Transcript
Introduction
Patrick
My guest today is Tobi Lütke, co-founder and CEO of Shopify. Having first spoken to Tobi at the beginning of the pandemic, just two months into it, this felt like an opportune moment to revisit Shopify and the world through Tobi's eyes. Among many things, we discussed Shopify's evolution into the world of atom-based building, through Shopify's fulfillment network, the value of infrastructure writ large, and the impact of market volatility on day-to-day business building. Please enjoy my conversation with Tobi Lütke.
Value of Infrastructure
Patrick
Tobi, it is almost exactly two years to the day since we last did this. It was early May in 2020, there was still a ton of uncertainty related to COVID. I guess there still is some extent today, and the world in Shopify and lots of things have changed a tremendous amount. I know certain things haven't changed too. I've been really excited to do an updated version of our conversation and we'll bounce all over the place, but before we hit go here, we're having this fascinating conversation around the concept of infrastructure, generally speaking. I think it started with this idea that we might be about to come on stream to a lot of good, useful, new, history books written by people who are really there to see this stuff get built in the digital world. I'd love you to sum up that idea of what your interest is in infrastructure and the way that history is written. Even things like payback on infrastructure and the ways in which we might underestimate it. I think this is a great tone setter for what we're going to be talking about today.