Happy Monday!
I hope you had a wonderful weekend.
Let me give a brief about Tobi Lütke before I share 1 interesting story, 2 quotes to think about and 3 short lessons from him for you to read this week.
Tobi Lütke (@tobi) is the founder and CEO of Shopify, Tobi Lütke. In case you’re still new to the internet, Shopify is the largest e-commerce platform that allows people to easily set up online storefronts to sell everything from jewellery to surfing lessons.
Shopify began as a simple two-man operation selling snowboards online, but it became clear rather quickly that it had the potential to grow into much more. Now Shopify employs more than 4,000 people and supports more than 600,000 businesses online. Kylie Cosmetics and Allbirds both launched their online retail store using Shopify
Tobi is an active advocate for computer literacy and education and serves as a board member of Canada Learning Code, an organization working to give all Canadians access to digital skills. In 2014, Tobi was named The Globe and Mail‘s CEO of the Year. He served as Chair of the Digital Industries Table, an advisory board commissioned by the federal government to provide recommendations on how to turn Canada into a digital leader.
1 STORY FOR YOU
What’s your box?
When I (Tobi) was in middle school in Germany I realized there were roughly two groups of kids. The not-popular kids and popular kids. Upon realizing this I thought it seemed to be a choice and I would like to be part of the more popular kids — as if that’s something you can decide. So I did what I’ve always done in these kinds of cases when I set out to accomplish something, I sort of analyzed the situation and tried to figure out how I might be able to join those popular kids. The answer I ended up coming up with was I needed Air Jordan sneakers.
At the time, this school was the centre of my universe — the centre of my world. When I first got there I was uncomfortable because there were a lot of new things, but then over time you sort of poke at it and you realize there is a social network, a hierarchy, and it starts to become familiar and uncomplicated — you understand what’s going on. It was this box I was in and everything I was experiencing could be explained from within this box.
I was vaguely aware there was more to the world, but it seemed to not truly matter. There was stuff I didn’t understand which my parents concerned themselves with, but within my little world — within this school — the most obvious and profound thought I could possibly have was that I needed Air Jordan sneakers to be part of the popular kids. This now seems silly from an adult perspective.
When you’re young, high school is like a universe (or a box), that you’re trying to understand and make sense of. While you’re in high school though, your understanding of it will most likely be wrong, and you won’t really see the truth of certain situations until later on in life
At some point, hopefully, what happens is you find a crack somewhere in the narrow box that you’re in, and you go into an outer box, where the box you just came from is like a tiny parcel in the corner
This might happen when you go to college, in the beginning, you’ll be uncomfortable, and this new box won’t make much sense to you either. Eventually, you’ll figure things out, and you’ll find a crack, and then head to a much larger box
In life, pay attention to those you meet who are clearly in a box or two ahead of you
“Try to import things from other people’s boxes who are presumably in bigger boxes”
2 QUOTES FROM HIM
“Computers are the most powerful tools that humanity has ever created. Yet, we treat them largely as a black box; as if it were an alien artifact that magically appeared on desks, in homes, and in our pockets."
“In my worldview, time is energy that you can invest in things, and money is energy that you can invest. Time has significantly more leverage than money in terms of how much energy you get out of time.”
3 LEARNINGS FOR YOU
Surround yourself with people that are just slightly better than yourself
Your team is never stronger than its weakest link. If most of your players are rated around 70 (every player is rated from 0-99), getting a Ronaldo or Messi (both 99 rated players) won’t save your team. Not only won’t your other players improve that much, Ronaldo won’t be able to perform at his best because, guess what - it’s a team sport. Instead, the best tactic is to have players that are around the same point range with a couple of slightly better players. An 82 rated player will perform better when paired with an 85 rated player. In my experience, the same goes for business. Try to surround yourself with people that are slightly better than you in certain areas and you’ll both benefit from each other and find success.
There’s no way to replicate/formulate startup success.
Lütke is often asked what the magic bullet is to create a world-class technology company. His appropriately tech-centric metaphor is a clever one: one of the biggest flaws in “human firmware” is our tendency to copy or replicate the behaviours of others, expecting the same results (i.e. company 1 did A, B, and C, and were successful. Therefore, if company 2 does A, B, and C, they’ll see the same success). There is, of course, no way to build a repeatable formula for company trajectories – there are just way too many variables for that reality to exist.
Optimize for growth
Try to pick projects and ventures that, even if you fail, you’ll have developed new skills and relationships that transcend any one given project – this way it’s really difficult to fail completely. Optimize your choices to be exposed to growth. Being part of something that’s growing fast is better than being part of something that isn’t growing fast because opportunities are essentially everywhere and you’re not competing for something.
That’s it from me, until next Monday! Also, share with your friends :)