Shopify’s founder and CEO Tobi Lütke is probably one of my most impactful recent leadership discoveries. He was definitely one of the best speakers at the All-in Summit 2023. Here are several ideas that resonated with me and both of these ideas relate to the question of how much values and morality should be incorporated into the company’s culture. Tobi believes that as much as possible, companies should be led by the founders, not professional CEOs because unlike CEOs, founders can use charisma, legacy, and other invisible factors to accelerate change or introduce initiatives that are risky, controversial, or, perhaps, needed but unpopular.

Tobi understands that as companies grow, corporate inertia is inevitable. He also strongly believes that meetings, especially recurring meetings, tend to reduce productivity and delay decisions, which is why at Shopify, all recurring meetings and all Slack channels are automatically cancelled and deleted, forcing people to re-evaluate, what is really needed and how often.

One of the examples of changes that only a founder can introduce (because any CEO would be scared) was Tobi’s memo titled “We are a team, not a family” where he explained how being part of the company is not the same as being a part of the family. 

Some of the principles and takeaways from his memo are:

• The company is a team, not a family, because families are unconditional and their function (among other things) is to offer unconditional emotional support and love, but teams are temporary and exist to achieve a specific purpose. Unlike families, teams must be performance-driven, and individuals should be held accountable for their contributions. Underperformers are expected to improve, or they may need to leave the team.
• Family is a more static organism, its survival is not challenged by competition or changes in technology, but the company’s survival depends on its ability to adapt and make changes. This is why employees are expected to develop new skills to remain relevant.
• Families often share common values about the past and are rooted in preserving traditions. The company’s values are often focused on the future and decision-making and risk-taking with a goal to achieve this future.  The concept of accountability for results is very important for the team, because family members often help each other without expecting reciprocity, however, compensating for low performance in the company creates a toxic environment and becomes counter-productive.

It is actually very telling that Tobi has been among the early adopters of cryptocurrencies, he often speaks about how inefficient current online payments became and how much potential blockchain settlements could offer. For example, Shopify currently has to maintain integrations with 80+ payment service providers (PayPal, Adyen, Stripe, Klarna, and many local payment options), and many of these integrations, reconciliations, separate settlement flows, reserves, payouts are completely redundant and unnecessary. He indicated that the payments industry is ripe for further disruption and, frankly, I could not agree more.

Have you been following or using Shopify? What are your thoughts?

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