My conversation with Tobi Lütke (@tobi), co-founder and CEO of Shopify. 0:00 Companies as Social Technology 5:27 The Value of Reading Books: Cheat Codes for Life 7:28 Post-IPO Crisis: Cosplaying as a CEO 7:54 Competition vs Rivalry: The Power of Healthy Competition 16:02 COVID as a Turning Point: Rebuilding the Executive Team 18:21 Hiring Founders: Building a Team of High-Agency People 26:49 Shopify OS: Engineering the Company from First Principles 36:48 Compensation Innovation: Giving Employees Full Agency 40:41 The Psychology of Identity and Affirmations 48:43 Differentiation Over Perfection: Making It Your Own 50:31 Context Podcast: Documenting Decision-Making 1:26:36 The IPO Decision: Going Against Silicon Valley Orthodoxy 1:35:08 Building a Company Worth Working For 1:41:50 Hiring for Spikiness: Finding Non-Conformists 1:48:28 Office Design Philosophy: Creating Space for Excellence 1:58:54 Video Games as Business Training: StarCraft Lessons 2:07:06 AI Revolution: 2026 and Beyond 2:11:44 Focus on Craft: The Unquantifiable Elements of Excellence 2:21:08 Survivorship Bias: The Importance of Entrepreneurial Exposure 2:23:22 Closing Includes paid partnerships.

My third conversation with Shopify co-founder and CEO @tobi. 0:00 How Shopify Uses AI 7:18 River: Shopify's Internal AI 8:55 How to Encourage Osmosis Learning 10:52 AI Dreaming and Self-Reflection 11:53 How to Use AI for Strategic Decision Making 14:11 The One Thing AI Cannot Do 16:04 What AI is Making Worse at Shopify 19:46 Predictions: Where AI is Headed Next 21:55 The Future of AI-Powered Software 24:40 Will CEOs Be Replaced with AI? 27:54 Can Superintelligence Be Controlled? 31:13 Critical Skills in AI Age 34:22 Why Complex Solutions are Usually Wrong 36:33 Conditions Needed for True Intuition 38:02 The Best Path Doesn't Have Instant Feedback 44:51 How Affirmations Can Shift Your Behavior 50:44 The Inobvious Thing Hurting Companies 52:37 Relationship Between Beauty and Creation 56:23 How SpaceX Moves Forward By Subtraction 1:00:24 Why Companies Need Refounding Events 1:01:50 Books as Cheat Codes 1:02:39 Three Books to Change Your Thinking Enjoy! (Includes paid promotions.)

Was wondering where my disk space went. Therefore this exists now. You can simply wish software into existence.

holy shit i asked claude to make a video on western civiization

holy shit i asked claude to make a video on western civiization

Introducing Fast Search in the Perplexity Search API. Fast Search runs on Photon, our new Rust-based retrieval and ranking service that we built with a small team of engineers and hundreds of agents. It returns 95% of search results in 230 ms or less.

Update on founding a company in Germany: The VAT ID arrived. 203 days after I started, almost €12k later. Then my tax firm asked for my trade registration. First time anyone mentioned it. Legally due the day I started. Filed it 3 weeks ago. Still waiting. Probably gonna get fined 1000€ for doing business before it. paolino.me/founding-a-compan…

"I'm clearly living in the future of software world now because my operating system is entirely and 100% malleable." That's @tobi talking about @dhh's Omarchy.

We are excited to announce we are partnering deeply with Muse to enable agentic checkout with Shop Pay on all Shopify stores, offering people an easy and delightful way to shop and check out with Muse.

My Rails World keynote will be streaming in a few hours on YouTube. I dare say this one might ruffle a few feathers, but it also just needs to be said. piped.video/live/V9SxpJpHuus…

.@benthompson says consumer AI has a marketing problem because the average consumer doesn't actually want to be more productive. "Tech companies are like, 'Let us book your flight for you!' I’ve had a personal assistant for 10 years. He does not come within an inch of booking my flights for me. That is crazy talk." "I understand which ones are gonna be delayed. I know which seat I want to be on. So the fact that this is continually a demo is hilarious to me." “Number two: people love shopping. They don’t want to be productive. They want to be entertained. One of the biggest forms of entertainment is shopping.” "Also, there’s so much information on a product page. Companies have spent so much energy focusing on that. You look at apparel as a category. They’re going to tell you what size the model is wearing, and you want to know that, and you want to look at the different styles." "The idea of having a personal agent that’s going and getting some of the information and bringing it back to you, and then you’re like, 'Well, what about this other thing? Tell me about this thing.'" "And you have your eager tech company executive say, “Oh, I have an assistant that can do it for you!" "And it’s like, no. Not only do I want to do it, I want to complain about it. I’m enjoying myself complaining right now, okay? Would you just let me be and live my life?"