London Fintech Podcast
00:49:47 · Rohit Mishra
[00:49:47] S0: is it's going to be it's going to be incredibly important that you think of whoever your users are, whether your users are consumers or businesses, that they will be represented by an agent. And that's something for you to embrace and not fight. And whether you're doing... If you're you're serving businesses, it's likely that the way future businesses will discover that you can solve a problem for them is via agentic means. The way they may interact with your service is via via agent. And I... Like, those who will embrace this shift will likely find themselves in a much more stronger position than those who will hold hold on to their current ways. Again, nothing's binary. And, like, we... As much as, you know, at Shopify, we are deep believers in agent tech. We continue to build better and richer tools for merchants to build better storefronts. Things are not binary. You can... But it's important that I I find that many people are self censoring, saying, no. No. This doesn't apply to my business. I... My business works in x way. But the agents at the end of day are just, like more... If if if you were working with a business that had as one, 10, 100 user... 100 people in that business, now just think of that business as having 10 x more people. It just happens that the next set of people are are these agents that are trying to give that business more leverage and... So that they can do more. And I think we we are thinking a lot about just like, you know, in all of... In all the industries, whether in b to c or b to b, user experience has been a has been a ongoing topic and service design has been an ongoing topic. How does that change with agents where discovery or transactions are happening with... From an from an agent? This agentic experience is something is something that deserves deeper thought. And so I would I would encourage everyone to warmly embrace agents, have empathy for agents, and and accordingly make adjustments so that your products and services can both be discovered and used by agents without necessarily adding friction because you do... Because you're worried about second order effects here.
00:52:28 · Tony Clark
[00:52:28] S1: Yeah. I mean, that's such powerful framing. Get ready to open your doors to the agents. And you wouldn't... I I certainly wouldn't actually think that on some of the more traditional sectors that I just mentioned but if your, your agent is looking for the best, digital pensions provider or wealth manager for you or your meta muse wants to raise the insurance claim on the car that you just crashed, you know, you need to be energetically enabled business to be able to channel that that activity and that opportunity. And I imagine some of the others perhaps are are not yet thinking that way.
00:53:09 · Rohit Mishra
[00:53:09] S0: Yeah. I I think as humans, we are programmed to always overestimate risk and underestimate opportunity. And that doesn't mean there is no incremental risk. There is. But there's also massive opportunity on... Like, I I I am... As as somebody who has had to file end claims in my life, I think both me as a consumer and my insurance provider can... We can both benefit by more seamless ways of interacting and communicating. And I think that's the way... That's the power and leverage of agents that that I... That that I'm hopeful that more industries, more... Even more traditional industries fully embrace and say, okay. What can we what can we provide so that... Especially with these new class of personal assistant agents, we've had AI with things like chatbots now for a few years. But I think personal assistant agents, they are a whole new class of modality. And I think the... With the deeper context that they can have about the consumer, memory about the consumer, they they can be way more effective and powerful. And it's... That... That's why I... I'm very hopeful that more and more industries, including traditional industries, really embrace these agents and try try to find opportunities instead of just worry about differences.
00:54:38 · Tony Clark
[00:54:38] S1: Yeah. I always like to ask people as we finish the conversation what they've learned along the way and you've been doing some clearly some very interesting things and and and at this point in in the industry, it couldn't be more exciting I would I would suggest. But is there anything that you've picked up along the way that you wish you'd known just when you were starting out? You just told your lung... Younger self perhaps when you were taking your first role?
00:55:04 · Rohit Mishra
[00:55:04] S0: I wished I had... The thing that I I wished I had learned is it's important to fail... To have failures. Not... You you don't seek to fail, but you should don't... Can't be scared to fail. And and and feel fail fail fail on on bigger things. It's okay. Because we all are in our jobs here because we're trying to find alpha. And you only find alpha if you have enough pain tolerance of trying putting your... Yourself, your products out there. Hopefully, many work, some won't. But I think the thing that you only learn with experience is the more you resist it and the more you want to always be seen and looked as... Rohit built great products only. That that becomes a... That that becomes a huge impediment because then you don't take risks. Even with agentic, we talked so much about it. There have been end things we have tried that haven't worked. But I don't see how we could have found things that did work without without trying and attempting and being vulnerable to failure across across this journey. So I... If I had... I could go back to my past self, I would, you know, I would I would say, hey. That's not just something that you read in read in read in books and blog posts. That's something to really live by, and embrace that more deeply.
00:56:38 · Tony Clark, Rohit Mishra
[00:56:38] S1: Thank you. Yeah. Take some risks and learn from the ones that don't work. They are, picking... Trying to pick the right things to spend your time and your money on. But, I guess the point there is that they're not all gonna pay off, but, you learn something every time. Anything that you do, Rohit, when you're off duty? I mean, I imagine right in the mark of the addition release, you might not have had any spare time, but if you do if you do get something, is there anything you do for a bit of a mental reset? [00:57:07] S0: Well, you you you are are bang on money. Haven't had a lot of time recently with with with additions and agents. But my my way of... I love a good deep drama show as it... I need something that completely absorbs me out of my world. So I I love I love drama shows. Horses is my It's one [00:57:35] S1: of my favorite. [00:57:36] S0: It's like... It's it's epic. Gary Oldman is is a genius. Loved loved slow horses. And then, you know, I I I I spend a bunch of time just... I find podcasts are such a gift. I'm a huge, huge fan of Acquired. I'll try to... I'm I'm working through their back catalog a bit. I'm on on the Lockheed Martin episode. And I read Skunk Works, the book about the the Lockheed the Lockheed Martin, but now also listening to the the acquired episode on it. So, yeah, it's... I would say some drama shows and then then some podcasts that I love. I love some of the long form podcasts and and and completely getting out of my world into something completely different. So so those those are my ways to to to relax. Yeah.