Glen Coates

Head of App Platform, OpenAI · 1 appearance on the record.

computed by AI from the episodes · how this works → · full disclaimer →

executivefounderengineeroperator@glencoates ↗openai.com ↗

Glen Coates leads OpenAI's app platform, where he focuses on integrating third-party developer apps into ChatGPT. He previously founded the B2B wholesale platform Handshake, which was acquired by Shopify, where he subsequently spent over five years leading core commerce platform development.

18statements → 7claims → 2claims resolved → 4.11/5average certainty → 2.39/5average debate potential → ≈4.5/5argument clarity, estimated → 5said about them ↓

2 supported 0 partly supported 0 contradicted 1 not yet assessed 4 not checkable as stated how the 7 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

1 prediction · 6 assertions · 1 opinion · 8 insights · 2 disclosures · every statement was checked. The prediction and assertions are the 7 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 2 are resolved, 1 is not yet assessed, and 4 name no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Glen argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Their most notable supported claim

Assertion Supported

Coates: Shopify was first major SaaS platform to run secure third-party code

“And I, as far as I'm aware of Shopify was the first at scale SaaS platform to do that.”

Glen Coates Mar 8, 2023 ▶ 23:59 Glen Coates: Why Shopify Will Dominate Amazon; How Microsoft Made Smartest Move of 2023 | E986 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings

Expressed certainty vs assessment result

none yet certainty 1

none yet certainty 2

100% certainty 3

none yet certainty 4

100% certainty 5

weighted support: a fully supported claim counts one, a partly supported claim counts half. Each filled bar is clickable and opens exactly those claims; "none yet" means nothing said at that certainty level has resolved yet

How they sound: speaking style how? →

264 words/min while actually speaking · 5.8 um and uh per 1k words · 14.8 false starts per 1k · 32.4% of pauses land inside a clause

No argument clarity score for Glen Coates: no usable question→answer exchanges on raw tape (a fair score needs 8+). We do not score a sample that small. Roundtable and news formats yield far fewer direct exchanges than interviews. Their coarse estimate from 27 exchanges on the produced feed is ≈4.5/5, shown at half point precision because the sample is small and produced tape scores higher.

Measured by listening to 8,607 words across 1 episode, but every recording we have of Glen Coates is the aired feed, and an editor cleaned that audio before release. Some of the hesitation was cut before we ever heard it, so read these as floors: the true rates are at least this high. These are measurements of speaking style, not scores. How it's measured →

How the interview went all their pushback → series average →

Across 1 rated episode:

host pushback ▾ 2/10

pushed back at the host ▾ 2/10

setup questions received 70%

host pushback: the hardest questions Harry asked, tap to play ▶ 25:19“A team, surely that creates silos, it creates barriers of communication, information slippage.” ▶ 45:39“Can you take to a product decision that you made that was a mistake?” ▶ 49:30“What's the biggest weakness?”

when Glen pushed back ▶ 37:27“Well, you tell me. Do you think you, what do you think Shopify does based on just the words that you just read?” ▶ 49:55“Fair. If you, started a company, and you're explicitly, like, I'm the business guy founder, and this other guy is the product guy founder, fine.”

What they said18 What others said5 Episodes1

Everything Glen Coates said on 20VC that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Insight

Coates: Bottom-up management destroys product cohesion across multi-product software suites

“The problem with power to the edges and bottoms up decision making Is that the value of a product like Shopify, or the value of, not even a product, like a product suite, like, because Shopify has many products, right? And look at Apple, right? Like Apple is l…”

Glen Coates Mar 8, 2023 ▶ 28:48 Glen Coates: Why Shopify Will Dominate Amazon; How Microsoft Made Smartest Move of 2023 | E986 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings

Prediction Open · timeframe Mar 2028

Coates: Shopify competes directly with Amazon today

“Well, I mean, Shafak meets with Amazon today. Oh, absolutely. Hundred percent. Hundred percent.”

Glen Coates Mar 8, 2023 ▶ 45:04 Glen Coates: Why Shopify Will Dominate Amazon; How Microsoft Made Smartest Move of 2023 | E986 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings

Insight

Coates: Product founders who hire a Head of Product are quitting

“The minute that person says this other person is the head of product, they've done one of two things. They've either quit their job, or they have given that other person a title that everyone knows is bullshit, and they've basically given that person a death s…”

Glen Coates Mar 8, 2023 ▶ 50:15 Glen Coates: Why Shopify Will Dominate Amazon; How Microsoft Made Smartest Move of 2023 | E986 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings

Opinion

Coates: Competing with Shopify in e-commerce is terrifying due to its buyer aggregator engine

“These days I'm like, I'd be fucking terrified to be competing with Shopify in commerce. Not, we have a great platform, but like, we've got it joined at the hip to an incredible buyer aggregation engine, which is just hard to, it's hard to overcome how powerful…”

Glen Coates Mar 8, 2023 ▶ 44:38 Glen Coates: Why Shopify Will Dominate Amazon; How Microsoft Made Smartest Move of 2023 | E986 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings

Disclosure

Coates: Shopify's key strategic weakness is lacking top-of-funnel control

“I think one of Shopify's challenges today is that we fundamentally do not control the top of the funnel, right? Like the top of the funnel for shopping on is something else, right? It's a social media site. It's a news site. It's an ad on Google. It's somewher…”

Glen Coates Mar 8, 2023 ▶ 51:56 Glen Coates: Why Shopify Will Dominate Amazon; How Microsoft Made Smartest Move of 2023 | E986 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings

Insight

Coates: Microsoft's AI Bing launch is an asymmetric attack on Google

“Search is like a non-part of their business, but search is everything to Google. Like if search ads stop working, Google doesn't, is not a thing anymore. And so they are swinging for the fences with a completely novel approach, which might not work, but if it …”

Glen Coates Mar 8, 2023 ▶ 55:26 Glen Coates: Why Shopify Will Dominate Amazon; How Microsoft Made Smartest Move of 2023 | E986 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings

Insight

Coates: Employees who 'disagree and commit' execute at 80% speed

“They don't move down the field quite as fast, but there is a difference between moving down field at 80% speed and, like, literally digging your heels in.”

Glen Coates Mar 8, 2023 ▶ 29:55 Glen Coates: Why Shopify Will Dominate Amazon; How Microsoft Made Smartest Move of 2023 | E986 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings

Assertion Not checkable as stated

Coates: Tobi Lütke is and will always be Shopify's head of product

“Toby, like all great CEO founders, is actually the head of product at Shopify, and will always be. I think the day that Toby's not running a product at Shopify is the day that he's not at Shopify.”

Glen Coates Mar 8, 2023 ▶ 42:43 Glen Coates: Why Shopify Will Dominate Amazon; How Microsoft Made Smartest Move of 2023 | E986 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings

Assertion Not checkable as stated

Coates Executed a 'Code Red' Fix on Shopify's Checkout in 2020

“So that was a year in which there was some really fundamental things in the checkout that needed to be fixed, like rather promptly. And so Toby asked me to move over and basically like run a, what's called a code red on checkout.”

Glen Coates Mar 8, 2023 ▶ 4:43 Glen Coates: Why Shopify Will Dominate Amazon; How Microsoft Made Smartest Move of 2023 | E986 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings

Insight

Glen Coates: Product principles must resolve close 51-49 decisions

“Principles are probably the most difficult and counterintuitive, but principles are basically how are we going to make the very hard decisions, the 51 49 decisions, that reasonable people could take either side of in this project.”

Glen Coates Mar 8, 2023 ▶ 10:29 Glen Coates: Why Shopify Will Dominate Amazon; How Microsoft Made Smartest Move of 2023 | E986 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings

Insight

Coates: Only progressive disclosure and app ecosystems let software scale from SMBs to enterprise

“The only two pieces of leverage you really have to allow that stretch is one is extremely good execution of progressive disclosure in the core product. So like features that appear at the right time only when you need them. A good example of this is something …”

Glen Coates Mar 8, 2023 ▶ 19:44 Glen Coates: Why Shopify Will Dominate Amazon; How Microsoft Made Smartest Move of 2023 | E986 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings

Insight

Coates: Platform ecosystems fail if third-party apps cannot match first-party quality

“One is you need you need an app platform that allows apps to be built that are of equal quality to the core features of the platform. That is absolutely critical. And like, look at iOS. IOS is like a great example of this. Like when I open up a first party app…”

Glen Coates Mar 8, 2023 ▶ 20:53 Glen Coates: Why Shopify Will Dominate Amazon; How Microsoft Made Smartest Move of 2023 | E986 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings

Assertion Supported

Coates: Shopify was first major SaaS platform to run secure third-party code

“And I, as far as I'm aware of Shopify was the first at scale SaaS platform to do that.”

Glen Coates Mar 8, 2023 ▶ 23:59 Glen Coates: Why Shopify Will Dominate Amazon; How Microsoft Made Smartest Move of 2023 | E986 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings

Assertion Not checkable as stated

Shopify's previous org structure required product escalations to go directly to CEO Tobi Lütke

“In the old org structure, the first point in the org chart where all those 14 teams actually, like, joined at the top was Tobii. So anytime someone has an escalation, the first point in the escalation tree was Toby”

Glen Coates Mar 8, 2023 ▶ 25:53 Glen Coates: Why Shopify Will Dominate Amazon; How Microsoft Made Smartest Move of 2023 | E986 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings

Insight

Coates: Audiences only retain three words at a time in communication

“You only get to lodge, like, a few words in someone's brain before, like, every word you add pops one out their other ear, and you only get to choose, like, maybe three words you can lodge in someone's brain at any given point in time, and you really need to c…”

Glen Coates Mar 8, 2023 ▶ 36:46 Glen Coates: Why Shopify Will Dominate Amazon; How Microsoft Made Smartest Move of 2023 | E986 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings

Disclosure

Coates: Core products represent about half of Shopify's total R&D headcount

“Core is now about half of R&D in Shopify, right? And core is what the outside world would think of as like the built-in bits when you first, when you sign up for Shopify. So like the stuff you get in the box, it's like the online store, the checkout, all of th…”

Glen Coates Mar 8, 2023 ▶ 8:05 Glen Coates: Why Shopify Will Dominate Amazon; How Microsoft Made Smartest Move of 2023 | E986 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings

Assertion Not checkable as stated

Coates: Shopify Core has 2,500 employees divided into 10 teams

“Core is about two and a half thousand people, right? And there's now 10 of these teams inside core, so there are about 200 people each, which is about the Dunbar number, which is not a coincidence.”

Glen Coates Mar 8, 2023 ▶ 25:37 Glen Coates: Why Shopify Will Dominate Amazon; How Microsoft Made Smartest Move of 2023 | E986 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings

Assertion Supported

Glen Coates quit business school after one day to focus on coding

“I basically applied to go to business school, went to business school, went for one day. And then I was like, actually, this is kind of not what I want to be doing. I'd actually rather be coding 12 hours a day. And so I quit business school”

Glen Coates Mar 8, 2023 ▶ 2:02 Glen Coates: Why Shopify Will Dominate Amazon; How Microsoft Made Smartest Move of 2023 | E986 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings

The other half of the tape: Glen Coates's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 5 times in 2 episodes on 20VC. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Harry Stebbings 4 Carl Rivera 1