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20VC: Shopify Founder Tobi Lütke on Why Micromanagement is Good | Why You Will Learn More From Studying World of Warcraft Guilds Than You Will Companies | Why Happiness is BS; Lessons on Marriage, Fatherhood & Decision-Making Quality

  • Podcast episode
  • Apr 3, 2023
  • #Business #SocialMedia
Harry Stebbings
@HarryStebbings
(Host)
Tobi Lutke
@TobiLutke
(Guest)
open.spotify.com
Listen on Spotify
57 min
1 Recommender
1 Mention
Tobi Lütke is the CEO and Co-Founder of Shopify, the powerhouse company allowing anyone to start and grow their e-commerce business. Over an incredible 18 years, Tobi has scaled Sho... Show More

Tobi Lütke is the CEO and Co-Founder of Shopify, the powerhouse company allowing anyone to start and grow their e-commerce business. Over an incredible 18 years, Tobi has scaled Shopify to 10% of total US e-commerce, millions of merchants in over 170 countries, and a market cap today of over $60BN. Huge thanks to Harley Finkelstein for making this happen.

In Today's Episode with Tobi Lütke We Discuss:

1. From a Small German Town to One of the World's Most Powerful CEOs:

- What did Tobi want to be when he was growing up?

- Who did Tobi learn most from in his younger years? How does Tobi think about the importance of mentorship in learning?

- What does Tobi know now that he wishes he had known when he started Shopify?

2. You Can Learn More from World of Warcraft Than You Can Companies:

- Why does Tobi believe you can learn more from World of Warcraft than you can from studying companies?

- Why does Tobi believe that humans are terrible at company building? What are the most obvious ways we can improve the quality of the companies we build?

- Why does Tobi believe that in-person is far superior to remote working? What are the nuances?

3. The Best Companies Operate with Many Constraints:

- Why does Tobi believe in all cases, constraints produce creativity?

- What is the difference between an enforced constraint and an artificial constraint?

- How can leaders create and enforce artificial constraints when they are not real?

- How do the best leaders use constraints to ensure their companies move faster and faster?

4. Inside the Mind of Tobi Lütke: Decision-Making & Prioritisation:

- How does Tobi reflect on his own decision-making process? How has it changed?

- Why does Tobi believe that sunk cost fallacy is BS and only leads to your outsourcing approval to someone else?

- Why does Tobi hate "black boxes"? How does he remove them from the org entirely?

- How does Tobi decide what to learn? What is his learning process once he has made this decision?

- How does Tobi decide what to prioritise in terms of strategic initiatives for Shopify?

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Angela Tran @AngelaTran · Apr 3, 2023
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Always blown away by the amount of preparation @HarryStebbings does for @twentyminutevc, esp when it involves little me asking Qs for @tobi (must be the 🇨🇦 connection 🙃). Great podcast covering a wide range of topics from WoW to micromanagement:
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