Lenny's Newsletter About failure 2025

Notion's lost years, its near collapse during Covid, staying small to move fast, the joy and suffering of building horizontal, more | Ivan Zhao (CEO and co-founder)

Ivan Zhao talks in detail about the years Notion nearly died, including a full technical rewrite after the first version failed, and how he thought about telling that story once the company took off. It is a rare, specific account of a founder who does not sand down the failure, he describes exactly what did not work and what they changed to fix it. Listen for how a founder narrates a near death relaunch with confidence rather than shame.

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6 March 2025

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