Tobi Lütke: Calm Progress

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0:38 Intuition. It's your ability to make Create decisions quickly. Welcome to the Knowledge Project. I'm your host, Shane Parrish. This podcast is about mastering the best of what other people have already figured out so you can apply their insights.

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1:25 My guest today is Toby Ludke. Co founder and CEO of Shopify. Toby is a friend, listener of the Knowledge Project, and has had perhaps one of the hardest jobs in the world for the past few years. I'll warn you now this conversation is wide and deep. We covered the differences between founders and CEOs, how his job has changed as Shopify has grown.

1:48 Fighting bureaucracy. And how he thinks about innovation in a large company. We also explore how he thinks about compensation, what businesses can learn from programming, and And how he keeps his head when everyone around him is losing theirs. We also discuss ideas that have left a formative impact on him, including Paul Graham's essay on conformism.

2:09 And the idea of the infinite game. But that's not all. We also cover the technologies most excited about. What he used to spend time on that he now sees as a waste. And how he fixed his sleep.

2:21 Longtime listeners will note this is the second time Toby has appeared on the show. The first time was episode forty one, which I think was like five years ago, which feels like Generations ago. It's time to listen. And learn. Mm-hmm.

2:37 How do you lead through such a period of volatility. Uh I mean it was uh um And I did a very good job of it, but like I I suddenly did it. Uh like I as I certainly had to deal with volatility. That's true. Um

3:01 Um, I think Shop Shopify's have captured the imag imagination, uh like of everyone. Um in this massive swing towards digital services. Um And um Um uh market beta.

3:15 cause Shopify to be extremely uh exposed and like just uh you know on everyone's mind. And then and then uh the the pullback was equally drastic, which wasn't A a fascinating experience internally, right? I guess lots of discussions you get always Everyone's gotten messages from their parents about like hey, what's going on? I mean I I I I've never thought that um Companies.

3:38 Uh And and s and their stock have that much to do with each other. Right? Like it's it's uh It's it's it's related, but not uh like it like no one in a company works on the stock. Um if things are going well. I think if people start working on the stock, things are actually Like that should be a sign that things are going pretty poorly in the company. Um

3:59 And so um It's been You know, it's been a challenging time to for for for for leadership because you'd l uh you kind of never knew what kind of Puzzle box. plat of wood drop onto your desk in the morning and um

4:13 Um I think Well the The perfect bit important during that time, but It things that are important during all times, which is

4:24 The most important thing is to keep the most important thing. But most important thing and uh the most important thing now case is like make a product that's really appreciated by entrepreneurs and can deal with Not just the current, but also the next prom sets of problems. We we we we adjusted quickly. We we shipped a bunch. Like a lot of uh products that had in the early days of like

4:43 Cups I pick up and so on. We just uh T took it from there. How do you do that though? Like how do you keep the most important thing the most important thing when the world around you It's sort of Going crazy.

4:56 Yeah, I I would say like the Um when you when you dig into the nuances of what the most important thing is, it's it's it's usually not Lake it put. For current tactic.

5:07 But it's actually the overall uh strategy and the the the Novstar is sort of thing that you need to protect, right? Like Um the end result of like the reason why company exists is a thing that needs to be protected. Right. And and and in our case this is very much like We love entrepreneurship. We think entrepreneurship should be simpler. We think entrepreneurship should be uh simpler on the internet than than has been in in in in in in the in the past physical vote. Um

5:32 And um uh We want to build software to make entrepreneurship just uh easier. Like at least make it so that the technology And internet side and uh. Obvious obvious things are not something you have to worry about. We we take care of all of them and you make great products and fight your market and we Um to the degree that we can have we have a voice as well, but like basically show up the something people want and um

5:53 We will Uh reach your audience. Um Because if that is your

6:00 Uh An off start. Just because suddenly there's shelter in place and no one can reach uh stores and these things. Yeah, that's an obstacle which no one could see coming.

6:12 Um but i if you know in which direction you want to go. And you just know okay, well clearly we have to get around this obstacle. So like Um Uh as l as long as we keep going in the same direction, it's it's it's all fine. Right now no one can reach uh retail stores, so make sure that we have the retail stores uh We get the catalog online and these quib side pick up these kind of things.

6:33 So you can Uh run this constant. Given What's going on right now? What's the best thing we can do? And you run this over and over and over, um Like this.

6:46 concepts like roadmaps and and just generally plans actually overrated. Um I think Um Uh like a road the best possible roadmap is ever Fake the I'd view of what matters to your mer um merchant.

7:00 Have a super Um strong model of your own capabilities. Um Um as a company. Uh and then Run we run the function of like deciding what is a

7:12 Very best thing you can work on. Every moment you have teams ready to pick the next task. Instead of Everyone's sort of doggedly working off a thing that of course gets interrupted by reality. Okay. Um

7:25 So so This is how you do it. Now how what how this looks in actual practice is You go off you Shop. You look at everything that is being done in a company and you put things into categories.

7:37 Helpful or not helpful right now. Um Because reality changed. And and and and I think we ended up Stopping to work on cancelling or not yeting. Um

7:49 Uh sixty percent of the things we were working on uh uh which I think everyone was Ready to for because It was Vaya op is and

7:58 Um First half of twenty twenty two, but we are going into very different times, right? So everyone was looking to see like how can we be most helpful. And I think everyone really wanted. Um Two You know.

8:10 All of us made life decisions. We were not doctors, we were not frontline workers, um Uh, we w we're not essential workers, uh but we worked in a technology industry. The technology industry was probably Amongst the least affected from a productivity perspective, we And Um

8:26 So You know, given also being able to help be helpful with the primary objective that everyone had. Um Which is health related. Um

8:37 We could at least Nail it on what we call it, uh And So that's uh everyone rallied around this and we got Shit.

8:46 I imagine it pulled you all together too because all of a sudden there's a lot of meaning and urgency to what you're doing. Have a cent. I mean I I wouldn't say it's like I I mean it it clarified permission for everyone. And and the mission I know I know some some sometimes sounds Everyone talks about mission and it's almost like one of those things, you go like

9:10 Well, with your mission statement and whatnot. But it matters. It's like it's it's it's it's it's a reason like for I I mean Some companies might have mission statements that are kind of dissonant with what they actually want and that's Unfortunate.

9:24 Um But like uh I think that's rare and founded that companies. I they they t they tend to be coming from a particular observation or particular a reason why they needed to exist and um Yeah, in in some cases.

9:39 That is Unlimited goal. At some point you might accomplish this goal. Um And then you're looking for something else, I I imagine, in our case I don't think we're threatened by this. This this is sort of a forever mission effected game if you if if if you want. And um

9:55 Um so it it it it's really clarifying for us. No. It was very difficult times well. Like I mean, like man, so many people were hoiled up on in tiny little apartments and didn't step outside for A year or more. Um

10:11 There's a lot of mental health issues. You know, like it's He must Dave us. Everyone wanted to had so much energy to want to do something. People were like

10:21 Upset with what we were seeing in so many different ways, not just Covet, but also like You know, other conversations like there's a lot of racial unr un unrest For very good reasons and I think

10:35 There was a lot of energy that couldn't be converted into productive means. Um Uh during this time, which made things challenging as well. And it's It it It was Listen.

10:47 Fascinating time. It was a challenging time. I think it was a clarifying time. I think a lot of companies We connected really with What why they are there for the And uh what

10:58 Like how they think about their own principles, how they think about organizing, how they think about talking, how they think about contributing not just Uh uh a as a company, but also as uh community. And uh Uh we had to go through this uh all in a hurry and uh All at the same time and

11:16 Leadership for this was Turkey, yes. Are there different roles that you see for founders and CEOs? I I don't have a good word for non founder led companies. I sort of You still refer to them as like the fashionally managed companies, but it's the efication there's like But the frontal led complex, I'm not sure actually.

11:34 So I'm I'm sort of lacking a great um uh monica for for non founder led companies. Um But but if you've worked for both these types. They are very different internally. Completely like

11:48 Like Let's let's keep going with the turn. Professionally managed companies are often Um Like the mental picture comes to my mind's like a river stone, right? Something that's like really smooth around all the edges. It's like Um

12:02 There's like it's a very similar um skill level on everything. They're usually they're like if I if I have significant competencies, they're often about just operational excellence and uh yeah very, very quantifiable things. Um Um everything that can be measured they they tend to be very good at. Um the core competency of the CEO leadership team is stakewater management, I guess.

12:25 Which is Like I I I say it with great respect because it's a very, very hard thing to do. It's it's extraordinarily hard to um align the interests of uh you know, very, very different groups, um and bring them all to the same side of the table. You have share what a community s sometimes society, sometimes um Your definitely your local economies, um your employees.

12:47 Um your customers, of course. Um And um Um The board of directors. And and and and and taking everyone for a journey is is is is is is a tricky thing to do.

12:58 The way you do this in a professionally run company is by planning, right? Like you because Like Bad companies. The problem is that people tend to not like to work for or companies that sort of were like are shadow of their former self. How does this happen?

13:16 But she What happens is uh Revision to the meeting. But it's it's uh the tragedy of a comments uh is Is is is uh active ingredient, entropy, you can call it. Like all these things describe the same thing. They all affect companies. Um

13:32 Um Where a department What the tech company Reverts to the sort of Middle of a bell curve ambient industry competency.

13:42 Um Uh For everything it does. Um That's

13:47 Like really bad because ambient industry or like autods quality is just quite low. Um uh on It just it just is. Um And so um What you're trying to do is like literally everything a company does is try to beat

14:02 Revision to uh reversion to the mean. And um Uh You you your options there are like uh usually like you have a strategy Yeah.

14:12 That's the plan. The plan by the people. Half s do the stakeholder management. We have we bring all the stakeholders on side. imbu the pl uh the plan with a ton of legitimacy.

14:26 And then the legitimacy that the plan has ends up being the thing that beats revision to mean because um you can now go around saying Hey. You team. You are implementing you have an engineering team, you're implementing the things on the planet.

14:40 Uh U UX you're gonna build the user interfaces for this. Sales learns what's gonna happen when and when we have which competency and how to explain the product. And so um This is this is a mechanism. Now All this to say. A founded company doesn't need this.

14:56 Right, because there's another thing of legitimacy, which is the founder. And I'm not saying this is a person it's actually the fact that the founder is in the company. It's a fate. Um I think legitimacy is one of the most underappreciated uh resources that exist. I think I think the but

15:12 Only really good piece of writing I've I've found and you probably might know ten others. Uh is is is Vitalik's uh V Vitalik wrote a essay on the topic of legitimacy. More like in the sort of blockchain world, but like it's I think it rings true across. And um

15:29 So where does this come from? Um In every company there's a sort of founding story. Like everyone sort of gets this Clear Set.

15:38 Hey, the reason why we have this job, the reason why we're on this mission, the reason why we're doing this thing, is because at some point someone took the first step, right? Like uh wrote the first line of code. That story is imbued in the company. It's in onboarding. It's like it's i it's even if even if no one would actively talk about it's something people eventually like accounted. What happens when a story is told is that there is some sent like um little bit of legitimacy almost deposited into a bank account. That's like it's you can almost think about it as social credit of some of some kind. Um

16:09 This this happens in all companies, but if The founders are still there. They can still draw on this account of literacy. And so my role I see um They often

16:21 Is that um. I have the think like pretty humbling uh ability. Two Like

16:28 uh uh bank up card of legitimacy and the company you make changes. And uh because I can speak for The entire story of a place. Yeah. Now if I would leave shop if I

16:42 This Bank account, but only Increase but no one could draw on it. And therefore it can't be an active ingredient in a company. Okay, what does office mean? Boop. The best thing founders can do is subtraction.

16:53 Just It's surprising, but like it's it's it's the The the the reason like it it's much, much, much easier to add things. Um than it is to uh to to to to remove things. Um

17:06 Adding things is a lot more expensive than removing things, actually. Um Uh however, it requires some measure of bravery. Um uh risk taking anyway. Um Saying yes to a thing is actually

17:21 Like if you say no to a thing, you say no to one thing. You say yes to a thing, you actually say no to every other thing you could have done with this period of time. And so As people are adding things Um

17:33 The the the set of things that can be done becomes smaller and smaller and smaller. And the set of things that has to be maintained gets larger and larger and larger. And um, you end up with more and more people actually working on just maintaining of uh But but but status quo or maintaining code bases and so on.

17:49 Um So where does subtraction come in? It Very often.

17:54 Things built. Like every every individual edition was a very good idea. But where it builds to is actually a Like sediment layers of something that actually doesn't make sense in the in in the end and that you have to walk away from. Like sometimes you're building

18:10 for really, really good reasons a product that actually will not make a difference for the company. Or when um Reality changes. You actually have like I like I just said earlier, I I had to subtract sixty percent of everything like an entire on D V team was working on. But um The reason why I could do this

18:26 is because I could draw on the legitimacy of like hey I I have seen every single version of his company. I've I've seen recessions. I have seen downturns, I've seen chaotic times and I've seen uh times. I know what to do.

18:41 And um So while this might affect you negatively because like something y your day to day job is changing the thing you're gonna be working on, you're gonna be prouder because it's gonna help the Um

18:52 Yeah. But the copy's mission in a better way. And um That is a form of subtraction. And then there's many, many others that uh like that

19:02 That we could go into. So I've actually very rarely Like the very, very, very best non founder. Um See us. Can subtract. It does happen Nella. has done it with at Microsoft in a

19:15 Phenomenal way, like potentially better than Many founder CEOs can. Um But it's about probably ten times harder to do. Um or a hundred times harder. And um

19:26 Uh so so that's almost a service. Um Around it. Like for for for the business. So It in in a in a in a in a way where you have Riverstone on one side, you really have sort of the sort of volcanic ash kind of spiky object thing.

19:41 Um of of a work on the other side. Like V Like some have very, very strong aptitudes Spiky object.

19:49 Sometimes surprising weaknesses. It's it's it's it's not a well rounded thing in the end. But it's usually perfectly appropriate in terms of uh well I an ideal case it's appropriate. And it's aptitude for the um Uh.

20:04 particular set of problems that a company uh a company solves. And I think this is why they end up feeling so different internally. You mentioned risk taking. I'm wondering how you think about risk taking in sort of a professionally managed just to use those terms versus like a founder Led company.

20:21 Yeah, I mean uh um There there's exactly one thing that doesn't take risk. Um which is do the same thing everyone else does. The number one thing that is very, very hard to uh teach actually, or very hard to convince people of Um But I'm pretty sure it's true. It's bet um

20:39 I just don't see value in doing the same thing as everyone else thought. I just I d I d I don't I I don't know if it was Who grows up to say, I'm gonna join industry, I'm gonna become I'm gonna go into finance. And then Oh, it's not the best example. I'm gonna go into let's UX. Let's go go into design uh

20:57 Yeah, UX. And then I'm gonna Do work that corresponds to sort of But generally everyone else launches around me.

21:09 I I I see why you might want to because it it it gives you more common ground with your peers in other places. It gives you um It it's easier to appreciate sort of Making a a slightly different version of something else. But um Someone does because Ben you

21:24 If you encounter both people who were behind that, you can now have conversation about the the sort of slight changes you made. But I I I I think that's just But If if everyone does this, that makes this planet simply spin too slowly. I I I I think um Sometimes

21:40 There's significant wisdom. encoded in what everyone's doing. In both cases go on the internet. But in many cases just use it. Nick.

21:49 Put everything you've ever learned together to make something that just as good as possible, right? Like because otherwise I think you're holding your setback. And I think the company needs to de risk this. No it's not a little bit more. No one's intuition.

22:03 Every single time you do anything that is different. From Best practices. Like we there's so many euphemisms for just basically doing undifferentiated work. Uh It's a strong statement I'm making here, but but best practices actually just simply means don't take risk and do with what everyone else is saying you should be doing.

22:25 Um Best practices are not bad. Good. Big bay should be best.

22:32 No They're average. Yeah, exactly. Maybe it's just average. And um I don't think I I have no time for average. I I I I I don't think our shit is that good. Uh around Plat Earth. I think we can do much better on everything. There's no chance that in hundred years People are looking back and saying. Wow, backband we just nailed everything.

22:53 Like we barely need any like I mean you look back three years and we're like Wow, you just kind of I had no idea how to do all these things, right? Like it's so um like All video contracts software was terrible. I think it's uh no one had a home de home setup.

23:09 Ab. And uh You know. And so on. Um

23:15 So everything depends on innovation. Innovation depends on a vape Basic. To be innovative, you have to do things that are different.

23:25 And if you do something different. You can either O overperform or underperform that was cool. And obviously. No.

23:33 Sometimes you get one, sometimes you get the other. But like again, if you can subtract. You can remove afterwards the things that underperformed. And give another Uh go at it.

23:43 And if you do that effectively, over and over Then you are out competing what other people are doing. So is that the role of the company then to provide safety?

23:53 uh for that failure internally where I I I I think so. And I think it's um it's I don't think anyone's cracked a code on how to do this. Um I I think very inf like I mean school conspires to tell people Here's how to solve problems. Ideally don't deviate and You probably don't have to learn anything new after this. It's just like a joke, right? Like I mean I I don't know how do you steal man those arguments, but this is definitely what schools say.

24:18 And um Uh Then you are uh Like you you you were that through your beginning of your career you sort of put the lie to be statements and and and you look around you and

24:29 Some people will have to do it. vastly different career outcomes, um, because they are just Like walking away from like be using orthodoxy as a major input. Um we'll learn everything they can out of it. We use it as a starting point. Maybe not.

24:45 Hamstrung by it. Um, Could be described as risky. But like I I ha I have to say um This is very, very hard to again.

24:58 Oh. Get people to believe, but it's actually risky to not Take. Uh Right.

25:04 Try higher. Half uh It's not risky in the moment, though, right? To to Follow best practices. It's only risky As you fast forward time. Yeah. And I mean we should acknowledge why if you make like

25:21 If you do what everyone else does. You are like Say like well, that's what industry does. Um But

25:28 I if you make it edit to it. You are you will have a s responsibility, good or bad, for for for that change. Um At least that's it it it it from if you if you risk avoidant, this is something you don't you you don't want.

25:42 No, if of course, if it works, it's great. At Shopify it's very clear, like it's very important that we explain to people. Like Like it's not failure. It's not like it's it's uh it's the successful discovery of something that did not work if if if if you underperform. It's it's we know actually more data and be um Um Uh we'll try again.

26:02 People actually H performance mashed out. Euphemism. Um To um If it don't take risks.

26:11 Um so it's it's actually for your career at job fair is actually more risky too. Um not. Him high. I think that environment, um and the psychological safety detector's risk is very hard to produce and I I imagine there's gonna be like twenty years from now, there's gonna be fantastic books on how to create these environments. I think there there might be a few Um

26:30 But it's a baby Think to maintain in my experience. Two rabbit holes here, one being Uh Typically what seems to happen in this case is

26:41 risk can be taken outside of companies, not inside. So you you leave your job, you have an idea, you can't do it internally, or you you fear doing it internally. Or you don't perceive enough upside. To doing it internally and only downside. You go start a company Uh that that is the risk and the

26:57 That profile company succeeds, gets acquired. How do you think about innovating internally at Shopify versus acquiring Yeah. I mean uh sort of an ergonomic for a lot of companies in the in the end state is to become companies that

27:14 Uh maintain what they've got, um and and then acquire all the innovation. I I I think that's a I mean I would not Be proud of Oh yeah. like overseeing a company like this. I I I I if if if if Shopify would turn under my watch into a bat, I think

27:32 Someone else could do my job better. Um I uh I I think companies ought like it's it's innovation is a lifeline. I I think You wanna innovate everywhere and I think every group in a company should be able to go to a conference and talk about how we are doing like how

27:48 Then Sort of a general. implementation of this discipline uh or idea. Um Um

27:57 By us doing things differently and how we are thinking about this. First principle thinking applied to uh Any area can can yield huge upside. And um Um I mean ideally

28:13 I think the best Uh Like the way I would like this to see this is actually that For our own purposes to build the best company that supports it being

28:25 Extremely innovative for entrepreneurs in the retail space. Um Yeah, innovating across all the disciplines across like we've recently done a new completely new comp system in uh in in in in in HR, which is not usually a Area but Cease total uh innovation.

28:43 Um but we're We did it's been very, very Um successful internally. Um Um and um

28:50 Um Generating a lot of interest externally as well. And and and it's the It it's it's this is just Shopify applied. Two

29:00 A place. usually just simply doesn't see a lot of innovation and therefore it's notable. But we be we want to have the same thing. Everywhere. But best then ex Entrepreneurship is like actually

29:11 Get this be innovative inside of Shopify, which has the balance sheet to to support this kind of thing. Um you know, failure is just not that fatal. Upside is massive because Anything can be brought. Like Um.

29:25 And and then you know, if it's Like if Shopify if it's focus on entrepreneurs says well this idea there's more value in this if if it's brought to another segment. Or maybe like this comp system might be prioritizable. Well, but that's not our main

29:44 Thing. Like we are perfectly happy to yield this to others and maybe Um People go and prioritize it and and then make this a sellable uh product for other companies which would like to get take s uh take part in. Some of his innovation I think that's actually

29:59 I think that's probably a better way for entrepreneurship in in the face you're going in. I think it's important like The the sort of stories around entrepreneurships are are very much come from the same period of time. That it was like a unique um situation of like

30:13 incumbent incompetent uh in in competent. I think it's incumbent. It's just it you know what, it's a fairly new idea, but you have to innovate at the pace and talk by it. Right? Like the the i it's actually It fits into the times because We are in times where everything changes so quickly all the time and therefore so much more every time

30:35 New infrastructure comes online. Every time Uh you know. I don't know, like transformer models are like like uh just like We figured out how to get an un unreasonable value out of Machine learning now. Um like it's it's it's the perfect sort of midpoint between

30:50 the the the academic ideas and the vocational like Just just sort of get it done. But no. Um That's a huge, huge

31:00 Space or for innovation. And now it's time for for companies to t apply this to their own problems and potentially for new companies to be formed around this. It's amazing that it exists. It's a w it's a it's a great example which I'm giving. Um

31:15 These example are not coming along at the pace anymore as the early two thousands, right? Like um or you know, a lot of uh multi billion dollar companies. Um Uh in in technologies uh like come from But is that a free four five year period of Which was this

31:31 Extreme gold y look zone of um Uh Everything was changing. Mobile SaaS, internet, uh broadband, um Remember Brockband?

31:42 Um All these things happened at the same time and and it it it was just like Mm. Easier. I think it's

31:51 So see. You could take Um Like I did. massive risk, career risk, to just go

31:57 Because the batting average of just having a good idea, given all the technological changes. If you just pick up natively Um They're building an an Internet native

32:10 In my case, software as a service. Ecomist system rather than Software that could sort of supply online stores. Um When that was just like

32:20 so categorically different from what everyone else was going for. That there was just a clear, obvious business opportunity. In VAT. That wasn't like it's not Um Craziest idea, right? Like it was like

32:33 But It was enough. I think that if it it's more difficult and subtle no. So if you can disappear what I'm saying is I think

32:42 Great entrepreneurship is actually uh extracting amazing innovative ideas out of now much, much, much more innovative larger companies than existed previously. Um and bringing them to other fields. And I think that's a good Form factor for it to finish it. Coming back to the revision to the mean, one of the other ways so best practices is a way to sort of

33:03 Um Start the path towards revision to the mean. Another way would be bureaucracy. How do you fight against that you're eight thousand employees now. How do you fight against Um

33:16 It's um Well, I mean Yeah. I mean subtraction helps a lot.

33:24 You know, sometimes again. People put sediment layers of proxies on top of each other. I have found people don't actually describe things that work really well as bureaucracy. I think bureaucracy

33:40 Um and process are almost Terms that are exclusive to the things that did not work. Um so if top people talk about Um bureaucracy.

33:49 It's actually usually an area that If you Apply some first principle thinking you might actually find a way of Um

33:57 Just streamlining this in enormously, right? It's not all bad. You know, like if it this is uh It is Fundamentally extremely hot.

34:08 to um Build things in groups of people. Right? Like There's very few very, very important things that can be done by individuals anymore on on just We we've almost mind uh Entire

34:21 value space. Like how like all basically all the uh minerals that were like Yeah. Like on the surface have been my doubt, right? Like so Oh lip. Minerals of value.

34:32 But they um. But Um Like the the the Valuable

34:40 Minerals are now fairly deep underground. For that you need organized groups of people to build the infrastructure, the support and a tissue. The safety like the do you Yeah. You have you have to build uh high tech mines uh mining operations now. Um, so to speak.

34:59 And um That requires coordination, that requires incentive systems, that requires uh mission, that requires culture, that requires Like every trick in a book to to to say, Hey Um We are going to

35:12 do things that can only be done in in in in in in teams. Very often there is Um conflict between Um Different

35:24 dissonant infinite games. Right? Like it's like uh the infinite game of Shopify is causing this like Sort of I think. Getting Towards the horizon behind which there's a lot of value for entrepreneurship entrepreneurs. That's a journey shopify is on. Um

35:41 What you need to do is get as many Groups and as many. things like like parts of the company to all be in alignment with this overall um Uh over arching. It's very easy for a group to to to end up like with uh

35:55 Like a distant of the known goal. And um I think what you Um But you sometimes encounter is um Um

36:05 Lack of larger exp uh I don't know. I don't know if it's a good example. I I I remember when I started to look into like how to do um charity war. Right, like Um You know that's Something I w I I want to do. I I I I'm very interested in.

36:20 sort of comprehensive like How can I affect like For every means of energy I have. Time.

36:28 Money, other resources. How can I be as beneficial to all the communities around me as as I can? And so I'm like The first thing you realise when you talk to people is like you have to make a choice between individual level and society level impact, right? Like and um

36:43 Um individual level is like You can do something for person And that's Deeply gratifying because it's very sort of

36:53 Mediate and and and Fairly it's deeply popular. With P Buff? Uh it's very easy to point at like almost all of the fewer stories around uh uh charity are Yeah.

37:06 But like the data like we if i i i if anything it actually causes problems because you usually when create dependents on charity for things, which is actually the opposite of I think the goals you are having. So so you end up having to look a lot at uh society level things, like what's the upstream problems. For Um Um the thing that you're trying to try to sort of. Anyway.

37:27 Companies are just the same. You you have this the society level and the individual level experience. Um And um Completely design only allows you to uh Really um Try to uh

37:40 You know, I think it's a good thing Guess to the the large outcomes of a co a company get get to the alignment. Um and and try to avoid bad individual level experiences to the degree to the best degree possible. Ideally to the like like Just like

37:53 uptime on service, you want to get to an ninety nine point nine nine percent SLA on People having good. If manage, I didn't like that's that would be great. Um, But of course there's going to be bad ones. Like like people will have You know, maybe the same person that usually has

38:09 Good one at once. At some point has just a disastrous one. And um One of the problems is like in terms of criticism. You know, like a lot of people then describe um All of a company through the lens of a one

38:23 individually bad experience, which actually was an exceptional case and so on. And so Yeah, y y you know, you end up like with a story um becoming an and and description of an exception which was actually rather expected although unfortunate. Anyway, with all that being said.

38:39 Um Uh like I last Like I I I I'd be Um

38:51 I I I do not want to build a A company that causes people to have to go to Kafka esque experience. However. There are s instances where what people describe as bureaucracy is actually Um

39:05 Good checks and balances. Which are like A way you are trying to solve a problem? Local context that you have. But actually

39:20 If you if the next person With a larger perspective says. Actually We we use driver patches, um because that's Doesn't cost props of rodents. And um

39:30 The person Like if if they Talk to the next person, they say, You know what, that that wall, there was holding it's actually a bad wall. It shouldn't be there. Let's actually get rid of entire wall. And but but You know, some even more perspective might say You know

39:44 We we are actually gonna remodel this entire floor or in this pot uh hypothetical office that I'm just sort of spinning up for the purposes of This conversation. Uh The entire floor is being redesigned, so that wall doesn't matter. It's like that hole is gonna be No one has to fix this right now and this is unnecessary work and the next person might actually say, Hey, we're going digital by design and we don't even have offices anymore.

40:06 And Um so so what the the culture you need is that ideas and action and proposals come from absolutely everywhere. Ideas must be omnipresent. But Um Decisions on the V strategy should be like

40:21 Coming from the pla place of right perspective. Which sometimes is for people who are close to front line and sometimes Actually A people who have a really intuit understanding of the long term goals of a business. And so that's

40:35 You know, when when when when things get mucked up there. And not explained, right? I have found That is People reach for vote bureaucracy in these cases, but I don't think that is bureaucracy. I don't know if this is a useful conversation.

40:50 Um I'm not a Baucusy apologist. Uh I I I I I do I I I'm I mean If you ask anyone at Shopify they will be able to cite many, many instances of me. Um using my legitimacy to subtract bureaucracy in every instance. Um I I I can

41:06 Um however it's not. Or that I guess. I like the visual of sort of sediment layers and how it builds up over time and you end up with this outcome that nobody intended. But you fast forward time and nobody would have chosen this, but it happens and it happens so incrementally that nobody notices. That's uh I think that's uh

41:24 Road to all evil and and and and businesses. Like Very very very smart people in groups. Sometimes do Um Ex Extremely.

41:35 Entertainingly Dumb things. Kill it along the way. Um, However the result is something that Absolutely no one.

41:45 Can steal man. Done this way. And um If you don't have a Some kind of

41:54 system of removing both things and and and and like I mean humor is by way very good. This is why One of the books I give to my uh executives is like is is Parkinson's Law, which is a wonderful eighty page Read on like How silly companies end up being often. Being able to make fun of these kind of things and then just like

42:19 Hey, let's Replace it with something better is a is a good way of doing it. How has your thinking on compensation changed? A lot. I I I think uh compensation is um I mean I'm very much in this because I've got

42:34 on this quite a lot. Um in the last a little while. And I actually don't know if it's a super interesting topic. It's just sort of like a problem we had. Um I mean actually This is like the other thing.

42:47 A lot of solutions like uh Uh multivariant. Like Five things. I'm I mean I'm usually a believer that like if there's smoke somewhere, there's probably a fire. But like It's often like one of those small smoldering fires that's been going on for like

43:04 two thousand years uh in the root system and no like it's it's like Like these things exist, right? Like they're Um In in in real life as well, therefore existing companies. Um

43:17 Technology industry ended up Doing compensation is one of our many, many, many sediment layers of I think individually good decisions which I'm out to a place That's Just strange. For something as important as compensation, I think we should not

43:33 Press into service. Reflexively. such highly financialized um Uh Derivative co like the instruments of enormous complexity and in huge um

43:45 variants of outcome. Without there being an agreement with Between Both sides of uh Uh but that's something that that they want.

43:55 A lot of stock options and RCUs of these things are exist. Because it's a tax optimization system. Very often it's not actually true anymore in many places. Like in in in in Yeah, Canada has a different tax system, Europe like it've never had really uh stock options in most places. Actually in some instances it's now coming, which is sort of interesting. Germany is

44:17 Creating some tax terribility for stock options. Um And um So so like the world is very different. Um I think

44:25 These things should be available but not prescribed. And so I mean these switch to a Very simple system where everyone gets a number. This is what you make every year. And um so everyone agrees what like the ground truth is of compensation. And then you can say we want this in cache, do you want this in stop options? Um Uh and and there's gonna be other things like

44:46 Yeah. We will hopefully get to a place where you can Use uh Like we have currently I think two or three sliders that you can uh Choose how you want your compensation and then

44:58 Like they're hopefully will be ten or so to give As we build more capacity for different options. Like A charity bucket would be great. Um Maybe even a charity bucket for

45:09 individual level action, society level action would be like maybe make that decision at this level. Um Would be would would be wonderful. Um And uh So so so we now have a system that we control that we can say, like, hey, we're we're making our compensation system and implementation of our

45:25 believe in what's actually the fairest, best and most flexible. And and and treat people like adults where they can make choices. And then if you want stock you to you just simply get those. Um And If a if if if if a stock market value of Shopify is a very low at this point, um

45:40 You get More shears. And it's Vay hi. Um

45:45 You get fewer chairs, but presumably once you got p previously have appreciated value, they've left there for you kind of Ahead in both ways. Um And um the moment of joy like I mean, this is sort of gets into the weeds of of of previous competition models. Like the thing that really I think it's It's the weirdest thing about the previous systems is you make these like big grants for over years.

46:09 Um At some point there's a grant date. Every single time before this. This grand Moment like

46:20 You actually have to look at the stock and because I'm like Man, like the the individual outcomes of the people for getting this next set of grants is so different based on what's happening that week. Because again, It's like this has nothing to do with company, right? Like uh like Shopify is we're market value is.

46:38 Going up. I think fairly rapidly by all the amazing things we are building. Uh that's what I'm working on. Um Shopify's Sto is like this.

46:48 Crazy function. Over time. Based on again. sentiment, market value. So tying everyone's lifetime earnings really put.

46:58 Like two This other thing which is like Why are these swinging compared to the thing that we are working on.

47:06 Pattern violation. Steel man wives steel steel man me the argument. But It should affect What uh Uh you

47:16 Like a like a Shopify employee. Uh makes us lifetime earnings. Whether or not Russia invaded the Ukraine the week before the Grant or not. Right? Like it's like that seems I

47:29 If someone wants to steal them this But Do it over beers in a bar and I'm like all ears, because that would be fascinating conversation. But I don't think it's it it it's a silly thing to have to even discuss like I feel like I'm not going to be able to

47:44 The answer should be no. And therefore you should design systems where that is not that big of a factor. What do you think businesses can learn from programming? I think all of business has to be rederived from programming principles. I I had this intuition. I think we even had this situation on previous episodes, like we talked about this. Wherever I tried it a bit better than all other approaches. And um

48:06 I I I think people need to understand it. Why is this? Like Because it sounds random. I mean it I I know, like especially you In the technology industry we are sort of used to um

48:19 Putting technology on on treating it with deference. Like uh if if you go into like Uh no oil and gas or like in introfinance. Um Where engineering and technology is almost like a cost center.

48:31 About as random. to them to say, Hey, we have to derive all of business from Engine. as it would be to come to a technology industry and saying, Hey, you have to derive all your H R system from surfer culture.

48:48 Here's my um uh Ethereum we can talk about examples. I I I I think um we ended up in a quite path dependent, but very unideal treatment of what technology is and what uh And how people think of technology. And I actually I I think it's causal from the way

49:07 campuses of universities are organized. In the fifties. Turing came up the f uh a Turing machine and and and you know Ex reading executions from tape and writing back to it to it and van Neumann formalized. Um uh the architecture that you're using. Um

49:27 It is sort of Created this sort of thing. Conceptual Can be an explosion around this time. For the si to the sixties for having

49:37 reasonable implementations of of of of these things. Of course we have some examples before. But um Where did everyone put that? I if you actually uh I I I'm I'm I'm well through the books but Chronicle of the history even though also are obscure books that are Un

49:54 Like More people that uh have to read. Um It's always the basement of some building. Like or

50:02 a rental off campus across the street from MIT or Harvard or something like this, where they they they they put people. Um Because it didn't fit into anything. Right? Like it's like

50:14 Um What is this thing? It's like It has a lot to do with language, really. Uh like because I mean what's great about language? Langu language is a concept of Taking um.

50:24 Uh very complex. Um you know like it's it's it's The concept of abstraction. Which is a Like

50:34 Or is it mathematics? Well mathematics it's like It's it's it's called as provability. It's it's like it's called as sort of Um It's theoretical.

50:48 Cohesion. The equivalency sign is like Both two sites are exactly the same thing. Reasonably similar. Um

50:58 It it it's it's it's it it it acts on a Bay limited syntax. Uh Like it's it's it's it's sort of a language, but it's actually It doesn't have a concept of abstraction. It's like everything is just these formulas which are And um

51:14 Um So you end up with this new world of a Turing machine, which is actually the midpoint between human language and mathematics. It has none of the theoretical parts of mathematics. It's all only the practical things. Um there is no such thing as a pie that is an infinite number that you can't compare to the end of a universe.

51:35 It's a very practical uh Uh like we can make a function called Pi. And this function. you have to make the decision for how much compute you need to invest into it. At some point you should stop because otherwise you end up in endless endless loop. So Therefore, like what computation actually is, is a practical part of mathematics.

51:55 And That Yeah. much more uh definable parts of linguistics. Um Basically what Wittenstein was trying to do and and with Vicratos uh exactly a hundred years ago.

52:07 Um Um, I think Rittenstein most actually probably but first hacker. Um And um And so so so you have this completely new field. What did we do? We put it like we caught it

52:19 What computer science Engineer Engineering, we're still not sure what to put up and But it's it's it's it's much larger. It's it's it's actually Like I I I think we've taken a significant chunk out of all the fields. And figure hey, there's actually a a unification of it.

52:38 And all the practical people. For the next fifty years gravitated towards the Whatever the partners uh uh computer science if you will. Uh because

52:50 That's where And and and leaving behind all the theoreticists. This is why we end up like the philosophy group was only doing real physics. And um Uh Physics basically only does like uh string theory. The topics that are a lot going on in academia are basically the

53:09 discipline versions of a nerd snipe. Yes, let's discuss them, but like it's not clear that it will have to be of practical value. I'm I'm being somewhat critical of his groups here, um because frankly I am. I I I think we are just not Thinking about all the stuff, right? Okay. All with all this being said, where how where does this leave us? Um

53:32 I I think what this field is probably is is is some kind of co applied computational philosophy. Is is is the is the correct way of thinking about it. It's like um A little bit like econom like game theory and economics ended up being like sort of an extraction from People playing poker. Like a pl you found like a practice where where where Game Theory was applied and then a lot of ideas from Game Theory were sort of

53:59 Informed to this. Um Like Isn't computer science is a this is not is a bad ner uh term because it's actually all applied. Um And wherefore

54:11 Um it's the most applied field of systems design. It's the most applied field of architecture. It's the most applied field of control theory or is the most applied field of almost all these things. And it's it's it's sort of a it's the practical, almost vocational side of academia. Like extracting all the good bits. And so Um but be left at Like we

54:34 But fair enough. Left it to the nerds. And said, Hey, for most in industries you're cost center. You just sort of enable the things that uh others do. And the revenge of a nerd is actually that we now build all these companies which have kind of outperforming everyone else. And and and And frankly, everyone has to kind of understand But it isn't because we have technical skills, but actually because we and I'm including myself here and sort of as engineering discipline by uh

54:59 Uh being very loose with it because I clearly don't have an engineering degree. Um Oh Yes.

55:09 Designing systems. That uh Have to be resilient. So like weird, non deterministic, like the kinds of things that are even that that you can't even really put into a Magmatica formula, right? Like uh packet loss. And and like

55:24 Um in you know our world actually is one of chaos in which we are trying to pretend but it isn't and then we have to put Uh abstract systems. Almost in the heritage of Linguistics. Um

55:37 This is an e commerce system. Like it like that word. House. Right now I'd Shopify alone, like Three and a half thousand, four thousand people in in R and D working on like every single day. It has had so Um slightly fewer for for years and years and years. Um eighteen years of my life invested into it.

55:56 And so um That is um that's a lot. behind this. Um Applies to business.

56:04 Business is unbelievably complicated. Um business is a Um Your your your your departments are trying to um use um sort of the old old way of old imports to try to make the most of it in most places. Like the old imports are Um

56:21 Uh Processes. Um Bureaucracy. Um

56:30 And story. Like we have a means by which uh like and all of those leading into a culture. You know, like that's you you're you're Um Compensation team. For instance.

56:40 uh had those mechanisms and by which they Venture process to look up okay, there's a new job, new S What's a cost center? What's the Comparables, what does the Redford or Compancy data say is a comparable? What's our percentile?

56:56 Here's her salary. Let's use this as an input. Oh, this is data processing, right? Like and and and and we should uh You know, engineering discipline has a lot to say about how to build very resilient systems that Can

57:12 roam across a lot more than just a few inputs like this and actually implement Um Like a function that spits out the right results based on Way more import spent than than this. And but a function is auditable and can run every moment. And if you're thinking about making a change to your business, like what would would it look like then?

57:31 A certain Uh discipline or job moves into a different part department of a company. Well, now if I make all of this executable I now go and um Just

57:43 Edit. One file. And then It rebuilds her model of a business. I think

57:49 And then if you like it. In a Engineering that So engineering thinking company. That becomes

57:58 The new desired model. And the goal of uh the Um HR discipline is actually not to make all these arbitrary decisions, but actually

58:10 What is the model of a company? What is the actual state of a company? What are the moves that get the actual state as close to the model as possible? We have the biggest discrepancies. A company like That is It retains its ability to evolve with a changing landscape because it's extremely hard to change bureaucracy, extremely hard to change uh bureaucracy uh uh uh uh we the stories in the business.

58:36 Um It's extremely hard to figure out all these like little arbitrary exceptions that have been created. And and and um Um Can still move fast.

58:45 Can't But also Um just leads to much more fair and and observable outcomes. You can you can use all the systems building advantages of like

58:55 Uh unit tests of linters, of like like where are things weird. Um data processing, observability, uh uh you know, dashboarding. Um And so so these these are the ambitions, I think, amongst the sort of most technically run engineering companies and and it it allows you to think about

59:14 Would we have done But it gives you a new tool because at the end of the day. I think what To right in like invent it. Um

59:24 Is a uh Is Um Uh is not As separate as people make it out to be.

59:32 If you look at the cells that make all life This is kind of what DNA is like. It's a it's it's it's a read hat and a right uh and a write hat and it like it creates more DNA, it creates more cells. It can It's it's like It it's it's the comparison is un it's it's not equal to sign in terms of mathematics.

59:55 But like Well now that you Yeah, like I I I think it's a lot more fundamental than we give it credit for. I think in a hundred twenty years from now. When we talk about human history

1:00:07 Um Like These books spelled like hacker s by Stephen Levy and And Um

1:00:16 Like code by Pet Sound and all these kind of These books. Uh actually um Going to be referenced moves. That that that that show

1:00:26 The actual mainline history of our species. Right. And and currently we j we like it's So Like Relegate to click me.

1:00:35 The newspapers talk about I mean current affairs, which we should, like they are also important. But it feels like we are living on this in in in this weird world but actually has not integrated. It's own mainline history track. uh into the public consciousness. And I think this is why the word is so weird to so many people. Why is like why are things the way they are?

1:00:56 Well. Because we have a model in our minds. Propagate a model through the Oh no. I know school, media, books, um

1:01:08 That's that's that's deeply rooted in the physical and which which is easier for us to reason about, to be fair. But it's not It it's It's it's an it's an extraordinarily lossy model. Um

1:01:22 Uh uh if if if you actually hold it up to what is happening in the world. Like Anyway it's it's it's it this is a topic I could uh talk about for hours. I I I I deeply Um Uh I never know if it's an interesting topic, um because I have no answers. I I I just um

1:01:41 I I I'm trying to like I I I think uh I I I think it's worth uh Uh uh Like I I think what's I mean, what's a T I DR? The T L D R here is.

1:01:54 Um Just like poker taught economics a lot. Because it was applied game theory. Uh and people play Many, many, many, many hands in an evening. Um And therefore develop a more intuitive understanding of

1:02:07 Uh a a for a a part that's important to uh to to economics, uh and and the various big parts of mathematics. Um I think um Engineering. It involves applied.

1:02:19 Systems design. Um It it has a discipline of systems design that is Just vastly like we're not talking about slightly ahead. We're talking about a hundred years ahead.

1:02:30 Um In in in to everything else. It is not a contest when when you're when you hold it up to uh sort of industry orthodox thinking on on on um these things if that orthodox thinking is purely informed by So if a pre if a book is

1:02:44 Basically from the from from the eighties. It will have interesting things to say because it the the the sort of How to implement things with humans is gonna be one more better developed and potentially how to craft story and and and and process. Um

1:02:57 But those are uh fairly minor support roles now to to to large systems design. I think what makes it interesting is the fact that there's no answer. Right? If there was an answer or a definitive answer be a little bit less interesting. Yeah, I wouldn't do this. I'm only interested in you. I I'm I'm I'm honestly just I'm I I'm no.

1:03:17 I'm interested in the idea. And I'm actually uninterested in fields where the ideal is figured out. Yeah. Because there's like I I have nothing to contribute there. Like I um

1:03:28 I think I sort of I I love and understand technology. I love and understand tech design and and UX. Um why? Because I really, really care about people. Like it's it's it I know it's a weird thing to say, but like I am um

1:03:44 I have sort of build my life around um giving people superpowers due to technology. Right. Like this is what I love delivering. So this are the three pieces. Technology is enablement. People are the point of it all. Um and people are awesome and people are creative and people need to be augmented. With technology and

1:04:03 I think that's obligation of us technol the technology industry to cause this to happen instead of replacing uh A people? And um um what we should replace is toil. And drudgery. Yes.

1:04:15 And bullshit. Right. Like this is like we both are things we replace. Sometimes there's jobs. Because The mean. Or because we didn't know better or we couldn't do better.

1:04:25 But only Toil. Trudgery. Bullshit. Let's rebase all these jobs. Everyone locked into these jobs. It's a creative person. And contribute significantly more if enabled with proper tools.

1:04:36 And so of course UX is in the very middle. It's like UX makes all the word of technology and everything we have accomplished there. Available and approachable by everyone. It's a it's it's a fundamental economizer. And and and so um I this Like I I think I

1:04:53 Um and I have a big concrete set of problems that I need to solve around um organising tens of thousands of people in Like Uh Well.

1:05:05 Build a highly innovative company with tens of thousands of people. I think um Um This might be surprising to people. I don't think that has been attempted many times before.

1:05:17 I I don't think people Like You know, there are companies you can describe as being highly innovative, but are hundreds of thousands of people because I think you're gonna always get sort of a residue of Uh innovation uh out of it. And if you have a lot of people.

1:05:31 But end of being You know. Uh still significant uh in terms of innovation. Uh That comes. Of course they are phenomenal companies that have

1:05:40 succeeded this, but I'm I think it's not unique. But it's probably single maybe low double digits of copies have ever um attempted it. Most companies are just trying

1:05:51 Like a minute. Thank you Find the And then play a defensive game around with it, just a very, very different thing, uh to do.

1:06:01 Um everyone pays lip service to in innovation. But innovation costs you a lot. Innovation is a if you want this Every single like solving any single new problem in a company is ten X as hard as it is if you don't. Um and um

1:06:16 Uh I I so so I don't think better maybe people have signed themselves up for this kind of uh headache. Um but I I think it's a toxic headache. One of the things that you sort of said was unleashing people with technology, which is It's fascinating to me because small differences in skill technology can amplify or leverage that ability to massively different results.

1:06:37 You and I have the same iPhone. We have the the same technologies available to us. But you can do a lot more with that than I can. Well Um Not sure about that. But like um I I uh

1:06:51 Yeah, like I I mean again The tools we use is uh multiply, not an added. Yeah. Not something like that. Um

1:07:00 I think until the comp the computer around but the most powerful tool in the world, but I don't Probably a slight goal. Um Um It's actually an interesting conversation about what muff m what might have been the most the highest sort of multiplier tour that existed. Um

1:07:16 Before. Probably sitting on top of a bureaucracy, frankly. Huh. Oh. Uh There's probably a

1:07:23 Time. Ten? Like I I mean I'm sort of making this up right now, but like I in the K let's say you would uh uh Go, go.

1:07:36 Back to pre sort of desk calculator times. Um Um how to do The Manhattan Project was Rooms and rooms and rooms of people. Um a lot of what they did is like uh Atlas Armas was actually uh carbulating uh

1:07:52 Um Spectacular. Um doing the um trajectories for artilleries. Um And uh that rooms and rooms and rooms are full of people doing this manually, right? Um and and so Um

1:08:05 Uh All these people be in s like better mathematics. I will ever be. And most of us will ever be. And um but been locked behind Writing.

1:08:17 Particular artillery Every one of them was different, so you had to re derive all the calculus like lookout tables basically for different differences. I think And that's that's that sucks. So so now You're living in a world where one of them

1:08:31 Could probably go on YouTube. And uh not enough programming in the yeah. Oh. Uh maybe a week. Mm-hmm. Um from scratch. Because again people must be overestimated how complicated it is to learn programming. It's like

1:08:46 You fire up Khan Academy, you sit down. Yeah. Clear your can and uh and by the next weekend you're programming some useful stuff. Like what um Like this example. And you will write a function that you input um.

1:08:58 Uh some calibration members from the artillery that you okay about and the distance and maybe an elevation uh difference. I will spit out behind. To uh Uh you know, exactly, but appoint it. Um or you do it over desk calculator. After that person after you do this.

1:09:13 This function. The stink. Always be Like a correct. May maybe you need to add someone adds wind at some point because you forgot about it. But like

1:09:23 That's just one optional parameter. Um to you add to the function. That function will be Solve Yeah.

1:09:30 Yeah. He gets it done. Um forever. Um Ver much productivity added to the world is not the utility value of a function.

1:09:39 It is freeing Oh the best people at calculus when to do productive work and actually write these functions. I I it's it's it's it's it's flabbergasting in terms of uh Planetary. Productivity number.

1:09:54 Um By way. We are terrible at carbonating productivity. This none of what I just said would actually be in productivity numbers that economists use to figure out if productivity is going up. So are we more productive now? Because based on that we should be massively but

1:10:10 It doesn't seem that way. Because um Um But Yeah.

1:10:16 I I am I'm curious why it doesn't seem that way. Um I think it does over all like If you put a movie on from Th there's a there's a funny uh list I've seen recently about like

1:10:27 Um All the movies you love that could not exist in a world that has cell phones. It was just like Die Hard. Yeah. Yeah, all the moves you watch in those days.

1:10:38 So so like It's just we're all Where the sentiments. Yeah.

1:10:49 But the sentiment is Like I mean One of the most important things that I think everyone's overseeing. It's for um

1:10:56 Um I'm great, but everything else is Fact effect. In fact. Um so this is actually a like a metric you can look per um look at per country basically People have to answer question.

1:11:07 How are you doing and how do you think everyone else is doing around you? Right. And um What you get back? Everywhere in the world. It's like I'm doing great. Everyone's anxiety is based on their understanding of everyone else, which everyone else literally disagrees with.

1:11:21 Like so we all think everyone else is doing bad and everything else is getting worse, but it isn't. Like it it it's it it the numbers don't bear out. As countries I think South Korea was like ninety ten. Like neighbor people are doing fine. And they only think like ten percent think any anyone else is okay. Um

1:11:38 So a sentiment. It's the it's a it's an important thing. Like The sentiment tracks um the actual experience of planet Earth in the same way A comp like a stock tracks.

1:11:49 for fair market value of company. May be eventually convergent, but sometimes vastly Swinging up and down based on And driven driven a lot by media, right? And what you're exposed to and the messages you're getting. Yeah, because I mean why? Because media

1:12:07 I mean um media has a crutch against technology for Fran frankly understandable reasons. Like Um everyone in media works for an institution that probably was negatively affected by tech. No. I think media itself, like if you if you're if some art is actually doing great. Like Podcasts are doing great. Um

1:12:25 A builder. operated. Founder operated media is Killing it. You have found overrated PDU. It's like It's the golden age of media along along my slides. I could never find

1:12:37 I I uh like there's no chance I would Like I I I I am a cr Delighted customer.

1:12:47 For the product of the knowledge project. But I don't think I would have been serviced in any other p period of time, right? So Um And uh Um so so found a

1:12:57 Build a Operated media is doing amazing. Um institution, let us see institution operated media. Yeah. Some of them actually do great. I mean some at higher inference break than they ever have it. But like

1:13:10 There is a a prestige change to be And and and so I I I understand but people are fundamentally uh in in this space are coloured and and and pessimistic about the changes that technology technology. But what is technology?

1:13:26 Technology is progress. Exactly So so um If you have W people who do like like

1:13:33 Um On the airwaves. Uh You know, like every person in on the planet ends up becoming so well. Everyone becomes sort of the average of the five people they spend the most time with, right? Like that's just sort of a really well documented sport.

1:13:46 Oh, if it's fundamentally true, but it's super useful as a as as a as a mental model. And um I think that uh you know, one of those people is the media. For most people. And um Um

1:13:59 So you're you're adopting a set of beliefs which are I think extremely coloured. Um And in this particular case I think somewhat unfortunate because you just recast The applied field of human progress. as something that is causing

1:14:15 Um But you know, again in the individual case Can happen, but clearly on society level isn't. Um We lost our ability to to to to to be optimistic enough for future and love progress and uh

1:14:30 And I think that's I I mean I think that's extraordinarily unfortunate and this is this like Somewhere in the top five things that they really ought to edit. Um And uh because people actually think they are doing okay. No, so perfect. would be great to get rid of all of those two, but like overall things are going in a really, really neat direction. Uh

1:14:51 Um And um You know, like books like Enlightenment Now and so on. Like they've everyone chronicles. Hey, what w was the past like? Oh.

1:15:01 overwhelm you with evidence for how good we are it. Well, if you can go back in time you'd definitely choose today. Like I I have incredible um I don't know. Uh

1:15:11 Yeah, and be the fuck it. Yeah. I I Yeah. I was born nineteen eighty. Um

1:15:18 There. Probably one of the best sort of thing. Like um. It's it's it's what of a Better types to be born, like we saw like perfectly so.

1:15:27 Physical like like like the the the handover and nativeness and All these kind of things, but man. Like. Wow, is that gonna be diminished compared to what our children will see? You hit on something interesting there, which is the search for

1:15:41 Um Accuracy over utility. So a lot of people dismiss ideas because they're not a hundred percent accurate, even though they're useful. How do you think about that? Oh man. Like I mean this is like we're current topic, but you uh I think teach

1:15:56 Extremely well. Like What concept of like all models I use? Uh wrong but somewhat useful. Like Yeah, I'm not sure. It's it's a it's a right way to think. Like I think this is another one of those things that you learn

1:16:08 Um Um in engineering adjacency, like electrical engineering, has this really well down. Um Um The sciences don't. Oh sadly.

1:16:18 Um uh but but computer engineering is like You're carving a System it works out of Before you got. Now that's good engineering, but like actually if you expose yourself to this, this is actually good thinking.

1:16:31 Like uh you have to think of bets. Like you have to think in Like you have to make choices earlier. Right? Like you you have to make a choice when you have I you can't wait for having a hundred percent of Uh the input because you will never have it. after the fact you get to go back and give yourself a scorecard for how good of a job did you m did you make when you had to have make an important choice, how good of a job

1:16:56 Did you finding all the relevant inputs to collect to make a choice with? That's something you can sub Really sort of Review after the fact. Like

1:17:06 Hey, I made this choice this way. Um Was it the wrong choice for Chance, in which case you made no mistake. Um

1:17:16 Was it a choice for A certain Chance that would have been known and wasn't considered. Too hot.

1:17:26 Um Something. Was it invalidated because you didn't see the bigger picture? That's your like totally your fault, right? Like on on on making choice. As long as the bigger picture would have been available Easily like I my my my test inter is always like Wherever any twenty minutes I could have spent.

1:17:42 to pull this piece of information I didn't consider right. into the set of things I Uh used as inputs to make a decision. If so, I wasn't equal to the task of making the choice at the time.

1:17:54 And I need to um Understand this better in the future and the proof form. Um So accu accuracy is like accuracy very often is. Um

1:18:05 Picking the right result. independent of making good decisions. This much. Poker players call this. And uh I think it's not really the right thing to do.

1:18:19 Let's talk about decision making a little. I mean, uh we sort of highlighted the last two and a half years and all the ups and downs in that How do you keep your cool When Everybody around you is sort of losing theirs. A lot of people end up getting really invested in their sort of job title as an identity.

1:18:36 Mm-hmm. Um They think they are valuable because the job is valuable. Unfortunately so much of a gold is like It's kind of

1:18:48 Is a second order effect of of of of self confidence issues. Um Um Uh. People seem

1:18:57 To have a fairly low opinion of himself. Funetic, which I I I I think it's just so sad because I think Like we should have a vastly high op like opinion of people's capabilities in in in general. I have a very, very high opinion. Sadly actually that makes me sometimes disappointed in people.

1:19:14 In a in a funny way. I had this funny exchange with uh Toby Shannon, who I worked with for twelve years, um, recently retired joined the board. He he told me like hey Toby, one of the biggest differences between you and me is like Um You have a Extremely high opinion.

1:19:28 And people's ability and therefore you're constantly disappointed in people. And I have a very low opinion of people, therefore I'm Just utterly delighted when they do anything useful. It's like you should you should he was he was offering this as advice for me to change my mind. I I I I I think um Like I like I think I'm I'm less confused about people's potential than I think they sometimes are but I in many cases I Um see it as one of my major contributions to my career to have people actually reach their potential and and and and and and have a more clear idea about their capacity.

1:19:58 Uh Uh Capacity ahead of time. One of the ways how this low opinion um reflects itself is that people think they are valuable due to Um Um More legitimate sources.

1:20:11 Of uh Um Um Like external like. I I watch at this point. I mean

1:20:19 I think um External validation. External validation. Like having a degree. Yes. But I'm value because I have his degree. Um

1:20:28 I'm valuable because I am a front end developer. Um And most things are fundamentally incorrect. I mean, maybe in some of these sort of

1:20:42 Meandering middling companies. That might be true. Uh You are valuable because of a brain we've got. You're vr value because you make choices. You're valuable because as a front end designer. Not just But you are actually engineering.

1:20:58 But you can program. But also Work on Build systems for that like

1:21:07 Great and easy and Random pe p people do very random stuff with user interfaces and you build something that's It's your experience, it's your skill. It's your actual it's it's Your life story.

1:21:22 Rolled up. Is your is is is your Intuition. It's your ability to make Create decisions quickly. And um

1:21:33 Ah. So So often. This anxiety that we're talking about. Up the stack to your actual question. It's that people confuse

1:21:43 Um their own self worth and their role in the world and and and and and their ability to well feed their family, frankly. With um the continuation of jobs. And and the continuation of a role that they have. But

1:22:01 The question you should have is like How can it be valuable? That's Shop if I hired you. As a person.

1:22:11 The only reason why we create roads and racks. It's because They are like Louis. To great people.

1:22:18 The interview process is not A process of figure Can you Can you do this role? Can we can we slot you into this role. It is

1:22:27 The Job may be better for you. Being cute. Right. And so um

1:22:33 So people shouldn't have those anxiety anxieties. Um Uh people should figure figure out how to be valuable and and and and and show great flexibility. In this ideally develop range. Or Okay. You you you should make a fundamental choice of of of of of of of

1:22:48 Are are you going all in on specialisation? I'm for Range. Most people should opt for range. Um Um Specialists uh

1:22:58 Like Everyone who knows But there should be a specialist, no space should. Yeah, like it's like everyone should be a specialist now. They should be. Like we this is this is a very particular set of character traits. Um Which wants to dedicate itself to a

1:23:11 Very narrow kind of thing. And go unbelievably deep. Like to a degree that's absolutely impossible to appreciate for the non specialists. But but but true depth of true specialist is up is is incredible. Um What specialists don't understand is like how

1:23:32 How incredibly good journalists can be at And Fifty things. Right, like The thing like a

1:23:39 Th many people think a journalist is sort of like a jack of all trades, master of non. Like it's this is one of the dumbest sentences I've ever heard. That's like not a like That's just Usually someone who d hasn't made a choice and is not good at developing any f any kind of rare people. Um Um Uh you you're you're like Pareto principle and no one tells you about first eighty percent of every field can be done twenty percent of time. So like

1:24:02 You you you can you can you can have easily five fields, um for uh in in uh to to to a degree of eight out of ten. Um Why the specialist is just looking at primary topic, right? So um Um frankly.

1:24:18 This is even Because So now learning the next thing. significantly faster than previous thing. Because the skilled set of learning is itself a skilled set and it's actually

1:24:30 Your skill set of How quickly you are learning. Which determines how long it takes you to pick up any kind of new field to to a to a certain eight or ten out of ten. Um Okay.

1:24:41 Um Anyway. How do you k keep your core? Like now that matters. And like humans are awesome and humans are like with Fact. Every individual human has more has more compute.

1:24:53 Ben. All the contributions we've ever built a network together. Right. Therefore.

1:24:58 There's a lot of roles for us to play. Um and um especially when a million millions of variables change. Software, technology, pitts plus. But like it's like um Right now the way engineering works, the way systems work. Um

1:25:12 As great as they are and as flexible as they are these days, they're still a little bit more like it you you you pour a little bit of cement into your card approach. Like refactoring and like uh technology is tricky. So if a world changes, it's time for humans to shine. And so um we should actually be very self confident into our world. And then um Again, you make decisions. I think decision making is

1:25:37 Miss Studied. Um I think decision making is uh Easiest thing in the world. Um blindingly obvious how to make the decision.

1:25:46 Uh uh any decision. What isn't is Finding the inputs. Like What is the context? What are all the things that affect the decision?

1:25:54 Developing bad is hard. Right. So Um thank you Knowing all things you should look at.

1:26:00 Knowing what to ignore. Such as But everyone else is the way. I mean You might use

1:26:07 When everything else it's doing is actually a second order import. It's an import Like. You should Look at it. make a judgment on like how much value there is.

1:26:17 And use your judgment on that as a hitput into your decision making. So you're twice removed. And then you build up a picture and then Honestly, everyone who looks at Bainfords will kind of come to the same I I I've actually never really seen this situation where if people are truly Making different choices.

1:26:35 Like there's always If there are like people on different sides. You just have to like okay. Let's take it from the top and like talk like state or the unstated assumptions that are Actually inputs into decision making?

1:26:48 And once was a Flashed out it becomes pretty obvious, I find. Carbon. And then After you make this decision.

1:26:58 You don't just I think if it's an important decision like strategy or something, you don't like Throw away this entire Voke. You actually capture it. And you revisit it because again the word keeps changing. And by the way, your appreciation of the inputs but better considered.

1:27:13 end up uh evolving as well. And so you should actually At any moment. We run function over the in ports. And uh be fairly neutral to the uh to to to to what that says.

1:27:25 Like I did that with I decided we built a lot of offices. We did them extremely well. I think we're got very good at building offices. But then A change happened in in a world and and and one of the variables was like Well, Can are people allowed to go to it? Like

1:27:42 Like uh for offices. I don't think I had better th that was an unstated input. There wasn't a stated input, but it was one. The moment that flipped. We decided like okay, no offices anymore, right? And then another input was like where are is our current staff? Like are they all close to officers? And then they said like And now the session was should be higher now outside of these places.

1:28:04 And after we made that decision. The variable on like where people live changed. Not everyone is close to offices and I c I I think it just said, Okay, well You're gonna go digital by design. And like with these decisions Actually went big quickly because

1:28:19 you could see how one leads to the other and then we just called it early, for instance, it's something we did very well. Like two thousand like I think in May or so I did like a Okay, we are done with officers we're they're gonna be probably the biggest role. And you were the first to come out basically. And we thought it was valuable to be with first because again I think um removing bad ambiguity is a very important thing. And like I think a lot of people want to know like

1:28:43 Like Some people over like just Waiting to get back to office, which I appreciate, but many people were saying uh and and people at Shopify who are in this state should know that that's not something Shopify could provide in the future. Or would not. And um People in other places which were clear that

1:29:00 they will go back to offices and and actually light this thing or like the ability to, you know, move Whatever they want to live, like engage in more lifestyle design uh then What you can do when you have a desk job. Um For sh for them it's important for me to like for them to understand that Shopify would be a fantastic company to join. And uh I I think that

1:29:20 Was very good for us. Uh so I think it's fair to summarize what you sort of said about decision making as being easy in the sense that The source of all errors in decision making is basically blind spots, rather blind inputs where you're blind to the effects of your decision. How do you think through the

1:29:39 Primary, secondary, third order. effects of your decisions and then the the broader impacts. Yeah. I mean I think you would develop a little bit of an intuition for the second photo effects. I but I I don't think they are You can plan for them. Um Uh you you tend to make decisions on primary effects and you communicate them on primary effects. I think

1:29:59 In a smaller team. You might talk about okay, this by way will actually cause this other thing, which wand will cause this other thing and it's it's uh I think that's sort of expert level decision making is being able to have a Fairly High batting average.

1:30:16 Oh. idea of how this is gonna continue because you're saving future headaches. Right. Being aware of them. But I I would say this is like this is where things get really hard.

1:30:26 Most people. Yeah. Really only concern us if the primary effects uh secondary effects are very, very Um hidden and opaque.

1:30:36 I think govern the vote a lot more than people realise. Um Um Very very very often the secondary effects are And then and torche effects are Um

1:30:48 A fasting more. societal impact and uh primary effects. Like I mean. Primary effect was people Like

1:30:58 People didn't like nuclear power. It's like So entire different conversation about how that might have happened. Um but I mean I think I think I mean if you if you look at causal requirement like It's probably because

1:31:12 All the green parties in the world, which I actually appreciate for what they do. Um somehow ended up embedding nuclear power being bad as one of her founding myths and organized around this, and therefore it was like possible to get out of their platforms later on when this became sort of silly.

1:31:29 Oh. And um Uh So there's like an import. Like.

1:31:36 Which I mean, maybe to the best of knowledge, when these parties were created, um Um Uh. Maybe that was thought to be true. Um like I mean I I I think sustainability and uh

1:31:49 environmentalism and so it meant something different back then. We didn't really understand fully Yeah. Raw carbon plate. And and so anyway. Um

1:32:00 But Vadaven didn't do is like after they got more data. Yeah. re ran the function of ST uh their their position on nuclear power and they just kept the fit because that was like Convenient, um I think. Oh.

1:32:14 Or you don't rerun it. You just dismiss the input the the change in variable. Well it becomes just this I think that's actually more accurate, sadly. Um Uh it's probably just It's written into the set of Again, it's a founding myth. Founding myths can't be revisited. Like I mean, this is like

1:32:34 end up with a really good set of You know, initials like like rules because once the people who write the initial rules are gone. very often there's gonna be a great set of def like great deferrents to them because again No one'll ever reach for legitimacy of

1:32:50 The funny founding fibers are like I mean there'sn't this entire Peace Plick. Think about how few functifers there were and how many Um

1:33:00 Uh constitution lawyers are now interpreting. But this is one where it's super important that we Find a way to rerun or get rid of or change. How do we do that? Yeah, I I mean I mean the the the actually um So

1:33:16 Talking about secondary effects, sometimes really use uh very often secondary effects are really the like the opposite of a primary effects, right? Like Um Uh a lot of our carbon issue uh in a word come from Uh The environmentalists.

1:33:29 Convincing the world that even though we We're building a Um economy that required nuclear power. We could somehow do it with coal instead. Um

1:33:39 Um Uh No, I think we got the scorecard for that. This really worked very poorly. Um and I don't I send finkers in the expense, but

1:33:50 And um Um Until maybe a year ago, it seemed like we actually were really not looking at this. Um Because of the I mean Well, I should make this explicit. This s secondary effect of us not building nuclear

1:34:05 Power plans. Is that now uh we have climate change. So Um Primary effect is environmental movement. Secondary effect is climate change. Like

1:34:15 Two on this for bed. Um Uh Again, everyone in the This movement.

1:34:21 Wanted to do the be what's best. But like the second matter. Now Take another one.

1:34:29 Russia invites Ukraine, which seems to be a very current topic here. Everything in primary is Bad. Secondary effects. Many, many, many, many of them are bad. Like There's a secondary effect of everyone having to look at the energy policies and realizing holy health.

1:34:48 So Yeah no, we actually um In a in a really odd way. Um Europe's dependents on Russia for natural gas.

1:35:00 Pipelines. Plus The act of aggression. By Russia. Nation cast.

1:35:07 Climate change to be solved. Which is like An unbelievable story when you're looking at this. And and and honestly this is the danger with secondary for A tertiary. Effect thinking.

1:35:18 His It really lends itself to cynicism um because because Um It sometimes you see these connections which are like feel extraordinarily inconvenient for for for for for the main story we tell ourselves.

1:35:35 Um But I I I also think facts are friendly. Uh I mean I'm and and also those are not facts. They're facts. They are like compounding systems that feed into each other and loops and cycles. They are they are All of this is just like Yes. And then

1:35:50 A hundred uh things besides. But it's really good to think about that. So you do the same thing, I hope in a m in a in a micro way in the company, right? Like it's uh You know, like if if you are Um

1:36:03 In a company everyone is allowed. And actually encouraged. Local incentive system. Um the system should be designed so um

1:36:14 But People sort of individualistic. Um Efforts. level up to the society level benefits.

1:36:23 Like for roadmap, for mission. You know. Um bureaucracy very often ends up being the grinding between both things, like the local incentive system and the needs of a company or the needs of another So

1:36:35 Designing things in such a way that they're in alignment is is is is is really important. And for that you will have to co analyze. Um Uh uh you know be uh be stings. So I think that's uh uh to me those are interesting challenges. Um And again, it's interesting again.

1:36:49 Because there are no right answers. No one is to get the stuff out properly. I think We had to build every company before.

1:37:00 Basic building blocks. What is the Um Uh Rules.

1:37:11 Uh Process And story. And both for But like course take the

1:37:17 Between Those are like software for humans. Um Now with computation and actual computing. I think we can implement more complex systems.

1:37:28 It to I'm more auditable. Uh the Be able to Uh provide some of a

1:37:35 um analysis that things are going in the right direction in the in some in in a more macro sense. Um And and will actually make it much easier to implement. Uh You know, more complex incentive systems or like But make it easier for everyone to know if they are

1:37:50 Mm. Like Doing work that's actually helpful to all the um uh comfy and then and and and the mission. completely underappreciated right now as as as as a as a as a source of

1:38:02 Um Business thinking value uh And um Uh I find I find it's very very interesting. This is really what I mean with applied computational thinking and a com applied computational philosophy.

1:38:15 Being almost uh Higher order. Like academic department that should exist on a campus and by way it should probably have the nicest building. Um

1:38:25 Uh and then This sort of computer science, hacking, tech like engineering are like Sort of the the the super applied versions of this, but like I think um a lot of other fields should have moved into this particular faculty as well. Now I'm not engaged in redesigning academia. It's not something I'm interested in in in any shape or form. I uh I I've never been in a to in a university outside of giving talks there. So um

1:38:48 And um I'm doing an out uh I'm I'm a little bit an outside observer there, although I am looking at what's going on with a little bit of exasperation because I think Academia in in fundamentally is a uh One of those areas where all the set of systems are incorrectly designed for society's um interests. I I I I I and I wish I'd be able to do it.

1:39:11 B would have more founder led academic institutions that could engage in some redesign to subtractions or fig out some different means by which We could enable some good thinkers of when legitimacy needed to make some changes there. Oh I see you're just gonna get papers, I think papers and rings and and um I I think progress has

1:39:31 From academia is like slow it down too much. Getting the amount of Sort of Like off resources. If if you if you if you sort of

1:39:41 Look at ICU. Dedicated to Like if you believe in IQ as a as a heuristic for Uh potential which is Not necessarily a discussion like uh put my signature on now, but like for simplicity's sake.

1:39:55 Man, we're diverting a lot of people into Academia s nuts. I think I'm thinking about the string theory and I I just like Man, there's a lot of practical things we need to solve here and I think we should go and like solve those. And you did some of that during COVID, right, with the rapid grants.

1:40:13 Yeah, I mean Rapid Grants was great. I mean that's a entire sort of emergent fields uh led by a bunch of uh like non academics, uh or or sort of academic adjacent. Sometimes founder builder types. called progress studies. Um It's uh Fanny.

1:40:29 Hey, we should probably Studress happens. Because It's probably slowing down a lot right now. And we we should kind of have a theoretical framework by which to

1:40:43 Like Yeah, like meta academics is probably uh almost a uh a better uh term there. Um And um Um

1:40:55 I don't I think that's pretty nascent and probably not. And potentially Um. I don't know if it can get off the ground, but like they did some experiments with fast grants and some other things. Maybe just said, like, hey, if enormous time pressure Give us a proposal and we'll tell you if you wanna get money for it in like a couple of days, because then was really needed the beginning of Covid. Yeah. Um

1:41:15 Because the granting process is too Byzantine and uh Kafka esque and and and uh brocratic. Um And I don't think and this was sort of But that is not uh my opinion.

1:41:27 Propsy to Just how you get scores, uh very often. W what have you learned so far about how progress does happen? I mean like Fast Grants was incredibly successful. It's unbelievable. It was like but like Um

1:41:42 Uh times that Things have made a real difference ended up. Uh being uh the recipient of Like if you it was like a clear

1:41:53 Mark of like But people really want to we're trying to make the system work, but like they're stuck behind Yes. And um I think that was good. I don't know how reproducible it it is and um

1:42:06 Um because it was a unique moment. Um I think um There was also unexpected springing like these ideas on people is very important sometimes because the problem is In any other case.

1:42:17 You reward the most prepared. And the most prepared are usually the people with the most time. And feel the most time are not used to people w working on important things. Right, like it's sadly true. Um, So

1:42:28 It's very hard to build academic uh environments or or even processes. At reward spoof. But people who have can have make the biggest difference. Um That's a very complex problem in in in in incentive system design and and and and and

1:42:43 Um Again, systems design. Especially once humans are part of Part of it. It's um Sadly.

1:42:51 The the but The people the most capable tend to be the busiest. You said in the past that I wanna read this so I get it right. People should make decisions based on the decision they assume the company in ten years from now wishes They would have done

1:43:07 Can you expand on that? I I love um having those questions as one of a governing Putting it as an input. Um Um

1:43:17 Or at least as a as sort of um A linting rule, if you were. On The quality of a decision. It's very easy to do what's popular right now and and and and and commit yourself to more pain in the future. It's um

1:43:31 It's it's This is all this Like almost every important decision that does doesn't have an automatic. Ends up being a little bit of a

1:43:40 Do we do what's right or do we do what's easy? But um Those are the only real decisions that people get hung up on. Outside of uh Have we seen no path forward.

1:43:50 We will have to eat shit. Which is like Which is for Py we should start enabling on. It's like that's that exists too. I mean especially in Times of crisis or sort of wartime.

1:44:00 Um Um both also end up becoming Um discussions. Uh but like usually it's uh It's in the form of Um

1:44:10 Are we allowing ourselves to do what's Expedient or easy. I want to have good heuristics for skewing towards. Best decision overall in the long term. Um ideally.

1:44:24 Again. Especially if it's strategy level and um people systems levels, uh it sh these things should be along the lines of a Um

1:44:35 long term benefits un inclusive of some of the secondary and food For tertiary effects that are predictable. And so this is why I try to um ask people hey I I found this question to be Clarifying for people.

1:44:48 Um Because often I mean or You know, on strategy'cause like a lot of what people call strategy is actually called a market. And a lot of go to market. Um

1:44:58 It was um Trying to figure out if you want to pull future profits forward at a disconnect. And and sometimes these discounts are enormous, right? Like absolutely crazy, like a ninety percent discount, but You can finish a quarter. Like I'm not talking about like

1:45:16 Here's a Shopify card for ninety percent off. I'm talking about we have a product called ShopPay, which I think a lot of people are familiar with because it's I mean, it's just the kind of thing that makes Check out school. Um you don't have to uh Type your address of your phones. Um Uh and um

1:45:32 That thing It's like increasing conversion rates. To a degree that not having it is simply makes Hid a mistake talk.

1:45:40 You you're basically committing a strateg Like right now you make a strategic mistake by not using Shopify. It's it's it's it's it's that's how High of a number. So I'm super it's super gratifying to me that we got to this point. The attachment rate is massive. The value is insanely high of this. There exists a lever inside of a company. I don't think I'm really really anything with this. Like basically when you build products that are extended extinctly valuable, you have

1:46:09 Like a diet. It's like we'll be monetization to uh. It's like Set to zero. But

1:46:15 Exists in a room full of Monetization dials or dials like that exists. Uh but but but as Click. U roadmap tries to Built more dials for that room.

1:46:28 Your long term strategy ought to be to use as few as possible because I could walk up to the one Attach to Shopee and just said, You know what, like You should charge for Shop Pay. We should say, Hey, you know, like

1:46:42 Cost an extra percent. It's like Utterly worth it. And create like from version is like twenty percent better.

1:46:49 Um Like everyone in the world would probably pay this. Yeah. mean that people will like they they could create always incentives for disintermediating the product. Um It would create.

1:47:02 competive landscape things. It would um Yeah. I think Shopify all in, like over the next ten years, would th we would be a very diminished company. for not giving our best feature play to everyone. Um Uh to make it like a a fundamental like

1:47:18 Um You know Like flag in the ground about Hey, you come to Shopify because we work on things like this and when we have them, they become available to you.

1:47:30 And um Uh because again For the period of time. Bad in both.

1:47:37 Uh not like w the web doesn't have identity built in in in a in a in a in a good way. You don't have Like there's autocomplete, but that's really hacky solution to the problem. Um Uh I think Even

1:47:51 pre Internets like uh Yeah, BTX and and and and other things. Had uh Your identity as part of But

1:47:59 Had transactions put in. And um uh AOL right like ahead of all this. Um so so it's kind of f surprising that the internet doesn't um. But it doesn't.

1:48:12 And and therefore. Which is still ongoing. requires us to sometimes enter all the to s with our firms. Um

1:48:21 And Shopee is a But probably fellowphone missing entire platform feature in a way. Right. And um Um So this is valuable for this period of time and it'll be something s uh as super valuable.

1:48:33 If this is uh solved. Um at some point and um Um but we want to play the role of like Democratizing the best features to as many like minute maintenance of small businesses. Because we are pro this we we want the small business to compete on uh equal ground of

1:48:50 the biggest companies and so Um Thank you All this to say.

1:48:56 Um This dial is not just a dial of like monetization. This dial is a dial of Um Uh How much

1:49:06 Observable. Deference to the mission. Uh uh you know, how much we invested into this. And I think it's more valuable for us to build a reputation. Of uh of doing this way.

1:49:18 than it would be for us to Yeah, absolutely kill it for a bunch of quarters. But so like that's um an example of that. I wanna talk with you about two ideas that have left an impression on you. The first one is Paul Graham's essay on conformism. Can you talk to me about

1:49:34 What insights you drew from that? Okay, so let me see if Nberg is this. Um I mean. I have to say like Essay uh

1:49:46 This wonderful like I find they're always insightful. Like they're they're always gems and and and and Um I find I find even sometimes the same essay actually like valuable.

1:50:00 really at multiple stages. Like I I I think I could so so so so His Writing this. Brilliant.

1:50:07 Um They often she um Does this thing we uh Again, he does the thing that's Language is best at for like

1:50:17 Putting A couple of labels to Things that are being observed in general, but like afterwards they make him easier to reason about. And here it's like builds up with Pretty arguments around them which can

1:50:29 Surf as almost onboarding to buy the year. I guess it's just like a I mean Mental bottle thinking that's what I'm saying. I was I I find um Uh

1:50:41 So in in this he uh draws if I remember right. Um Uh Like a one of us uh four penal grads where one axis is um Um How independent

1:50:54 Um Mind that you are And Or how conform is you are on the other side. And then sort of a passive aggressive um standard separation.

1:51:04 And and and um Yeah, I think this is it's valuable because I think um Uh you you can you can sort of put it. Um over this and and you would sort of I think he makes the argument um that

1:51:19 But Most people are probably passive to begin with. And um Um which I think makes I mean I think society would kind of like full about if that's potentially not true. Um

1:51:31 And um uh then there's um Uh uh m more people are uh significant more people would be on a coin. Um I'm not. Underconformists.

1:51:40 Uh side pitch. I mean One thing to acknowledge, conformist is a really Like I I mean maybe or maybe it's only to me, but it seems like a very negative uh connotation. Uh in there.

1:51:52 Um Like This just means like People were willing to like work on great ideas really, like it's like how like especially passive

1:52:01 Conformness is like Um you know some of the greatest people are probably can be ascribed. This way. I was of a specialist, but people who are making a choice on like

1:52:12 I'm going to really go super deep into this one topic. And Um I'm going to go like I I I I I will I'm I'm okay Like.

1:52:23 Working. But I No, on like Like a company goal, right? Like it's like this is like very sort of Uh

1:52:32 This um on the aggressive side, the picture kind of uh Changes, right? Like and and um Um Because Both of the people were trying to like I guess get everyone else to go to their their sites. And and I think there's a

1:52:45 Yeah, like the aggressive c uh independents are clearly entrepreneurs. Um They'll sort of look a little bit different. Um and The aggressive conformists. And I think that's

1:52:59 That is what the essay gets at. I think it's important that we sort of talk about And a little with a little bit of like Hey, there's probably a lot good in there, but like we should also like really understand the downside effects on Uh here because

1:53:14 Aggressive conformism. It's a uh thing that is gonna make it very, very, very hard to innovate. It's gonna be be a thing that Um Certainly, um

1:53:28 Makes a lot of people. notable people's life h living hell on places like Twitter and uh Um You know, but uh A good deal of industries that are

1:53:40 Deeply um invested in in in in this as sort of as an art type. Again, I would say like Generally but bureaucracy is Thank you. Especially sort of a the the

1:53:54 The the sort of bad part of paroxy, the Kafka as a part of paroxys, usually involves Um Aggressive conformist. We very often the comic book villains. But like But

1:54:06 Blend in really well. I don't know. I don't I don't know if one person is like One of those things always or in different contexts? But I what I like is like hey this is useful. Like this this feels like

1:54:22 What's going on? Why are people like having so different opinion? On looking at the same thing, like here's something. That changes things. Um And and some people automatically say, Well that's quote quote, and some people say that's clearly something I'm going to fight. And um

1:54:40 I think it's important that companies What kind of groups they uh Like Like a company that makes no choices about People they want to uh

1:54:51 So the make I mean. Again, you you end up with a full on bell curve and therefore you're gonna end up with a full full on average results. Um Because The

1:55:01 Potential for agreement is extremely tiny. if you're fully in implementation of like every like every uh other set of ideas, right? Because If you combine everyone's favourite colour, you end up with mud brown with an old legs and uh that's sort of a um Yeah, thing you're gonna end up with. So If you are wanting to build an innovation in that company.

1:55:22 Um You should No be very deliberate with uh where you put a con uh like conformists or aggressive conformists. Like they play a very important role in some groups, but you have to be clear about which rule group. Because the consequences of Uh that kind of thing. Uh

1:55:42 Um Like they will cause a thing to happen that you need to want to happen. Because they will definitely make it happen. If not about The the the output you want, then uh you you should treat. Carefully.

1:55:56 The other idea is the infinite game, which we've talked about a little bit earlier. That's a big topic. I find uh Uh James Coss, uh book find it finding it games to be really profound uh and underestimated. Um I think

1:56:10 P Crab could Do us all the service by making a single essay free page for packaging of idea because he seems to be able to uniquely be able to simplify. Complex ideas to this point.

1:56:21 For everyone else you have to read James Cars's book, which is uh somewhat dense, but actually I think it's wonderful. It gives you this real sense of like what Like the the the difference between long term Um Yeah.

1:56:34 Well okay. Okay. Is it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But um

1:56:41 It is important to delineate. Finite infinite games. What's the difference? Finite games are like things that have a goal. Like an anything that has And the coal is not Is not uh

1:56:51 Can't be an infinite infinite game anymore. Um They uh ha have a winning condition and the winning condition is usually met when basically p participants agree that the winning condition is met. This is sort of a convoluted way of saying. Um tennis is a the finite game. Tennis exists um In a word of uh

1:57:09 Like rules, it's been defined. It's as probably a governing body um of uh Um Aggressive conformists. But keep tennis away tennis is. And um

1:57:20 Um Uh And um Like the match. Cost to a couple of sets and

1:57:28 You know, there's a referee with a participant in the game, uh that people forget about, but it's actually like the game is one Because all the Players like all the participants. Agree that the winning condition has been met, which is what someone wants. Uh uh free or two sets.

1:57:43 Um and then it rec recross. And it's the same game of tennis that's played over and over and over and over again, right? So that's a finite game. An infinite game. It's um Some of that has no goal. It's actually interesting. Like let's let's let's try to make this happen with tennis because that's the example I've used.

1:58:01 Um An infinite game. game is actually let's say um fitness. It's like This is not a destination.

1:58:13 It's a journey. It's like it's it's a it's a There is no Like, I think it's not a good thing It's actually um

1:58:22 Um The goal of the game the only goal of the game is keep playing. It's the the You are trying to say I'm gonna go in some direction, the direction of fitness. You can make the opposite decision the decision. You know, but

1:58:36 You could Make a decision to go towards sloth. If you want it. Uh I guess. Uh but you made bad decision and b that that You have to compromise on this. Every single step along this way is gonna be different.

1:58:48 What you allowed to do though along the way is play finite games. So Um and this is where things get really, really interesting. Because people's Like everyone should think about their infinite games. What is the infinite game they do? And maybe you have multiple ones that happen to be in reasonable alignment.

1:59:05 And you should make your life decisions largely based on your uh infinite game. Like again, I talked about my eco uh my infinite game as Um I I I I I I love computing. I I uh I I have Yeah computation and

1:59:19 Technology has huge potential. I really love prepell. huge potential and frankly we are people and therefore we should look out for each other. Like we we should we should help each other reach our full pro uh potential as species and individual level. And and and and and You know, design and systems and organization and all like

1:59:37 My goal is oh f everything I do is try to like get people as much power from technology. Like like V and then the on bath bridge. And um So Shopify is awesome for me because um you know

1:59:52 Like I I it's It's bad and it's because resources it's like my my infinite game. is in hundred percent alignment with my Or all the final games I play within the company of like Doing financial calls.

2:00:05 And and and and uh Uh you know, I don't know. Like You know, build a company with working for and and and and and You know, all these things are finite and have goals. Um

2:00:18 filling the role of CFO. You know, like it's le it's a game that's recruits every You know. Hopefully not too many years. Um And so um

2:00:28 So so That's I think uh important. I think the word of they often confuses us. Um Because for instance school is such a great example. Um I'm really down on academic uh and school here in this conversation. It's funny. We all have uh like I think uh an infinite goal for

2:00:47 Being educated. Right, like if we we want to be educated, we want to acquire knowledge. Um So about

2:00:55 we can turn it into wisdom. Pursuit, I think, every once in a while. I hope. But then we Then when when we explain this to kids, the way we tell them to do this is like you play the game of grade one.

2:01:10 And there's a test in the end, and you A passing or not passing in the end, at least so with return system you repeat the entire class. And um Uh then um

2:01:25 And then you do this again and you the two. And underneath there Each subject is like Math is like We start on page one and we m do a page of a book. And uh we saw.

2:01:37 The current topic and then there's A test and you saw for test it's like It's a fractal of finite games. And everyone's forgetting about education. Because

2:01:46 If you if you if you if you remember the education being the fight infinite game. I think there's a whole lot of final games we're playing even in schools that are not leveling up to the infinite game. We are we we end up obsessed with Testing, over testing. Road memorization, random things that are just like kind of so beside the point.

2:02:10 And um I I think very often. Um my criticism for school and my observation my h my my bias is before having kids and my observation after having kids is that um Some of it is really, really good and some of it is totally random and just Because it's something we're doing because we're doing it and we are falling out of alignment. Okay. So what does all this mean?

2:02:30 Uh fifth. Finite and infinite games. is the following and actually we talked about this and this is actually um potentially sort of theoretical These sort of leaflets of interesting ideas from earlier on.

2:02:44 The biggest difference is The attitude to change. In uh between those two games. If You p pull a lever somewhere and you change gravity down.

2:02:55 Two. Point seven G Um On Plat Earth, if that would be a thing. Okay.

2:03:01 Finite games of tennis cannot recruit. A tennis depends on the Gravity being one G. No. It's gotta be

2:03:08 Edited hopefully. Um But it is not possible to have a game of tennis ever again if Planet Earth just doesn't have one G of uh gravity. Um You can Potentially invent a new game.

2:03:20 But then Um Maybe even one which is more fun than tennis, frankly. Um But

2:03:25 Um You have to end forever this game and you have to invent a new game. It seems to me that the only people who seem to have ability to reinvent a game based on changed uh information are the people were actually the infinite players on um along some other journey. Maybe the infinite blue ends up like

2:03:45 Let us Again, fitness or um uh um self mastery or something, or uh you know, just actually sort of a need for physical entertainment. It's like uh like uh whenever it is. Um But

2:03:58 If you are on an infinite journey. Change is actually welcome. Change is clarifying, change is a new bit of information. Because you actually have no opinion. Like

2:04:08 You you want to try to get a Verizon. But like You're not because this is a goal. Like there there is no goal in an infinite game. Um Yeah.

2:04:19 This vision. Uh horizon. His to keep more vision from horizon for something else. And I think that's I think that's poetic. That's beautiful. And I think it's described like I I I I feel I um

2:04:34 This I read this book twice now, once and it sort of roughly came out and once uh like twenty years later almost, um Um And um Um

2:04:44 I I I realise maybe maybe the first help me in this way myself, but I I I feel I just always had More to do with the infinite game. Uh games. Um And and and I've learned to translate.

2:04:59 the tasks that need to be done along an infinite game. into finite, winnable, quantifiable, sort of high More f fast paced games. Because a lot of people ask me to. Right.

2:05:11 Most people are just not okay on the full Like sort of raw. Like. We never know how you're doing. You sort of like even progress is not

2:05:21 It's not satisfying because like it's it's like There is no Nothing you're working towards. It's just Trying to It's its own like it's progress for its own sake. It's not even progress for

2:05:34 Like an outcome that you're hoping for. Um Um it's almost a little bit Spiritual. It's like it's it's it's you're doing this for your own purposes. And um

2:05:46 Nothing in society. Tells people that this is anything. Both doing. Or even bet. Anyone else I think you you can't have a career

2:05:56 Unless you climb some kind of ladder. It's Fine right. And and One run. And one job up, and one title change, and like

2:06:05 Therefore people's identity gets tight into the finite like I'm currently crushing a finite game of being a a senior UX developer. Or something like this. And um Um You think that's your self worth and you like

2:06:19 And if someone comes to you and saying, Hey, we don't do UX developer because we just moved UX developer. Like that's actually an engineering job because it it's part of engineer discipline. We move them you for over there. That's like Crushing to some people. Delightful to others.

2:06:35 Uh. And um I I I was always wondering trying to figure out like how to separate people. And I I I I do find You you can sort of spot it in the language of people that people use talking about their own career and Yeah, Shopify hires through um

2:06:50 Uh we we talk about just your life story a lot and uh and and I feel like we can find a lot of um predictive artifacts in in in a life story about which kind of type of pursuit you are on. But I think the key is just invite people. Like I I actually think this is one of those like A lot more people would say, Well That sounds like a lot more.

2:07:12 Reasonable. Um than this sort of Meal. to uh to like to doing the same thing over and over and just trying to like I don't know, hit the quarter close slightly better with a slightly higher number. Um,

2:07:29 You do that. If you actually want to become We're the most persuasive people on Plata if if if that's a Or

2:07:38 If this is your craft. through which you make home is better for everyone and and and and make entrepreneurship More available through our product. If if you can find the alignment between but the the infinite codes of a company And your infinite codes of uh the fix that you really want to acquire for yourselves.

2:07:56 And then you pick your finite games. As things that have a second order effect. To help you along your actual journey. There's a harmony that's unbeatable. And I think when you study really, really successful people

2:08:08 you invariably find people who are in some kind of uh uh intrinsic, sometimes unacknowledged, uh to the outside world. I'm joining your own. And Um a um

2:08:21 management in such a way that they like they Spent most of her time. Um doing things that are I'm a valued by society, potentially for the purpose of of a job. But actually

2:08:33 spent uh play doors their own goals. We'll switch gears to talk about. Um personal questions. One of which is Um you recently tweeted that you had fixed your sleep. I'm curious. What did you do to fix your sleep?

2:08:47 I have to admit I uh when when one thing one compromise I made when Covet started is um I had a prescri prescription for sleeping pills. Which I had just for Um I I was really bored about it initially'cause it's like

2:09:09 Speaking of a pretty steep slippery slope. Um it's easy to create a dependents on. But like Baba's side voice. If I can't do red eyes. Then I can We just lose one day with my family on each side of international travel and I just like

2:09:24 That fair like an easy m Um Easy uh decision to make. Uh huh. So I had this. Um When Covid started.

2:09:32 I mean As you can maybe spot. If Like spools up chronologically here at uh

2:09:40 Talk. I uh things I shared about um You know, going for all roadmap and looking at and cancelling a lot of things and doing a million other things besides. Covid. Um

2:09:50 For me meant Fourteen, sixteen hour days, every day. Like all day. Like seven days a week. Out of for probably a year and a half, two actually two years probably almost. I I think I started taking weegans after about a year and a half again. Um uh one this one day.

2:10:05 Um it was just like I I I I I Lots of my executives turned over um Who ended up just like Um Yeah.

2:10:15 Wasn't for them to go into most times. And um uh so so I I I you know, for obvious reasons anyway if The this is sort of um not making excuses, it's just I'm like I can work two free jobs. uh my time management skills and and and and background. Um

2:10:31 If I'm reliably sleeping. Yeah. Six and a half hours, I eat, precisely. Um By way, I thought I needed much more.

2:10:40 So um then. So so are atop sleeping paths. All that's to say I took sleeping paths um And I was like, Okay, I gotta get office because I I'm not gonna stay dependent on Second Pass. And so I I I imagine this is gonna take me a very long time. But I'm saying like One of my first questions I ask is like if we in a bird is Good at this and what can I learn from there?

2:11:00 I'm like Clearly I'll lot of people are good at sleeping. Like this is some this is feels like a core skill for a lot of people. Um And um um You know what you know what

2:11:11 Like because when you go onto sleep hacking and you're like, Okay, melancholen plus like uh, you know Redshift on your screens and like routine and always the same and temperature. You know when you talk about people who are good at sleeping? But Don't know of any of these if they just steep.

2:11:26 Like it's like it's it's very b like it's actually uh almost annoying to the the the simplicity there. Okay. That was a back job. I'm like, Okay, I mean I what's a theory here. So Um I I eventually found Bad Vest, like I mean C B T is like a modern package. I mean It's

2:11:44 If you If it's Uh modern packaged Stoicism. Uh yeah, um

2:11:52 Uh in a combinative behavior and therapy, that is. Um it's like sort of Take Stoicism plus um Uh I think Little bit of

2:12:02 I feel Adler and uh A little bit of yan and then It's like Brilliant.

2:12:11 But That's exactly what we need. So good stuff. Um Unreasonably effective as a fair form of therapy. Um

2:12:19 has a lot of subferries, one of them is T C B D. Hi. CBDI is the subpart of that called insomnia. It's actually Awkwardly named.

2:12:29 But actually it's It's correct. Um I think the the taxonomy is correct. So um finding out that this exists. I tried finding a doctor for it. I couldn't. Um

2:12:39 Because Uh There's only like I think the all of the United States is a hundred So if I Um

2:12:46 People that been doing it since the nineties Um Effective. Ninety percent is better than sleeping pills. Um

2:12:53 Yeah. Reliably fix everyone that's on there. Um. And um Kind of somehow we don't talk about it.

2:13:02 I'm like okay, like what w how do you like I find a poker rate like I think. I think I read like Two books on it. They were like pretty sort of pop size and

2:13:12 I think you can pick any book because it's actually pretty basic. Um Actually found some apps that help which I think is actually really great. Um sort of entry point for

2:13:24 App based healthcare because I think what we what the practitioners do is very similar, they just put you on a program, they they they hold you rigorously to it. But these apps actually do a very good job. Uh uh unless I actually have more data because I have wearing an aura ring, which was very useful to have data before even started with this already, highly recommend your aura rings. Well Apple watches obvious trackers.

2:13:46 Um Because having some data about your sleep is important. And then um babs can just help you interpret this. Okay, one have I learned. I'm not gonna go for the entire program because you just have to do it. But

2:13:57 Um I thought this was gonna take me a month of a grind. I actually sort of Pre registered for Shopify may have to take. Like full time off to do this. Um By day three, except for a night, I have been sleeping perfectly

2:14:13 Have a sense. I mean once a month I Maybe like Well you walk walk me through this. This is like w what what are the steps to to do that? What app do you use? Honestly, it just it's it's like uh it's mental, unfortunately. Unknowingly. It's like it's I fought poorly about sleep. I've had I have had bad stories that I told myself. Like such as If I wake in the morning up in the morning and I feel drowsy

2:14:37 I had a bad night statement. That's incorrect. It's like Right. That just means you woke up in a d different part of a sleep cycle. Right. You cannot just your sleep. It's also I add stories like I need eight hours of sleep. I don't. I I I I In fact,

2:14:51 You can think if you if you've spent enough time s forgetting to church you ever wash, you probably have enough data to figure this out. You go into the sleep app. You look at All of history. You you get it to quit the average of your sleep. Like sleep is like hunger.

2:15:07 You like there is no need to train for it. Like a sleep sleep will come. Your body takes it. Like your body Nick. We'll tell you when you're hungry. And if there's no um your your your your body will tell you And you're sleepy.

2:15:19 Um If you're not sleepy, that means. Just exactly one thing. You are not sleepy. Um Um

2:15:25 There's a difference between sleepiness and fatiguedness. Fatigue this is Like You are running on too low sleeve. Fatigue is

2:15:33 can lead to sleepiness. Like they they're often correlated. The they different things. You cannot sleep when you're just fatigued and not sleepy, but you can always sleep when you're sleepy. Um So what you do I mean on an effective face of basis is uh you you do create this routine. A lot of these tools are useful. Um

2:15:52 You uh but and this is the hardest part. You do not do. Basically. That's some minor. Um uh allowances.

2:16:01 Anything in your bed, but it's a civic. It's your C V you'll be your best for sleeping. You have a chair. Close by Um

2:16:09 Um You would create there. Um You do not Uh bring your phone to bed ever, even sort of in the afternoon if it's like convenient and you're just like hiding from the kids or whatever. Um and uh like it's just it it's it's it needs to be a little bit more parnobian

2:16:24 Uh Mm. Um Sleep.

2:16:31 Like into your bed if you're sleepy. Uh you don't go there until you're CB. You learn how to feed audio S D. You will always get sleep at the same time of the day. And if you don't see me, you don't need to sleep. You just

2:16:41 Uh. I I'm I'm Go to sleep at Pega. I'm going to I'm going reading at ten every evening, basically. That's sort of like maybe sometimes a little bit earlier, depending on how good my book is. Um

2:16:53 And then I'm Well go to my bed and I'm sleepy and I I I I sleep immediately. I fell I fell asleep if it like my the sleep effectiveness rating on my sleep checkers is basically ninety five percent now. It's like I just that means like On average it's like five minutes in bed when I'm not sleeping. And um

2:17:10 Then uh Okay, I I Some some nights there's more, some next nights there's it's fewer. After like over the course of the week it averages to exactly six and a half hours, which exact is exactly what my What told me the average amount of s sleep that my body

2:17:27 Takes Um It's No. Yeah.

2:17:30 You can be um less lucky like you can be more unlucky here and then might actually need aid. Um at which point That's your number. Um But this is Uh apparently there are people we'd W actually legitimately needs up to twelve hours of sleep.

2:17:44 I f I I that sounds like That's crazy. Unbelievably comparable with modern society, I really feel for most people. That should be treated as like And thank you. What what a rough card that would be to be dead fifth. Um But there's lots of people who are

2:17:58 Fine with uh You know, less There's a book which initially I thought was good, called Why We Sleep, which is actually very bad. Um from everything I now know. Um I I mean it's it's it's not that the book is Incorrect.

2:18:13 In the macro sense. But it gives you It it it it I think the book itself is anxiety inducing. Um Because it makes claims on which I don't think prove out. On the um

2:18:25 Importance of sleep and how Everyone's goal should be to sleep eight hours and there is no variance. This is a Bizarre claim to make, given that they all were incredibly good trackers now, and we have all the data and we just simply know that that's not true. Um

2:18:41 And so I think there's a bit of damage caused by this and I think we should need to change the story. Okay. So

2:18:49 I don't know if that's like all content that needs to go on a podcast. I I actually Um I I don't know what to do with this. I feel like it's just like It's silly that we have so many people who can't sleep and it's actually s something that seems But

2:19:05 Ma maybe this can't have everyone, but like it cease to have everyone I'm sending in this direction. Well that's why I wanted to talk to you about it, because everybody has problems sleeping. And it seems like the most common problem these days is like You go to bed, you don't have a problem falling asleep, but then you wake up at like two or three AM And you're like wide awake and wired. Yeah, exactly. I mean

2:19:26 What you do is you get up to the chair. Yeah. For fifteen minutes. You read and your body sleeping and then you go back and um After a while your body just doesn't do it anymore. Like it's it's it's it's I know it sounds crazy. But like

2:19:38 It's like takes two to tangle. Like if with one of us is like super not in on the job or or not aligned with a With with a worth it's intuition of sleep then like you feel not sleep, um interfere. Yeah. Um, two final questions. What did you used to spend time on that you now see as a waste of time?

2:19:58 A lot of trouble. Um I think um I I I I think it's uh hugely pro um spending time with people and uh I think travel is a Um

2:20:10 tax on doing this, it's just totally Like easily worth it. Um But I think there was a lot of travel before that. Um pandemic, I think which was almost like

2:20:21 I know. Feels like It was almost penance for meetings. Like it's just like it's like Your sincerity had to be proven at some point of alter of sincerity by you sacrificing uh

2:20:36 Days of travel and Airports and cross continent travel. Um And compromising your time with your children. Sounds insane now, but we did this, all of us. Um that shouldn't come back.

2:20:49 What should come back is like Hey, deliberate time spent with people that are important and then it goes nets out. I I I I I fell a little bit into this. Work through Orkchart, treat it as a trustful. You know, like uh

2:21:05 hire smart people and then get out of their way. I think that's a waste of everyone's time. It's not even good for the Like It's a nice story, but it's like dumb. It's like One of us.

2:21:15 Would be nice if that would work, but doesn't uh if n at least not may maybe again if you Going for the middle of a bell curve of outcomes then. I think probably it works. But And in some industries that's all you need to do. Um

2:21:27 But like not in mine. Um we we're trying. For class. Um Um Have Enormous perspective and ability for

2:21:36 Again, found legitimacy to Make things happen faster. And um Uh when I want to make decisions I want to Like I want to be part of the potent decisions because that helps me for my meta model and so No Ivo.

2:21:50 Yeah. on the old idea of a trust battery that we talked about in previous times we talked about um to Devon. Um The trust bed we builds. We work together, we work alongside, we make key decisions together. A as a team Everyone brings perspective. We listen to absolutely everyone, but the choice at some point has to be someone's.

2:22:09 And um Um Yeah. It's not a good place for Faith. At the end of the day, if you're trying to make a work as product, it's all the details that matter and for that

2:22:21 You need to have a team of people who are Okay to go into all the details. Um Or at least can talk to the trade offs that are being considered when we talk about the details. And so um I think that's uh It is

2:22:34 So we how how I always looked on our technology. I guess. I like understanding like many layers below the level I'm working at. Um Um I I again I I feel it very I don't know why it took me off.

2:22:47 It was a decade. But like it took me almost a decade to allow my The way I've been successful in t working with technology and software. To actually fully come To uh Fresh.

2:23:02 out outside of workman technology. Um Like you like maybe this is sort of uh thing you you're spotted in the in our conversation. I'm I'm I'm a lot more at ease with the integration of us two things. I think it's not even an integration, it's actually our collision course. And I think

2:23:19 Maybe it's already happened. I don't know, man, like I'm looking at some Everything. There's a lot of good content and something like Havis Have a Business Report.

2:23:30 But sometimes I read these things I'm like That is some kind of weekend at Bernie's kind of style party you guys are on where you think we're start still Just Like if it this is like

2:23:44 E everything that you were talking and taking as like statements and as as mutable truths. His Utterly Uh

2:23:55 Invalidate it. By things that we've Figure it out. And Engineering system design.

2:24:02 Ten years ago. And just Because that's the nerds doing this kind of thing. We haven't been pulling out The lessons. In the way like

2:24:13 Nash. Hold out the lessons. From his poker evenings to then get a Nobel Prize for In game theory, right?

2:24:23 It used to be that academia was better at pulling. uh the lessons out of practitioners and um Uh I don't think that's happening anymore. And

2:24:33 Oh no. If academia are doing it, we should At least the business leaders need to do it more and so I don't know. I've changed the way I work, uh, mostly around self confidence and in in in my uh

2:24:46 Um Intuitions. I again I think your intuition is All of the mental models, all of your experience. the supercomputer in our brain that's absolutely N in surpa not uh unsurpassed by

2:24:59 All Turing Machines combined. Um Coming to work too. Use everything you've ever seen to make the best decision in the moment. Um And uh

2:25:09 Um Continuing just to build out. Like the The situations I can

2:25:17 models too or can say I've seen this before and uh Um uh you know that that's That's how I Become better at my job. And um

2:25:28 I'm not putting engineering skills on speed dial anymore. They are now the core of how I make decisions and I I I I just It's That's been just a Fascinating.

2:25:39 Like if I could travel back in time. Like And just give this as a Hey, this is this will happen. I wouldn't but I I would be extraordinarily

2:25:48 Surprised by this. Almost in a like Hey, I I've got to be. These skills took me here. They will not take me there. I actually need to go for a full change of identity and just like embrace

2:26:02 Me looking for strategy and Thank you. A bit more of the sort of old school things. A bit. Um I I I thought this was gonna work. It's blown up in my f

2:26:14 I think it can work in peacetime. Mm-hmm. Uh I think it cannot end. And and and and

2:26:21 I don't like war time. I think Crunch time. And like where where like everything matters, where all the slack is gone. You know, like we're they're very Well it's much more of a h highwire act of like can can you pull this off?

2:26:35 Like Um It's just There's not enough slack in the system, then everything has to be more precise. And

2:26:45 the feedback loop is much t we are in a recession time potentially. Uh Like a different like it's crisis into crisis. In a in a way. Um, How about the weirdest crisis.

2:26:58 Uh compared to previous ones. Bizarre shape to them. Oh. Um

2:27:05 And uh therefore even less predictive. Then You can't even really look at previous ones because we just never had an economy that was also good. But inflation. But Yeah. All this kind of thing. Um so so um

2:27:19 Um In these times there's like no margin for error, but like very tight feedback loops. It's actually better times for this kind of decision making and and then again even more valuable valuable and the innovative in the new. You seem a lot more comfortable. I hope so.

2:27:37 Wh what technology are you most excited about right now? Um well uh I would say um I mean look I I'll say Metaverse and MS rolling the ice. I think the metaverse is like a having way. Uh um implementation. Uh it it's like uh nowhere and then suddenly everywhere and it's like it's hard to predict where it's going to be.

2:27:59 We definitely have. uh platform requirements around glasses, but like they are also like Belaps are here in goes. Uh be if we know how to I think we know how to make the lasers for the glasses now, minus maybe red.

2:28:15 Um And like the like This is really where academia shines and and then there there's a lot of practical Um uh industry industry relevant uh work happening.

2:28:26 Um Uh So so that is going to happen and I'm excited about it. Uh I think that um Uh It it'll just be clear that it's openly going to that word. Um it's not as far away as people think.

2:28:42 Right now you call it, say, like machine learning. So machine learning has been unreasonably effective already. Um But Or do transformer models change everything. I it's another one of those. They transform models feel a little bit more v vocational than academic and like

2:28:59 They're probably not as good an analogy to the brain as Maybe some of the other Like approaches, or at least a sub as p pure play. Yes, um. Some of them.

2:29:09 Um But. Well, but it's crazy what's happening. Like it's crazy. And another thing which I love about what's happening machine learning, like His

2:29:20 It it it it feels like uh I mean Daddy. But really

2:29:32 I have to say as a as a sort of Collapsed. Apprentice. Cook should uh Proper h slash hacker.

2:29:42 I love that uh stable diffusion. Happened. And Um not even for what it can do over but it's stunning. Like who knew that So much of his human creativity could fit into four point two gigabytes.

2:29:57 Mm-hmm. of binary floating point numbers. H I mean that's another thing to send back in a bottle. Like for time machine and

2:30:06 Really, really stunned people with um Uh, but we all live in that world where we know but that's true, which is like also something that doesn't feel fully reintegrated with our main line human history. Um And um uh but what what is so profound, I think stable diffusion is that it's gotten released as open source and now what's happening with it is Just um like ac all acceleration has but

2:30:31 This is already but probably maybe minus crypto. A fastest talk. Uh progressing field in the world. And um Um

2:30:41 Two or three more gears there. If you track like I mean, we started like I think first versions on top of a line graphics card on your own machine, you can execute this, right? It's open sourced. Um You could make an image in fifteen seconds. I think we're down to three.

2:30:56 Yes. And and and like With no hope changes. And just like No. Because

2:31:03 Um the tooling behind machine learning was again is a very academic field. It really feels academic. It's Jankiest. Heck. Yeah.

2:31:14 the m the soundest engineering uh that that I've ever seen. Um although it's unbelievable what they've enabled, but like it's it's it's coming from again mathematical purity rather than sort of Developer experience, like this kind of stuff. So so that's true. Um, and then you have um But now you have a lot of people who can contribute because we have an open source thing that we can all hack on. So suddenly you have people who are good at uh developer experience. Suddenly you have People like John Carmack who are like Hey everyone.

2:31:44 Well we can probably do this with less precision, and here's like fifteen ways no one's ever used a computer. I I don't know if he actually is saying this, but like He will say this because he's that kind of person. He's gonna tell us how to make computers do this thing significantly easier. And uh a a lot of people who uh r uh uh like grew up on CarMax contributions to video games and and have been inspired and want to do and bring the same thing to Bisfield. So Um

2:32:09 Everything changes every time there's like a significant breakthrough in terms of speed and and and and and and computation because uh like It is Extraordinary how many things we can do with language large language models and uh diffusion models and transformers and I I I just like I wish

2:32:29 Thank you. In a more inspired world. Yesterday's breakthroughs in the world of stable diffusion. would be every single day of the last couple of months. Um

2:32:45 We we we we're we're spending our time Thinking about uh Bay relevant and bay important. But Oh

2:32:56 There's more important things going on in the world that are like a lot more Crazy Exciting, cyberpunk and optimistic. Um Um And uh

2:33:07 I think that's I I think that's incredible. I I I I just can't wait to see what's coming. Uh coming from there. I'm pretty optimistic about coming out.

2:33:15 Auto click. Whatever Valuable things coming out of the crypto world as well. Um No S That went through a cycle that just shedding a lot of uh

2:33:24 So frough that must stay obvious, and Easy to criticize for. And um So I find that I I I I I I'm I'm I um

2:33:35 Extremely excited and ever things progress. Um I Can Watch three, four, five different fields right now. Or if I'm progressing at breakneck pace.

2:33:46 Yeah. I mean especially Machine learning is the first time I think I found my Total capacity. This progresses so fast, but I think my model of what's possible is falling behind.

2:34:03 Even though I'm trying to make that not true. Alex, sometimes I Just don't notice that something is accelerating, uh and far behind, but then I can catch up. Yeah. Makes you have trouble. Staying up.

2:34:14 Staying uh uh on top of it. I mean maybe that's a statement about Me being very busy at work, maybe it's a statement on me being in my forties now. Um But like Um

2:34:26 I don't know. If like if if if if it If it's a test The machine learning model world is the first which is clearing it. Um in a technical realm and I think very relatively quotes for that because I think we have a lot of writing on this. Um so that's awesome.

2:34:41 The best is yet to come. It is. It's and the is gonna be friggin' amazing. There's no chance. Like I'll take a long bet. For a lot of money on this, if anyone wants to take it.

2:34:54 Uh it'll have to be a real long bet, but like if I'm right, I'll have to pay out. Um But For the rest of human history. But twenty years before this point, I mean twenty years after are going to be more studied.

2:35:07 And will be treated as the coming of eight of our species. Um They are going to be treated as The um formative years.

2:35:17 The questions we had to ask ourselves. Maybe had to Um Learn how to organise in a way. But

2:35:24 Um Be safe. Our planet, um Or at least Um

2:35:31 Take the things that are available to us. And and prioritize if I'm based on something. But it's Clear prioritization for the for for the for for the global.

2:35:40 Good. Like where we actually band together. I was had very high hopes this would happen around Covet. Covet felt the first time. Um Maybe since the since since the plague has a has a like

2:35:53 Uh all humans got attacked by something and w might be might be a binding. Experience. You all know that didn't work. Um But I think we learned a lot about

2:36:03 How information travels and and and how it You know, like the upsides and the downsides. We've we've becoming so much more mature in understanding What the word is like. Given all these new possibilities, um

2:36:16 Uh behalf. And so uh I think these are our formative years in a lot of ways. Um they've involved um The coming of age of I think But One of the greatest.

2:36:27 Click. If technology is progress, the Turing Machine is the engine of progress. And uh that that but almost all like net. human purpose is gonna be built on uh

2:36:40 Because everything else is gonna round to zero. Um And it was probably ma mainly needed for bootstrapping with your machine. And uh The uh

2:36:50 We are like the really sort of custodians and the explorers of this field. And I I just I have man, like There's no chance you would want to live to any diff different times. Hey, the future is fantastic and we'll probably become immortal relatively soon and all these kind of things. Um And um

2:37:07 Uh, maybe not us, but our children definitely will. Uh and and and so um A lot of what people will be preoccupied with in the future is clearly what's what's next and what's possible. Uh uh and and many of the biggest questions will remain to be studied and and to curiosity. But like It's here.

2:37:27 It all was like up on the table and it was mounded the whole thing and it just it seems It seems so incredibly great to be around You have to study this stuff. It's so fantastic to go and Um

2:37:40 Actually be a perfect Like play a tiny little role, like Like again the Th the crazy possibility That

2:37:51 You know. So many of us. Um made these choices to get into this industry or pick up these disciplines and these skills which all really, really help.

2:38:02 Making companies which are the implementations of large scale coordination, which again, as I said earlier, is like all the problems that are worth solving now, and large scale coordination challenges. Um You know, we get to play our like our part in it and we get to make a dent into it, and I think that s means we get to write into the

2:38:23 Like The the the the most lit up. parts of uh of like of of of a historical record. I think that's just uh I think it's humbling and incredible. And we get to Oh play part on it, that's cool. I think that's a great place to end this. Thank you.

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