The Exchanges

Q Okay. Listen, dude, I'm, I'm loving that little detour. What's the most significant life hack That you found recently. I know you're an aura ring user. I know you cycle. What's the most recent significant life hack?

A So I become much more stringent with my phone. My sleep was terrible. I didn't get sleep. I like every day I woke up and my aura ring told me that, hey, you basically didn't sleep tonight. And so now I've set up like really strict schedule, which is basically like I work 8:30 a.m. till five p.m. I then go down. I have dinner with the kids. I put them to bed at seven. They're asleep by seven 30. I then go back into my office. So when I go down to have dinner with the kids, I leave my phone in my office. So I'm like, there's no phone then. And then I come back into my office, work for an hour and a half, and then I have the sauna beyond. So then when I leave my office again, I leave my phone in the office, and then I go down, I do a sauna, I do cold punch, sauna again, and then I read, and then I go to bed without a phone in the bedroom. And it gives me sort of an hour and a half to like read and wind down and not like think about work. And then I go to bed. And, and it's been the thing that has just changed how I sleep.

AI assessment note: “So I become much more stringent with my phone. My sleep was terrible.”

Q That is not in the interest of Gymshark, but it is in the interest of being a better companion. How do you think about that duality?

A I think it's important for companies to have principles that they adhere to when it comes to those types of considerations. And I think it's important to realize that you'll need a little bit of both. So, for example, if you browse Gymshark and you browse a Gymshark store inside a shop, we're pretty hardcore about not promoting other competing brands, any other brands on that surface. We think of their store inside a shop app as sort of like they had their own app in the app store. It just kind of packed with like hundreds of millions of buyers. And so there are surfaces that we think of as like merchant owned surfaces inside of the shop app. But if you're browsing the feed and you're kind of like just going through like this feed of like merchant and product recommendations, then you're really shopping a shop surface. And the job of shop there is, is really to just adhere to your interest and figure out what do you need right now? And what based on your, what we know about you, what's the best thing that we can recommend to you? So for us it's sort of like understanding what is the job that we're employed to do depending on the surface and having a strong kind of point of view on that.

AI assessment note: “understanding what is the job that we're employed to do depending on the surface”

Q That is not in the interest of Gymshark, but it is in the interest of being a better companion. How do you think about that duality?

A I think it's important for companies to have principles that they adhere to when it comes to those types of considerations. And I think it's important to realize that you'll need a little bit of both. So, for example, if you browse Gymshark and you browse a Gymshark store inside a shop, we're pretty hardcore about not promoting other competing brands, any other brands on that surface. We think of their store inside a shop app as sort of like they had their own app in the app store. It just kind of packed with like hundreds of millions of buyers. And so there are surfaces that we think of as like merchant owned surfaces inside of the shop app. But if you're browsing the feed and you're kind of like just going through like this feed of like merchant and product recommendations, then you're really shopping a shop surface. And the job of shop there is, is really to just adhere to your interest and figure out what do you need right now? And what based on your, what we know about you, what's the best thing that we can recommend to you? So for us it's sort of like understanding what is the job that we're employed to do depending on the surface and having a strong kind of point of view on that.

AI assessment note: “understanding what is the job that we're employed to do depending on the surface”

Q Do you worry that discovery becomes challenging with the plethora or excess supply that you see created in market?

A I have for a while before AI worried that the distribution has largely settled and innovation is favored by the larger companies again. Like when I started Ticktail, so like we launched in 2012, we've like really had our moment like 2014. It still felt like this time in the market where there was a lot of like free distribution to be had. Through social, through advertising, through different viral mechanics, a lot of it using existing networks like Facebook to tap into them and accelerate growth. Most of those avenues got shut down or became way more expensive. And I think this shift happened where the companies that held their own distribution, companies like Meta, like Google, but also companies like Shopify started to favor where they were already established. They already had a huge user base and they started to become just Better at innovating, at creating new products, at bringing to life new experiences. And I find that to still be the thing, right, where product discovery has been expensive for a while, and it's created an environment, I think, where it's been harder for startups to cut through, and most of them get picked up earlier and just integrated into larger platforms that already own the distribution.

AI assessment note: “product discovery has been expensive for a while, and it's created an environment”

Q Where do you think designers waste their time today where they won't in the future?

A I'll use a dumb example, but like configuring the toggles on a settings page is really not the job that a designer needs to do. You don't need the Figma for it. Like if you have a good design system, if you have great components and you have a product manager That can think. Then you'll basically be able to say, hey, I want to create a settings page that allows you to configure the markets you sell in and the price points and blah, blah, blah, blah. And you'll have cursor or whichever tool you use build that for you. And I don't know that the design that comes out of that is going to be much worse or better than what a very good UI designer would be able to produce. And so really what I think is going to happen for design It's that you'll have designers that go further down in the stack and really focuses on the design systems and the components that allows any other person to produce better design, right? If you're going to rely more on AI for the outputs, the inputs have never mattered more. So you need to like really double down on your design systems and the foundations. And then I think the other role for designers is to break all of those same systems and paint outside of the lines to create unexpected experiences Where you're not doing the obvious, but you're doing the unobvious, but correct, and creating an experience that is like memorable, that stands out, that makes …

AI assessment note: “configuring the toggles on a settings page is really not the job that a designer”

Q If you were CEO, Carl, would you have it as in person? I speak to many of the best CEOs in the world. Every single one behind the scenes says remote just does not work as well. Everyone's back in person. I force everyone to be. It is like a universal consensus. If you were CEO, would you be in person?

A If I started a new company, I believe I would start it in person, and I would have an agreement that at some level, say, a 150 people were all going to turn remote. Because I think that there's this thing that eventually the access to talent just becomes so attractive in being a remote company. And ultimately I believe hybrid is the worst. The worst thing is the thing where like you have half of the team in person. They have an enormous information advantage. They figure out their own rituals and ways of communicating and collaborating. The other half of the team sits somewhere else. You try to come together through weekly meetings, half of the group are tiles on the screen. It just doesn't work. And so ultimately, I think companies need to pick one of the lanes, and too many companies are ending up in both. What I think is happening is that after a certain scale, you just get so attracted to some of the talent, talent specific to the category you're going after, to the problems you're trying to solve. And they're not going to be wherever you happen to start a company, even when you start in SF or New York. And you're going to want to bring those people on. Why shouldn't you? And then you have a choice. You're hybrid or you're remote. And between those two choices, I choose remote.

AI assessment note: “If I started a new company, I believe I would start it in person”

Q Dude, we were both so young, but I was speaking to your co-founder before at Ticktail, before this show, and he said we had to start here. He said, Oliver Davids, trademark, how does it influence your mindset? I had absolutely no idea, and I have no idea what he means, so can you enlighten us?

A Oliver Davids belongs to the murky parts of my career. I was running an agency together with Kai Drobin, who I then started Ticktail together with. And we did a bunch of stupid things. But one thing we did was that we landed this job to basically like produce a huge event in Stockholm with a bunch of artists, like Swedish House Mafia, a bunch of artists playing. And we were supposed to find like an event photographer to like document this whole experience. And we were like, 18, and super young, and cocky, and kind of thought we knew how to do everything. So we were like, F that. Like we're, we don't need an event photographer. We're going to document this whole thing ourselves. But the people paying us insisted that we had a professional photographer. So we made up this, this name, which was my second name, Oliver, and Kai's second name, David. And we're like, well, we have this incredible photographer that's coming in. Oliver David is going to shoot the whole event. And, and we had all of these, like, we had to meet all of the artists in the green room, and we had to like get perfect shots of them when they were playing. And then we had to like, Go around with like this big set of Japanese journalists and show them around and take photos for them. And our photos were published in like these like Japanese lifestyle magazines under the name Oliver David. So that was my very shor…

AI assessment note: “So we made up this, this name, which was my second name, Oliver, and Kai's second name, David.”

Q Okay. Listen, dude, I'm, I'm loving that little detour. What's the most significant life hack That you found recently. I know you're an aura ring user. I know you cycle. What's the most recent significant life hack?

A So I become much more stringent with my phone. My sleep was terrible. I didn't get sleep. I like every day I woke up and my aura ring told me that, hey, you basically didn't sleep tonight. And so now I've set up like really strict schedule, which is basically like I work 8:30 a.m. till five p.m. I then go down. I have dinner with the kids. I put them to bed at seven. They're asleep by seven 30. I then go back into my office. So when I go down to have dinner with the kids, I leave my phone in my office. So I'm like, there's no phone then. And then I come back into my office, work for an hour and a half, and then I have the sauna beyond. So then when I leave my office again, I leave my phone in the office, and then I go down, I do a sauna, I do cold punch, sauna again, and then I read, and then I go to bed without a phone in the bedroom. And it gives me sort of an hour and a half to like read and wind down and not like think about work. And then I go to bed. And, and it's been the thing that has just changed how I sleep.

AI assessment note: “I become much more stringent with my phone. My sleep was terrible.”

Q You said there about the communication that you have between teams that are turning around the whiteboarding. Do you believe you can be as effective as design teams and product teams when doing it remotely?

A No, it's the short answer. The way we overcome this at Shopify is by bringing teams together intentionally. So we will have teams come together sometimes for a week at a time to be in a room together to really get to the depths of a problem, to really get all of the nuance that comes from considering ambiguity. But then, you know, at some point you said all the things that needed to be said, And there's also something that's extremely valuable of coming back to your own environment in a hyper-focused setting where you can just go to work. And there's not a bunch of people and distractions and meetings that are being called left and right that is like breaking your flow. And so we're trying to find the balance. And ultimately, I think it depends as everything else a little bit on what's the project, what's the maturity of the team, what's the stage,

AI assessment note: “No, it's the short answer. The way we overcome this at Shopify”

Q How has your view on what good design is changed over time?

A Not that much. I have always been of the belief that good design means all of the things. Like it's not just like, oh, it's a great information architecture or UX. Like it's that and it's phenomenal finish. And it's that and it's really, really, really like low latency. Products that just are snappy to move that have motion that makes it feel more like a journey than kind of a reload. You don't feel like you belong to any certain screen that you land on. You're like just always in motion. Down to the, like, the small, delightful moments that you don't even count on. The feedback on touch, or how a button animates after you click it. And I think having that sort of like, hey, it's everything. Like, there are no speed limits. We can just go further, has always been kind of part of my design philosophy. And now technology allows you to push it further.

AI assessment note: “Not that much. I have always been of the belief that good design means”

Q If you were CEO, Carl, would you have it as in person? I speak to many of the best CEOs in the world. Every single one behind the scenes says remote just does not work as well. Everyone's back in person. I force everyone to be. It is like a universal consensus. If you were CEO, would you be in person?

A If I started a new company, I believe I would start it in person, and I would have an agreement that at some level, say, a 150 people were all going to turn remote. Because I think that there's this thing that eventually the access to talent just becomes so attractive in being a remote company. And ultimately I believe hybrid is the worst. The worst thing is the thing where like you have half of the team in person. They have an enormous information advantage. They figure out their own rituals and ways of communicating and collaborating. The other half of the team sits somewhere else. You try to come together through weekly meetings, half of the group are tiles on the screen. It just doesn't work. And so ultimately, I think companies need to pick one of the lanes, and too many companies are ending up in both. What I think is happening is that after a certain scale, you just get so attracted to some of the talent, talent specific to the category you're going after, to the problems you're trying to solve. And they're not going to be wherever you happen to start a company, even when you start in SF or New York. And you're going to want to bring those people on. Why shouldn't you? And then you have a choice. You're hybrid or you're remote. And between those two choices, I choose remote.

AI assessment note: “If I started a new company, I believe I would start it in person”

Q I remember when I had Glenn Coates on the show, who I love. I know he's a friend of yours. What a fucking great dude. But he was like, ah, dude, like I'm not head of product in any way. I'm not CPO in any way. But hell no. Toby is CPO. He's head of product. Do you agree with that? And how do you analyze Toby's product instincts?

A It's not even a question of whether we agree with it or not. This is as close to a fact as we can possibly get on anything. I came to Shopify, and I thought that I would be here through my original earn out. Three years. I'm a startup founder, an entrepreneur. I want to, like, go through this thing, land the team, make sure that they're off to a great start, launch this thing that turned out to be shop, and then just take another swing at it. And I'm going now, I'm getting close to seven years at Shopify, and I'm not going anywhere. And the reason I'm here is Toby, because like, what excites me about Shopify is that we get the distribution, we get the consumer network effects, but it doesn't seem to come at the cost of pace or conviction. And we're allowed to take these big leaps and take these bold bets. I don't agree with every bet. And sure, at some points I would have rather seen the company go in a different direction. But the trade-off of saying, hey, I am actually aligned to 80% of his thinking. The trade-off of disagreeing to the remaining 20% is so worth it in that I get to be part of a mission that I've been pursuing since 2011 in a company that is so well positioned and so poised to go after it, and that is going after it in such a high conviction way. But I also always say that, like, Toby is the reason I'm here. This I probably shouldn't say on a podcast, but he's …

AI assessment note: “This is as close to a fact as we can possibly get on anything.”

Q Where do you think designers waste their time today where they won't in the future?

A I'll use a dumb example, but like configuring the toggles on a settings page is really not the job that a designer needs to do. You don't need the Figma for it. Like if you have a good design system, if you have great components and you have a product manager That can think. Then you'll basically be able to say, hey, I want to create a settings page that allows you to configure the markets you sell in and the price points and blah, blah, blah, blah. And you'll have cursor or whichever tool you use build that for you. And I don't know that the design that comes out of that is going to be much worse or better than what a very good UI designer would be able to produce. And so really what I think is going to happen for design It's that you'll have designers that go further down in the stack and really focuses on the design systems and the components that allows any other person to produce better design, right? If you're going to rely more on AI for the outputs, the inputs have never mattered more. So you need to like really double down on your design systems and the foundations. And then I think the other role for designers is to break all of those same systems and paint outside of the lines to create unexpected experiences Where you're not doing the obvious, but you're doing the unobvious, but correct, and creating an experience that is like memorable, that stands out, that makes …

AI assessment note: “configuring the toggles on a settings page is really not the job”

Q Shopify's value accretion has been amazing, and the market cap today is incredibly deserved, but awesome. But it also means for the senior folks, you're not exactly there for the money anymore. Does not being there for the money Change the way that you build product, design product, and work?

A It does and it doesn't. The right answer is that it should never have affected how I built products during Ticktail. I think that in my startup years, the most inspired work I did was before I had like the constructs of racing the next round in the back of my head. And you were just building product for the sake of it. Ironically, those were the products that grew the fastest and had the biggest impact. That's really the environment of Shopify that I appreciate so much, that we are such a high-conviction company, and we are truly driving towards long-term goals rather than, like, next-quarter earnings. But I think it's less of, like, being in a financially secure spot and more about being in a company environment that encourages that type of thinking.

AI assessment note: “It does and it doesn't. The right answer is that it should never have affected”

Q Do you agree with that? And have we got to a stage where actually marketing comes before product and attention is everything?

A I believe that there's no right way. Like, I think companies or people and podcasters, like, really are trying to find, like, what's the right way? What's the truth? And obviously, like, if you want to, like, over market something on social media before it exists, fake it till you make it, land it, have a few users, and then try to keep up where the user needs, that's certainly a way to go about it. Like, you can certainly do this, and you will probably, some of you will probably figure out that path that makes you successful. I think it comes down to just, like, what's the type of company that you want to build? What's the DNA of your business, and what do you want to be known for, recognized for? And I think personally, I just have come to a place where I gravitate towards software that's, like, highly opinionated, where the builders have high conviction, and want to create, like, end-to-end journeys that are, like, just cared for, and, like, really dialed in.

AI assessment note: “I believe that there's no right way.”

Q How has your view on what good design is changed over time?

A Not that much. I have always been of the belief that good design means all of the things. Like it's not just like, oh, it's a great information architecture or UX. Like it's that and it's phenomenal finish. And it's that and it's really, really, really like low latency. Products that just are snappy to move that have motion that makes it feel more like a journey than kind of a reload. You don't feel like you belong to any certain screen that you land on. You're like just always in motion. Down to the, like, the small, delightful moments that you don't even count on. The feedback on touch, or how a button animates after you click it. And I think having that sort of like, hey, it's everything. Like, there are no speed limits. We can just go further, has always been kind of part of my design philosophy. And now technology allows you to push it further.

AI assessment note: “Not that much. I have always been of the belief that good design means”

Q I remember when I had Glenn Coates on the show, who I love. I know he's a friend of yours. What a fucking great dude. But he was like, ah, dude, like I'm not head of product in any way. I'm not CPO in any way. But hell no. Toby is CPO. He's head of product. Do you agree with that? And how do you analyze Toby's product instincts?

A It's not even a question of whether we agree with it or not. This is as close to a fact as we can possibly get on anything. I came to Shopify, and I thought that I would be here through my original earn out. Three years. I'm a startup founder, an entrepreneur. I want to, like, go through this thing, land the team, make sure that they're off to a great start, launch this thing that turned out to be shop, and then just take another swing at it. And I'm going now, I'm getting close to seven years at Shopify, and I'm not going anywhere. And the reason I'm here is Toby, because like, what excites me about Shopify is that we get the distribution, we get the consumer network effects, but it doesn't seem to come at the cost of pace or conviction. And we're allowed to take these big leaps and take these bold bets. I don't agree with every bet. And sure, at some points I would have rather seen the company go in a different direction. But the trade-off of saying, hey, I am actually aligned to 80% of his thinking. The trade-off of disagreeing to the remaining 20% is so worth it in that I get to be part of a mission that I've been pursuing since 2011 in a company that is so well positioned and so poised to go after it, and that is going after it in such a high conviction way. But I also always say that, like, Toby is the reason I'm here. This I probably shouldn't say on a podcast, but he's …

AI assessment note: “This is as close to a fact as we can possibly get on anything.”

Q Shopify's value accretion has been amazing, and the market cap today is incredibly deserved, but awesome. But it also means for the senior folks, you're not exactly there for the money anymore. Does not being there for the money Change the way that you build product, design product, and work?

A It does and it doesn't. The right answer is that it should never have affected how I built products during Ticktail. I think that in my startup years, the most inspired work I did was before I had like the constructs of racing the next round in the back of my head. And you were just building product for the sake of it. Ironically, those were the products that grew the fastest and had the biggest impact. That's really the environment of Shopify that I appreciate so much, that we are such a high-conviction company, and we are truly driving towards long-term goals rather than, like, next-quarter earnings. But I think it's less of, like, being in a financially secure spot and more about being in a company environment that encourages that type of thinking.

AI assessment note: “It does and it doesn't. The right answer is that it should never have affected”

Q I agree with you when you say about distribution, existing customer bases, trusted brand, loyalty with customer bases, but I look at a lot of them in terms of their data handling, their data quality. I just don't think that they're structured to take advantage of the immensely powerful assets that they do have. Do you agree or do you disagree? And what will separate successful versus not successful incumbents?

A Yeah, exactly. I think it's a case by case thing here. Like when you say incumbents, there's a lot built into that word. I think we've like for years have been trained to know an incumbent as a shit company that's large. That's basically like the definition. And I just don't know that that's the case right now because you have a bunch of companies that came up in an era of modern company building. I'll use Shopify as an example, but you can pick others like Stripe is a great example. And they actually have like management teams that are on it. They have founders that are super active leaders of the businesses. They're hungry. They're paranoid. These are starting to be the incumbents of the market, but they're not sleeping at the wheel. And so I think it largely comes down to like, okay, so which industry are you trying to disrupt? And who's the category leader of that industry? Is it like a sleepy CEO who is like trying to Figure out how to make it another five years? Or is it someone that's hungry and paranoid and looking to re-imagine and transform the company to live for another chapter?

AI assessment note: “I think it's a case by case thing here. Like when you say incumbents”

Q You said there about the communication that you have between teams that are turning around the whiteboarding. Do you believe you can be as effective as design teams and product teams when doing it remotely?

A No, it's the short answer. The way we overcome this at Shopify is by bringing teams together intentionally. So we will have teams come together sometimes for a week at a time to be in a room together to really get to the depths of a problem, to really get all of the nuance that comes from considering ambiguity. But then, you know, at some point you said all the things that needed to be said, And there's also something that's extremely valuable of coming back to your own environment in a hyper-focused setting where you can just go to work. And there's not a bunch of people and distractions and meetings that are being called left and right that is like breaking your flow. And so we're trying to find the balance. And ultimately, I think it depends as everything else a little bit on what's the project, what's the maturity of the team, what's the stage,

AI assessment note: “No, it's the short answer. The way we overcome this at Shopify”

Q Dude, we were both so young, but I was speaking to your co-founder before at Ticktail, before this show, and he said we had to start here. He said, Oliver Davids, trademark, how does it influence your mindset? I had absolutely no idea, and I have no idea what he means, so can you enlighten us?

A Oliver Davids belongs to the murky parts of my career. I was running an agency together with Kai Drobin, who I then started Ticktail together with. And we did a bunch of stupid things. But one thing we did was that we landed this job to basically like produce a huge event in Stockholm with a bunch of artists, like Swedish House Mafia, a bunch of artists playing. And we were supposed to find like an event photographer to like document this whole experience. And we were like, 18, and super young, and cocky, and kind of thought we knew how to do everything. So we were like, F that. Like we're, we don't need an event photographer. We're going to document this whole thing ourselves. But the people paying us insisted that we had a professional photographer. So we made up this, this name, which was my second name, Oliver, and Kai's second name, David. And we're like, well, we have this incredible photographer that's coming in. Oliver David is going to shoot the whole event. And, and we had all of these, like, we had to meet all of the artists in the green room, and we had to like get perfect shots of them when they were playing. And then we had to like, Go around with like this big set of Japanese journalists and show them around and take photos for them. And our photos were published in like these like Japanese lifestyle magazines under the name Oliver David. So that was my very shor…

AI assessment note: “we made up this, this name, which was my second name, Oliver, and Kai's second name, David”

Q Do you worry that discovery becomes challenging with the plethora or excess supply that you see created in market?

A I have for a while before AI worried that the distribution has largely settled and innovation is favored by the larger companies again. Like when I started Ticktail, so like we launched in 2012, we've like really had our moment like 2014. It still felt like this time in the market where there was a lot of like free distribution to be had. Through social, through advertising, through different viral mechanics, a lot of it using existing networks like Facebook to tap into them and accelerate growth. Most of those avenues got shut down or became way more expensive. And I think this shift happened where the companies that held their own distribution, companies like Meta, like Google, but also companies like Shopify started to favor where they were already established. They already had a huge user base and they started to become just Better at innovating, at creating new products, at bringing to life new experiences. And I find that to still be the thing, right, where product discovery has been expensive for a while, and it's created an environment, I think, where it's been harder for startups to cut through, and most of them get picked up earlier and just integrated into larger platforms that already own the distribution.

AI assessment note: “I have for a while before AI worried that the distribution has largely settled”

Q I agree with you when you say about distribution, existing customer bases, trusted brand, loyalty with customer bases, but I look at a lot of them in terms of their data handling, their data quality. I just don't think that they're structured to take advantage of the immensely powerful assets that they do have. Do you agree or do you disagree? And what will separate successful versus not successful incumbents?

A Yeah, exactly. I think it's a case by case thing here. Like when you say incumbents, there's a lot built into that word. I think we've like for years have been trained to know an incumbent as a shit company that's large. That's basically like the definition. And I just don't know that that's the case right now because you have a bunch of companies that came up in an era of modern company building. I'll use Shopify as an example, but you can pick others like Stripe is a great example. And they actually have like management teams that are on it. They have founders that are super active leaders of the businesses. They're hungry. They're paranoid. These are starting to be the incumbents of the market, but they're not sleeping at the wheel. And so I think it largely comes down to like, okay, so which industry are you trying to disrupt? And who's the category leader of that industry? Is it like a sleepy CEO who is like trying to Figure out how to make it another five years? Or is it someone that's hungry and paranoid and looking to re-imagine and transform the company to live for another chapter?

AI assessment note: “I think it's a case by case thing here.”

Q Sorry, we are going to have some structure, but I am just so intrigued. You said about the many different teams. How do you structure product teams within Shopify? Given the many different teams, how big are they? How are they resourced? What does the reporting structure look like? Help me understand that.

A So at the highest level, we have areas you would call them. And the areas are kind of like the businesses of Shopify. So think of areas being like financial services holds all of our banking, our lending products. You have POS, which is how we sell in person. You have commerce loop, which is like checkout and online store. You have Shipping and taxes, which is how you fulfill and pay taxes, withhold taxes for the products that you sell. And so you have these areas and they're really like large scaled up companies in their own right. And each of these areas have leadership teams that kind of consider what's the future of my area? Where are we going? And of course, inside of these areas, there are multiple teams that then kind of like oversee kind of the different problems that come up in those areas. And so there is that sort of like organizational structure, but Shopify is An unapologetically top-down company. And so while these areas sort of have their own mandates and they have autonomy to go after their own objectives, there's also a much bigger push towards sort of like company-wide missions and company-wide mandates that will be pulling these different areas together in different ways at different times and having them form sort of virtual teams to go after certain objectives that are important to us at any given moment.

AI assessment note: “at the highest level, we have areas you would call them.”

Q What part of your role do you dislike most, but continue to do regardless?

A It's sometimes very clear for me where we need to go and how we're going to get there. And very often, I just want to bring everyone into one meeting, basically say it once, and then have everyone be on their way. But we're in this time of change. And of course, it's breeding a lot of insecurity for everyone about the future of the business, the future for their roles, the future of like kind of their, their, their personal identities, like what it means to be a crafter today. And I wish I could tell everyone all at once that as long as you're curious, ambitious, continue to learn new tools, you're going to be fine, but it's all going to come down to the quality of the work that we produce and put out there. So let's put our fears to the side and just be on our way. And I think that I do a poor job of reminding people of this and rearticulating it because it's something that is so intuitive for me. But that I have come to learn needs constant reminding for others.

AI assessment note: “needs constant reminding for others”

Q Sorry, we are going to have some structure, but I am just so intrigued. You said about the many different teams. How do you structure product teams within Shopify? Given the many different teams, how big are they? How are they resourced? What does the reporting structure look like? Help me understand that.

A So at the highest level, we have areas you would call them. And the areas are kind of like the businesses of Shopify. So think of areas being like financial services holds all of our banking, our lending products. You have POS, which is how we sell in person. You have commerce loop, which is like checkout and online store. You have Shipping and taxes, which is how you fulfill and pay taxes, withhold taxes for the products that you sell. And so you have these areas and they're really like large scaled up companies in their own right. And each of these areas have leadership teams that kind of consider what's the future of my area? Where are we going? And of course, inside of these areas, there are multiple teams that then kind of like oversee kind of the different problems that come up in those areas. And so there is that sort of like organizational structure, but Shopify is An unapologetically top-down company. And so while these areas sort of have their own mandates and they have autonomy to go after their own objectives, there's also a much bigger push towards sort of like company-wide missions and company-wide mandates that will be pulling these different areas together in different ways at different times and having them form sort of virtual teams to go after certain objectives that are important to us at any given moment.

AI assessment note: “So at the highest level, we have areas you would call them.”

Q Is that your fault or is that the team's fault?

A Well, I think it's my fault at a leadership level, and it's the team's fault at an execution level. Like, you know, we're all at fault here. And I honestly think it's a great team and a high quality team. And they, you know, eventually were able to kind of get to a solution that we could all agree to and hold to. But just if you get a very bad prognosis from a doctor, it's like completely sociable, socially acceptable that you'll go to a different doctor to ask for a second opinion. I think you should just accept that this is how many more companies should be running their product processes. Sometimes teams just get so stuck on a specific way of doing something that it's really hard for them to see the full opportunity space or to take different approaches to things. And I believe very strongly that all problems are people problems. It's actually very seldom it's about like, oh, the brief wasn't right, or the feedback came at the wrong time. It's mostly about like a configuration of people, That could or could not take on a certain configuration of a problem. And more often than not, it's about them just saying, you know what, we have so many different problems to go and solve. Let's shake things up, have some of these people go look at a different problem, bring in some new fresh eyes to take a different approach and, and, and think about this opportunity differently.

AI assessment note: “I think it's my fault at a leadership level, and it's the team's fault”

Q What part of your role do you dislike most, but continue to do regardless?

A It's sometimes very clear for me where we need to go and how we're going to get there. And very often, I just want to bring everyone into one meeting, basically say it once, and then have everyone be on their way. But we're in this time of change. And of course, it's breeding a lot of insecurity for everyone about the future of the business, the future for their roles, the future of like kind of their, their, their personal identities, like what it means to be a crafter today. And I wish I could tell everyone all at once that as long as you're curious, ambitious, continue to learn new tools, you're going to be fine, but it's all going to come down to the quality of the work that we produce and put out there. So let's put our fears to the side and just be on our way. And I think that I do a poor job of reminding people of this and rearticulating it because it's something that is so intuitive for me. But that I have come to learn needs constant reminding for others.

AI assessment note: “needs constant reminding for others”

Q Do you agree with that? And have we got to a stage where actually marketing comes before product and attention is everything?

A I believe that there's no right way. Like, I think companies or people and podcasters, like, really are trying to find, like, what's the right way? What's the truth? And obviously, like, if you want to, like, over market something on social media before it exists, fake it till you make it, land it, have a few users, and then try to keep up where the user needs, that's certainly a way to go about it. Like, you can certainly do this, and you will probably, some of you will probably figure out that path that makes you successful. I think it comes down to just, like, what's the type of company that you want to build? What's the DNA of your business, and what do you want to be known for, recognized for? And I think personally, I just have come to a place where I gravitate towards software that's, like, highly opinionated, where the builders have high conviction, and want to create, like, end-to-end journeys that are, like, just cared for, and, like, really dialed in.

AI assessment note: “I believe that there's no right way.”

Q Is that your fault or is that the team's fault?

A Well, I think it's my fault at a leadership level, and it's the team's fault at an execution level. Like, you know, we're all at fault here. And I honestly think it's a great team and a high quality team. And they, you know, eventually were able to kind of get to a solution that we could all agree to and hold to. But just if you get a very bad prognosis from a doctor, it's like completely sociable, socially acceptable that you'll go to a different doctor to ask for a second opinion. I think you should just accept that this is how many more companies should be running their product processes. Sometimes teams just get so stuck on a specific way of doing something that it's really hard for them to see the full opportunity space or to take different approaches to things. And I believe very strongly that all problems are people problems. It's actually very seldom it's about like, oh, the brief wasn't right, or the feedback came at the wrong time. It's mostly about like a configuration of people, That could or could not take on a certain configuration of a problem. And more often than not, it's about them just saying, you know what, we have so many different problems to go and solve. Let's shake things up, have some of these people go look at a different problem, bring in some new fresh eyes to take a different approach and, and, and think about this opportunity differently.

AI assessment note: “I think it's my fault at a leadership level, and it's the team's fault”