Invest Like The Best
Episode 173 Building a Modern Business
Invest Like The Best

Episode 173: Building a Modern Business

Invest Like The Best

Episode 173

Building a Modern Business

Tobi is the co-founder and CEO of Shopify, the ecommerce platform that champions entrepreneurs. We cover Shopify's business model and North Star, the overlooked benefits of video games, and Tobi talks about the best idea he has ever found.

This episode is brought to you by:

The MIT Investment Management Company. The MIT Investment Management Company (MITIMCO) is the endowment office of MIT. MITIMCO is looking to find investors starting funds today. MITIMCO is partnership-driven, long-term focused and has an extensive history of backing investors early in their careers. If you are or you know of someone who is currently in the process of starting a fund or recently launched, please email partner@mitimco.org or discover more on their website, www.mitimco.org.

[00:02:35] – (First question) – The launch of the new Shopify Shop app

[00:02:44] – Daniel Ek Podcast Episode

[00:02:45] – Jeff Lawson Podcast Episode

[00:04:56] – Having the right focus and growing a good business

[00:09:06] – Marketplace business model vs the merchant driven business model

[00:09:16] – Bill Gurley Podcast Appearances – 162 | 144 | 137

[00:11:47] – His role as a decision-maker as CEO of the company

[00:14:07] – What does he mean when he talks about quality

[00:18:28] – His thinking on design and quality

[00:18:32] – Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance

[00:19:59] – The Design of Everyday Things

[00:21:06] – Friction as a force in business and manufacturing

[00:26:04] – His thoughts on systems and being free of process

[00:26:08] – The Systems Bible

[00:30:01] – The game of Factoria and how it relates to systems

[00:32:16] – Transfer Learning

[00:34:33] – What Real-Time Strategy games have taught Tobi

[00:38:30] – Building context inside of a company and making it scale

[00:41:17] – Personality typing

[00:46:22] – The Tobi Blueprint

[00:46:04] – A Guide to the Good Life and stoicism

[00:55:38] – Raising kids and the impact of Covid

[01:03:16] – Kindest thing anyone has done for Tobi

Building a Modern Business

Introduction

Patrick
My guest today is Tobi Lutke, the co-founder and CEO of Shopify. This is both a timely and evergreen conversation. Timely as the world has moved aggressively digital in the past two months and Shopify powers so much of digital commerce. Evergreen, because while we touch on COVID and the Shopify business, this is much more a conversation on business and personal principles, learning, design and growth. Tobi is one of the CEOs I look up to most for the type of company he is building and for the way he conducts himself. We discuss business focus, why video games help you learn the power of attention, what design means for products and organizations and much more. Please enjoy my conversation with Tobi Lutke.

Shopify's North Star & Business Model

Tobi, thank you so much for joining me today. I've been so excited for this conversation. You, along with some of the other public CEOs I've had on like Daniel Ek and Jeff Lawson are the kind of builder that I aspire to be. And so, I'm going to bombard you with business strategy, video game, life questions, all over the map. Because it is Tuesday 28th of April and Shopify, just as of this morning, has launched a new initiative, a new mobile app called the Shop app. I just think that would be a neat place to explore and begin to discuss some of your principles and ideas. Maybe you could begin by just telling us what that app is and how it continues your mission of serving merchants.

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