Reflections on Four Years at Notion

The beliefs that shaped my experience and my parting statement

It was a hot summer night. I just added another set of weights for my next set when I saw someone waving in my peripheral. My face, beet red from nearing the end of a workout, effectively masked the subtle shock of running into Ivan, Notion’s CEO, at the gym.

It's like running into your high school teacher at the mall or some other obscure location—a familiar face in an unfamiliar setting.

We started catching up on how things were going at Notion. It was a period of significant growth for the company, with new cohorts of employees, executives, and rising leaders (including myself), along with strategic reorgs for what seemed like the nth time.

Suddenly Ivan asked, “So what do you want in the future?”

I took a moment to decide how I wanted to answer this question: What do I want as a new leader at Notion, or what do I want in life? We ran into each other at the gym of all places, so I might as well go in for the punch.

“I want to start my own company someday, likely in healthcare.” Admitting this in earnest to your CEO, of all people, gave weight to a statement often passed around with levity in Silicon Valley.

In typical Ivan fashion, he graciously shared candid words of wisdom. I could feel his humility and sincerity, as he spoke from one established founder to an aspiring one, rather than from CEO to employee.

“If you’re serious about starting a company, don’t stay at Notion for too long,” said Ivan.

At that moment, I knew that I would think back on this memory when the time came for me to say goodbye.

Now, I sit here typing with disbelief, my face still flushed like that summer night, as I reflect on all four fascinating and disorienting years I spent as an early employee at Notion—from a small team of ~20 to the behemoth it has become.

Rather than focusing on the operating principles I learned about company building, I want to articulate the personal operating principles that I’ve both applied and adopted during my time here.

These are the beliefs that shaped my experience— beliefs that I’m gladly taking with me and sharing as my parting statement.

Find what keeps you hungry

I’m proud to identify as a first generation Asian-American, but I wasn’t always proud of this growing up.

Questions like the following both haunted and raised me, accelerating my coming of age:

If my parents can’t help me with my school projects and homework, then who can?

Am I the only 12-year-old that calls the IRS to negotiate a payment plan?

How can I financially support my parents when I am just starting to support myself?

But it was through grappling questions like this, that I learned the value of delayed gratification, the satisfaction from being creatively resourceful, and the beauty in collectivist mentality — a virtue often lost in the Western world.

Reflecting on my career thus far, I have come to realize that the environment of my childhood has followed me into adulthood, particularly in my professional life.

The constant reminder of the need to survive.

Putting the mission first, above personal interests.

Striving to make an impact on something much larger than oneself.

In other words, I began to notice similarities between my childhood environment and the early employee experience at startups like Notion.

I call this operating principle “Find what makes you hungry” because hunger was a primary driving force throughout my time at Notion. I define hunger as an animalistic instinct to survive, an appetite for challenge, or sheer curiosity.

Hunger was a learned behavior that helped me navigate the world as a child of immigrant parents that didn’t speak a lick of English. The character traits that enabled me to help my family turned out to be transferable to working at very early-stage startups.

It was hunger that drove me to cold-email someone at Notion, which eventually led to an interview (I tried three variations of their email, and luckily one went through…)

It was hunger that helped me scale alongside the company from ~20 to 500+ employees. I initially started in a customer support role, handling 100 tickets per day, to eventually leading a team focused on capturing the startup segment.

And it’s the same hunger that’s moving me to close this chapter to take a bet on myself.

Looking back, I now understand why I intentionally sought out being an early employee at startups, why I founded Notion for Startups— a program that supports other startups— and now, why I’ve decided to venture out and build my own.

Startups have become my adult playground and battlefield, evoking a sense of nostalgia for my upbringing and tapping into my natural instincts.

I’ve since realized that tending to this hunger is best when it’s an intentional choice, rather than accepting it as a default mode of operating.

It is a privileged choice and one that I am now so proud of.

Adaptability wins

All the best startups have a book-worthy origin story and Notion is no exception.

It was 2015 and Notion was dying. With dwindling runway and limited options, the founders faced the dilemma of either laying off their entire team and starting over or shutting down completely. Ivan and Simon decided to take a bold move as their second attempt: they relocated to Kyoto, despite not speaking Japanese, and hunkered down to build Notion from scratch.

What makes for a cool founder story isn’t just the undeniable display of grit and fortitude. It’s the adaptability required to recover from near death and be back in the running to win.

Early employees need to muster up a similar kind of strength.

In fact, there are three end games for us early employees: you either scale with the company, fall behind, or move on. Your ability to adapt can decide which door you choose to open, whether it be by your own hand or of forces not your own.

In other words, if I had to choose one trait that best predicts the “success” of an early startup employee, it’s adaptability. Working at Notion was a masterclass in cultivating this skill.

I define adaptability as the ability to reinvent your value over time and optimize your impact amid constant change.

In hyper-growth, a company looks different every 3-6 months. With each new environment, there are new players and rules, and you must adapt to survive. The skills that made you valuable to the company when there are <50 employees won’t always translate over with the same level of value perceived and impact-driven when there are 150+ employees and so on (especially for non-technical roles).

In the early days, I contributed value and made an impact through the sheer dedication of my output.

There’s a reason why they say strong generalists make excellent early employees. You have to simultaneously write and execute against your own playbook. You do whatever it takes with no ifs, ands, or buts about it.

As we scaled, I could no longer just put my head down and work.

The value I held as an early employee became the context I amassed, the culture I carried, and the values I embodied. All things were critical to infuse into cohorts of new employees and leaders.

It’s easy to feel lost in the shuffle of hyper-growth. I certainly did many times. But I learned to evolve my value and impact from not just my work, but also the influence I had on others (regardless if you’re a people manager).

Early employees are the unseen forces, the backbone of the company, that hold internal structures intact as the company scales. We’re the glue that brings disparate teams together, the bridge between the old and new, the all-purpose solution for whatever needs fixing.

Adaptability at first was a means to survive, but now I see it as one of the best learning opportunities.

Ultimately, look inwards

Notion back in the day did a lot of things differently from most early-stage startups.

Everyone took their shoes off and wore house slippers in the office.

VCs wanting to invest were turned away to the point of leaving cookies at our door.

Profitability was actually a priority before it was “cool” again.

And every Friday, we held Life Stories.

Life Stories is a tradition where one person presents their life story and why they are who they are today. I remember many Fridays huddling around a single carpet, gripping a pamplemousse LaCroix, absolutely stunned by the vulnerability shared by my colleagues. Laughter, welled eyes, and even a cinnamon roll hug (google it) would bookend our weeks, deepening our understanding and appreciation of one another—ultimately affecting the work we did together.

These quirks, big and small, were what gave Notion its soul and warmth as a product and company—something I hope can scale as the company does.

What made Notion special originated from an unwavering vision, the courage to be different, and the ambition to be a generational company. Vision, courage, and ambition are all things that are best found and sustained from within.

So when I reflect on what makes Notion “Notion”, it inspires me to look inwards.

By looking inwards, I learned to hone my intuition and business sense—finding the intersection between curiosities and business needs. This led me to launch Notion for Startups among other programs.

By looking inwards, I went from feeling like I was hanging onto the rails of a rocket ship to buckling myself in the front seat. I learned that keeping my ego in check and actively regulating my emotions was crucial in weathering the ups and downs of hyper-growth. Every pile of Legos I gave away felt easier than the last. Every reorg felt less jarring and I found my footing more quickly.

And now I look inwards to recalibrate my inner compass on where I want to make the most impact moving forward in my career.

Impact that I hope I can continue to hone from within.

Once a Notino, always a Notino

These are just a few of my many reflections on four years at Notion, not just as an early employee, but simply as a human that’s so grateful for what was and hopeful for what’s to come.

To many dear friends and colleagues that I’ve had the pleasure to build, learn, laugh, and commiserate with—these are the memories I’ll cherish the most.

I also want to take a moment and highlight the leaders/managers that had a direct impact during my time:

Janelle Shiozaki for answering my cold email prior to joining Notion, which made all of this possible.

Akshay Kothari for your guidance as my first manager and for championing me to launch Notion for Startups.

Kate Taylor for fostering some of the most memorable times I’ve had at Notion.

Bryan Ng for trusting and seeing me as a thought partner during a difficult transition period.

Tim Dalrymple for enabling me to become a leader and manage my own team.

Ivan Zhao for taking a bet on hiring me and encouraging me not to lose sight of my north star.

As for what’s next, I’m going back to my roots in healthcare and diving deep into the earliest stages of building. For those who are already building full-time in the space and looking for thought partners or collaborators, let’s chat!