In the age of AI, when breathless proclamations of revolution arrive daily and every startup claims to have built the future, Ivan Zhao's measured reflections feel almost radical.
The Notion CEO has a habit of pausing before he speaks. Not the awkward silence of someone searching for words, but the deliberate stillness of someone who actually thinks before answering. He compares building with language models not to conquering new frontiers, but to brewing beer — an ancient craft where patience and environment matter more than precision.
“Building classic engineering products is like building bridges — you can predict everything,” Zhao told Capital Brief in Sydney, where he was visiting for the company’s “Make with Notion” event. “Building with language models is like brewing beer. It’s not predictive. You can just make the environment good enough and hope for the best to come out of the models.”
This insight comes after three years of AI development, work that began well before OpenAI's ChatGPT triggered the current frenzy. Zhao’s team gained early access to GPT-4 through connections in San Francisco’s Mission District, three to four months before the public release. The experience was transformative.
