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Kaz Nejatian: How Shopify Built a $90BN Business to Last 100 Years | E1189

Kaz Nejatian is Shopify’s VP of Product & Chief Operating Officer. Before Shopify, Kaz founded Kash, a payment technology company which was acquired in 2017 by one of the largest fintech companies in the U.S. Kaz then served as Product Lead for Payments and Billing at Facebook, reducing the barriers for businesses in cash-dependent markets to purchase digital ads without a credit card. ----------------------------------------------- Timestamps: (00:00) Intro (00:01:06) Takeaways from Working with Keith Rabois (00:03:11) Building Complete & High-Quality Software (00:05:02) The Role of Vision in Building Company (00:17:59) Shopify’s Unique Approach to Hiring (00:20:44) Lessons from Mark Zuckerberg & Meta (00:24:48) Why Do Great PMs Blame Themselves for Everything? (00:28:18) The Value of Talk & The Cost of Meetings (00:34:01) What Was Shopify's Toughest Change & Key Lesson Learned? (00:47:47) Most Underappreciated Part of Shopify's Product Vision (00:49:42) The Importance of Information Flow (00:54:30) Value of Marriage (01:00:18) Quick-Fire Round ----------------------------------------------- In Today's Episode with Kaz Nejatian We Discuss: 1. Learnings From the Greats: Mark Zuckerberg: What are Kaz's biggest lessons from working with Zuck? Why does Kaz believe Zuck is massively under-appreciated? Keith Rabois: What are Kaz's biggest lessons from working with Keith? How did it change how he operates on a day to day basis? Tobi Lütke: What have been Kaz's biggest lessons from working with Tobi? What has he changed most significantly since working with Tobi? 2. Shopify: Why We Build Our Own Tools: Why does Kaz believe it is crucial for Shopify to build their own tools? When did he doubt this strategy most? What caused him to question it? Why does Kaz believe the Stripe & Shopify partnership is the most important in business? What is the role of a PM at Shopify? Why do Shopify focus on how not what product is built? 3. Eight Truths The Startup World Gets Wrong: Why does Kaz believe "The Lean Startup" has done more damage than any other startup book? Why does Kaz believe that 90% of companies do not know what they want when they hire? Why does Kaz believe the way that companies pay their staff is totally wrong? Why does Kaz believe that most companies pick fights they do not need to pick? Why does Kaz believe that for 90% of companies remote work is a terrible idea? Why does Kaz believe that everyone in sales and marketing should be able to code? Why does Kaz believe that married people with kids are more, not less productive? Why does Kaz believe that we totally misunderstand divorce rates? ----------------------------------------------- Subscribe on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3j2KMcZTtgTNBKwtZBMHvl?si=85bc9196860e4466 Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-twenty-minute-vc-20vc-venture-capital-startup/id958230465 Follow Harry Stebbings on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarryStebbings Follow Kaz Nejatian on Twitter: https://twitter.com/CanadaKaz Follow 20VC on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/20vchq Follow 20VC on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@20vc_tok Visit our Website: https://www.20vc.com Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://www.thetwentyminutevc.com/contact ----------------------------------------------- #20vc #harrystebbings #KazNejatian #Shopify #Stripe #venturecapital #partner #zuckerberg #lutke #rabois

Kaz NejatianguestHarry Stebbingshost
Aug 13, 20241h 5mWatch on YouTube ↗

At a glance

WHAT IT’S REALLY ABOUT

Inside Shopify: Building Enduring Software, Culture, And Contrarian Company Practices

  1. Kaz Nejatian, COO of Shopify, explains how Shopify aims to be a 100‑year company by prioritizing product quality, deep technical rigor, and long-term thinking over short-term optimization.
  2. He criticizes misapplied Lean Startup ideas, remote-by-default for most companies, and generic enterprise software, arguing instead for opinionated tools, high standards, and PMs who deeply understand how code is written.
  3. Kaz details Shopify’s unusual practices: building extensive internal tools, radical information transparency, frictionful hiring, and a culture that truly favors learning over experience and thrives on change.
  4. The conversation also explores risk-taking at Meta, the Stripe–Shopify partnership, Shopify’s move upmarket, the personal and economic benefits of marriage, and how contrarian cultural choices influence public-market perception.

IDEAS WORTH REMEMBERING

5 ideas

Ship complete, vision-driven V1s instead of half-baked experiments.

Kaz argues misreading Lean Startup has led to a flood of unusable products; early versions should be constrained but coherent and grounded in a clear vision, not random tests to “see what happens.”

Optimize for ‘how’ you build, not just ‘what’ you build.

He insists most teams obsess over feature ideas but neglect where in the stack they should live and how they’re implemented—decisions that determine scalability, speed, and long-term leverage.

Use long-term horizons to justify overbuilding where it compounds.

Shopify overinvests in product quality and internal tools (like its GSD system and HR stack), which is inefficient on a one-year horizon but powerful if you plan to operate for 100 years.

PMs must understand how code is written, even if they don’t code daily.

To choose the right ‘how’ and ‘where’ for product changes, PMs need enough technical depth to reason about architecture, constraints, and tradeoffs rather than treating engineering as a black box.

Deliberately design information flows to bypass org-chart bottlenecks.

Kaz’s biggest mistakes stemmed from routing information strictly up and down hierarchy; he now pushes for writing things down, sharing broadly, and accepting that bosses can learn news when everyone else does.

WORDS WORTH SAVING

5 quotes

We say the job of a PM at Shopify is to build the right thing, the right way, at the right time.

— Kaz Nejatian

I think the book Lean Startup may have done more damage unintentionally to software than any other book.

— Kaz Nejatian

First we build our tools, then our tools build us.

— Kaz Nejatian

People overestimate the importance of what, and then massively underestimate the importance of how.

— Kaz Nejatian

I think being remote is an exceptionally bad idea for most companies. I encourage almost everyone to not do it.

— Kaz Nejatian

Critique of Lean Startup culture and incomplete softwareShopify’s product philosophy, quality bar, and 100‑year time horizonInternal tooling, opinionated software, and partnering vs. buildingRemote work, information flow, and Shopify’s cultural operating systemProduct management: role definition, technical depth, and ‘how’ vs. ‘what’Risk-taking, partnerships, and moving upmarket with enterprisesPersonal philosophy: learning vs. experience, hiring, and marriage as a success factor

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