Tobi Lütke - Building Islands of Innovation - [Invest Like the Best, EP.393]
Episode publishedPodcast: Invest Like the Best with Patr...Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
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2 fun facts about our newest sponsorship partner, Ramp. 1st, they are the fastest growing Fintech company in history, reaching a level of revenue in 5 years that I can't quote exactly, but is eyebrow raising. 2nd, they are backed by more of my favorite past guests, at least 16 of them when I counted, than probably any other company that I'm aware of. A list that includes Ravi Gupta at Sequoia, Josh Kushner at Thrive, Keith Raboy at Founders Fund and Khosla Ventures, Patrick and John Collison, Michael Ovitz, Brad Gershner. The list goes on and on. These facts demand the question, why? Having be
Patrick O'Shaughnessy is the CEO of Positive Sum. All opinions expressed by Patrick and podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of Positive Sum. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions. Clients of Positive Sum may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast. To learn more, visit psum.vc.
My guest today is Toby Lukke, the cofounder and CEO of Shopify. I've spoken to Toby on this podcast twice before, first in 2020 and then again in 2022. Needless to say, a lot has changed both about the world and about Shopify since we last spoke, and we start by talking about the biggest change of all, AI. But I'll remember this conversation for the next set of ideas that we discuss, Toby's very unique take on the very popular concept of founder mode, raising the temperature of an organization, and the importance of building on an island that's distinct from the mainstream. Toby embodies the c
2 and a half year pace we have, the great thing is if you ever end up in one of those phases and we decide that, well, nothing much happened or we didn't much like what happened in the last two and a half years, all we need to do is wait for the next one. And clearly, it's gonna be a new word again, a head recurrent upgrade. I'm not gonna say anything, I think, terribly different from what a lot of people say. Very humbled by just getting to be so lucky to be part of an industry that is constantly, has all these phenomenal innovations that allow us to just have to redirect everything. And like
I'm curious when something new like this comes out, like o one. I saw Noam Brown speak this week, and it's incredible how convincing he is that this new inference time version of, like, scaling laws, like, another thing that we're gonna stack on the pretraining scaling laws. And that if you just give this thing more time to think, it can conduct yet more magic. When something like this comes out as a technologist that loves this stuff, how do you personally play with it to see what it's capable of? Because I think so many people are reading the headlines, but then don't go play with the thing,
Usually, the second it gets announced, I'm, like, in some WhatsApp chats of someone saying, hey, enable my account. So that's step number 1. Lucky that I've earned the right by sending good feedback to everyone, but I usually get the privilege of a beta flex. So then I don't think I'm gonna go to bed that night. Like, it's just too interesting. It's just I literally cannot tell my brain to not. There's nothing that exists. I almost have to schedule around these things. Maybe as a leader of an organization, I've learned that one of the best things to do, especially with high, famous, younger en
saw the talk that you gave, or I guess that the AI gave, and you were the medium through which the talk came into your team. Say a little bit more about that experiment and the implic
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