Notion's CEO on if AI is really killing software companies

Definitely. We're looking for very AI native people. We're shifting towards

native people. We're shifting towards younger early career folks. Early

career. You hired a 16-year-old the other day.

>> Wait, did you really?

>> Yeah.

>> Tell me about this. How do you know about it?

>> Finally, I'm getting the chance to orchestrate a bunch of little bots to do my busy work for me. This week on Access, we hear from Notion CEO Ivan Xiao ahead of his big custom agents

launch. We get into it all from Ivan

launch. We get into it all from Ivan replacing his email inbox with clever agents, hiring 16-year-old engineers, and why Ivan thinks every company must make itself legible to AI to survive.

But first, Alex and I discuss my little field trip to Andre and Horowitz, the launch of a new startup that turns your slides into interactive sites, and how OpenAI buttered up the fella behind Open

Claw. This is Access.

Claw. This is Access.

Welcome to Access and hello to all of our new listeners, viewers after last week's uh splashy episode with Fiji Simo. Reminder, find us on YouTube in

Simo. Reminder, find us on YouTube in beautiful 1080p or higher definition.

Ellis, how are you doing, my friend?

>> I am something. I am

tired of overcommitting my calendar, my friend. As a new soloreneur who is also

friend. As a new soloreneur who is also deeply a people pleaser, I set myself up today with an hour of therapy, an hour of client review, 45

minutes for lunch, a 2-hour work session with a client, and 1 hour podcast where I had to bring it, and then now we're doing this. So, yeah, my lips are

doing this. So, yeah, my lips are chapped. Uh, a little worse for wear,

chapped. Uh, a little worse for wear, but I'm all right.

>> Sorry, 45 minutes for lunch. I don't

think I've given more than five minutes for lunch on a weekday in 10 years.

>> Well, thanks. That makes me feel better.

>> I'm just saying, man, like you had some pad time.

>> What kind of co-host are you? You got to validate, support, and praise the co-host. I mean, if I could have an

co-host. I mean, if I could have an agent manage my calendar and be like, Ellis, it's just too much. Then it

wouldn't at least I wouldn't have to be the one to say no.

Say, my agent told me no. Well, we can ask Ivan Jiao, the CEO of Notion, who is our guest today, about that in a little bit. But first, Ellis, I want to hear

bit. But first, Ellis, I want to hear about your time up in San Francisco last week. I'm usually the one who's going to

week. I'm usually the one who's going to San Francisco doing the JSX up from Burbank, but here you were last week with me staying put in LA, going up there and having some fun and telling

the founders what's up.

>> Yeah, it was a lot of fun. and I was invited by their speedrun accelerator Andre Horowitz A16Z to speak to their brand new cohort of young founders about

the art and science of startup storytelling of course and um I think it's going to get posted online later and it was a bit of exclusive for now

but I can share the things that people tweeted about it and then I could say more. Um I think but the big the big

more. Um I think but the big the big message which I came up with the morning before because I was trying to do my storytelling method on myself and say what people actually want to hear. Um

the big message was don't say what it is. Meaning don't say what your product

is. Meaning don't say what your product is but say what people want. And I tried to give a bunch of examples of kind of how I and others have done that uh

through history. I think in a world

through history. I think in a world where tech is kind of frankly a lot less differentiated as it once was, where everybody had different innovations, now everybody's kind of talking about the

same AI stuff. As powerful as it is, talking about agents or AI or saving time and money, uh, is going to be tough for you to stand out, right? And so I

think I just kind of shared the inside scoop on my method of trying to find putting my reporter hat back on trying to find whatever is most interesting about your company through the eyes of

your audience and just like hammering that home, you know? And I think like one of the examples that resonated with people was when I worked um on the daylight tablet computer. And I think

being tech dudes who did have like a legit innovation like a 60 frames per second super responsive scrollable e- in touchscreen. Um so you could browse the

touchscreen. Um so you could browse the web, you could listen to music or podcasts if you want. You could read your newsletters inside your email. It's

kind of like a Kindle that can do a lot more. something like between the Kindle

more. something like between the Kindle and the iPad. I think any other tech company would have just talked about the screen technology, especially if it was a company like Samsung. But the fact

that they also created the Ron OS that was all kind of about calm and peace and focus and it doesn't want to have notifications. It doesn't want to have

notifications. It doesn't want to have social apps. They try and move you

social apps. They try and move you toward a psychological knowledge worker zen moment. We ended up making the

zen moment. We ended up making the headline about the larger idea, which is I think what I believe people want most, is just a computer that's calmer and more focused. And so the headline I came

more focused. And so the headline I came up with was the computer deinvented.

When everybody else is reinventing and adding more and more and more into their products, I think reinvention and has become synonymous with just adding more initified stuff into your product. What

if there was a deinvented way? And as

always, the headline is just a hook, a way to get people in. I don't know if you'd like it, Alex, but uh >> well, I would just say that you weren't very calm when you brought your daylight to our live show with Google Ventures and Winston from Harvey and that [ __ ]

broke immediately and you had no notes.

Uh but yeah, if it works, I can see that working.

>> Yeah, Android is not my favorite to this day. I mean, I think half the problem

day. I mean, I think half the problem was that I couldn't make the text bigger, coincidentally, in the notion app. I know where that setting lives in

app. I know where that setting lives in iOS. I do not know where the setting

iOS. I do not know where the setting lives in Android. Actually, I think I tried to change it, but it wasn't reflected in specific apps. So, yeah,

>> it's okay. Um, I want to know about the actual day of doing this keynote like and the process of it. Were you were you pacing? You know, were you doing like,

pacing? You know, were you doing like, you know, you go to one side of the stage and then the other? Did you have a teleprompter? Were you winging it? Do

teleprompter? Were you winging it? Do

you have a bunch of slides?

>> Slides, but a lot of riffing, which I am prone to do as a yapper. That's why I have a podcast.

I was supposed to go 45 minutes, but I went 20 minutes over.

>> Jesus Christ, you talked for over an hour straight.

>> Yeah. I mean, you heard I I've talked for like seven hours today already. Um,

including this. So, yeah, I guess I can do that. But I just get excited. I mean,

do that. But I just get excited. I mean,

I, you know, I like to make people laugh. I think of myself as a little bit

laugh. I think of myself as a little bit of an entertainer or a stand-up comic.

It's interesting, though. I felt like when I got out of media, I was like, I don't want to be in media cuz I don't want to be an entertainer. But I do think going back to the people pleaser mindset, that is definitely a part of me.

>> Yeah. Did any uh 20-year-old founders come up to you after and be like, I was 5 years old when you were at the Verge?

>> Shockingly, no. Uh they all came up to me, which was fun. I mean, they are founders, meaning they are ultraetworkers, ultra ambitious. They by

definition are the people who approach the speaker after the event.

But in a room full of founders, all of them approached the speaker after the event, which is funny. But yeah, I don't think any of them were alive when I was at the Verge. Isn't

>> that wild? Something else you did last week uh after we recorded was you had another company that you worked with go live uh faces. Is that right?

>> Yeah.

>> This looked interesting. Like a new kind of PowerPoint. There's a million

of PowerPoint. There's a million companies doing this, but I liked the kind of weirdly IRL low production look of at least the still of this trailer.

You know, just chairs on a beach. Yeah,

this one was fun. Essentially, what

they're doing is instead of having your slides just be these kind of static rectangles, they are using the full power of the web to create live interactive experiences inside of your

slides. Whether it is a rotating 3D

slides. Whether it is a rotating 3D model, a live map, a quote you can generate from a client, anything that can be on your site can now be in your deck. And this was kind of like the

deck. And this was kind of like the perfect client for me because they have this very, very cool tech, but they aren't completely sure where they want to point it. And so for me, the exercise

is always about what do you love? And

they talked about founders building cool stuff. Um, what's the technology you

stuff. Um, what's the technology you have? Where might people want it? Who do

have? Where might people want it? Who do

you want to compete against? And uh I think we ended up in a really cool place. This was also a line I was proud

place. This was also a line I was proud of from the manifesto that I also tweeted. There's no power left in

tweeted. There's no power left in PowerPoint. That uh you know, you just

PowerPoint. That uh you know, you just got to give the people what they want, right? Everybody loves that [ __ ]

right? Everybody loves that [ __ ] >> Again, what were you showering when you did that one?

>> Dude, I like I like don't I don't even know at this point whose idea it was.

Could have been me. Could have been Cloud.

>> You're so in the zone.

>> Yeah, I guess so. I don't know. I I feel like I'm burning out a little bit in terms of my like random access memory.

Like I don't even know what happened yesterday. But uh whatever I'm doing

yesterday. But uh whatever I'm doing seems to be working at the moment.

Well, we have to talk about the biggest news of this week, which is that the founder of Open Claw, Peter Steinberger, is joining OpenAI. So you you haven't you haven't set up OpenClaw, right,

Ellis?

>> Oh my god. Did anybody make the joke that Alman buttered him up?

>> Oh, what? Because he's a lobster.

>> Exactly.

>> Uh, no. Because it's a bad >> Not my best.

>> Not your best. It's okay. Uh, if we were in person, I would laugh.

>> But there's some legendary buttering up methodologies, are there not? Zuck take

people for a walk around campus up to that hill or whatever. I don't know.

What What do you think Sam does?

>> That's a good question. And you know, I asked someone uh very close to this conversation uh why Peter probably picked OpenAI and

Sam Alman over Meta and Mark Zuckerberg because he had actually said on Lex Freiedman's podcast uh that those were the two offers he was evaluating which I just love how the entire process has

been public and on display for like the last two weeks of he went to San Francisco, he talked about having these conversations and then he joined OpenAI like all within two weeks. Uh, but

anyway, I was talking to someone very close to this and um they said probably money was the reason he went to OpenAI.

Though, I don't know. I mean,

Steinberger is an interesting dude, man.

Like, he's he's a uh repeat entrepreneur. He sold a company that did

entrepreneur. He sold a company that did PDF stuff for like over hund00 million.

He did 40 something projects before Claude >> PDF goat.

>> He's the PDF goat. He's also jacked living in Europe and it doesn't seem like he really needs a lot. I mean on Lex Freiedman he was talking about that but um I actually just wanted to play

you him talking about uh the offers he was getting. Um let's cue this first

was getting. Um let's cue this first one.

>> And then there's all the big labs that I've been talking to and from those meta and open eyes seemed the most interesting.

>> Do you lean one way or the other?

>> Not sure Ma should share there. It's not

quite finalized yet. Let's let's just say like on either of these my conditions are that the project stays open source that it maybe it's going to

be a model like Chrome and Chromium.

This is too important to just give to a company and make it theirs.

>> So yeah, this literally came out I think a couple days before he joined OpenAI.

>> Dude, I don't get this at all.

>> You don't get it at all?

>> It's so [ __ ] simple. One company is about personal productivity and the name open is in their name and they have 800 million intentional AI users every week.

One has 800 million unintentional AI users every week. Has not stood for personal independence and doesn't really have anything to do with productivity or owning your own [ __ ] >> Okay, fair.

>> Am I wrong?

>> That is a very fair point. Uh, I think an interesting argument is that Zucker is over there trying to assemble the Avengers of AI to reboot everything and

is willing to uh consider things he hasn't considered before. But yes, your point is well taken. I think it also helps that Open Claw ran on Codeex,

OpenAI's uh coding platform and that Steinberger was such a proponent of that. Yeah, point taken. Now the

that. Yeah, point taken. Now the

question is what is he going to do at OpenAI? I'm not so much concerned about

OpenAI? I'm not so much concerned about the future of OpenClaw because again it's still this super early adopter thing that most people including myself will not take the time to go through and

spend thousands in tokens and buy a Mac Mini to like have it maybe triage email.

Okay. Um I would rather just wait for the hosted safe version of this which by the way Kiwi uh and then Manis which

Metabot shipped like also this week. So

open and I will do a version of that.

But I think there's actually something else Peter will work on that connects to our last episode with Fiji. And he was talking about this with Lex Freedman, too. Let's play this.

too. Let's play this.

>> There should be a very easy way for agents to get their own Twitter account.

Um >> we need to rethink social platforms a little bit. If if if we we we go towards

little bit. If if if we we we go towards a future where everyone has their agent and agents maybe have their own Instagram profiles or Twitter accounts or can like do stuff

on my behalf. I think it should very clearly be marked that they are doing stuff on my behalf and it's not me because content is now so cheap eyeballs are the expensive part. So yeah, I think

he's going to be working on this open AI social network for agents which Fiji told us about for the first time last week. Let's just quickly play that. you

week. Let's just quickly play that. you

know, nothing really specific in the works, but the thing we're thinking a lot about and I think everyone is thinking a lot about is like what happens to like social relationship in a

world where everybody has their own personal agent and like how can these personal agents maybe help you manage your social relationship in a better way? Like if your agent and my agent

way? Like if your agent and my agent were like communicating ahead of this interview, would that interview have been better?

>> So yeah, what do you think about this, Alice? It sounds like we're going

Alice? It sounds like we're going towards a future where agents are talking to agents.

>> Well, he certainly sounds like a PDF goat. I'll put it that way. Um, man, I

goat. I'll put it that way. Um, man, I don't know. It just sounds like one use

don't know. It just sounds like one use case to me. I mean, when I think about what I think the Johnny and Sam device is going to be, it is this always on

thing that has access to computer use, browser use, app use, APIs, MCP, whatever it is is going to be on the back end. And you can use it to

back end. And you can use it to orchestrate whatever you want. And that

could be an automation, that could be something that you want your computer to do while you're away. I don't know if they're going to use this guy's open source technology uh or even just the

principles of it to help build it. Um

but but tell me this. I mean, I'm still not completely sure. I'm not completely sure what what was the hardest part about what he did.

>> That's a good question. It sounds like a lot of it was around memory, around the way that he designed it, not so much the underlying technology because he was

using, you know, Open Claw is based on models like Claude and GPT and all that.

So it's not like he has some proprietary model. I think it was

model. I think it was >> he connected the dots.

>> He connected the dots and let it and let it go wild and which is what ChachiPT did originally was, you know, Google and all these other companies had chatbots like that and they just didn't want to release them because they didn't think

people were ready. They didn't think it was safe or secure enough. And this open source project is like here just have at it. Install this thing on a Mac Mini.

it. Install this thing on a Mac Mini.

Spend a [ __ ] ton in tokens and figure it out. And I think what he showed is that

out. And I think what he showed is that people at least a significant early adopter crowd which is probably also listening to a show like this want to do that even if the ROI on the other side

is not known. And so if you take that energy and you scale it to 100 million 800 million people with the right safeguards with right the right tool access and really abstract away the

difficulty of setting it up maybe you've got something pretty cool.

>> Yeah. Yeah, I think the other thing he hinted at with this project is back toward, you know, this vision of the future that there's always been where you own your computer and your computer

does things for you versus, let's say, kind of the like approach where it lives on a corporate server and then that stuff does it for you. But I mean, I'll tell you this. I mean, as a segue into

this this Notion uh interview with Ivan Jiao, I mean, I was using the new custom agents tool, and basically what I was able to say is every morning at 7 a.m.

like run a script where you update my availability document based on when the next 2hour slot is in my calendar for like big project learning sessions and

also the next 1 hour slot for like one-hour working sessions. And it's just going to do that every day. And then I made up another one that said whenever I get an email uh or I said after the

final review with a client on my calendar, go to the relevant invoice, prefill that into an email and get it ready for me.

>> And it works.

>> Uh not yet.

>> There we go.

>> There are still some kinks to work out.

Um one of them is a simpler kink, which is that the original availability one couldn't access my subcalers. That'll

get worked out. It saw my main calendar just fine, but I'm a nerd who has multiple subcalers uh for each client, so that's my problem, I guess. But, uh,

as far as I know, being able to like create timebased or rulebased or like trigger-based stuff is a lot of, you know, what people are talking about when

it comes to to OpenClaw and whatever is talking about. I think part of it is

talking about. I think part of it is that you could kind of own it and run it yourself and have it be always on as a result.

>> Yeah. But I don't think most people want to do that.

>> Oh, for sure. For sure. Yeah.

>> I think most people want the Manis version, which Metabot, which is like it's hosted for you and you access it via Telegram or WhatsApp and it's a it's your own little cloud that you control,

at least theoretically.

>> But yeah, you'll always, you know, it's the same people that have like physical Bitcoin wallets. There's always going to

Bitcoin wallets. There's always going to be people who want to control it on prem as they say. And I mean, Ivan actually gave us a juicy little hint here on the show about like this independent uh app

that they're working on just kind of talking to the AI and >> it's going to be able to do stuff just like that.

>> There's actually a lot of interesting new stuff uh in this combo with Ivan. Um

he is a super well-connected um influential dude obviously in AI and tech more broadly, but also notion I think has a soft spot in both of our hearts. You worked with Ivan uh on some

hearts. You worked with Ivan uh on some of the company's positioning at one point. Uh just full disclosure like

point. Uh just full disclosure like we're friendly with Ivan. Notion was

actually one of our launch sponsors for Access. Uh so mad props to them for

Access. Uh so mad props to them for that. Um and just generally really good

that. Um and just generally really good people. So it was super exciting to

people. So it was super exciting to finally get time with Ivan on the show.

>> Do you want to hear any more from Delirious Seven Hours Talking Ellis or should we just cut to Ivan?

>> Let's just cut to Ivan.

>> Okay. Have fun.

>> Ivan, how are you?

>> I'm pretty good. How are you guys? I'm

good. Where where are you calling in from today?

>> I'm calling from our San Francisco office.

>> Are you tired of hearing and saying the word agents yet, Ivan? Are you still loving it?

>> You know, one of our um key uh one of our best designers in the company? I do.

You guys know this guy, Jeffrey?

>> I don't think so. Sounds like I need to meet him.

>> Yeah, he's great. But um whenever he says Asian a Asian sounds like Asians, >> he's like we have this Asians do this and he's Asian, right? So it's like

Asian Asian. Okay, it makes sense, too.

Asian Asian. Okay, it makes sense, too.

>> So we're catching you at an interesting time uh week before the big roll out. I

know you previewed custom agents a little while ago, but but how's everything going toward the launch?

>> That's very good. We're just prepping up for all the custom agents ready to launch next week. been testing for a while. We've been actually talking about

while. We've been actually talking about today in all hands like we've been working on this idea almost a year now.

Next week it will be the f uh will be the week the ready finally ready for public. So we previewed this earlier

public. So we previewed this earlier late last year in our make with notion keynote events. Um so bunch company be

keynote events. Um so bunch company be running out for some time but next week is the public tag.

>> Ivan it's funny I feel like I was giving custom agents a try. Uh big thanks um Taksheet for the demo with Alex the other day and uh what what I was

thinking was that it was kind of like your initial vision years ago for being able to create your own software but you guys dumped that line right is it time to bring it back it because it really feels like that

>> democratize software right now it's democratized AI agent it's it's kind of similar people are trying it from all different angles you can even see from uh what is it Open claw in the past

couple week several week blowing up right people buy Mac mini they want to use having asynchronous agents that running on the backgrounds can do work

uh so but what is like to have a business grade multiplayer then you can create a factory of those kind of customer agent working 247 for you and

open up easy enough that more people can do that that's the spirit of the product we're launching >> Ivan have you actually had openclaw do anything good for you? I'm actually

dying to know anyone who's had OpenCloud do something meaningful for them.

>> One of our uh our head of product um I don't know if you hook up OpenClaw, but a lot of clock uh to manage his lights for him. Uh he has those like Lutron

for him. Uh he has those like Lutron systems. um he figure how to plug into their his AI system whether it's open cloud-based or his own agent system

>> maybe not worth thousands of tokens in a Mac mini running on its own uh but you know we'll get there >> I think we all have to tinker tinker within us right we all want to people

play Lego part of it to see the final result but I would say the journey is actually making the Lego pieces and when you make something great you want to showcase to people I think it's a lot of the draw for it including notion

included. People want to build something

included. People want to build something that showcase to other people. So, open

open cloud plays into that, too.

>> It's tough. I feel like when with any of these big paradigm shifts, and you're uniquely good at this, I think, Ivan, coming up with like historical references or metaphors, and for a

while, I feel like it was Legos. Uh, now

we're moving on to the factory. And I

feel like I had a founder client who was talking about that game, Factorio. And

uh I have a special thing that I want to show you from my from my history that I just thought of that's actually right behind me. Hold on one second. Uh

behind me. Hold on one second. Uh

>> oh.

>> I have the original PC box, one of the best box arts of all time, Sim City 2000. And like it does feel like that.

2000. And like it does feel like that.

Like you're trying to manage and optimize this incredible system all by yourself. But what's crazy is that you

yourself. But what's crazy is that you could just you're you almost feel like the boss. You feel like the CEO, like

the boss. You feel like the CEO, like the mayor of your Sim City when you just say it with words now. And that's to me I think what's what's the craziest piece with this empire you've built that is

now accessible with the agents.

>> It's actually so there's twofolds. One

is that's the product we built. We want

all the know leaders CEOs whoever working company feel like they can manage a team of Asians agents or interns and

>> I can't hear it now Ivan.

That's a proud we build but at the same time like me running notions like I've been doing a lot of with coding agents just plugging all the different tools inside the company it just feels like

superpower like some of our customer agent connect with snowflake on one end all the contacts in notion uh claw co can run some other process on the other

end it's like I can ask any question inside the company and the answer will be it's a superhuman level of answer for me and I can run some repetitive processes and I It almost feels like it

can do anything. So that power is I would say until this coding agent coding agent revolution with know since 4 six

we don't we haven't power and that's fairly new. It feels like same city but

fairly new. It feels like same city but for your companies. Ashe was showing us how you guys use the custom agents internally at notion and I thought that was pretty interesting like everyone you

guys run on Slack and he was showing us how it can monitor one of the channels where people are asking like basic things around the office like where are

the chargers you know I'm out of whatever at my desk and it can respond and remind people of inventory and if not create a ticket that a human can

then go and check on and I thought that was a pretty cool use case cuz it's not you know revolutionary but it does uh lessen the effort uh that you need to get basic things done uh that humans

would have done before. So I'd be curious to see how that scales out in what other people build.

>> Yeah, it's one of the So there are three use cases we try to really nail with this custom agent launch. So you just mentioned one of them which is answer repetitive questions, right? a big swap

of knowledge or you can argue maybe a quarter of them are just answering questions that live in some kind of knowledge base. So we try to do a really

knowledge base. So we try to do a really good job of that. Uh another one's triage tickets triage to-dos. Uh you

probably saw some demos from hey people ask questions in one slack channel you should pass to team in the other slack channel. A lot of PM's job a lot of

channel. A lot of PM's job a lot of engineer manager job is doing that. Uh

the third one is kind of write this kind of status report status updates. So many

team work it's like hey what did we do last week what did you do yesterday so you don't need to do that those anymore and those three type of use cases what we consider busy work and most knowledge

war it's actually big swap knowledge are those kind of busy work >> it sucks it's so much tedious stuff man >> I know uh agents can do them pretty well

in sometimes super human level well now so just delegate those to agents and you human can elevate up and play your sim cities Right.

>> I get to finally be the systems thinker I think that I am. When you're forced to actually construct the perfect instruction manual for each agent. And

that was I think one of the things that you guys have done really well with this launch is create that settings panel where you can actually fine-tune the different prompts, the different access, the different integrations. And uh I've

been playing a lot with Wabby recently to create some little Vibe Code apps and they've done something really similar.

And I think we're seeing a very cool innovation. Um, people are moving beyond

innovation. Um, people are moving beyond just the chat screen to actually catalog some of its memories in a UX that actually makes sense. Like inside of Wabby, there's a settings page within

your app for the icon prompt. There's a

setting page for the different fetch prompts it's doing and you can select a model. And I feel like you guys have

model. And I feel like you guys have taken a similar step forward. Um, when

did that settings page come about to let people actually tweak things not just with natural language but in more of an interface cuz that it feels like a big a big next step for uh AI. I wouldn't say

the big next step is about required step to do anything business facing because when you're working with a lot of people >> just like giving the transparency into what it's actually doing >> the transparency and you want to lock

down you want to make sure the permission is set like when you work with a team of people there are secrets right certain people should see certain things certain people should should not see certain things certain workflow should be defined by the experts and

people shouldn't change it the the power of language model is free for all anybody if you can speak English or Japanese you and modify things. The

downside of language model is free-for-all. Anybody can modify

free-for-all. Anybody can modify anything. In a business setting, you

anything. In a business setting, you don't want free-for-all. You want some guardrails for the permissions, for the securities, for all the boring but very important and necessary things. And um

in some sense, that's a lot of value we provide with customer agent to provide those guard rails. So like open claw, you can run Mac mini to run everything in your life, but that just by yourself.

But what is that for a company in that unique arts and all those check boxes you mentioned?

>> Yeah, I'm curious. I would think you guys are on the cutting edge of actually implementing this stuff internally. I

feel like every single company out there is saying like AI agents are going to help you automate the busy work and focus on what matters. But what have you heard from the team for what that

actually looks like in terms of being able to focus on what matters? It's the

repetitive work we're talking about like we've been testing this with a small group of alpha customers like um the ramp the versel the clay the cursor of

the world right >> access podcast we've got early access >> yes um even though those company are very AI first they have a lot of busy work too uh they can vibe code a lot of

internal workflow on the coding side but anything that's knowledge work related teamwork related notion is the best primitive for that um give you one example ramp fully on board into notion

last year. uh it's right now I think

last year. uh it's right now I think it's about 3,000ish people companies right before notion they have to use across like uh half a dozen core collaboration tool so they just shrink

from six just to notion that's the first step consolidation so save cost save money move faster one place for information but now once you have one place for information is have one

context for AI agent so they deploy notion across all the ramp employees one place for AI meeting nodes Now there has one place to do the custom agents. So

they can actually automate some of the repetitive workflow inside ramp. Uh one

of their popular ones is for their sales teams. So ramp is shipping really fast.

They're shipping feature left and right and it's really hard for their sales team to keep up, right? Like what's the latest feature? Uh what's how do you

latest feature? Uh what's how do you answer question from customers? So now

they set up a custom agent that can answer all those question from all the slack channels, internal notes and docs from emails. Uh I think that's the most

from emails. Uh I think that's the most popular one inside the company. They

answer in the last couple weeks they I believe answered 4,000 questions for this customer agent and that's about know if we can consider each question is about 30 minutes that's about two 2,000

human hours. Um that's a real time

human hours. Um that's a real time saving for ramp. It's funny when you say 2,00 human hours. I think CEOs love that kind of talk. But I feel like the AI narrative could have been a little

different had it been a bit more like targeted around the exact use cases.

Like if you were to say, "Hey, help desk." You don't have to tell people

desk." You don't have to tell people where the [ __ ] is that they're asking for every day. Like the IT help desk, they would have been like, "Oh my god, give me this thing." And that's like one of the reasons that in my work

uh as you've seen Ivan I always try and lead with like the hypersp specific relatable problems because it instantly makes this stuff feel a bit less threatening and but then the question

remains like with all that stuff automated what are people doing instead like have you seen the pace increase for your own team now that they're not doing the busy work like what's the outcomes that you're actually seeing because I

haven't heard this from anybody yet.

Yeah, I would say the first appearance is happening on a lot of engineer side engineer product design within notion like we don't all the daily standup inside notion were done by customer

agent now so you don't have to summarize the meeting notes you don't have to say what you did last week right those are small time saving like a five 10 minutes each meetings but they adds up other

things like triaging tickets managing uh the bug backlog none of those done by any PM anymore they're still small they're like five 10 minutes here and

there but they add up I will say the shape of the time saving is very horizontal it's not very vertical meaning that's like it's five minutes 10 minutes here and there for each everyone

versus the entire row entire job done by agents because of that we don't see a structural change at least in company yet right it's like everybody's life gets a little bit better if you ask our

team like hey we're going to take away the customer agent from you we're going to have a re revolution inside the Right? But it does not precisely map to

Right? But it does not precisely map to any persons responsibly at this moment because the model capability need to get better. The guard rails and all the

better. The guard rails and all the permission stuff need to get better.

>> That's what we learned with OpenClaw, right? Is that it's cool to let it go

right? Is that it's cool to let it go wild, but the model is still kind of unreliable. The safety is just not

unreliable. The safety is just not there. There's prompt injection. There's

there. There's prompt injection. There's

all these reasons you don't really want to let some agent go ham with shell access to your machine. And I guess that's the opportunity notion is is

going after. Is that fair that this is

going after. Is that fair that this is >> very fair? Yeah. It's like what is open cloud spirit asynchronous can do almost everything you can do with a computer but make a multiplayer make a

collaborative with enterpriseg grade permission and security.

>> How do you use it? Like and you talked about how some of your team's using it but you're the CEO. Like how are you using agents in your day-to-day to run the company? Every morning I have a

the company? Every morning I have a brief from this guy. So, um, this is out of the box. So, it tells me, actually, let me read my brief today. Uh,

>> you're gonna talk to these two schmucks on a podcast.

>> I was going to say, please cancel all meetings with people that are five skip levels below me that somehow got on my calendar. Thank you. Bye.

calendar. Thank you. Bye.

>> Give me a daily brief every morning. Uh,

I used to archive my inbox. So we also notion mail, notion calendar team, their top priority right now is to make their agent to use capability worldclass the bestin-class. So you can archive any I

bestin-class. So you can archive any I basically don't check my inbox like a normal person anymore. I largely talk to the custom agent that runs my inbox. So

it has a context of uh what I'm working on has a context of what kind of thing I care about, right? So that's another things. Um the the super power one I

things. Um the the super power one I mentioned earlier connect to our snowflake back end. So I can understand any almost any data inside the company with the commentary. That's the contact

from Slack, contact from notion docs, from an email. Um it's kind of like a data science team in your pocket.

>> What was your brief like this morning?

>> I mean I usually once you dismiss it, it goes away. So let me uh

goes away. So let me uh >> That's kind of crazy that you're not really looking at email anymore. I love

that. I would love to not look at email anymore. happy to set up for you guys

anymore. happy to set up for you guys because it really changed your um >> All right. So, we'll stay on after the pod, Ivan, and you'll uh you'll personally walk us through. Right.

>> I was just doing this yesterday with uh um who's that lady from Wall Street Journal. He finally clicked with notion.

Journal. He finally clicked with notion.

>> Oh, is this why Joanna tweeted that?

>> Yes. Yes. Yeah. Uh

>> oh, Joanna. Shout out Joanna. She just

left. She

>> I was going to bring up her tweet. She

was like, I finally understand notion thanks to AI. And I was like, >> that was you, Ivan. You made her understand AI, >> Ivan. That's the power of going direct,

>> Ivan. That's the power of going direct, as they say.

>> It's It says a lot about our on boarding could be better, but it also says our AI is is quite magical, right? Can do

everything you asked for. So, I actually DM her afterwards. We're going to set up oneonone to truly on board.

>> I that is the thing about notion for me is like uh it's it still is kind of like, man, there's so much to do in there and I'm not sure where to start.

That the onboarding has to be tricky when it's such a powerful tool.

>> Yeah. I would say in some case that has been our weaknesses for years because we give people the Legos, right? Um and and this moment seems to be a blessing

because if you think about traditional SAS, you hardcode the workflow into your software logic and and it's like that's your domain what you're selling.

Everything's rigid, but it's powerful.

It's automated. It's on the cloud. And

>> some Salesforce dude spends eight weeks programming it for you. Well, Salesforce

is actually a pretty flexible one compared to many vertical SAS. So,

actually as a relational database behind the scene, you can do a lot of different things, but majority of SAS is pretty rigid. The workflows baked into it and

rigid. The workflows baked into it and notion Legos would turn out to be very opinionated. So, historically is

opinionated. So, historically is difficult to on board, but with language models, language model can use those Legos. So, it's actually make our

Legos. So, it's actually make our weakness into our strength. So now you can do all the different open-ended things, all different flavor knowledge in notion. So it actually shifted a

in notion. So it actually shifted a little bit.

>> I have personally onboarded Alex to a variety of different use cases and I will require a small commission. Thank

you Ivan.

>> Uh so you know it's funny my my barrier to getting on notion back when I joined the browser company is and I actually hated it for a hot minute. Now I'm like an evangelist essentially. But I was

like where the [ __ ] do I click? There's

six buttons over here. There's six

little dots over here. There's a little table dragger over here. You could drag around the lines. And now that I know how to use it, it's like my favorite thing. And I use Google Docs and I

thing. And I use Google Docs and I frankly want to kill myself. But uh

there are all those little things I think that kind of add up. And another

really big thing I think to learn is how to actually use databases well, which was like such a huge unlock for me. Are

you telling custom agents to like proactively recommend stuff like that that maybe is underappreciated that people don't even know what they could ask for yet? You know, they ask for a

faster horse instead of a database.

>> We don't proactively ask agent to uh suggest a workflow yet. We're actually

testing this uh to when we deploying customer. It's like how do you automate

customer. It's like how do you automate for a deployment motion, right? This is

a buzz word for deployment engineer. How

do you make that better with our own tools? Um we should do that. Um I would

tools? Um we should do that. Um I would say the most popular use case is rather than you build a database from scratch like the rows and column and relational schemas agent can just build it for you

and that has been at this point is more than 50% of database are built by agent than human now and that's probably the magical thing that clicked with the Wall Street Journal lady yesterday. I found

my daily reminder daily brief. So, uh,

my top three items is confirm our domain because we're trying to, uh, uh, I think we're trying to buy another domain for our product. And, uh, number two,

our product. And, uh, number two, >> don't let that out here until because it's coming out Thursday. You got to get the domain before then.

>> The others, prepare for podcast block this afternoon with you guys. Um,

there's a bunch of links in my calendar email. And the last one, before end of

email. And the last one, before end of day, review the candidates in my um, recruiting databases. So we have a

recruiting databases. So we have a recruiting database internally. Every

day our customer agents send me notifications like who those are the people who are uh job offers going out.

So I usually review those job offers.

>> Speaking of recruiting, I know some CEOs like Toby Lucky of Shopify have been pretty forward about, you know, their uh essentially saying you are not allowed to hire anybody unless you could prove

that AI can't do it. Um whereas other companies have said whoever we hire has to be provably AI native in all their in all their workflows. Do you are you implementing anything like that yet in

the recruiting process as criteria?

>> Not strict but definitely we're looking for very AI native people. Uh I would say our overall um we're shifting towards younger early career folks because like they're just >> early career. You hired a 16-year-old

the other day.

>> Wait, did you really tell about this?

How do you know about it? I saw a tweet a 16 and 18 year old.

>> Okay, so the story is um late last year we hired a well mid last year we hired 18 years old. We thought this is the youngest what we ever hire, right? So

still just graduated high school going to college. Um then a month later um we

to college. Um then a month later um we found this person really talented on YouTube not famous on Twitter anywhere like he making some cool videos about

design and AI stuff. So like come we invite this person to our office then I bump into him in the elevator and say hey where did you go to college say I

don't go to college uh so like oh you drop out right so no I'm still in uh I'm grade 10 in in high school but this kid is so talented and he's uh

actually part of our um >> he runs marketing >> no no he's a he's a programmer uh part of our next next product has he's building a big chunk of it. So we're

we're it's we're going to announce hopefully in May so a lot more people can play with it.

>> Wow. So you find with AI you want to hire younger because those kinds of people what they use the tools and they embrace them faster. Is that the thinking?

>> Embrace them faster less assumptions because a lot of things you just assume they cannot do but the assumption changes every two month every month at

this point right. So um more optimistic I'm more optimistic more hungry um a lot of experience doesn't matter anymore you just have to be a good ask the right

questions and I think also like you grow up with the internet in the past 10 15 years then you just you you learn much faster like we have internet when we were a little bit older but this kid

just completely grew up with internet from when they were toddlers so their rate of learning is compounding at different rate and met last couple years if you grow up with HBT is accompanying

yet a different rate.

>> I'm so happy you're advocating for toddler screen time Ivan because my toddler has screen time and has learned a lot from #myipad and I'm just I mean even dating back to

the snap years I'm I'm just such a big believer that it's not about the screen per se. It's about what's on the screen

per se. It's about what's on the screen or sure what it's replacing if it comes to relationships, play outside, unstructured free time, all that stuff.

But uh yeah, one would think. I mean, I remember back in those days as well. I

mean, I'm curious, you know, I know you've you've been with Notion a while now. I mean, how would you have done it

now. I mean, how would you have done it differently on the way up if you had access to these tools?

>> Oh, man. Good question. Anybody nobody

asked me this before?

>> This is what you come on the show for, Ivan.

>> Yeah, I'm not a researcher. So um I don't think I will be building even if you rewind back 5 10 years ago I wouldn't be building I wouldn't be ex

like first d deep diving into building hi right so um actually you guys know there's historically there's always two

spectrum of um um schools of computing right so on the east coast there is this AI school which is like that start MIT

John McCarthy trying to teach computer how to play chess as this is 1950s MIT right um that's on the east coast on the west coast this is like Douglas Angelbar

and later Alan K those are the HCI uh human computer inter interaction or you can known as like uh augmenting human intellect AHI school for computing so

AHI hi always be polar schools of computing I will say right now the power definitely shift a lot towards AI hi side but what draw me to start notion

draw me to start to play with computers.

It's the interface, the tool side, the the create the shape of something that you can hold in your hand that hopefully amplifying what makes us human. Um, if I

start in tech again now, I think I'll still be drawn towards that directions.

Like in notion, some of you been to our offices, we care a lot about tools and craft. That's the HCI as the human

craft. That's the HCI as the human augumentation schools of way of thinking about computing and uh I think right now it's interesting time because AI becomes

so powerful. How do you use this power

so powerful. How do you use this power to create new forms of tools is the question that nobody proper answered yet.

>> Open claw is a good example of that because I have >> Alex why do you have to like incessantly bring up open claw. Well, it's just it's just on the mind, man. Like, I think what he's saying is is is

connected to that because I think a lot of people a lot of labs had that kind of tech internally and AI is getting a lot better at tool use and agentic use cases and really what it is, it's like a

different interface. I mean, it's not a

different interface. I mean, it's not a good one in terms of like a mass consumer interface, but it just change the interface to interact with an agent in this way and make it accessible. And

so the opportunity with interfaces and AI right now is just tremendous because there's so much there's so much ceiling on just the AI the AI we have today even beyond future models right

>> I think as people are start showing like hey realtime strategy games from the 90 and 2000 might be a good form factor for managing agents >> that's what I'm talking about

>> uh we're cambban board turns out we're full circle now like for we had a one year two year managing IDE uh using ID to manage agents. Now we're going back

to managing multiple agents. Turns out

the best way is Camban boards. So we're

still looking for the best form factors.

>> I was a Settlers of Katan um addict in college. I won the Kentucky Championship

college. I won the Kentucky Championship one year. Are you saying maybe maybe

one year. Are you saying maybe maybe that could come back and I could use that skill to to run my agents? I don't

know about katan actually. It's probably

more it's probably more like civilization.

>> I got one. What is the zurgling rush of agentic deployment in Starcraft terms?

If you really want to destroy a competitor before they've even gotten out the doors, I need one agent to dodo their servers.

I need another to uh hire all their team members. I need another to

members. I need another to what?

>> We're we're missing metaphors here.

>> Did you play Starcraft?

>> I do play Starcraft. Uh I like Yeah.

What would be interesting to see? It's

like like human wants to be in the loop.

You just have to go up the loop.

>> You don't want to be on the level of doing busy work loop. You want to elevate elevate. Eventually you're from

elevate elevate. Eventually you're from managing uh uh work itself to managing a city. And I think we're still doing

city. And I think we're still doing that. We're figuring out the right

that. We're figuring out the right interface allow us to elevate.

>> You've inspired me to want to not look at email ever again. That's going to be my first uh level of elevating. Well, my

prediction is like there's agents to manage inbox and there's agents to write emails and I think in maybe two years from now, email will be a really flooded

medium just with all the spams back and forth. So, become too saturated, right?

forth. So, become too saturated, right?

So, we'll see. Oh, it gets really busy now with all the sales emails and all the agents collect them.

>> If you think that happens to email, I'd actually I was going to I've been trying to find a way to ask you this. I'm

curious how you think notion itself survives agents at scale because there's the argument that um what cloud is building and what open eye will probably do with Peter and and what they're doing

on agents with codeex like uh maybe they want to eat you too. How does not uh stay uh firm in that kind of an environment where you know I was listening to Peter and Lex Freiedman and

um the founder of Open Call and he was saying like most apps will just become API calls. So how do you avoid notion

API calls. So how do you avoid notion being in that future or does that even matter? Is that okay?

matter? Is that okay?

>> Yeah, I think it's a lot of discussion like is software dead, is SAS dead, right? To me that's a kind of like a

right? To me that's a kind of like a tale of two cities. Um like with agents with language model like how software is used and consume and build is completely

different like in some sense software providers are you're no longer just building for humans you're building for other language models and agents.

Like if your product cannot be used by agents, I don't think the future is really promising for you. But if your product can be rearchitected, can be properly adopted, used by agent, you use

the word to use, I think that you can tap into brand new market that's that the tech industry have never seen before. Like for the longest time, tech

before. Like for the longest time, tech mostly selling tools in the past 15 years selling tools as a Cbased Cbased business model for other people to buy.

But the larger market is not just selling tools, it's selling the work and services.

That's about 10 times the market. So if

you can make your product and your current stack and all the tooling you're building around this to tap into that market, that's much much larger. And to

me that's the opportunity for all the tech companies. The question is can you

tech companies. The question is can you reshape your architecture to ride this wave? That's why we have been building

wave? That's why we have been building notion so many times to to ride this wave. Yeah, it's crazy to think about

wave. Yeah, it's crazy to think about the back end versus the front end. Um,

that's what I was wondering about if you were to build Notion from the ground up with these tools if the user interface would have been any different. I mean,

it it's definitely clear, you know, with y'all's incredible design sensibility.

And I think we talked about this once, Ivan, just like that eternal unsolvable tension, you know, between too many buttons and too few buttons and how do you create some way for the team to to

know what's right, to know what's enough and what's too much. But it seems to me that with AI, a lot of this stuff could ostensibly be hidden and a lot of the buttons, you know, could go away. I

mean, when you think about it, it's like moving your mouse and clicking something may be something that that 16-year-old couldn't care less about versus just kind of speaking it even, which you're starting to see a lot of different

speaking tools that register this stuff even more clearly.

>> That's why like I've been using chat as interface to manage my email inbox, right? Like what's matter here is like

right? Like what's matter here is like uh I don't want you to click 50 button to archive emails. I can just tell the the customer agents, hey, archive what's I don't think is important today. Right?

So I think what's tr what's key here is okay fundamentally the company Ghana gets more nimble shaped differently by future business it will build by a small

uh group of human start a company together a lot of talk about one billion uh one person building a billion dollar business but at least we believe it still be a small group of people so will

be some form of multiplayer right multiplayer type of use cases more important than single player that's one form factor That's important. So when

multiple people will collaborate, what's the best form factor for multiple people to collaborate? Reading and writing text

to collaborate? Reading and writing text is still one of the best form factor. So

you need a multiplayer canvas to do some form of documents, some form of the writing. And when you have a multiple

writing. And when you have a multiple people collaborate on strategy and writing, you also need to collaborate on what to do, who to do what. That's

basically give us some kind of a project management shape of things. Whether

you're managing todo for humans, managing for to-do for agent come you you got some kind of cambore right to me those are the core primitive to work with a small group of people and

dedicate a lot of work to agent agent can write a lot of docs agent can do a lot of task you can work with external clock and cursor agent to do uh uh

create a new feature for your codebase but that's kind of your command command um pallet command dashboard for human a small group of human to work together,

right? And lastly, you want to have the

right? And lastly, you want to have the state of our models. So, right now there's uh three or four model companies and each ones leaproggers

uh they don't want to lock into any of the model providers. So, there's a value to be neutral. There's value to be a Swiss land of all the model providers.

So you want to have a multiplayer interface collaborative environment that can use state-of-art models that are model agnostic and neutral and to be

truly B2B uh rather than B2C. So that's

the position we see that's brand new wide open in the market and that's what we're going after today. And that's how you think notion will withstand open AAI and anthropic

trying to go hey in notion you're actually just an API call to our agent and our agent is going to traverse your interface right because that's what they would probably like to do uh in the long run

>> I think we should open everybody because like that it should be more open rather than closed right now so many company SAS provider close close down their API close down the endpoint I think is a

moment actually to be opened up so not just welcome human to read and write your product and services. A welcome

Asian to do do that and you can win by providing a really good thoughtful user interfaces. You can win by being

interfaces. You can win by being Switzerland and play with the state of our models. Like whenever um open

our models. Like whenever um open airropic release a new model the next day or the very same day we have that model right customer want that and we can play neutral in this ways and we

already have the artifacts of documents and can bambbor and to-dos and all the permissions and securityurities in enterprise care about. So when AI can

use your apps, access your tools, use APIs, access other things through MCP, I mean, it seems to me that it's kind of turning a lot of services into at least

more so of a dumb pipe than they have been. And if it's kind of being

been. And if it's kind of being extracted or sorry, abstracted away, you wonder kind of what happens to these companies and the types of edges that they were able to achieve by having

their own interface, you know? I mean,

do you think that's that's what's behind some companies resistance to being open?

>> The future is really unknown. People

don't know how this going to play out.

There's a lot of fog at work. We using

some real-time strategy metaphors, right? So, if you don't know the future,

right? So, if you don't know the future, you tend to uh play a safe, right?

>> Don't want to accidentally drain your moat.

>> You don't want to accidentally drain your data, >> trade your sheep. Yeah.

>> Right.

At least in notion we believe like when other people zorish act Zach when the entire software market sort of like close down their data it's a time to actually embrace open embrace developers

embrace getting to coding agent to access your data and just be a really good in and out be a really good human canvas to collaborate um that has been our strategy so beyond our next week's

custom aation release we're going to release a lot more developerf facing features in the coming weeks and month and those are embracing this openness of the platform, right? Notion historically

hasn't been a very developer centric company, but this is about to change because this philosophy.

>> So it sounds like the nuanced view you have is that the whole SAS, you know, is over market selloff thing maybe is overblown in some cases, but there are

companies that if they are not uh designed for agents to traverse, you think they're going to have a really hard time. And that's kind of going to

hard time. And that's kind of going to be the pecking order is you've embraced this, you're going to be more open, you're going to let agents crawl you, be open your endpoint or you will be kind

of left behind. Is that is that fair?

>> That's fair. I think there is a change in terms of um how fast can you rearchitecture your product, right? So

if a product has a lot of buttons um I don't want to speak poorly for anybody's product but assuming a product that's 90s early 2000 software with like a thousand buttons on the screen it will

be really difficult for agent to understand how to use it and if agent cannot use it and if the majority of human knowledge work going to be done by agents then you're going to lose market

share. It's very simple right? Second

share. It's very simple right? Second

it's the business model transition. So

you no longer just selling seats, but you have to think about how do you selling usage, selling work, selling outcomes. There's a lot of buzzwords and

outcomes. There's a lot of buzzwords and nobody have a right answer in the market. Literally not a single company

market. Literally not a single company figure this out outside some developer tools. So everybody's just watching each

tools. So everybody's just watching each other and but we're going to figure it out in the next year or two.

>> Do you think you'll move to usage based?

Because to my understanding, you're mostly seatbased, right? That's the

>> That's what we're doing right now. Yes.

>> Really?

>> Yes. Yeah. And that that seems profound and that seems like that could change the product a lot.

>> Yeah, we are it's a lot of experiment.

So uh customer agent is our first usage based product and customer actually embracing it. Just we're talking about

embracing it. Just we're talking about the ramp versel clake cursor of the world. If you just ask the value they

world. If you just ask the value they get from those customer agents, they're saving meaningful real human hours and that can translate into dollars in a substantially amount uh away rather than

just seats. So people are embracing

just seats. So people are embracing because the the benefit it creates for people.

>> So I'll make you sweat a little bit, Ivan. I know you were talking about kind

Ivan. I know you were talking about kind of using email through the AI today. Why

was it important to acquire the email app and the calendar app? Was that about having better access to some specific data coming to own it? I know a lot of apps in the past want you to create, you

know, their own pipes instead of using the Gmail pipes, etc. >> Yeah, we want to create our own pipes.

So we bought the mail and calendar product uh two years ago, right? And at

that point we want to create our own pipes. Um it's still the plan long term,

pipes. Um it's still the plan long term, but there's even faster way to create value, which is to create the best tool use for mail and calendar. Two ways in

uh at different paces. It's like sooner rather than later we're going to have computer and browser use. Later it'll

just be the pipe and we'll get there both ways.

>> Yeah. You need to build good pipes, right? Like the model capability has

right? Like the model capability has been there for quite some time, pretty much a year now. What's missing are the the infrastructure and the pipes to do knowledge work, the high quality tool

use capability that works well together, how the permission pipe together. And

that's what we're building. So we've

been reposition our mail and calendar team to build those pipes and make sure they work really, really well out of the box.

>> Yeah. Because like why would you even need all these separate apps in the future? Why would you need a separate

future? Why would you need a separate calendar app, email app, etc. That whole model seems like it's going to go away.

>> I think calendar, email, TBD, calendar, you still need a very information dense way to see things. So the interface is still really critical. You can argue if you are professional salespeople or

someone lives in inbox, you see like five 10 emails at a time. Interface

still matters. Uh for me, my at least for my personal email habits, I usually pick out three or four important email given time. So interface is less

given time. So interface is less important. So it really depends on how

important. So it really depends on how you how what kind of information density you want and calendar is really hard to beat has been around for like 100 plus hundreds of years this kind of way of layout uh time. So I think calendar is

here to stay >> well. So how are you thinking about the

>> well. So how are you thinking about the product suite growing? I think I'm sure there are folks internally who are like let's just create a bottom navbar inside main notion that includes your docs,

your calendar and your email. But then

there's also the school of thought that having these as separate apps for any number of reasons is pretty important. I

feel like the consumer appetite is definitely for simplicity as opposed to super app at least here in the west. So

what's your take on that?

>> We're actually changing I'm personally changing my philosophy on this. Um

>> oh >> given how quick you can just build things with coding agents. Um

hopefully soon enough we're going to create a release a dedicated uh customer agent or agent chat product that has all your business first chat needs in one

place right and that's a dedicated use cases that's chat first notion with all the contacts in notion and you can use it to manage calendar and email and this is a standalone app and we can build

this fairly quickly because now a small team with a coding agent can just whip it out in few weeks. Ellis just started sweating with anticipation.

>> Yeah. I mean, as a designer, that's the number one goal, right, Ivan? You want

to fill up the entire iPhone doc with your own apps. Is that not the goal for every designer?

>> Want to turn them all into black and white color, mono color.

>> Oh man. I guess the only one left is Slack then, huh?

>> Uh, yes.

>> Ivan, I wanted to ask about the company more broadly. Um, you all just did a

more broadly. Um, you all just did a pretty big tender offer. You let

employees sell some stock. I noticed you waved your cliff, the one-year cliff for new employees. Um, and I think everyone,

new employees. Um, and I think everyone, you know, now that Figma went out, went public, people are wondering when is notion going to go public? Is Notion

going to go public? Um, how are you thinking about the next phase of of the company like that?

>> Yeah, to us, um, we we share this message very clearly internally. It's

it's most important for us to layer our business model into this usage based business model like the one we talked about earlier. Not a single software company has done this has scale

yet outside developer tools and people are looking is where in the knowledge work domain is one of the largest if not the largest market but not not a single product has do this kind of conversion

into selling work to other knowledge work customers. So we need to do a good

work customers. So we need to do a good job do this kind of transition while we're private. So we can take a lot of

we're private. So we can take a lot of risks. We can move really fast. We can

risks. We can move really fast. We can

watch how the public market plays out.

And this could happen in the next two or three or quarters, right? And when that when this is figured out when we fully release customer agent uh with the new pricing model with new business model,

then we can talk about IPO timing.

>> The only other person I've seen talk as clearly about that shift to usage based as you is Brett Taylor at Sierra. that's

how they've been operating from the beginning. And it makes sense, right? I

beginning. And it makes sense, right? I

mean, he puts it very plainly like why would you not charge for outcomes if you could? And um you could maybe charge

could? And um you could maybe charge more. And I think people are so used to

more. And I think people are so used to the kind of frankly lazier seatbased SAS model. Uh it's almost like a gym

model. Uh it's almost like a gym membership where you probably make a lot of money off of seats that don't get used, right? Um, so I imagine especially

used, right? Um, so I imagine especially in AI which is expensive to serve and you guys are a huge uh token buyer from the labs already. Uh I imagine there's a

lot of trade-offs to to going to that approach. But it seems like you have

approach. But it seems like you have conviction that this is going to be the future and that every business like yours will eventually move to this and you all want to be early to that, right?

>> Yes. Because the market is much much larger, right? selling tools, selling

larger, right? selling tools, selling seats, it's you're still selling um you're still in the tech industry. When

you can selling work and usage and outcome, you're in the knowledge war economy. That's 10 times larger, right?

economy. That's 10 times larger, right?

Um and that's I would say that's the direction that more companies more software companies should look towards to not think about okay can someone vibe code their own products and they just

shrink the cost of creating software.

That's more interfacing the margin looking but outerlooking one is like there's entire knowledge economy there's so much busy work in the world how do you how do you help people delegate some

busy work that's a much larger market and more interesting market >> I know there have been a lot of different ways companies have been positioning themselves and you just bring up busy work again I mean how are

y'all working to differentiate yourselves at this point I know there's kind of been the teammates angle from notion um but it seems Seems like when a lot of folks are talking about the same thing, it's got to be pretty tough. I

mean, especially to enterprise customers. What are you guys saying

customers. What are you guys saying these days? What's the latest and

these days? What's the latest and greatest?

>> Yeah, if you think about the market, uh, who's who are the players uh, in this kind of knowledge work space? We

mentioned Open Claw, right? Open Claw

Macin very much for tinkers. Um, you you can manage your personal knowledge or personal work with it. Um that's one space is a single players. It's uh uh

fairly complex to use but quite powerful right sitting on one of the quadrant and we here we also have uh claw claw cowork which is uh claw's know sister product

for claw co tailored for knowledge work less for coding and it works great with files right lawyers loves it spreadsheet finance team loves it and entropy really

double down on files so there works really good for all the formats knowing formats uh but because of the files is still largely single player right it's good for individuals I think the niche

that we can occupy is this multiplayer uh from the get-go sits on the cloud and it's made for business made for teamwork not for personal use from the get-go

right and that's a niche that not that many player are going after today and we have a head start because we have been building a collaborative product for more than five plus years we have all the canvases and building blocks from a

document for project management tools.

We've been building AI product for more than two three years. So a lot of pieces are there and allow us to ship the customer agent as one of the first in industry to do this kind of things for

uh business and that's a position where we want to do really we really want to nail for the next coming quarters.

>> A lot of talk about multiplayer but I still can't see people typing live in notion. That's the only thing I think

notion. That's the only thing I think Google Docs still has.

>> No. Is that like a architecture thing?

>> Uh we have the architecture to build it.

The question should is just like do we spend more time on the AI stuff or do we go back to do the Google do competition side of things?

>> Just hire a couple more teenagers, you'll get it done in like a day.

>> Uh if you have your cousins or your um nephews to recommend, we're happy to take them.

While I have you, I feel like, you know, when you're on a meeting and presenting or working at the same time with people, it's maybe not as much watching them type, but being able to highlight specific things like look at this. You

know what I'm saying?

>> You see cursor and see highlight is the same architectural or implementation complexity. So, uh I'll add one more to

complexity. So, uh I'll add one more to do for for >> or do you have an agent that is going to review the meeting notes? Are you

running notion AI right now? I am not meeting. Of course you are.

meeting. Of course you are.

>> I'm not actually. So, okay. Wow.

>> What have been smart to do?

>> I assume you guys will have recording so I can just uh >> I mean, yeah, but you need it for your agents context. How's it going to know

agents context. How's it going to know what to tell you tomorrow morning?

>> I think we mostly cover the things we already talk about.

>> We need to ask better question, right?

Auto.

>> We didn't cover anything new. Don't need

my notetaker. That's a great modern burn. This isn't a new one, but I I did

burn. This isn't a new one, but I I did want to know what it felt like to get quoted alongside Steve Jobs and Bill Gates by Satia Nadella at Davos. I'm I

know you saw this. Um he he really loved your manager of infinite minds. Uh you

wrote this essay that was really great.

It got shared a lot around the holidays about how you're thinking about AI. And

this this phrase manager of infinite minds, which is the kind of phrase Ellis would spend days in the shower trying to come up with for a founder, >> literally. Um and uh Satia was giving

>> literally. Um and uh Satia was giving you mad props for that. I have to imagine that was pretty wild to see that.

>> Yeah, it was uh some bunch of people text me in live. I was kind of uh I'm very flattered. Um

very flattered. Um yeah, Microsoft is company we look up to like it's one of the company that put PC personal computer on every desk, every

home, right? So it made this industry

home, right? So it made this industry and Steve Jobs um those people I look up to when I got into tech and and I think Sata is the real one because he actually

came up based on what I know through the rank of Excel building all the basically no product of the 90s right uh open do

uh Olay type of thing so he knows what he's talking about and uh and uh see him refreezing something I was uh uh we published during the break So, it's it's a huge honor.

>> Manager of Infinite Minds, though, how did you come up with that? Ellis needs

to know.

>> I'm actually not sure. It could just be notion agent regurgitated a thousand times and some words just show up, then um I probably play more of editor role.

So, wow, that feels right. So, I kept it. Um I like to think in metaphors. Um

it. Um I like to think in metaphors. Um

metaphor just like help me think through problems from different angles and also other people can relate it to. So like

bicycle for the mind is Steve Jobs quote right but if you think about that and we have internet in the since the 90s we're still paddling bicycle and information highways so when I express this metaphor

to my team and for other people people get it right so what's coming it's like we're going to can drive cars on information highway through AI and people get that uh those are pretty

powerful things >> speaking of word choice I know something we've discussed in the past um Ivan is workspace. When that 16-year-old or that

workspace. When that 16-year-old or that 18-year-old shows up, I mean, obviously, they're not your your ICP, but this is something that, you know, Microsoft and Google have been using for years. Is

that still the right word? How are

people going to talk about this in the future?

>> Everybody start using the word workspace. I don't love that word.

workspace. I don't love that word.

That's just become what it is. Um, the

meaning behind it is still important. I

think is still going to be around which is you have a centralized place a system record of things a system record of workflows to power your project or power

your business and it will be a group of people looking at the same thing together. I think that will be around if

together. I think that will be around if anything become more important in this kind of agent first world right and how do you allow that get different agent to

access to this workspace you invite clco agent cursor agent come into based on understand what your business trying to do and start working on your workspace

in GitHub and do something there um this notion still be around um I think what's different is in the past is the human doing a lot of information pushing from

this workspace to the other workspace and which is a majority of knowledge work. Now we have this magical materials

work. Now we have this magical materials of infirm minds who can do this for us and how do we elevate oursel to not just manage in one workspace can we manage in 10 can we play a sim city of a thousand

workspace at the same time maybe it's possible and the limiting factor again is human interface in my opinion >> here's uh bringing it full circle my genius idea if we want to appeal to all the strategy bros we could just call it

the war table >> where you direct all your we direct all your field troops to uh destroy your enemy Or on the other hand, serve your

customers with delightful solutions.

>> Put into cloud notion AI find better options. No,

options. No, >> I just think about it. Just think about it.

>> Okay, I'll keep thinking about it.

>> We should let Ivan go. Ivan, we

appreciate your time.

>> It's a pleasure, gentlemen. Thanks for

joining us.

>> I'll see you next time.

>> Yeah, see you next time. Bye.

>> And that's it for this week's show.

Don't forget to like, subscribe everywhere you get podcasts. Our website

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Ivan from Notion for coming on this week. And if you liked this episode,

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>> Access is part of the Vox Media podcast network and the show is produced by Hooked Creators.

>> Bye.