Ivan Zhao, CEO of Notion

Notion

San Francisco, California, US

Website

Notion CEO Ivan Zhao: Email Address, LinkedIn and Bio (2026)

Ivan Zhao is the co-founder and CEO of Notion. His personal email, as listed in Notion’s 2013 seed pitch deck, is ivan.h.zhao@gmail.com; Notion’s support inbox is team@makenotion.com, and staff mailboxes mostly follow {first}@makenotion.com. He started Notion with Simon Last in 2013, and Forbes estimates his net worth at about $1.7 billion (Oct 2026).

Company overview

Company

Notion Labs, Inc.

Industry

Software: productivity and AI workspace

Founded

2013

Headquarters

San Francisco, California, US

Revenue

$500M+ annualized (Notion, Sep 2025)

Funding stage

Private; $11B valuation (employee share sale, Jan 2026)

Ivan Zhao at a glance

Fact

Detail

Role

Co-founder and CEO, Notion (since 2013)

Age

37 as of April 2024 (Forbes)

Background

Born in China; moved to Canada with his mother at 17; Canadian citizen (Forbes)

Education

Cognitive science at the University of British Columbia

Before Notion

About a year at e-textbook startup Inkling

Co-founder

Simon Last

Ownership

At least 30% of Notion (Forbes estimate, Apr 2024)

Net worth

About $1.7B (Forbes real-time, Oct 29, 2026), up from $1.5B in April 2024

Lives in

San Francisco and New York (his personal site says “SF/NYC”)

Public profiles

Personal site ivanhzhao.notion.site; X and Instagram @ivanhzhao; LinkedIn /in/ivanhzhao

Notion CEO email address: how to reach Ivan Zhao

Ivan Zhao’s personal email address, as given in the contact details of Notion’s March 2013 seed pitch deck to investor Elad Gil, is ivan.h.zhao@gmail.com (Notion’s 2013 pitch deck). It dates from 2013, so it may no longer be in use. He doesn’t list an email on his personal site, ivanhzhao.notion.site, which links only his X and Instagram accounts, or on LinkedIn (checked Oct 30, 2026). For the company, Notion’s support inbox is team@makenotion.com, and press requests go to press@notion.com.

Channel

Address

Source

Personal email

ivan.h.zhao@gmail.com

Notion’s March 2013 seed pitch deck to Elad Gil; may no longer be in use

LinkedIn

linkedin.com/in/ivanhzhao

Linked from his Lenny’s Newsletter interview

X

@ivanhzhao

Bio: “CEO @NotionHQ. Tools for thought.”

Personal site

ivanhzhao.notion.site

His About section: “a startup founder, photographer, based in SF/NYC”

Instagram

@ivanhzhao

Linked from his personal site

Notion support

team@makenotion.com

Notion privacy policy

Press and media

press@notion.com

Notion press help article

Notion email address pattern

Notion staff mailboxes sit on makenotion.com, not on the notion.com website domain. Most addresses follow {first}@makenotion.com, according to LeadIQ (LeadIQ).

Format

Example (fictional name: Maya Chen)

Share of known addresses

Status

{first}@makenotion.com

maya@makenotion.com

About 64%

Current, most common

{f}{last}@makenotion.com

mchen@makenotion.com

About 23%

Current

{first}.{last}@makenotion.com

maya.chen@makenotion.com

About 9%

Current, less common

Notion also owns notion.com, notion.so and notion.ai, but none of them hosts staff mailboxes, so a guess like first@notion.com, first@notion.so or first@notion.ai is unlikely to reach anyone at Notion.

Before emailing any pattern-based address, run it through a verifier: a bounce hurts deliverability for every later send. All Notion email patterns, domains and official inboxes are on the Notion email format page.

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Career timeline

Zhao rebuilt Notion from scratch once before it took off, then grew it into an $11 billion company without raising a priced round after 2021.

Date

Milestone

Source

Sep 24, 2026

Names Max Schoening CTO

Notion

Jun 8, 2026

Forms Notion’s first board, with five outside directors

Notion

Jan 26, 2026

Employee share sale values Notion at $11B

Notion

Sep 18, 2025

Launches Notion 3.0 with AI agents as revenue passes $500M annualized

CNBC

Aug 2024

Notion reaches 100M users

Notion

Feb 22, 2023

Notion AI opens to all users

Notion

Oct 8, 2021

Raises $275M at a $10B valuation, led by Coatue and Sequoia

Forbes

Apr 1, 2020

Raises $50M at a $2B valuation, led by Index Ventures

TechCrunch

Aug 2016

Launches Notion 1.0 on Product Hunt; profitable within weeks

Forbes

2015

Lays off the team and rebuilds Notion in Kyoto with Simon Last

Forbes

2013

Co-founds Notion with Simon Last on a $2M seed round

Forbes

Before 2013

Spends about a year at e-textbook startup Inkling

Forbes

The Kyoto reboot

Notion’s first product wasn’t working. In a last attempt to save the company, Zhao and Last laid off all their employees, sublet their San Francisco office and moved to Kyoto, Japan, to cut costs, Forbes reported; a $150,000 emergency loan from Zhao’s mother kept them going (Forbes). The rebuilt Notion launched on Product Hunt in August 2016 and was profitable within weeks.

At UBC he studied cognitive science but also considered a career in photography, and he learned web development in Vancouver’s hacking scene. When he pitched Notion’s seed round, Josh Kopelman of First Round Capital wrote the biggest check after a pitch that included a long digression on the origins of paper. He still describes himself as “a startup founder, photographer, based in SF/NYC” on his personal site, which hosts his photo series and an essay, “On Universe, Life, and AI.”

He now describes the company he wants as “a jazz band, not a marching band” (Sequoia). On AI agents, he told Alex Heath in February 2026: “If your product cannot be used by agents, I don’t think the future is very promising for you.” (Sources)

Notion’s leadership team

Person

Role

Since

Ivan Zhao

Co-founder, CEO

2013

Simon Last

Co-founder

2013

Akshay Kothari

Co-founder, COO

2018

Rama Katkar

Chief Financial Officer

Oct 2022

Erica Anderson

Chief Revenue Officer

Mar 2023

Lena Waters

Chief Marketing Officer

Apr 2025

Max Schoening

CTO; previously led product and design at Notion

Sep 2026

Notion’s first board, named in June 2026, has five outside directors: Jonathan Chadwick, Pat Grady of Sequoia, Gretchen Howard, Christopher Payne and Patrick Hsu (Notion).

Full company profile, including revenue and valuation: Notion in 2026: revenue, valuation, funding, CEO.

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