famous demo when you probably heard Steve Jobs went to Xerox PARC.

Yeah.

To learn about the first borrowed a lot of ideas, right? So that's where the Alto computer was. So when he went to Xerox PARC and he doesn't like the scroll bar's direction, so, oh great, this graphic user interface is amazing, but I wish they scrolled the other direction, right? So, and while he was asking the question, a researcher at Alto just changed the direction of scroll bar live.

All right.

Because everything is so malleable. Software is really easy to change right now. If you want to change something, it's really, really difficult.

Yeah.

So that's the big idea of the '70s. In the '80s, generation happened, which is the Bill Gates and Steve Jobs generation in order to make computer mainstream. And the notion is like that— what is it? Microsoft's mission was put a computer on every desk in every home, right? They have to simplify a lot of things. And through that simplification, a lot of good ideas lost. So computing become more of an application-driven system. That means in order to use computer, you use software, you have to— largely there's a user of application and maker of application. Maker application are programmers, user application are users. A user can only click the buttons, maker can do programming. So there's a separation. The separation back to reading and writing, almost like there's a priest, There is the scribe. They know how to read and write French or English, and there's rest of people can only go to Catholic church and listen.

Right? Wow!

We're stuck in that world. We're still in that world.

We're still in that world. Yeah. It's it's it's interesting how I mean all of those reflections, all of your talk what you're talking about right now. You were thinking about that prior to creating Notion.

That's what inspired me to create Notion.

All right.

'Cause I want to create the product that brings back some of those original ideas 'cause they're so powerful and so good. And there should be some kind of internet-based software that brings some of this kind of malleability and creativity of computing back to as many people as possible.