Dan Martell - Tobi Lütke The Creator of Shopify

00:00:00.000 Shopify exists to basically arm the rebels like we want lots of people to go and compete with

00:00:05.720 Amazon and that's I think that's really good for the internet. Ignition sequence start three two one

00:00:12.720 Toby how's it going man I'm reaching across hey no better handshake yeah I'm

00:00:25.640 Oh, I appreciate you making it, man.

00:00:29.100 For those who don't know, Toby is the co-founder of Shopify.

00:00:33.880 I'm going to ask you the hard-hitting questions.

00:00:36.120 Let's do it.

00:00:37.020 OK, does it feel different being a billionaire?

00:00:41.160 You know what I mean?

00:00:41.960 Because everybody thinks, I got to get this place,

00:00:44.640 and then I'll be happy or successful.

00:00:46.120 How does it feel?

00:00:47.600 So I can now talk with great confidence about this.

00:00:54.000 The day I became a billionaire, the clouds did not part.

00:00:57.540 The trumpets didn't trumpet, I guess.

00:01:01.760 Nothing's different.

00:01:03.960 It's an incredible source of energy.

00:01:08.400 Like, people mostly have energy in the form of their time.

00:01:12.860 They can invest it into the things that are interesting

00:01:14.880 and the things that might be profitable for them

00:01:18.260 in any which way.

00:01:20.240 Money is the same thing.

00:01:22.580 Time is way higher leverage.

00:01:26.860 Money is also a form of energy.

00:01:28.760 And so you get to do a couple of things more at the same time.

00:01:32.940 That's good.

00:01:33.960 But I've never set out to become rich.

00:01:37.260 In fact, I have very cheap hobbies,

00:01:39.820 as long as I have a gaming PC.

00:01:41.600 You have to.

00:01:42.700 A good laptop to do my work on.

00:01:44.620 That's all I really need.

00:01:46.280 And so nothing changed, really.

00:01:48.240 So one fun fact, Tobi, I started off as a developer

00:01:52.400 and learn Ruby and Rails and you built ActiveMerchant

00:01:55.400 was the way we transacted and did payments back in the day.

00:02:00.800 And I know that you still are very involved in the product

00:02:03.920 team and the engineering.

00:02:08.060 And that's what I think a lot of people,

00:02:09.440 when they look at Shopify, I know I

00:02:11.000 look at just like how incredible you guys and how

00:02:13.220 consistent and all that stuff.

00:02:15.560 What do you think is different about the way

00:02:17.600 you think about engineering, technical product?

00:02:23.280 What is it that's allowed you to build world-class product?

00:02:28.000 Yeah, that's a good question.

00:02:29.900 I don't know.

00:02:34.820 I don't know necessarily if I do anything terribly

00:02:39.620 different from what most people do.

00:02:42.560 I mean, for one thing is programming

00:02:49.040 is something that's really, really important to me.

00:02:51.140 I love it.

00:02:51.740 I'm a technologist.

00:02:52.760 But I'm not a traditionally trained engineer.

00:02:56.000 Like I'm self-taught.

00:02:57.260 I self-taught.

00:03:00.080 And I follow my interests fairly wide.

00:03:05.180 Like I find businesses super interesting.

00:03:07.760 I find finances interesting.

00:03:09.800 And in fact, I find everything.

00:03:10.920 Like, I actually have not really found anything

00:03:13.820 that I don't find really interesting.

00:03:15.220 Is it the problem that you?

00:03:16.740 It's exactly because, like, I just

00:03:22.020 have questions about the world, in a way.

00:03:25.180 And then I like exploring those questions.

00:03:28.360 And sometimes that involves reading a book,

00:03:31.280 and then now you know the thing that you want to know.

00:03:34.480 But in a particular case of Shopify,

00:03:37.260 it required building a company to a certain degree.

00:03:39.540 Because the thing that I found is initially,

00:03:41.940 and that's what I used to do before, right?

00:03:44.640 I built this snowboard store.

00:03:46.600 And the thing I found and what I had been a question about

00:03:49.100 is like, why is it so goddamn hard to build an internet company?

00:03:52.120 Like, isn't this the thing that we,

00:03:54.220 like didn't we invent the internet so everyone can kind of

00:03:56.160 do their own thing on it?

00:03:57.220 Like, wasn't the cool thing about it

00:03:59.580 when it came around that suddenly you didn't,

00:04:02.480 you could participate?

00:04:03.840 There was no permission required.

00:04:05.680 You could put a bit of yourself on the website.

00:04:08.480 And everyone without needing permission could visit it.

00:04:11.380 That was sort of a premise.

00:04:12.720 And then I wanted to do this in the form of building

00:04:15.500 a business, which is, I think, to me,

00:04:17.480 is one of the most pure forms of self-expression.

00:04:20.400 And it turned out to be incredibly difficult,

00:04:22.040 because no one has deemed to make it easy.

00:04:24.780 And first of all, I wanted to know why not.

00:04:27.800 And then second, what would happen if someone would do it?

00:04:31.160 Would there be a lot more people who are going

00:04:34.400 to be entrepreneurs?

00:04:35.340 Or would there be a lot more people who do this kind of thing?

00:04:38.460 And so I follow these questions.

00:04:45.700 And I think it's very natural for me to just say, OK, well,

00:04:51.940 now that I'm on this journey exploring this question,

00:04:56.080 it would be good to understand, I mean, how do you fundraise?

00:04:59.760 Or how to organize a business in the systems.

00:05:03.380 And so I guess one thing, one advantage I have

00:05:10.180 is that I never really went into this

00:05:15.140 because I wanted to play with that one technology.

00:05:17.500 Or I would never describe myself.

00:05:21.040 I describe myself as a technologist, I guess,

00:05:23.420 or a product technologist.

00:05:25.780 But never as a mobile developer or something,

00:05:28.820 because that seems incredibly confined.

00:05:30.660 To me, the point is, to me, I have so much pride

00:05:35.580 in being a journalist.

00:05:37.240 And because I can draw upon all these different fields

00:05:44.640 to come to solutions.

00:05:46.300 And I think that maybe that's something

00:05:47.780 that happened along the journey.

00:05:49.760 And what about being productive at that?

00:05:51.420 Because there's a lot of people that will study abroad,

00:05:54.300 but they don't actually apply it.

00:05:56.560 How do you think?

00:05:57.540 Because I'm fascinated.

00:05:58.540 Have you ever had your IQ tested?

00:05:59.940 Like, do you, like, because I self-taught programming

00:06:03.000 as well, but I didn't, I don't feel like I approach problems

00:06:06.480 the way you have.

00:06:07.560 And I'm just curious, like, you know,

00:06:09.960 is it you want to look at the broad spectrum of different

00:06:13.600 things that need to be solved as problems,

00:06:15.240 and then you have a ranking order, like a thought

00:06:17.700 process for prioritization?

00:06:19.740 Because you're so broad, like, how do you

00:06:21.780 decide where you're going to go spend your time and energy

00:06:23.680 and what problems?

00:06:24.380 Yeah, so for the past 15 years, I've

00:06:26.340 been just completely obsessed with exactly this question

00:06:29.640 about how to build software that makes it easier for people

00:06:32.340 who aren't technologists to start in-house companies.

00:06:36.840 It's just been all-consuming.

00:06:38.380 That's the question.

00:06:39.780 Shopify is almost sort of a collaborative inquiry

00:06:43.000 into this question.

00:06:43.620 Totally, like the recursive question

00:06:45.160 on just how do we make it easier for non-technologists

00:06:47.760 to build an online business?

00:06:48.780 What would it look like if entrepreneurship

00:06:50.820 would be easy and common?

00:06:52.960 And so with that question, my hypothesis

00:06:57.920 would be that it's a cooler version of a world that

00:07:00.740 exists right now, if that would be the case.

00:07:02.680 Because I think, again, I really believe

00:07:05.680 in the self-expression of starting business.

00:07:07.880 It's very pure and very important.

00:07:10.240 And so the way to get to an answer is just make it so.

00:07:15.680 Create that thing.

00:07:17.100 Try in our defined area, which is right now

00:07:21.780 physical, typical products.

00:07:24.320 Make it make that so easy to start businesses

00:07:28.040 that there will be a lot more consumption.

00:07:29.820 And so here's the interesting thing.

00:07:32.900 I've been, we met around.

00:07:36.740 Like I remember us meeting on a trip.

00:07:39.680 Just might have been the same day.

00:07:42.020 I was in Santa, like we were in San Francisco.

00:07:44.760 I was in Santa Road pitching venture capitalists.

00:07:48.560 This is about 10 years ago?

00:07:49.620 Yeah, like 2008, 2009, something like this.

00:07:52.720 And I was with some VCs.

00:07:56.860 And they were seriously looking at a company,

00:07:58.840 but ended up not investing.

00:08:00.440 And the reason they gave me is because they

00:08:04.240 thought the addressable market was too small for online stores.

00:08:09.320 Because they said at this point, there

00:08:12.700 was about 40,000, 50,000 online stores.

00:08:15.940 And so if you would get 50% of that,

00:08:17.740 that would still not be a big enough business.

00:08:20.320 And I actually met with a partner, the same partner,

00:08:23.300 recently, a couple of years ago.

00:08:24.860 And he asked me, like, what did you miss there?

00:08:28.160 And I pointed out saying, no, you had it right.

00:08:31.820 Like, you're actually correct.

00:08:33.000 What you didn't realize is Shopify was the solution

00:08:35.080 to the very problem that you identified that there was only,

00:08:38.340 the reason why there was only 40,000 online stores

00:08:40.960 is because it was hard, expensive,

00:08:42.720 and everyone who tried ran into all these brick walls

00:08:45.760 of complexity, which then Shopify, once after another,

00:08:48.820 moved over, made it simple to do.

00:08:51.060 And so, you know, doing that and keeping to do that

00:08:55.200 is just fascinating to me.

00:08:56.620 And so everything's interesting that helps me somehow

00:09:02.380 take this question further.

00:09:03.660 There.

00:09:04.040 So back then you were here.

00:09:06.760 This is the nirvana.

00:09:08.820 There's bumps along the way.

00:09:11.300 And you just said, OK, well, this first hurdle

00:09:13.320 needs to be smoothened out.

00:09:16.180 And that was whatever it was back then.

00:09:19.060 And that's still the question you ask yourself on a daily basis

00:09:23.020 to continue building this business.

00:09:24.220 What sucks about starting online businesses?

00:09:26.580 And the answer to that is the next thing

00:09:29.300 that we should be working on.

00:09:30.280 And if we're not working on that,

00:09:32.560 we probably don't get the prioritization right.

00:09:36.880 Which is also, interestingly, it's

00:09:39.740 a cure for something that befalls a lot of business

00:09:43.660 that are getting successful in their initial product

00:09:46.040 market fit, but then don't end up becoming maybe

00:09:49.880 as big as the ambition of the founders might be.

00:09:52.060 Because what happens a lot is that companies end up

00:09:55.460 adhering to predefined industry swim lanes.

00:10:00.320 Like, for instance, Shopify in the beginning

00:10:03.540 was shopping cart software.

00:10:04.940 That was an existing market as open source software,

00:10:07.700 or enterprise software, like tons, like hundreds,

00:10:11.440 apparently thousands, some people told me, of companies.

00:10:15.540 Although, with a twist that they all

00:10:18.380 try to service the same entry point, which

00:10:21.780 was existing retailers, not new businesses.

00:10:26.880 Because existing customers had a lot of money.

00:10:28.980 Existing retailers had a lot of money.

00:10:30.980 Entrepreneurs had no money, so everyone went there.

00:10:34.080 So Shopify launched into a very crowded space

00:10:37.300 with one major change.

00:10:38.880 We're actually making it for the entrepreneurs.

00:10:41.160 And it turns out, if I look at the top 10 fastest selling

00:10:46.400 stores on Shopify now, the vast majority of them

00:10:49.680 are people who started on Shopify.

00:10:51.420 So it was in migraine.

00:10:53.120 No, they didn't come.

00:10:54.060 They're not the proctors and gambles or something,

00:10:56.080 which we have as customers too, but these guys sell faster.

00:10:58.380 So that ended up being important.

00:11:03.400 But then this continued, hey, let's go and think

00:11:07.180 about what the pain points are has taken us

00:11:11.020 to be in a completely different segment.

00:11:13.280 Like one of the pain points was a lot of our customers

00:11:17.840 ended up having physical locations.

00:11:20.520 And they were spending a lot of their money

00:11:23.500 with integrators trying to synchronize the point of sale

00:11:26.760 data bias with the Shopify database.

00:11:29.780 And we said, that's silly.

00:11:30.960 We can let's just connect the same thing together

00:11:33.580 and we build a point of sale system.

00:11:36.240 Suddenly, we were not a shopping cart software anymore.

00:11:39.720 Suddenly, we were multi-channel software.

00:11:43.280 And then Facebook came up, and Instagram,

00:11:45.220 and all these other channels.

00:11:46.300 And we just changed Shopify to give us your products,

00:11:50.640 you sell everywhere.

00:11:51.820 That's a completely different category of software,

00:11:53.380 which no one ended up following us, like Intel.

00:11:57.040 Now we are getting into logistics.

00:12:00.260 We have warehouses, we have a robotics arm

00:12:05.480 and all these kind of things.

00:12:06.620 So again, that is not adherence to the swim lanes

00:12:10.760 of a predefined industry.

00:12:11.860 That is just following a question as far as it goes.

00:12:15.200 And I think that's really, really important

00:12:17.720 to build a company that has a self-confidence of a mission

00:12:22.420 or a question it's trying to answer.

00:12:25.600 Because otherwise, I think you self-confine yourself

00:12:28.340 to some kind of a local maxima.

00:12:30.080 Do you think about the idea of the machine

00:12:33.060 that builds the machine?

00:12:34.920 Because, you know, I know early days you guys invested in an executive coach to, like, coach up your leadership teams, which was a novel idea.

00:12:44.100 Do you think about, like, the organization that builds Shopify and how?

00:12:50.000 Sure.

00:12:50.420 The funny thing is, one thing I found is that, you know, the advantages of starting out as a programmer is that you automatically, you think in systems, right?

00:13:01.960 you don't know no good programmer is confused that the world runs on cause and effect you know

00:13:07.880 people like by default most people think about cause and effect right like it's like you do this

00:13:12.440 and then that happens like you go to school and then you get a good job you you you do this one

00:13:17.320 thing and you get a promotion like everything sort of happens as linear the world doesn't work at all

00:13:22.440 like this that's a complete post rationalization by our brain but the world actually works on

00:13:28.840 systems it's you go to a good school because that activates your quality of thinking you learn how

00:13:36.280 to like learn things this reinforces the value of which like your value to an organization and that

00:13:44.360 is the thing that over time will end up being attractive to a company and then you end up a

00:13:48.600 company and then you solve problems and you get better decision making it's all loopy the world

00:13:53.880 is loopy, not linear. And so as an engineer, as a programmer, you understand this because you

00:14:02.280 have been building systems. You know that things have to connect not in linear ways. They have to

00:14:07.560 reinforce each other, otherwise everything breaks after one thing breaks. And so the good news is

00:14:15.800 we know this in engineering, but most of the world doesn't know this in company building yet.

00:14:21.560 It's actually, these ideas are new ideas in the world of company building.

00:14:25.640 And so once you say, okay, let's build a culture where the right things matter,

00:14:32.220 where all the systems sort of intuitively reinforce each other in such a way

00:14:36.740 that you get the kinds of behaviors that you want,

00:14:39.380 the right people get the promotions and all these,

00:14:43.420 just like where all this kind of fits together, it's an interesting challenge.

00:14:49.000 Because there's people.

00:14:49.660 very very worth doing yeah which is true turns out one of the nice things about machines is

00:14:56.460 they just do the same thing when you tell them history until they crash always loved about coding

00:15:01.660 was i solved this problem this way and it'll always do that for the history of life conversely

00:15:07.740 though um uh the program also doesn't make itself better if because um uh the most wonderful thing

00:15:18.700 like about about businesses is um you know what is a business like this is such an interesting

00:15:26.220 question um i think the the sort of intuitively think about a business like we talk about apple

00:15:33.500 did this or google did this but there's no such thing it was a um was uh like there's no monolithic

00:15:40.940 google does not make decisions there's 150 000 people or so at google um same same shop shop

00:15:48.140 Shopify is about 5,000 or whatever people.

00:15:54.320 So how does Shopify get better?

00:15:56.960 Because we have to.

00:15:58.100 Like the Shopify of 2012 couldn't solve the Shopify 2020

00:16:03.840 challenges.

00:16:05.000 How does a company get better?

00:16:06.400 It's not by just getting more people.

00:16:08.900 That wouldn't lead to exponential growth.

00:16:13.040 That would lead to linear growth.

00:16:14.940 You need more good people.

00:16:16.580 But the existing people also have to get better.

00:16:19.760 You have to re-qualify for your job every year.

00:16:24.340 And so how do you do that?

00:16:26.600 Well, a lot of this is culture.

00:16:30.440 A lot of this is systems.

00:16:32.400 Like, one thing which is so good about our specific story

00:16:39.700 of having built Shopify and not Silicon Valley, basically.

00:16:43.620 Like, nothing bad about Silicon Valley.

00:16:45.800 They're just very different to build companies there.

00:16:48.100 Totally.

00:16:51.100 For instance, when I hire someone,

00:16:53.600 they're probably going to still work there 10 years later

00:16:55.940 if a relationship is good, right?

00:17:00.440 So because of that, we built a lot.

00:17:05.280 This sort of learner's organization

00:17:06.980 is such a core part of our business, of our identity.

00:17:11.460 And this is why we have a fairly sizable coaching staff

00:17:16.020 in the company.

00:17:16.920 How big is it now?

00:17:18.900 I think talent acceleration is 30, 40, 50.

00:17:22.980 It's a quite big team.

00:17:25.220 You call it talent?

00:17:26.300 Talent acceleration.

00:17:27.220 Acceleration.

00:17:28.020 Because, and this is my point, what is a company?

00:17:31.320 A company is a collection of people.

00:17:33.120 The best thing you can do, if you want to become better

00:17:35.220 as a company, build your people.

00:17:37.900 Help your people have their breakthroughs.

00:17:40.300 is the way Shopify gets a better company today

00:17:44.800 is by someone, somewhere, having a eureka moment

00:17:50.140 of some meaningful way.

00:17:52.660 This is how a team actually gets better.

00:17:54.640 And because of that, it's not just

00:17:57.120 that they are now thinking better,

00:17:59.700 and not just they made this one choice better.

00:18:05.060 That person will make every choice they encounter better.

00:18:08.440 And there's how many billions of choices

00:18:11.680 happen in a calendar year?

00:18:14.100 Like, it's just so if you figure out ways, systems,

00:18:21.440 reinforcing loops, whatever you call them,

00:18:24.520 to always ratchet up the quality of the thinking

00:18:29.860 and the quality of the decision making

00:18:31.100 within the company year over year.

00:18:33.700 And you do that in a consistent way,

00:18:35.120 eventually it will become unbeatable,

00:18:36.680 because that's not what most companies do.

00:18:39.020 I like the way you said you have to reapply or requalify

00:18:43.580 every year for your job.

00:18:46.040 So that's just part of that loop, that engine.

00:18:48.380 I think that is something that people at Jobify talk about.

00:18:53.540 It's like, in a company that's growing significantly,

00:18:59.240 50% in a year or something like this.

00:19:01.160 At your scale, I mean, that's crazy.

00:19:03.140 Yeah.

00:19:05.760 But it also means everyone has to get 50% better at that job

00:19:08.460 just to stand still.

00:19:10.020 Just to stay, yeah.

00:19:11.820 So if you want to grow and you want to make it further,

00:19:16.840 you have to outpace the growth of a company.

00:19:19.440 And that's tough.

00:19:21.940 It's tough to do.

00:19:22.960 You have to be really committed.

00:19:24.160 Like being a learner's organization,

00:19:27.440 thriving on change, these are core values in a company,

00:19:30.780 making great decisions quickly, think of a long term.

00:19:34.020 Like, all these things are kind of,

00:19:35.520 they are sort of like warning labels on a cigarette pack.

00:19:40.620 Like, not saying Shopify is as bad as nicotine for you,

00:19:43.380 but it is a choice that you're making,

00:19:45.180 and it's a warning label.

00:19:46.380 You know what you're signed up for.

00:19:47.460 It's like, this place might not be for everyone,

00:19:52.440 but for the people it's for, it's intoxicating.

00:19:55.780 Let's talk about Harley, because I know Harley's

00:19:58.180 the glue for a lot of people.

00:20:02.100 You know, because he wasn't there early.

00:20:03.660 I remember Scott met the early co-founders,

00:20:06.000 and then Harley shows up, and he's

00:20:07.680 a meaningful part of the business today.

00:20:09.780 How did you guys connect?

00:20:12.600 I mean, in many ways, a lot of people

00:20:13.820 think he runs the business in his area.

00:20:15.820 How did this all come to be?

00:20:18.180 I'm curious.

00:20:19.120 So I met Harley at an entrepreneur meetup

00:20:22.500 in, I want to say, 2007, 8?

00:20:30.440 Maybe even earlier than that.

00:20:33.280 He was studying.

00:20:34.660 He got his law degree.

00:20:36.040 Yeah.

00:20:36.420 He was doing his law degree in Ottawa.

00:20:41.020 And he's from a very entrepreneurial family.

00:20:46.840 He was looking for entrepreneurial opportunities.

00:20:52.400 I think he was selling licensed t-shirts back to universities.

00:20:56.700 He had something going on.

00:20:58.000 So he was at an entrepreneur meetup, and I was as well.

00:21:01.180 And I told him about Shopify, and he loved the idea

00:21:07.180 of being able to, instead of just having

00:21:09.100 to negotiate with universities, actually just

00:21:12.060 find a different market.

00:21:13.060 And I taught him a snowboard story.

00:21:14.800 And he ended up, after the meetup, he signed up.

00:21:17.320 Through using the product, yeah.

00:21:18.320 Yeah, he started using the product.

00:21:19.660 And he was building a store doing law class, as he tells it.

00:21:24.680 And I think that was a successful thing for him.

00:21:29.820 He had lots of things.

00:21:33.180 He made me my money.

00:21:34.080 He had lots of feedback.

00:21:35.220 And frankly, he sent me more emails than any other person

00:21:40.980 ever.

00:21:41.920 Just enthusiastic.

00:21:43.140 Absolutely enthusiastic, but also relentless.

00:21:45.960 Like, every single time he had a shipment that was late,

00:21:50.400 like for some inventory, he couldn't sell this.

00:21:53.340 He wanted me to prorate the monthly fee for Shopify

00:21:57.440 because he's like, I can't sell anything.

00:21:58.900 I don't have anything, I can't pay, and I don't want to shut down the store.

00:22:01.840 So just comp me the store for the next 10 days."

00:22:04.440 And I'm like, you know, like my billing system couldn't even do this, right?

00:22:07.820 Like, because, so I had the choice.

00:22:09.040 Like, I had this like super squeaky wheel of Harley over here.

00:22:14.740 And I'm like, am I going to invest, like, because it was basically like me and like

00:22:18.860 four other people working on the engineering of Shopify.

00:22:22.360 And I was trying to make decisions.

00:22:24.040 Should I add stuff like this?

00:22:25.440 Is that for real?

00:22:26.980 Is that what everyone will ask me for eventually?

00:22:28.900 should I add this to my billing system as a feature?

00:22:33.580 I decided, like, that's crazy.

00:22:35.460 So, you know, in the end, I just made his account free

00:22:38.500 because I just didn't want to deal with all these kind of, like, changes anymore.

00:22:41.620 Like, it ended up being more trouble than it was worth.

00:22:44.280 I didn't know that.

00:22:45.100 And so he was done with his law degree.

00:22:50.020 He went articling in Toronto.

00:22:53.140 And one interesting thing happened.

00:22:56.440 I had this angel investor, John Phillips, in the company. He put some money in early.

00:23:01.000 John Philip Green?

00:23:01.960 No, not John Philip Green. It's a different John Phillips.

00:23:11.080 He was a great mentor for me in the transition of becoming the CEO, not just because I started

00:23:16.360 as CTO in the company. And one day he said, after a board meeting, he said,

00:23:25.080 toby i really really love your company you're building but um everyone i'm meeting in this

00:23:31.000 company is basically of some version of you um um basically engineers or like engineering

00:23:40.680 hacker type kind of people yeah and he said one you really have to have to figure out how to hire

00:23:46.200 people who are different from you and so um that was good feedback really good feedback um and uh

00:23:55.080 I was thinking about, okay, you know, like, where do we go?

00:23:58.060 And I ended up starting to talk to people

00:24:00.660 who just obviously had different skill sets,

00:24:02.640 and Harley was one of the first people who came to mind.

00:24:04.800 Like, we were thinking, you know, like,

00:24:06.460 that guy was such a pain in the behind,

00:24:09.660 like, when I was negotiating.

00:24:12.280 Like, he could be my pain in the behind.

00:24:14.480 Yeah, he could be your guy.

00:24:16.400 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:24:17.420 But better to have someone like him on my side.

00:24:19.440 Yeah, my side.

00:24:19.940 Exactly.

00:24:20.680 So I called him and said, hey, what are you doing?

00:24:23.260 and he said basically said i'm i'm articulating but like screw this i'm not gonna be a lawyer i'm

00:24:28.220 gonna do something different yeah it's like well how about you come for you actually were looking

00:24:32.860 to recruit him yeah yeah i always thought he was like oh there's this like lightning in a bottle

00:24:38.940 i better jump on the i i've he might have realized this but like i think i i i i probably sorry i

00:24:47.580 ended up calling him before he could call me um it was like we were both ready because like he

00:24:52.380 want to finish his articling and then come back and so so so that happened i same day i actually

00:24:58.460 hired toby shen where i'm not sure you know but like it's also like completely different person

00:25:02.540 um both of them started on the same day different than you as well completely different from me

00:25:06.220 completely different from harley and between between us i think like the like a trifecta

00:25:13.420 yeah and it was like suddenly this sort of concept of culture fit changed you know because culture

00:25:21.020 of it before was, hey, you probably

00:25:22.700 played video games and FIFA soccer.

00:25:24.560 You, I mean, we had lots of genders and people,

00:25:28.940 ethnicities in a company in Canada.

00:25:30.420 Like, it's, you get people from everywhere.

00:25:33.260 But everyone was still, their sort of values, life values

00:25:37.780 Venn diagram was a massive overlap.

00:25:40.020 And then these two guys came just massively broadening

00:25:42.680 the area of the kinds of people that would thrive at Shopify.

00:25:47.220 And that was a really important signal.

00:25:48.740 And the next people, like, suddenly we got all these amazing people, which maybe without this particular day of hiring, we wouldn't have brought on.

00:25:57.320 And I think that was a major part of success.

00:26:00.720 Really?

00:26:01.200 So Harley ended up, like, doing, I mean, he started out just basically renegotiating every deal and, you know, just instantly useful to everything.

00:26:10.920 And funnily enough, in a very real way, actually, the company grew into Harley because his natural skills of being out there, his relentlessness.

00:26:26.620 But also, basically, here's the first thing Harley did after he came.

00:26:31.600 It's like, came in the office and said, I just walked by this place two times because there's no sign out there.

00:26:42.760 I'm like, obviously not.

00:26:43.920 We have what we need to sign.

00:26:45.480 We don't have the internet.

00:26:46.880 We have the internet.

00:26:47.940 We have signs on jobbifor.com.

00:26:50.520 And he says, no, let's put signs up.

00:26:55.000 And just like, he wanted to be louder.

00:26:57.340 Was it his ambition that was bigger than the business or was it just louder?

00:27:02.940 I think he's just extroverted in a way that I'm not.

00:27:05.620 Oh, just a bit.

00:27:06.020 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:27:06.640 Just a bit, yeah.

00:27:08.000 I would say on the extreme side.

00:27:09.740 But it gives you sort of a flavor of the kinds of conversations that I had

00:27:16.580 which no one else would have brought up.

00:27:18.640 And so bit by bit, it made the company a lot more self-confident in what it is.

00:27:22.520 Again, it allowed another complete group of people to suddenly find themselves to be a fit for the company because they could self-identify.

00:27:32.340 Maybe I'm not like those people, but I would be super valuable, but that person I can relate to.

00:27:37.300 And therefore, I feel like I can jump on here.

00:27:40.960 I love the way you explain the overlap and the surface that it created.

00:27:45.980 It's a good way to think about it increased the surface area by having those three people.

00:27:51.580 Because how diminishing would it be

00:27:53.120 if you could only recruit from a subset of people?

00:27:55.700 Like people of all, like the more neurodiversity

00:27:59.340 you bring into a meeting, the better decision you will make.

00:28:02.700 Neurodiversity.

00:28:04.460 Like different life stories, different brains.

00:28:09.640 You really think about this stuff.

00:28:12.460 Neurodiversity.

00:28:14.120 That's so cool.

00:28:19.360 Think about it this way.

00:28:20.680 If you, let's take a Wimbledon final tennis match, right?

00:28:31.280 Let's get a recording of a most recent one.

00:28:34.620 And, like, analyze it frame by frame and just look at,

00:28:40.160 okay, so here's two people.

00:28:44.140 Here's the service.

00:28:45.960 Here's where the other person is standing.

00:28:47.720 Here's how they move right before a ball comes.

00:28:50.680 Here's how the ball goes.

00:28:53.760 Here's where they go after the return.

00:28:57.460 Like, if you really analyze this frame by frame

00:29:01.060 and just say, I think what you'll find out

00:29:04.800 that at that level, they play 80, 90% perfect.

00:29:10.600 Like, everything is choreographed.

00:29:12.160 They react perfectly to the state

00:29:14.800 where the ball is which direct it goes.

00:29:19.380 So if you do the same thing with a company,

00:29:23.060 if you could do the same thing with a company,

00:29:24.760 just like have a recording, freeze frame it,

00:29:27.960 and analyze every single muscle movement of everyone,

00:29:30.760 like every keystroke, every memo that's being written.

00:29:34.080 Every thought.

00:29:34.880 Every thought, every decision.

00:29:37.600 What would be the efficiency in that?

00:29:40.780 Low.

00:29:42.280 Very low.

00:29:43.380 Very low.

00:29:44.400 Is it 5%?

00:29:47.260 It's an unfair comparison because tennis is the constraint.

00:29:50.740 There's a rule set.

00:29:52.000 There's a court.

00:29:54.440 Every point starts the same.

00:29:56.000 Every game starts the same.

00:29:57.460 It's like you get to perfect the thing.

00:30:00.200 It's unfair to business because business is like a new game

00:30:03.640 every minute.

00:30:04.480 So everyone is an amateur in the current minute

00:30:09.760 of a business's existence.

00:30:10.960 Of what the business looks like in that moment.

00:30:14.020 But that is really low.

00:30:16.900 So that means, if it actually is 5%, let's just say,

00:30:21.060 that means the first company which makes it to 7%

00:30:23.540 is significantly outperforming everyone else.

00:30:26.020 And so I think here's the cool thing.

00:30:28.200 No one knows how to build companies.

00:30:29.840 We have not figured it out.

00:30:31.720 We are going to all, at the end of our careers,

00:30:34.740 for hopefully long careers, we are going to look back

00:30:37.180 and say, how the hell did we run companies in 2019?

00:30:41.240 We had no idea how anything works.

00:30:43.580 There's all these things which, in the meantime,

00:30:46.180 We figured out about motivation and systems and approaches

00:30:51.280 that we didn't know yet.

00:30:52.240 So how did anything work at all?

00:30:54.100 We are going to be terribly embarrassed by the companies

00:30:56.240 we were running right now.

00:30:58.700 And so which is why it's such a cool time to build companies.

00:31:03.000 Like, don't you want to be part of a pioneering crowd?

00:31:06.700 Why would you try to build a company that's

00:31:08.740 exactly like the other ones, if that's a backdrop,

00:31:12.420 if you already know that we haven't figured out?

00:31:15.480 What you should do is build one which is different,

00:31:18.360 as different as possible.

00:31:19.800 And to get a company that's different,

00:31:23.400 what you have to figure out is you

00:31:25.380 have to figure out your own set of things that you think

00:31:28.340 matter to companies.

00:31:30.340 So like, neurodiversity is one of those kind of things.

00:31:32.860 Like, again, I've been in a lot of meetings

00:31:35.140 where everyone's like fairly similar background.

00:31:39.120 And we got stuck.

00:31:40.980 And then two new people came into a group

00:31:45.240 which have lived their lives in a very different way,

00:31:48.000 and they could draw back on a lot of different life experience

00:31:52.120 and said, actually, you know what?

00:31:53.180 This situation is something I have encountered

00:31:54.760 in this sort of abstract way before

00:31:56.180 at some completely different point of my life.

00:31:59.100 And that's how you solve problems.

00:32:01.260 And so you have to figure out what your bets are

00:32:03.940 when you're building companies.

00:32:05.640 What are the things that you believe

00:32:08.100 that most people don't agree with?

00:32:16.200 and be right that doesn't matter i mean you the market will tell you if you're right you just

00:32:21.800 what's your set of um what is your set of opinions like i i think shopify had a very off-brand set

00:32:31.560 of opinions about what matters um and the reason why it's as big of companies it is because many

00:32:37.640 of them proved to correct um but if you start with the exact same ideas that everyone else does

00:32:44.920 then you're competing on equal grounds if everyone was already much bigger than you

00:32:49.240 and that that's they've already came to that conclusion because they already have done the

00:32:53.080 growth based on those ideas right how do you in from a culture point of view from a hiring

00:33:00.280 what what do you guys do that's unique to make sure that that neurodiversity exists

00:33:04.440 yeah so um i mean we look for very specific things in our hiring um which again are very

00:33:11.240 much in accordance with our uh are you guys using like a profile assessment some kind of like

00:33:15.640 myers-briggs or no we wouldn't we wouldn't do that in in in doing hiring we're doing it internally

00:33:20.600 in the company uh we we use just for communication yeah we use for enneagram mostly and myers-briggs

00:33:25.960 and it's um it's the reason why both things are super valuable is just

00:33:32.760 yeah but i think after you take one of those personnel tests basically what it tells you is

00:33:37.960 other people are different and and even just knowing that is actually super important um

00:33:43.960 because that's one of those massive breakthroughs everyone has in their careers who can swing it

00:33:50.440 like once there's a before and after and after you understand hey most people are not like me

00:33:54.920 um like i have different like the things that i love doing are chores for other people um

00:34:00.680 and and the things that are chores for me is like someone's life work right like

00:34:03.960 Like, just even figuring that one out is one of those kind of, like, amazing things that can really help you in the development of a leader.

00:34:11.760 But during the hiring, that's not just really what, like, you wouldn't sit someone down saying, hey, go through with my aspects.

00:34:19.400 We're looking at things that are according to the company values.

00:34:22.800 Like, we can teach some of them.

00:34:25.660 Like, potentially, at this point, we can teach all of them, but we can't teach you the world set.

00:34:32.700 You have to start out.

00:34:34.140 There's a foundational character set that needs to be present.

00:34:36.920 Well, you have to have a bunch of them,

00:34:38.960 and then we'll teach you what you're missing.

00:34:40.620 But if we have to completely turn you from this side to this side,

00:34:43.420 it's just too much work.

00:34:44.280 And it will not work for the person either.

00:34:47.040 So, I mean, we have a specific way how we do it.

00:34:51.020 We basically talk with people through their life story.

00:34:54.600 I don't want to give too much about this away

00:34:56.360 because part of why it works well is because it's a surprise

00:34:59.860 for people who are going through

00:35:00.880 because it will feel very, very different than hiring.

00:35:04.420 But basically, we'll have a conversation

00:35:08.640 of something that the other person is the worldwide number

00:35:14.160 one authority on, which is their own story.

00:35:18.040 And then we dig into the kinds of things

00:35:21.380 which we find interesting for certain tests.

00:35:24.000 And that's the way we do it.

00:35:26.620 When you think of, Toby, for me,

00:35:29.980 It's, you know, the product you guys have built, the consistency of how it's performance, your API structure, the modularity of it, the way you structure your teams.

00:35:43.460 What what do you what do you feel like you've done right there?

00:35:49.360 And maybe and I think sometimes you probably take for granted what you do.

00:35:52.440 So I'm just curious if you could unpack it a little bit and then just kind of explain why you do it.

00:35:56.040 Yeah, I was going to say it's very flattering of you to say that.

00:35:58.760 It sounds like it's looking so good from the outside.

00:36:01.200 I really hope that's true.

00:36:02.020 And you can probably see a hundred things you should do better.

00:36:03.500 Because I see the inside.

00:36:07.960 Yeah.

00:36:10.780 I mean, here's the answer to that is,

00:36:15.960 you know, yes, you have to have a sort of general alignment

00:36:19.160 about how to solve problems within the team,

00:36:21.760 but then just have really good people.

00:36:24.500 there's no other way to do like product at this scale like you know product is so it's not about

00:36:31.720 the pod structure it's not about anybody can push the production in real time like you're just

00:36:38.040 saying it really is at this scale you have to you have to create an incredible environment and

00:36:43.500 the kinds of like what we say is um what what success is important for our success in the long

00:36:52.300 term is that if you're an engineer or a product person or UX person, if you're in the R&D team

00:37:02.300 and you want to solve any problem in the world of commerce, that should be significantly easier to

00:37:07.900 solve within the company as being part of a company as compared to being a startup outside

00:37:13.180 of a company. If that's ever not true, then what are we doing? Wow. That's a high bar.

00:37:20.060 it's a very hyper it means you have to spend you have to outpace the innovation often of of

00:37:26.620 the field right um but things like yeah so you push anything to production it's i mean there's

00:37:35.260 gonna it's gonna ask you there's an automated system it's asking you to like assigns two people

00:37:39.900 for pull requests a review um after it's been looked at um uh they do their like little sign

00:37:47.260 and off button on GitHub.

00:37:49.340 Afterwards, it's automatically merged into a system

00:37:51.700 as a bot which tells you how deep the queue is right now

00:37:55.580 because automated systems tests have to run.

00:37:58.780 And it automatically goes in production.

00:38:00.940 Once it goes through the regression test.

00:38:02.440 Hundreds and hundreds of deploys a day.

00:38:04.820 And yeah.

00:38:06.540 Was that always the case, Toby?

00:38:08.840 I think that's been true for three, four, five years now.

00:38:11.500 I guess it's been easy to deploy to production.

00:38:14.740 has always been part of Shopify.

00:38:18.420 I mean, at certain points, it was

00:38:20.180 that you had to go into a channel and write in a command.

00:38:24.160 So you've added automation, increased the throughput.

00:38:27.280 But the principle of should always be easy.

00:38:30.760 Always has to be easy.

00:38:32.300 You have access to incredibly, like,

00:38:35.300 if you're doing something new, you

00:38:36.940 have an incredible design system over here that you can use.

00:38:40.460 So even just the programmers can do,

00:38:43.240 like without a designer involved, it already

00:38:45.480 doesn't look terrible.

00:38:48.280 Then you need payments, you use this thing.

00:38:53.960 You need a billing system, you need this thing.

00:38:56.500 You need a lock-in system, there's a module.

00:38:58.840 You basically can focus on solving the problem

00:39:02.200 that you want to solve.

00:39:03.420 Everything else is modularized and available to you.

00:39:07.220 And that's just a good environment.

00:39:09.820 It's basically just open source approach within a company.

00:39:15.100 Yeah, at scale.

00:39:16.120 Do you guys have a DevOps dedicated team

00:39:18.640 that's building this tool set?

00:39:20.200 Or do you allow teams to decide, those are problems

00:39:23.260 that I want to work on?

00:39:24.160 Yeah, so what I don't know is if I would self-identify

00:39:26.440 as DevOps, because I don't know the current hype cycle state

00:39:31.580 of this particular term.

00:39:34.540 We have a developer acceleration team, which is very, very

00:39:37.720 loved because.

00:39:40.540 But there is a dedicated function

00:39:41.920 to increasing throughput for developers.

00:39:44.400 Oh, I mean, the biggest shortage on this planet

00:39:49.540 is developers, right?

00:39:50.740 Like this planet is building software right now.

00:39:55.960 That will end up being the name of age.

00:39:58.660 And we have not, I mean, we have not been making enough.

00:40:04.660 So your goal, it's so interesting.

00:40:06.640 So at some point, a company, it makes way more sense

00:40:11.380 investing into developer efficiency,

00:40:14.240 because you get massive leverage on this

00:40:16.920 compared to giving people inefficient tools

00:40:19.880 and then having more people.

00:40:21.320 So it makes perfect sense from an investment perspective.

00:40:24.260 Do you do that for most of the other functions

00:40:27.000 in the business?

00:40:29.040 How many of those functions or engines do you have?

00:40:32.400 We have a lot of internally built tools.

00:40:34.480 So you have talent acceleration, talent acceleration.

00:40:38.320 Yeah, talent acceleration uses some self-built tools.

00:40:40.940 I mean, if a market produces something that's better,

00:40:43.600 you're OK with that, too.

00:40:44.560 But in regards to a department focus

00:40:45.640 on acceleration of a function, how many of those do you have?

00:40:49.880 So this is mostly present in R&D,

00:40:51.800 because that's the tightest roles.

00:40:54.160 Again, engineering, specifically.

00:40:56.320 I mean, engineering product people and UX people

00:40:58.900 are rare on this planet at a certain level of quality.

00:41:02.720 Like this is the labor market for R&D roles is like in a lot.

00:41:09.800 I mean, right now the labor market is pretty good across the field,

00:41:13.820 but I mean, low unemployment, but like it's at full employment

00:41:18.540 and it has been at full employment for the past five, six, seven years in these fields.

00:41:23.100 So there's no, there's almost never like an engineer looking for a job.

00:41:31.000 Like, it's basically the only labor market movements that exist is the top companies shuffling people back and forth.

00:41:38.320 So it's, you need efficiency out of everyone.

00:41:43.040 And, I mean, also, if I'm an engineer on a team, I don't want to wait, like, an hour for my CI to come back.

00:41:52.400 That's, like, super boring, right?

00:41:54.120 I want my CI to work across 1,000, like a million dollars

00:41:58.800 of hardware, super parallels, and come back to me immediately.

00:42:01.560 You've got the money.

00:42:02.060 Right, because that's just, like, that's cooler and more fun.

00:42:05.740 And therefore, it makes sense, right?

00:42:07.840 That's interesting.

00:42:09.440 And going back to Shopify enabling more entrepreneurs

00:42:13.800 to build companies, I mean, one of the things that I've,

00:42:16.640 and I don't know, I don't have the data to prove this,

00:42:18.480 but just because things get easier

00:42:20.880 doesn't mean more people build businesses,

00:42:22.780 because there's a whole mindset behind it.

00:42:25.080 How do you think about that?

00:42:27.580 I eventually will get to that point,

00:42:31.020 and that will be a huge success.

00:42:32.540 I do think it's unknowable how many people.

00:42:37.220 I would absolutely self-identify as a kind of person

00:42:39.540 who had to start their own company, and therefore I did.

00:42:42.060 And I think you would do the same.

00:42:43.660 There's a certain percentage of people

00:42:45.840 who are the kind of people who really, really, really

00:42:48.540 had to start their own companies for various reasons,

00:42:52.120 chief amongst them can't work for other people.

00:42:57.100 And so I'm just sometimes thinking about this.

00:43:02.500 If I would have been born in another time or in another

00:43:05.440 country or another place which simply wouldn't have allowed

00:43:08.080 me to do this, I would have been absolutely miserable.

00:43:11.320 The reality is, I don't think that's

00:43:14.180 as rare as we make it out to be, at least the desire.

00:43:17.320 Like, given the chance and given the opportunity,

00:43:21.340 I would start my own company, I would take the risk,

00:43:24.700 and I would give it a go to see if it works.

00:43:27.460 I think one in 10 people probably

00:43:31.720 would say yes to that question, if you ask them

00:43:35.200 if they would be like this.

00:43:38.060 I bet you if you ask teenagers, it

00:43:40.160 will be way higher of kids who see themselves

00:43:43.860 as being like this.

00:43:45.220 So who knows?

00:43:45.980 It might be 30%, it might be 50% for all we know.

00:43:50.580 So I don't know what the number is,

00:43:54.780 but that's the demand side.

00:43:57.020 So demand and then goes to life and looks for opportunities.

00:44:04.080 Like, I mean, this is my, like, I at some point

00:44:08.260 went to the hill snowboarding and did my deep dive.

00:44:11.360 I need to learn everything about how snowboards are made

00:44:13.460 because I want to make a choice for one snowboard I'm

00:44:15.540 going to buy because I had no money and, like,

00:44:18.460 I want to make the right decision.

00:44:19.700 So I researched everything, got the right snowboard,

00:44:22.760 had a wonderful time with it, and at some point was like,

00:44:25.820 yeah, I wonder how many people would

00:44:27.380 want to do as much research as I do.

00:44:29.840 And it's too bad there wasn't a website which I could have

00:44:32.840 gone to, which had just good snowboards,

00:44:35.720 and would tell me why they have good ones.

00:44:38.820 Like, I could make that website.

00:44:40.860 And then I could make money by actually then

00:44:43.100 selling more snowboards.

00:44:44.320 It wasn't that hard to make these leaps.

00:44:47.300 And so once opportunity meets preparedness,

00:44:53.360 I was at the right point in my life.

00:44:55.020 And I was to give it a go.

00:44:56.740 And I saw the opportunity.

00:44:58.180 And then getting those two things together

00:45:02.740 was almost impossible.

00:45:04.020 It turns out I needed, on this particular journey,

00:45:07.880 I actually had to, it wasn't a climb.

00:45:10.700 It was a vertical wall that the only reason why I could get up

00:45:14.600 To my goal was because I had specialized gear, which is called I'm a computer programmer.

00:45:19.400 I could write my own software because no one was giving me that.

00:45:22.980 And some other significant challenges that I had to overcome to make this happen.

00:45:27.180 And so the thing that lies, like what a lot of sort of free market thinkers don't understand is that between the demand and eventual supply lies friction.

00:45:45.240 I actually think that friction is probably the most potent force for shaping the planet that

00:45:50.280 people are just generally not acknowledge and so I think in like this has been like when

00:46:01.560 politicians talk about hey we need entrepreneurs are amazing which you know I think every politician

00:46:06.680 in the western world sort of acknowledges we need more of it usually the solution is like

00:46:13.160 like some kind of incentive package, which can be useful,

00:46:18.620 funding, some accelerators.

00:46:21.140 Obviously, it's not bad.

00:46:22.480 It's just the problem is they try to increase the demand side.

00:46:28.460 I think the demand side is always so big,

00:46:32.000 the friction in the middle is a problem.

00:46:34.580 And that was my theory.

00:46:36.300 Again, when I turned my Snowboard story to Shopify,

00:46:40.320 there was a lot of more people like me,

00:46:42.020 except there was too much friction,

00:46:43.560 and therefore, which we needed to serve.

00:46:46.220 And so Shopify has proven out every single time

00:46:49.460 we make the process simpler of setting up this malls,

00:46:52.580 there's more consumption.

00:46:53.540 More people get their first sale.

00:46:56.300 More people do it.

00:46:57.500 At this point, we have a million merchants on Shopify, which

00:47:01.380 is like a mind-blowing number.

00:47:02.760 It's crazy.

00:47:04.100 It's the population number of the entire city

00:47:06.080 we are currently in.

00:47:07.360 And so they're sellers.

00:47:09.140 And they were selling actively.

00:47:11.260 And as I earlier said, initial estimates

00:47:17.060 was that there might only be a demand for 40,000 online

00:47:19.240 stores, right?

00:47:20.420 And so friction is a major component,

00:47:23.560 I think, is something that software is uniquely

00:47:26.380 good at reducing the friction.

00:47:30.020 But I mean, I guess the thought experiment

00:47:33.060 is because technology and the internet

00:47:36.200 made it easier for a lot of people.

00:47:38.820 Shopify has made it a lot easier for people

00:47:40.660 start businesses.

00:47:42.120 But did more people, like are these people that

00:47:48.620 were already going to start businesses

00:47:50.040 and they just happen to do it online versus a retail store

00:47:53.680 or a lawn care company?

00:47:55.480 You know what I mean?

00:47:56.940 How do we actually create more entrepreneurs that

00:48:00.880 are willing to?

00:48:02.320 Yeah.

00:48:03.040 Yeah, I mean, it's to a degree unknowable,

00:48:05.520 but just because of a magnitude here of a step change,

00:48:09.420 I really like the amount of more merchants

00:48:14.740 that have online stores on the internet

00:48:16.120 is vastly outpacing the people on the internet,

00:48:19.060 like the growth of the internet.

00:48:20.440 OK, got it.

00:48:21.020 So you actually have the data to prove

00:48:22.760 that it's not a percentage of the population.

00:48:25.440 It's actually becoming easier and more people are approaching it.

00:48:29.060 Yeah.

00:48:29.560 I think more people, like if you think like what people don't

00:48:33.820 under, like one thing which is important to acknowledge

00:48:36.120 is the total entrepreneurship is going down in the world.

00:48:39.720 It's actually the people don't realize this generally,

00:48:42.880 because when you talk about entrepreneurship,

00:48:44.820 people think, OK, well, tech entrepreneurship clearly

00:48:47.400 is working well.

00:48:49.980 Well, yeah, like tech entrepreneurship is doing well,

00:48:52.680 but you have to be a programmer, which most people aren't.

00:48:56.440 And so the actual new company formation as a chart over time

00:49:02.900 is trending downwards since the 70s.

00:49:06.440 So the Gen X is less entrepreneurial than the boomers.

00:49:12.960 Millennials are less entrepreneurial than the Gen X.

00:49:14.960 Even though it's getting easier.

00:49:17.060 Well, for a lot of reasons.

00:49:20.420 I mean, globalization has to do with it.

00:49:22.500 You're very quickly competing.

00:49:25.700 There's a war market in every city, so that produces

00:49:29.480 the potential for a lot of mom and pop stores.

00:49:32.840 Oh, that makes sense.

00:49:33.560 So consolidation.

00:49:34.560 Yeah.

00:49:35.060 OK.

00:49:35.560 A lot of consolidation.

00:49:37.260 So the opportunities for new business formation in everywhere

00:49:41.540 has actually been reduced.

00:49:44.120 And online is like the internet is just one big village.

00:49:49.800 It resembles one big village.

00:49:51.440 And there is the Walmart, like in the retail space,

00:49:53.580 there's one thing which wants to own all retail.

00:49:57.940 And I don't think if there would be a company

00:50:04.820 who's created a viable business model around making it easier

00:50:09.160 for other entrants into this space.

00:50:11.980 By the way, I'm talking about Amazon here.

00:50:14.320 I didn't mean to be so obscure.

00:50:16.620 Like Amazon wants all e-commerce for itself.

00:50:19.420 They're going to have an empire.

00:50:21.520 And Shopify exists to basically arm the rebels.

00:50:26.620 we want lots of people to go and compete with Amazon.

00:50:29.920 And I think that's really good for the internet.

00:50:31.920 To do that.

00:50:32.740 Exactly.

00:50:33.560 Toby, when you look back at the entrepreneur or the person

00:50:37.020 that started Shopify, who you are today,

00:50:39.740 who did you need to become to continue to lead this company?

00:50:44.060 Yeah, I mean, it's fascinating.

00:50:51.060 I mean, I have a lot of different skills

00:50:53.800 I didn't have, big man.

00:50:55.900 I started out treating business as a complete black box.

00:51:01.180 That's what I told Scott, my co-founder, and focusing on technology.

00:51:06.460 And now, again, I recognize so many things that are interesting.

00:51:10.780 And I learned so many things about myself.

00:51:12.560 And I think that's been, to me, just such an amazing coincidence

00:51:18.440 and side effect of this particular journey.

00:51:21.340 I just love building things.

00:51:24.940 programming was for me the best way to build things but now i get to build things in a lot

00:51:31.420 of different ways i get to build teams people systems company um i get to actually have some

00:51:39.580 like a real impact on frankly the economies of a lot of countries like entrepreneurship is like

00:51:45.260 most people don't work for amazon most people work for uh smbs like we need millions of small

00:51:52.540 businesses to provide good employment for most people right um which you know we can have a

00:51:58.140 hand in because you can accelerate small business formation so like the way i um think about it is

00:52:07.260 like i could have never jumped any like i i've met a new version of shopify every year and um

00:52:15.420 it was i and i struggled with it at times but i i always tried to be just good enough for the

00:52:21.740 the current version of Shopify and have an eye

00:52:24.600 on what I need to learn for the next one

00:52:26.780 and just maybe get a little bit of a head start

00:52:29.160 right before I need it, and then it inevitably

00:52:31.580 caught up to what I could do.

00:52:35.900 And I found out, and I wouldn't have known this about myself

00:52:39.440 before, and I wouldn't have, like some of my parents

00:52:42.360 wouldn't have predicted this, that that's actually

00:52:44.180 exactly what I wanted.

00:52:45.060 I needed to be challenged in this particular way.

00:52:47.220 And it's been just really, really, really interesting.

00:52:56.680 At this point, when I start feeling comfortable with,

00:53:02.580 I've got a handle on what Shopify needs for me right now,

00:53:05.320 I get really suspicious.

00:53:06.780 That's the moment I get really worried because I'm like,

00:53:10.600 I wonder if that is because I don't quite know what Shopify

00:53:13.920 really needs for me right now.

00:53:15.420 I need to go back and look broader and talk with people

00:53:19.180 and read some far-field books to try to get some ideas

00:53:22.960 for figuring out where my next growth comes from.

00:53:25.400 Because again, I have to get ideally twice as good

00:53:29.880 by next year to stay in my job and to re-qualify.

00:53:34.620 To re-qualify.

00:53:36.440 That's amazing.

00:53:38.080 Toby, I just want to wrap up by saying,

00:53:40.100 as a Canadian entrepreneur, as a technologist,

00:53:43.560 What you've built in Ottawa, in Canada, is crazy inspiring.

00:53:48.880 I know there's a lot of people that may never have the opportunity to meet you in person

00:53:51.700 to tell you this, but I'm going to tell you on their behalf because it's, I don't know,

00:53:57.120 we always need those people that have gone before to be that example.

00:54:00.060 And it's just really cool to see you not only have built it, but share the way you think

00:54:07.940 about building it because I think a lot of people have aspirations, but they don't even

00:54:11.420 and know what would I do tomorrow to get there?

00:54:13.960 And I think in our conversation today,

00:54:15.720 you definitely shed some light, I know for me,

00:54:18.540 and I just wanna tell you how much I appreciate that.

00:54:20.620 Thank you.

00:54:21.460 Thanks, Dan.

00:54:22.300 Thanks a lot, man.

00:54:23.140 This was a lot of fun.

00:54:24.020 And it's a wrap.

00:54:24.860 Thanks for watching this episode of Escape Velocity.

00:54:27.540 Be sure to like and subscribe

00:54:29.340 and leave a comment with your biggest insight

00:54:31.660 from our conversation.

00:54:33.060 Be sure to check out the next episode.

Dan Martell - December 05, 2019

Tobi Lütke The Creator of Shopify

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