Ryo Lu went from Notion's founding designer to cloning himself with AI at Cursor. This is the full conversation.

From building anime fansites at 11 to architecting Notion's core systems to creating his own OS in a browser - Ryo reveals why the best designers are actually tool makers in disguise.

We dig into creative burnout, why he stopped asking permission, and how AI is turning designers into parallel processors of their own brains.

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CHAPTERS:
00:00 - Building websites at 11 years old
02:00 - The Chinese Apple fanboy community
03:50 - Failed startups and depression
07:00 - Creating "Chinese Stripe" in Shanghai
09:00 - How payment friction created China's internet boom
11:00 - Ivan's daily 4:30pm design critiques at Notion
14:00 - "I was not wrong either" - handling creative friction
17:00 - Becoming a sponge for information
20:00 - The fog of war problem in design
24:00 - "There is one ultimate solution"
27:00 - Why all SaaS tools are the same underneath
30:00 - From Figma to code - killing the abstraction layer
35:00 - Building prototyping environments
38:00 - Why Notion and Cursor solve the same problem
42:00 - What is RyoOS really?
45:00 - "Constant flow state" - rediscovering creative joy
48:00 - Designer burnout and serving too many masters
50:00 - 16-year-olds will out-build senior engineers
52:00 - "We're just builders and makers"

ABOUT TOMMY GEOCO
I spent 15+ years in tech and design. Former military. Father of five. Now building Internet Enjoyers, a weird little media + product studio rediscovering soul in creative tech. This show is how I'm rediscovering my love for the game.

ABOUT STATE OF PLAY
Host Tommy Geoco discovers what fuels the internet's most interesting designers and builders.

SPECIAL THANKS:
Sam Chapman: https://x.com/editedbysam
Mapal Berenson: https://youtube.com/@mapal
Bernabe Bolanos: https://youtube.com/@bernabebolanos
Adam Stewart: https://youtube.com/adnastu
Tom Fox: https://catalog.tomfox.site/

LINKS:
UX Tools: https://uxtools.co
Follow Ryo: https://x.com/ryolu_
Try Cursor: https://cursor.com
See RyoOS: http://os.ryo.lu/

FOLLOW ME:
Instagram: https://instagram.com/itsdesignertom
X / Twitter: https://x.com/designertom_
LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/tommygeoco
TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@designertom
Threads: https://threads.net/itsdesignertom