Tobi Lütke on Creating Shopify for Americans as a German in Canada
Conversations with Tyler
Conversations with Tyler
4.8 • 2.4K Ratings
🗓️ 18 September 2024
⏱️ 54 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Tobi Lütke is the CEO and co-founder of Shopify. 20 years ago, he was just a German coder who emigrated to Canada to launch some ecommerce platform with another German. Now he’s the world-renowned thought and tech leader who has revolutionized online shopping for billions. He’s also the creator of many open-source libraries like Liquid, Active Merchant, and the Typo weblog engine.
Tyler and Tobi hop from Germany to Canada to America to discuss a range of topics like how outsiders make good coders, learning in meetings by saying wrong things, having one-on-ones with your kids, the positives of venting, German craftsmanship vs. American agility, why German schooling made him miserable, why there aren’t more German tech giants, untranslatable words, the dividing line of between Northern and Southern Germany, why other countries shouldn’t compare themselves to the US, Canada’s lack of exports and brands, ice skating to work in Ottawa, how VR and AI will change retailing, why he expects to be “terribly embarrassed” when looking back at companies in the 2020s, why The Lean Startup is bad for retailers, how fantasy novels teach business principles, what he's learning next, and more.
Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video.
Recorded July 23rd, 2024.
Other ways to connect
- Follow us on X and Instagram
- Follow Tyler on X
- Follow Tobi on X
- Sign up for our newsletter
- Join our Discord
- Email us: [email protected]
- Learn more about Conversations with Tyler and other Mercatus Center podcasts here.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Conversations with Tyler is produced by the Mercadus Center at George Mason University, |
| 0:09.0 | bridging the gap between academic ideas and real world problems. |
| 0:13.0 | Learn more at Merkatus.org. |
| 0:16.0 | For a full transcript of every conversation, enhanced with helpful links, |
| 0:20.0 | visit Conversations with Tyler.com. Thanks. |
| 0:23.0 | Visit Conversations with Tyler. |
| 0:25.0 | Hello everyone and welcome back to Conversations with Tyler. |
| 0:30.0 | Today I'm Chaddy with Toby Lutka, |
| 0:32.0 | who is the co-founder and CEO of Shopify the famous Canadian |
| 0:36.8 | e-commerce firm Toby welcome so good to be here so good to see you Tyler I have so many |
| 0:42.2 | questions do you still do stand-up meeting So good to see you, Tyler. I have so many questions. |
| 0:43.0 | Do you still do stand-up meetings? |
| 0:46.0 | But never we've had days, I do them. |
| 0:48.0 | I know what, I feel they need to make a comeback. |
| 0:50.0 | Like the Friday afternoon stand-up meeting is just one of the greatest accelerants for businesses. |
| 0:55.7 | I'm highly encouraging everyone to do them. |
| 0:57.8 | But digital version doesn't work so well, does it? |
| 0:59.6 | Like it's some slackboard or so telling everyone to stand up and type something is just like |
| 1:04.6 | doesn't do the same thing. It's wonderful problems with remote companies and it may be |
| 1:08.5 | harder to monitor what other systems do you have for getting good information out of |
| 1:12.4 | meetings? |
| 1:13.0 | Okay, so I grew up as like outsider, like it's as an kind of have an outsider mindset which is kind of hard to argue from first principles at this point, but like in a small town that was super not interested in computing in Germany. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Conversations with Tyler, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Conversations with Tyler and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2025.