Shopify

Tobi Lütke

Started a snowboard shop, ended up building the platform underneath everyone else's.

He writes more honestly about the craft of building software than almost any other chief executive.

1. Solve your own problem first.

   Shopify exists because he wanted to sell snowboards online and the tools were bad. The best briefs come from being the customer.

2. The tool you build may beat the business you built it for.

   The shop was the reason. The platform was the outcome. Stay alert to which part is working.

3. Stay technical.

   He kept writing code long after it was expected of him. Retaining first-hand judgment about the work is worth the time it costs.

4. Bet on the platform, not the product.

   Enabling other people's businesses scales differently from running your own. Being infrastructure is a different game.

5. Contribute to what you depend on.

   He was an early Ruby on Rails contributor. Investing in your foundations is cheap and pays back for years.

6. Optimise for learning rate.

   He talks about compounding personal growth as the real metric. It is the same argument as any other compounding, applied to yourself.

7. Be explicit about the culture.

   Shopify's internal writing on how it operates is unusually direct, including the unpopular parts. Ambiguity is not kindness.

8. Small tools, honestly named.

   He is sceptical of grand strategy language and comfortable saying a thing is just a useful tool. It ages better than a manifesto.

9. Distance from Silicon Valley can help.

   Building from Ottawa gave a different set of assumptions, and different assumptions are where advantages come from.

10. Trust the merchants.

    Shopify's decisions consistently favour the small seller over the platform's short-term take. That is a strategy, not sentiment.