Uncapped with Jack Altman
· Jack Altman, Tobi Lutke
[00:00:00] S0: That’s the “what do you like” side of the question. To flip it to what candidates are like, have you felt any change in competing for talent in this market? You’ve got a lot of variables at play here. You’re public. Many of your competing-for-talent companies are probably private. You’re in Canada, not in Silicon Valley. There are all these different factors, but I’m curious how the AI wave changes what you do to attract and retain the very best people? [00:00:00] S1: I think the best way to deal with recruiting is to build a company worth working for, for the best. People are thinking about it too much as selling and not enough as marketing, or at least just information. [00:00:00] S0: Yeah. It’s like, “How do I look super healthy? You could use this angle, you could turn to this angle, you could do…” Or you could also just try to be healthy. [00:00:00] S1: Exactly. Things are just simpler sometimes than they seem. [00:00:00] S0: So what goes into that then? Obviously there’s being a good business, but— [00:00:00] S1: Just don’t mire people in bureaucracy. Give people the space to be creative, allow them to fall in love with the mission, have them understand what problems people care about and what impact the work has. Shopify has a lot of intrinsic advantages here, but the best way to attract talent is to make it so that when people try on the idea of maybe coming to Shopify, they come by, they meet everyone they will work with, and also the really impressive people that they will work with together.
· Tobi Lutke, Jack Altman
[00:00:00] S1: Just don’t mire people in bureaucracy. Give people the space to be creative, allow them to fall in love with the mission, have them understand what problems people care about and what impact the work has. Shopify has a lot of intrinsic advantages here, but the best way to attract talent is to make it so that when people try on the idea of maybe coming to Shopify, they come by, they meet everyone they will work with, and also the really impressive people that they will work with together. [00:00:00] S0: As a CEO of a public company for, I think, over 10 years, how do you feel about companies being private for so long? Obviously it’s more possible than ever. Venture markets are a lot bigger than they were back when you were going public. What do you think? [00:00:00] S1: I find it a little bit sad. I totally understand why the individual companies do it. I just find it, man, I’m so glad that so many people end up— [00:00:00] S0: Buying Shopify stock. [00:00:00] S1: Buying Shopify early. [00:00:00] S0: It’s gone well for them. A lot of retail investors have done really well with it.
· Jack Altman, Tobi Lutke
[00:00:00] S0: It’s gone well for them. A lot of retail investors have done really well with it. [00:00:00] S1: Exactly. It’s remarkable. I can go basically anywhere and meet people, and they tell me that they bought some shares at some point and it was really important to them. It’s cool. I want people to make money with Shopify because I’m very much not… The sort of “one share, one vote” kind of thing, the influence part I’m like, “Totally what the fuck is that all about? Just like founder shares, let’s go.” But I think they are tickets to participate in something you believe in. My view of money is, it’s how you vote for the world you want. When you buy a product, you’re voting for that product and everything that caused that product to exist. That works with shares too. If you want to hop on a company because it does things that you agree with, then you can buy them, and you can go to another company if someone else captures your imagination better. I think that’s a wonderful institution. I just also feel like it came from a meme. Because I have lived the other side of this… It was kind of easy to go public, wasn’t it? [00:00:00] S0: You’re saying the “stay private is much better” came from a meme? The argument is you don’t have the quarterly public scrutiny. Not everybody can see all your financials all the time. Your employees aren’t seeing their stock move up and down.
· Jack Altman, Tobi Lutke
[00:00:00] S0: You’re saying the “stay private is much better” came from a meme? The argument is you don’t have the quarterly public scrutiny. Not everybody can see all your financials all the time. Your employees aren’t seeing their stock move up and down. [00:00:00] S1: Fair enough. I just never really saw these things as bad things. They induce a diligence and a data-drivenness and a set of responsibilities which I think are worth having, because you’re responsible for thousands of people’s jobs and an important product. [00:00:00] S0: What are the other benefits? You just shared one about the joy of a lot of people getting to share in your success. [00:00:00] S1: It helped us in a way that maybe is not always the case. Especially as a Canadian company listing in New York, we were just very small. When Shopify IPO’d, it was like a $1.5 billion valuation. [00:00:00] S0: So you’ve had 100x in the public markets.
· Jack Altman, Tobi Lutke
[00:00:00] S0: So you’ve had 100x in the public markets. [00:00:00] S1: Yeah, and that’s cool. Therefore I find lots of people who tell me that was a good investment for them. It gave us legitimacy. We never wanted to go upmarket, but we always wanted to have a product that can work well for people at all parts of the scale. That just sounds like words. It’s about 100x harder from building a product. Building a product that actually scales across the entire thing is insanely difficult to do and has been one of our most fun challenges to pursue. Bigger customers were just like, “Yeah, you’re a public company. That’s cool.” That’s different. Then frankly, there’s really, really good people who would only work for a public company, so that’s also helpful. [00:00:00] S0: Makes sense. My last question. I know you have at least been a big reader. Do you still have time to read a lot? You got any books I should read? [00:00:00] S1: There’s so many books I love. I’m a huge fan of short, incredible books like Parkinson’s Law and Lessons of History. When people distill all of their knowledge into under 100 pages, I think that’s great. I recently read a really good book called What Is Intelligence? It re-explains basically all of biology from a perspective of how important prediction is and how it probably emerged just in a sequence. It felt existentially profound in a way that I don’t quite know if that was… Because it felt like all this part was just to support an argument later that wasn’t actually that important to make, I think. So this is interesting.
· Tobi Lutke, Jack Altman
[00:00:00] S1: There’s so many books I love. I’m a huge fan of short, incredible books like Parkinson’s Law and Lessons of History. When people distill all of their knowledge into under 100 pages, I think that’s great. I recently read a really good book called What Is Intelligence? It re-explains basically all of biology from a perspective of how important prediction is and how it probably emerged just in a sequence. It felt existentially profound in a way that I don’t quite know if that was… Because it felt like all this part was just to support an argument later that wasn’t actually that important to make, I think. So this is interesting. [00:00:00] S0: I think others have felt this too, but I’ve been struggling more to read. Partially it’s a stage of life thing, but partially I think the internet is making my brain loops too short, and partially I think I am in a head space where I want every minute to be productive. So it’s hard for me to read a book for joy, and I need to figure out how to get through that. But you seem to have figured out how to—