The Exchanges

Q Have you, have you, when you think about building the business, I think Stripe's mission is something, like, to maximize the GDP of the internet. Um, is that roughly your Mission as well, and?

A I think, um, uh, second order, yes, but like, um, honestly, Shopify prays at the altar of entrepreneurship, uh, of, of people reaching for independence, and, um, it's, it's really, like, causing entrepreneurship to be a more casual, uh, thing, rather than this, uh, huge, like, all, like, decision. Like, the, the, being able to be an entrepreneur in your lunch break, so that you can maybe escape Like, a career which you chose for wrong reasons, and, and you're the kind of people, like, you discover, like, myself, you're the kind of person who really can't work for other people, and, um, um, retail and building shops and businesses has been around for a long time, thousands of years. It's something, it is one of the most accessible mechanisms of, uh, independence, and, um, as the internet is just a huge part of the economy now, like, the ease by which you could start A stand in the bazaar needs to somehow be translated to, um, um, the, the digital world, and I, I mean, we talk, you guys talk on, um, a lot about policy, and, um, um, incentive systems, and what's important. I do think the thing that's missing, and sometimes in these conversations, is friction. Like, honestly, friction shapes the world so much more than, like, what, what laws, or what, um, policies is anyone gonna pass to cause more entrepreneurship? But if you make it harder, you're gonna get less of it. And frankl…

AI assessment note: “second order, yes, but like, um, honestly, Shopify prays at the altar of entrepreneurship”

Q with more macro because we just had Ray, um, on stage. You run a big e-commerce business. You see consumer spending. We know that the consumer is the largest part of GDP, so we must have a sense of whether the consumer is turning over. We're seeing all the headlines. Is there a recession? Is there not? Hard landing, soft landing. Um, where is the economy from your vantage point?

A Yeah, so, I mean, we have an amazing perspective, but I don't think it's a, it's a, it's a credible witness to the entire economy. It's, um, about half a trillion dollar has been transacted through Shopify in its lifetime, and, um, it is really, really fun to do the analysis on, on it, but like, fundamentally, the products sold on Shopify are not, um, are the products people want, not the products people need. And, and I think this is specifically shifts the, um, Um, landscape a little bit. Um, what we Um, and also the other fun thing is it's really good for falsifying bad media narratives, because, you know, as always, it's like everyone puts up a chart and says, this is the answer, and then we get to dig in one level deeper and actually see what are the constituent parts underneath the chart, and everything changes, the story changes. So, um, we definitely see people react. Like, we know a recession is going on, or at least, um, it changes behavior, but the particular way in which it changes behavior is probably not a fully explored story. Um, um, outside of, uh, Python notebooks and, and companies like Shopify. Um, because fundamentally what people do is, um, um, they, in most categories they shift one quality level downwards. Um, so, if you ended up, like, um, shopping at, like, medium spend level, you might look for fast fashion afterwards. In some cases, in our case, this…

AI assessment note: “in most categories they shift one quality level downwards.”

Q Why did you do the deal with Amazon?

A The deal with Amazon is mostly about, um, buy the prime. Um, well, look, so, so this is, you know, a lot was made out of the Shopify challenging Amazon, um, story, and, you know, like, it's a good story, but, like, Maybe this is a bit about me. I'm, I'm a product. I'm not a product of business school, right? Like I'm, I'm an engineer. I apprentice. I'm, I'm a blue collar engineer. I apprenticed as a programmer in Germany. Um, I had a Meister. I could have gone for journeymanship to start town to town, kind of doing this European thing. Um, then we decided against it. Um, I grew up with open source. It's, it's positive some, like it's not, it's not Fighting for percentage points. They're like, we can build so much more if you look together. And, um, um, specifically around buy with Prime, like, Prime is a credible brand. It's probably a better brand than Amazon in some cases. Um, there is a plausible future in which, um, like, the purchasers or buyers, as we call it in our parlance, like, just want to buy everything through Prime for, because that's the trusted brand. I think it would be very bad for my company, and I think a lot of my customers, if they would have to fire Shopify just because their, their customers ask them to provide Amazon Prime services, and I just like, so, so it's much better to work with them.

AI assessment note: “it would be very bad for my company... if they would have to fire Shopify”

Q Tell us about what you're doing in AI. You launched a co-pilot, um, it's, it's literally like anybody could become their own business person. It's really incredible. Do you want to talk about that for a little bit?

A Every time, this is my favorite thing about Shopify, other than the fact that we're sort of, we as a business sit on the same side of the table as, like, The merchants, the partners, the best thing we can do for Shopify to, um, for our business model is actually make our customers more successful, which is just, like, it's an incredible simplifier, and it's incredible how many businesses are actually really doing sort of a fakery cosplay on top of a principal agent problem, really. Um, so we, we have, it's much more simple, simple for us. Um, The other thing, the thing that I'm so excited about, because I didn't, I, I only had that as a hope when I started, but then, um, uh, it's proven out, is that, uh, this thing I said about the, um, friction in the process, every single time we shipped something that reduced the friction by a meaningful amount, we actually had more successful business being built. So we, we really, really proved that out in, in the numbers. Great example is a payment gateway. Again, initially you had to make a choice. When I had to get my payment gateway for my snowboard store, I had to have a two-hour interview with someone in American Fork, Utah, and then, um, mail my passport to them, right, like, but not a copy. And so, um, that's kind of the friction that existed for just from formation, and like, now it's like instant underwriting, and everyone, every…

AI assessment note: “this is my favorite thing about Shopify, other than the fact that we're sort of”