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

1. 0:00 – 1:06

   Intro

   1. KNKaz Nejatian0:00

      (upbeat music plays) We say the job of a PM at Shopify is to build the right thing, the right way, at the right time. I think the book Lean Startup may have done more damage- (explosion) ... unintentionally to software than any other book. And as a result of it, we have a crap ton of bad software that should not be in production, in the hands of people. I think being remote is an exceptionally bad idea for most companies. I encourage almost everyone to not do it. People overestimate the importance of what, and then massively underestimate the importance of how. I'm not saying all PMs need to write code, but all PMs need to understand how code is written. That's an incredibly important thing.

   2. HSHarry Stebbings0:37

      Ready to go? (upbeat music plays) Kaz, I am so excited for this, I heard so many good things. I spoke to Max Levchin before, I spoke to Harley. This is gonna be a great one, so thank you so much for joining me.

   3. KNKaz Nejatian0:59

      Thanks for having me, man.

   4. HSHarry Stebbings1:01

      Not at all. But listen, you've worked with some incredible people, and I wanted to start almost with like a quick-fire

2. 1:06 – 3:11

   Takeaways from Working with Keith Rabois

   1. HSHarry Stebbings1:06

      on the people that you've worked with. If we start with Keith Rabois. I love Keith. Uh, what was your biggest takeaway from working with Keith?

   2. KNKaz Nejatian1:14

      I work a lot with both Keith and Max as partners, 'cause they both are in the Shopify ecosystem, and one of the things you realize about both of them, it's actually true about both of them, and I think it may come out of how they grew in tech, is that they are, I say this with ad- admiration, more aggressive than anyone you can imagine being. They're incredibly kind, but very aggressive, uh, in their execution and their ambition, but I have learned from both of them to be perpetually hungry, and it's very impressive watching them do that.

   3. HSHarry Stebbings1:48

      (laughs) I'm just, sorry, I'm just thinking of Keith, thinking, "Yep, that's absolutely Keith."

   4. KNKaz Nejatian1:52

      (laughs)

   5. HSHarry Stebbings1:52

      Yeah, it's, we mentioned the show with DeLeon before this, and DeLeon's biggest takeaway was Keith's view of company building as like a Hollywood movie-

   6. KNKaz Nejatian2:01

      Yeah.

   7. HSHarry Stebbings2:01

      ... where there's a director who sets the script, recruits the actors-

   8. KNKaz Nejatian2:05

      Mm-hmm.

   9. HSHarry Stebbings2:05

      ... and executes against-

   10. KNKaz Nejatian2:06

       Yeah.

   11. HSHarry Stebbings2:06

       ... that vision. That's one way to do it, and then the other way is test, iterate, talk to customers.

   12. KNKaz Nejatian2:11

       Yeah.

   13. HSHarry Stebbings2:11

       How do you think about those two very opposing views of company building?

   14. KNKaz Nejatian2:15

       I think I had written a note internally to our product managers about this at Shopify. I think the book Lean Startup may have done more damage unintentionally to software than any other book. I think it's a well-written book, but it's misunderstood by everyone who's read it, and as a result of it, we have a crap ton of bad software that should not be in production, in the hands of people. And this is just a really good way to churn everyone off from these products. Look, people don't want to be tested upon, and this culture we've developed of ship things that you're not proud of that you know are bad just to, like, get some people to react to it, it's just really bad.

   15. HSHarry Stebbings3:00

       Mm-hmm.

   16. KNKaz Nejatian3:00

       We would never do it this way anywhere else. But I am not saying everyone should spend three years building something before shipping, but the goal is to ship things that you are proud of being in the world.

3. 3:11 – 5:02

   Building Complete & High-Quality Software

   1. KNKaz Nejatian3:11

   2. HSHarry Stebbings3:11

      Okay, can I just interject there?

   3. KNKaz Nejatian3:13

      Sure.

   4. HSHarry Stebbings3:13

      I get you and agree, but if we apply that to content, my first episodes were shit. (laughs)

   5. KNKaz Nejatian3:19

      Sure.

   6. HSHarry Stebbings3:19

      I was ter- I was terrible. You know, uh, content, you grow, you learn, you develop-

   7. KNKaz Nejatian3:24

      Yeah, of course.

   8. HSHarry Stebbings3:24

      ... you au- And y- what I tell people now is, "Don't be afraid to do V1, just get it out, 'cause V2 will be better and V3 will be better."

   9. KNKaz Nejatian3:32

      So, Harry, there's, there's a difference here. When you look back at your work, you will always be ashamed of it. You'll always say, "Ew, I was terrible back then." That's true of like, I mean, I'm not super happy with past versions of Shopify that we have shipped. That's different. When we shipped it, they were complete products. Like, uh, you listen to your first podcast from start to finish, you can actually listen to it, enjoy it, and like as a, as a, as a, you know, as an audience member, but much of what software's being shipped today cannot be used or enjoyed because it is so incomplete. Like, there's a, there's a difference here, right? There's a, uh, and you had a vision, right? It's like, it is totally okay to ship a V1 of something which is constrained version of your final vision.

   10. HSHarry Stebbings4:18

       Mm-hmm.

   11. KNKaz Nejatian4:19

       Right? That's totally okay. In fact, everyone should do that. But what a lot of people do is have zero vision. They just ship something to see what happens next, and that's not how good things are built, like, right? Software is, uh, much more similar to woodwork than people appreciate. Like, it's much more about building something complete that someone can enjoy. Imagine if someone shipped you a chair with three chairs just to test how it would work. Like, it just wouldn't... A, a chair with three legs just wouldn't work. And that's the, that's the difference between complete and incomplete, and I think this is what Keith is saying. Good software is like a good movie. It requires the whole thing

4. 5:02 – 17:59

   The Role of Vision in Building Company

   1. KNKaz Nejatian5:02

      to work.

   2. HSHarry Stebbings5:02

      Can I ask you a rather divisive question, which is, do you think visions are also dangerous? And the reason I say that is because when I actually started the show, my vision was actually to have, become an associate at a venture fund in London-

   3. KNKaz Nejatian5:15

      Yeah.

   4. HSHarry Stebbings5:16

      ... and, you know, in the time that I allocated for that, I actually raised $150 million on my own.

   5. KNKaz Nejatian5:21

      Yeah.

   6. HSHarry Stebbings5:21

      And if, but if I'd succumbed to my vision, I would've accepted that, and so visions can constrain you. Is vision always good?

   7. KNKaz Nejatian5:27

      I don't know. I, I don't think so, Harry. Like, let's, let's, I mean, let's look at Shopify. Kobi's original vision was to build a snowboard store, right? And he didn't, I mean, he built one, and now Shopify exists. Like, it is not... Like, it is very true that people learn and change their final goal. People learn and change their vision. But everything good ever created started with someone saying, "Hold on a second. The world is wrong about X. I will fix it." The initial thing of saying, "I have to create a thing to fix a problem for me or for someone else," requires you to know what you want at the end. Now, you may be wrong about that. You can change that, obviously, you know, like-Microsoft's first product was a bootloader for Basic.

   8. HSHarry Stebbings6:17

      (laughs)

   9. KNKaz Nejatian6:17

      Microsoft is not a company that makes bootloaders anymore, right? That's a real thing. But Microsoft's first product wasn't, "Let me ship two lines of code and see what the third one looks like." There's a difference between, um, beautiful things are created with a vision, it is okay for that vision to change over time.

   10. HSHarry Stebbings6:35

       You mentioned kind of Tobi there and building the, the snowboard store as the first vision. You've worked with Tobi now for several years. If we do the quick-fire on your lesson from Tobi, what's your biggest lesson from Tobi?

   11. KNKaz Nejatian6:46

       Two things that Tobi is exceptional in, um, and it's actually very impressive. The first is, um, Tobi has ingrained in the company a prioritization order that is very, um, meaningful to Shopify. We say at Shopify we only have three priorities: build great products, make money, use money to build more great products. And never reverse one and two, right? Priority one is build products, priority two is make money, priority three is never reverse one and two. And like, that is actually incredibly hard to hold as a publicly traded company of our size. That idea of like, hey, just never change those priorities, and spend most of your time on the first one. This is a real thing. The second thing is because of that prioritization stack, Shopify has a quality bar that is higher than most other software companies. So the, the, "We hold things back that almost everyone else would have shipped." And this was actually a jarring thing when I first got to Shopify, when I realized how much Shopify overbuilt before it shipped.

   12. HSHarry Stebbings7:58

       Is that an effective use of resources? I don't ... Can I-

   13. KNKaz Nejatian8:01

       Depends on your timeframe. Depends on what timeframe you're thinking of, right? If you're thinking about a year, hell no. It's a really bad idea if you're t- if you're optimizing for one year to spend so much of your time overbuilding. If you're thinking the thing you're building will be around for 100 years, then for sure it was effective use of your, your resources, right? It's just a matter of like what discount factor you apply to value of time, right? Like-

   14. HSHarry Stebbings8:29

       I really, I, I really couldn't get over it when you said about, uh, internal building of tools, and how you said like, "Hey, we built everything in compliance, HR, payroll, uh, you know, you don't have Linear or Jira, you have everything built internally." And I'm like, oh my Go- I was walking around the park and I was like, oh my God! Then you have to maintain it, you have to update it, you have to infuse AI into it to make s- Like, I still do not get my head around this argument of how across the whole stack of software tools, it is better.

   15. KNKaz Nejatian8:57

       Like Tesla spent a shocking amount of their time building robots to build Tesla cars. They could buy those robots off the shelf. Like they could actually go and buy off-the-shelf robots that everyone else buys to build those cars. But they spend a lot of their time building those robots, rather than buying off-the-shelf ones, right?

   16. HSHarry Stebbings9:15

       Wha- Why?

   17. KNKaz Nejatian9:17

       Because this, uh, our tools shape us more than we realize. Like we buil- first we build our tools, then our tools build us. I think there's nothing wrong with using off-the-shelf software. In fact, we build off-the-shelf software for people to use. But if you're in the business of building software that people use for building things, which we are, it's incredibly opi- important to know where your opinions are coming from, right? There is no such a thing as opinion-free software. The fact that Google Sheets is built the way it is changes how you write, how you think, how you, like, imagine the world. Like our tools shape us in ways that we don't appreciate. So it's a real thing. Like, eh, we, look, we, we have a tool called the GSD, which is our, uh, stands for Get Shit Done, which is our internal stakeholder management and prioritization and project management tool. Like, I've shown it to people, and people are always amazed by how feature-rich it is. Now, building it for us isn't that big a deal, because this is, w- we do this all the time. We have an internal tool built for HR management. People look at it and they're like, "Whoa." Like the, uh, most companies, let me give you an example. Headcount planning. Uh, a lot of companies spend ... they do headcount planning once a year, they go into some Excel sheet, but I'm pretty sure Excel, uh, has done more damage to the world than any other software. They go into an Excel sheet, or they're, they're create some false certainty 'cause Excel doesn't have a column for certainty level, so they model the world and they come up with a headcount plan. And the only thing I am sure of about that headcount plan is that it is wrong (laughs) .

   18. HSHarry Stebbings10:56

       (laughs)

   19. KNKaz Nejatian10:56

       Like I'm very sure the second hit send, it is wrong. At Shopify, we've built software that imagines a company and runs continuously based on a prioritization stack, based on what we're working on, based on the APIs we have built ourselves into our data systems, so we don't have to have people building these like Excel sheets.

   20. HSHarry Stebbings11:16

       So it's like Rippling, but for internal tooling, which is like the benefits that come from having the synchronicity between all the tools on one platform means that-

   21. KNKaz Nejatian11:25

       Yeah.

   22. HSHarry Stebbings11:25

       ... you can run simulations and models easily between your own tools.

   23. KNKaz Nejatian11:29

       Yeah. But I think Rippling actually is probably the best software th- for startups. It kind of like gets across the same thing. Like the fundamental problem of business software is that it is under-premised because it is under-dated (laughs) . Like the data you need to run the business doesn't really exist in, so like you have to do these like very weird like duct taping of different tools together to make your world work. Or in real world what happens is a CSV export from here into an Excel sheet there to make the decisions, so everyone's decisions regardless of how big you are as a company ends up being made in an Excel sheet. And like we're inc- we're incredibly opinionated about this. We think this is a bad way to run a company. Um, and...... I think everyone who comes to Shopify, their first instinct is, "What the heck? You guys have built a what internally?" And within three months, they're converted to why this is the way we do things.

   24. HSHarry Stebbings12:27

       Have you ever questioned the approach that you've taken, and if so, what moment led you to question it?

   25. KNKaz Nejatian12:33

       I had a internal conversations where I said, "This idea is dumb as a bag of hammers." Um, we were-

   26. HSHarry Stebbings12:40

       That would count as- that would count as questioning. (laughs)

   27. KNKaz Nejatian12:42

       Yeah, that was- we were- we were starting to build, uh, internal software. Shopify is a remote company. We were starting to build software to manage, uh, our culture remotely. I thought this was just the nuttiest thing to do. Uh, like, this is just, like, total waste of code, like which- this is a bad idea. And, like, six months after we started, luckily Tobi overruled me. Uh, six months after that, you could not rip this thing out of my hand. Like, I have found it is incredibly valuable. Um, so, look, I think the most important thing is, and this is a really true thing about how we work at Shopify, we are together on this search for truth. Like, our goal is to find, like, what the- what truth is, and we are not that offended about, like, telling someone they're wrong. I actually once looked at my Slack history, uh, with, uh, with Tobi, and the most common p- phrase I had told him was, "I disagree," over the course of the past, like- like- it was, like, over a 30-day period. Like, I'm- I'm generally a person, like, if you can do these tests that figure out how disagreeable you are, I'm generally very disagreeable.

   28. HSHarry Stebbings13:58

       (laughs)

   29. KNKaz Nejatian13:58

       Uh, I think I'm pleasant, I'm just disagreeable. Like, there's a lot that happens inside the company where people genuinely honestly disagree with each other, and our job is to find out the truth.

   30. HSHarry Stebbings14:08

       I totally agree, it's to find out the truth, and I- I too am disagreeable. And I was listening to you speak before, and you said about a learner's mindset being core to Shopify as kind of culture and one of your core values. And I think a value is something that you can either argue for or against.
5. 17:59 – 20:44

   Shopify’s Unique Approach to Hiring

   1. KNKaz Nejatian17:59

   2. HSHarry Stebbings17:59

      Kas, can I ask, what about the way, or the type of people that Shopify hires would you like to change? So, it could be the people their self, it could be the process-

   3. KNKaz Nejatian18:08

      Yeah.

   4. HSHarry Stebbings18:08

      ... but what would you like to change about the way you do it?

   5. KNKaz Nejatian18:11

      I mean, I've gone through a few these, Harry, in my life at Shopify. Uh, in my first year, I tried to convince our, uh, recruiting team to put Shopify's career page behind the API. Like, i.e., it would not have a UX, like, you could not go-... to, uh, you could not go to shopify.com forward slash careers, you just have to literally, like, use the API. My argument back then was if you can't figure out how to do that, you probably shouldn't work in software. Um, it's actually a thing I actually still do a great deal of.

   6. HSHarry Stebbings18:44

      Do you think that's an arrogant stance?

   7. KNKaz Nejatian18:47

      Sure man-

   8. HSHarry Stebbings18:48

      Just because you-

   9. KNKaz Nejatian18:48

      ... of course. (laughs)

   10. HSHarry Stebbings18:49

       Yeah. (laughs)

   11. KNKaz Nejatian18:50

       Like, but like-

   12. HSHarry Stebbings18:51

       I like it personally, but I'm like, you know, in a, in a labor market that's incredibly competitive, it's like-

   13. KNKaz Nejatian18:55

       I mean, I'm glad we didn't d- I'm glad we didn't do it in hindsight, but to be clear, our goal is not to make it easier for people to work at Shopify, that's not the goal. The goal is to, um, find people who are incredibly mission-aligned and care about the thing we do and the way we do it and make sure they have the career of their lives here. It's different. Like, this is a professional sports team, it's not PV Soccer. My goal isn't for everyone to play. That's not the goal. Like, I don't want it to make it easy to register and show up and play. I want exceptionally good people who care about this thing to spend their time here and that's not, you know, it's, it's different. Let me give you, uh, I mean, we didn't do the API thing, but there's a real thing that is true. Um, most companies end up with content management systems, right? So their marketers end up with these templates, they create, they type the words in, put the pictures in, there, w- they're like this WYSIWYG thing, and then it creates a website for them. We don't have that at Shopify. At Shopify, if a marketer wants to create a new landing page, they have to go into GitHub, they have to know how to write some code. They ha- like, this is a real thing, and our, so our marketers learn how to write some code. Like, we expect pro- we expect people here to be able to, be able to do SQL queries, like this is a real thing. Like, like many of our salespeople write SQL. (laughs) This is not a, this is not... now, all of them don't, but many of them do, and this is a real thing. We actually care about this part of the job. Like, we care about the people being here who are the type of people that want to learn new things. Now, we'll gladly teach you SQL, we'll gladly teach you how to code, but you need to be able to want to do these things.

6. 20:44 – 24:48

   Lessons from Mark Zuckerberg & Meta

   1. KNKaz Nejatian20:44

   2. HSHarry Stebbings20:44

      I do wanna touch on, on one final important figure, uh, and that is Zuck. Uh, you obviously spent time at Facebook or Meta now. What was your biggest takeaway from Zuck, Kaz?

   3. KNKaz Nejatian20:54

      But Meta, Meta and, uh, Mark are both underappreciated, like incredibly underappreciated. It's for, like, I think that Mark's ability to, uh, understand risk adequately is just probably unparalleled in business history. Like, I just think that the guy's ability to, like, understand what it means to take risks is just incredible, and for, because of that, Meta has a much higher risk tolerance than most companies.

   4. HSHarry Stebbings21:23

      What's the best risk he's taken and what's the worst?

   5. KNKaz Nejatian21:25

      I mean, newsfeed. Like, just think about, like, like it's actually, like, not like a, like there's no such thing as, like... when you take risks, sometimes they work out, sometimes they don't, and you don't judge the outcome, you judge the process by which you take risks 'cause the outcome doesn't really matter. Um, like if a process is good, on average you'll be right, or 99 re- risk adjusted you'll be right. But think about newsfeed, which is a thing that people think of as Facebook. It did not exist when Facebook launched. Paul Bakai built it as, as like friend feed and they just bought it and just rebuilt the entire thing, the Like button didn't exist. So these are substantial changes in a young product that people would never think of doing today. Like, most founders cannot imagine saying, "I'm going to change my product by this much." And this is, like, very early on. Like, ignore everything else that they've done that has just been amazing, like ignore their incredible bet they've taken on AR/VR, um, which I think people mocked and are starting to realize they were wrong about mocking.

   6. HSHarry Stebbings22:26

      Why are they wrong about mocking it?

   7. KNKaz Nejatian22:28

      I mean, I think if you have used the new, uh, Ray-Ban glasses, you have seen what the future will look like. It is very clearly how it's going. Like, it's just very clear that, like, this is str- like, I think Ray-Ban glasses are just, like, not quite the iPhone moment, but they're, like, almost the iPhone moment. I think when the next Quest comes out, I have no insider information on when it will come out, but, like, some of it has leaked, people's minds are gonna, like, like, it's just gonna be, the promise of AR will be real and it's just, like, these people have just, like, like, it is... and imagine the amount of, um, backbone it took to keep investing in this thing and build a new paradigm of computing when everyone was shitting on it.

   8. HSHarry Stebbings23:16

      What do you think was the worst bet that he took?

   9. KNKaz Nejatian23:19

      The worst decision Meta probably made was not being more publicly celebratory of Mark personally and Meta generally. I think Meta allowed... because the company was so focused on execution internally, it didn't spend that much time worrying about its reputation externally, and essentially allowed a lie to spread about it that has caused it significant pain. I don't think that will matter in the long run, to be honest, but in the short run, it's clearly been painful, right? This has been a real part of, like, you know, what's happening in much of the world regulatorily is just clearly very misguided and it's misguided because Meta didn't spend time educating people. And there's another thing about Meta that very, is, uh, is important to appreciate, more founders have come out of Meta than any other tech company. Th- this is, like, there was a point at which I actually, like, looked it up, it's a, it's like, it's like PayPal-esque, but at much bigger scale. Like, there was a point at which you would, I compared this a few years ago, of the number of $100 million companies that have started by ex-Facebook employees versus ex-employees of other major tech companies. All of them combined was less than Meta.

   10. HSHarry Stebbings24:33

       Wow.

   11. KNKaz Nejatian24:34

       ... and it was like, this is a few years ago now, but yeah, it was a real, um, like Meta, Meta's impact on the world will be un- well, is unappreciated in ways that, like, it's hard to quantify.

7. 24:48 – 28:18

   Why Do Great PMs Blame Themselves for Everything?

   1. KNKaz Nejatian24:48

   2. HSHarry Stebbings24:48

      You mentioned there the potential comms challenge that they let slip and let permeate. One thing I thought was fascinating that you said the best PMs have inherent within them is you have to blame yourself for everything. Why do you have to blame yourself for everything, Cas, and is there ever a time when it's not applicable?

   3. KNKaz Nejatian25:06

      Product management is not a job that has traditionally existed in the world, right? It's not like a... you can't go and find a product manager skilled up to 1700s. That's not a thing. It's a rel- what we call product management is a relatively new thing. Like, it was basically invented by kind of like Netscape, kind of, kind of Google, kind of Meta. Like this is real. That's how old, like this is like early 2000s-ish type thing. Before then, by the way, if you actually read like c- uh, the story of Compaq or, uh, coming up, or Dell coming up, the people who did most of the job PMs do today were marketers. The VP of marketing was what would have been like kind of in charge of the roadmap. Uh, and there was a, there was a real change in essentially, I think Netscape was the OG here, but people give credit to Google and Meta too. What essentially the job is, is to understand and represent the user and the user's best, um, best outcome, not best wishes, best outcome for the user given the market you're in. That's the job, right? And if the user is not better off, only one person could have made the mistake. If the user is not better off, it's because we say the job of PM at Shopify is to build the right thing the right way at the right time. Most companies don't actually bl- care about the right way part or the right time part, they care about the right thing part, but we care about all three.

   4. HSHarry Stebbings26:49

      If you were to trade off on one of them, what would you trade off?

   5. KNKaz Nejatian26:52

      The right thing, for sure the right thing. 'Cause like, uh, people overestimate the importance of what and massively underestimate the important of, importance of how. The people just massively underestimate the importance of how, uh, in ways that are just like shocking still. Like if you think of like most software, most people in most software companies spend their time arguing what should be built, but they really should be arguing where should we build it? Like where in the stack should this thing be built rather than what we should build? 'Cause that's like, if you get that decision right, you actually can end up building a lot more. This is why, by the way, more PMs need to be more technical. I'm not saying, um, all PMs need to write code, but all PMs need to understand how code is written. And like that's like incredibly important thing in like the stack of priorities.

   6. HSHarry Stebbings27:48

      It's funny you said there about kind of most companies spend a lot of time talking about what. Uh, I had Gustav, the CPO of Spotify on the show.

   7. KNKaz Nejatian27:55

      Yeah.

   8. HSHarry Stebbings27:56

      And he said, "You know, talk is cheap, so we should do a lot more of it." (laughs)

   9. KNKaz Nejatian28:02

      (laughs)

   10. HSHarry Stebbings28:02

       And I still disagree. I believe in dictatorial regimes.

   11. KNKaz Nejatian28:06

       Mm-hmm.

   12. HSHarry Stebbings28:06

       I believe in, uh, someone having a vision and then executing against it. I think most of the debates, brainstorming, fucking retreats that we do today are not right, actually-

   13. KNKaz Nejatian28:16

       Yeah.

   14. HSHarry Stebbings28:16

       ... and ineffective.

8. 28:18 – 34:01

   The Value of Talk & The Cost of Meetings

   1. HSHarry Stebbings28:18

      Do you agree with me or do you actually agree that talk is cheap and we should do more of it and communication amongst teams is the best way to build product?

   2. KNKaz Nejatian28:25

      So I actually disagree talk is cheap (laughs) 'cause most people actually miss, uh, like when they talk about talk is cheap, what they mean is I can say things without that much consequence to me. What they miss is people have to listen to you. So their time spent listening to you is very not cheap. In fact, we have this thing in sh- in Shopify where we calculate the cost of every meeting and put it in the meeting invite. I can tell you talk is very, very not cheap. It's incredibly expensive.

   3. HSHarry Stebbings28:54

      Were you worried when you implemented that, that you would then disincentivize meetings that could create moments of magic? 'Cause I agree with you totally, but it almost reminds me of calories on menu, which is like, I get you if you continuously show me there's 1,200 calories in the apple pie, I'm not gonna eat it. But that apple pie might have been fucking sensational-

   4. KNKaz Nejatian29:13

      Yeah, I don't-

   5. HSHarry Stebbings29:13

      ... and I just missed a moment to be happy.

   6. KNKaz Nejatian29:15

      I don't think so, man. I think it's o- obviously everything has risks. It's plausible we did that. But, you know, the way you do things matters more than the outcome. But I actually think this actually we've been... the world is tilting more in our direction, thankfully, from when we did this then to now. So Shopify, like the thing we want to do is for more things in Shopify to be communicated via words and code written down rather than in live meetings, right? That's what we want. We want to tilt the world more that way.

   7. HSHarry Stebbings29:48

      Are you sure, are you sure that the world is going back to, to, well, going to your way of thinking, of discussion?

   8. KNKaz Nejatian29:53

      Well, I'm not sure if everyone's doing it, but I'm very sure that the outcome will be more favorable to us. Like if you think about how LLMs work, you need something to train the machine on. And the fact that we are, we, we had this discussion in paper, we wrote our thoughts down and they made an outcome, it's a very good thing for training machine.

   9. HSHarry Stebbings30:12

      Unbelievable. I totally agree with you. The lost data and, you know, the future of AI is how you work, you know, show you're working at school-

   10. KNKaz Nejatian30:18

       Yeah.

   11. HSHarry Stebbings30:18

       ... and we don't have any of that in, in data or within companies. I'm just speaking to, you know, 10 CEOs a week of billion dollar plus public companies and they're all saying, "Dude, it's so much better in person. It's so much better. We're, we're all back and trying to..."

   12. KNKaz Nejatian30:32

       I think being remote is an exceptionally bad idea for most companies.... it is-

   13. HSHarry Stebbings30:37

       (laughs)

   14. KNKaz Nejatian30:37

       ... really, I encourage almost everyone to not do it. The reason it works for Shopify is because we have spent so much time and so much effort building systems and tools and software to make this work. Like, it is if you go YOLO remote without all the tools we have built, all the teams we have focus on this thing, you will 100% for sure fail. For most companies, they should not do it. It's a bad idea. Um, but that's, um, that's, by the way, that's a structurally true of Shopify. Like, if you go back and read the early memos on, like, investors in Shopify, they were all like, "No one should do this. It's a really bad idea." Like, serving e-commerce, which everyone thought was a small busi- a small town opportunity, for small businesses, which everyone thought was, again, gonna decline, high, insanely high churn. Like, it's a definition when you read Zero to One, uh, Piotr Tegel's book to, like, you know, don't open up a restaurant that's very churny. Shopify dedicated its core mission to serving people who are the most churny. They're, like, a million times more churny than restaurants, uh, pros. It's like, Shopify is very good at this thing where, like, it would be a really bad idea for everyone else, but it's an exceptionally good idea for Shopify.

   15. HSHarry Stebbings31:55

       What makes that though? The process with which you approach it?

   16. KNKaz Nejatian31:59

       Yeah, I mean, I think, I, I, I honestly think this is goes back to, like, Shopify has two core values that are different than most companies, and I know this is like, uh ... but I think they're actually also embodiment of Tobi, uh, our founder, who, like, is very much like this. The first is, like, thrive on change. Now, thrive on change sounds good, but most companies actually don't wanna thrive on change. Most companies are built such that they do incredibly well in times where there are no change. Right? That's what most companies are. Like, if there is change, most companies are not handled, not built to handle it. Shopify is built such that it does better when there is change. When there's dramatic change, Shopify just does better. It's just that's how company's built. So we're, like, very thrive on change-y. Uh, the second is this sort of learner's thing we talked about, where it's like, Shopify is built such that normal things take us longer at Shopify than it would take most companies. Let me give you, like, an example. This is no longer true, but it was true when I got to Shopify. If you wanna hire a person at a regular company, you go to HR, you give them a r- like, "Hey, I have a empty headcount. Please go hire this person for me." And there's a process they run through that works. When I got to Shopify, there was no such process, so hiring someone was just a very weird, like, we had to discover, like, e- from the first time, how do we hire people? That's a real, like ... it, it took, so it took us longer to hire people than most companies, which meant our headcount grew far more slowly than most companies. That's a real downside, right? If you're, if you're optimizing for speed in something-

   17. HSHarry Stebbings33:35

       It reminds me, actually, of FoundersFund's investment decision-making process, where they actually say you want to increase the friction to an investment decision being made, because it increases the requirements on the decision-maker's side to get it done. If you don't have an HR team, you can just throw it over the fence. Like, "Oh, shit, I've gotta do it? I've gotta source candidates?" That's the same thing.

   18. KNKaz Nejatian33:53

       See, look, that, that works for us. This works for us, really. But for most companies, that amount of ownership would be really hard for people to understand, right? Uh-

   19. HSHarry Stebbings34:00

       What change

9. 34:01 – 47:47

   What Was Shopify's Toughest Change & Key Lesson Learned?

   1. HSHarry Stebbings34:01

      did Shopify find hardest, and what did you learn from that? You said, like, Shopify actually thrives in change.

   2. KNKaz Nejatian34:06

      Uh-

   3. HSHarry Stebbings34:06

      What change did you not thrive from, and what did you learn from that?

   4. KNKaz Nejatian34:10

      I mean, l- uh, two things. Going remote was incredibly difficult for Shopify. It took us a very long time to get right. I can honestly tell you for the first six to 12 months, it just straight up wasn't working. Like-

   5. HSHarry Stebbings34:24

      How so? Just c- comms breaking down?

   6. KNKaz Nejatian34:27

      Shopify went from being incredibly in person, Shopify did not even have co-located teams, all teams had to be in the same pod.

   7. HSHarry Stebbings34:33

      Mm-hmm.

   8. KNKaz Nejatian34:34

      So, like, we went from that to fully remote like that, and none of the cultural things that had made Shopify work translated. So that change was very difficult. It was just incredibly painful. I mean, th- there's been other ones that have been ... we made a change where Shopify pays people differently than most companies.

   9. HSHarry Stebbings34:57

      Yeah.

   10. KNKaz Nejatian34:58

       Like, most companies you go to, say, "Hey, here's your salary, here's your equity, here's your bonus structure," whatever. At Shopify, we say, "Here's a pile of money. Here's a software you can use to allocate that pile to salary, equity," um, like, a bunch of other things. That change was a very weird change. Like, let me give you an example. Like, that change required Shopify to change its equity process, 'cause, like, literally what we wanted to do was illegal in most of Europe. Like, the ability to give people, the ability to take options or RSUs or, like, pick between them, was just, like, very ... so it took us many ... it actually ended up with Tobi personally writing a crap ton of code to actually make this thing work, because it was very painful. Now and, now, now that we are through it, um, and, and at the, during the time it was just very painful, 'cause it was just people were reasonably worried that, like, "What the hell is happening here?" But now that we're through it, I don't think any company does, um, this as well as we do. Um, but it was very painful.

   11. HSHarry Stebbings36:08

       What are those discussions you have when it's not working? Did you talk about going back to fully in person? 'Cause there's gotta be a moment six to nine months in where you're going, "Shit, did we make the wrong decision?"

   12. KNKaz Nejatian36:18

       I mean, we burnt the bridges relatively well behind us, 'cause we knew it would be painful. So if, I think if we knew how painful it would be, I don't know if we would have done it.

   13. HSHarry Stebbings36:29

       Hmm.

   14. KNKaz Nejatian36:30

       But once we committed to it, we burnt the bridges pretty well behind us. Like, we encouraged people to move, we, like...... like, gave up our leases in a bunch of places, took the write-downs-

   15. HSHarry Stebbings36:42

       Mm-hmm.

   16. KNKaz Nejatian36:42

       ... gave up the furniture. Like, we made it, like... 'Cause a lot of companies that went remote during COVID, like, kept their offices pristine, did not give up the leases, managed like, like, like, did the whole thing so that you had the optionality to go back. We hired people in places that we, they were nowhere near our offices on purpose. So, we, we, um, made it very difficult for ourselves to go back.

   17. HSHarry Stebbings37:05

       Do you think you make it difficult for yourselves with public markets because of your contrarian stance on remote, on, you know, how you thrive in change, on the way you hire? It's not an easy story for analysts to get their heads around -

   18. KNKaz Nejatian37:19

       No, I, I, I think-

   19. HSHarry Stebbings37:20

       I mean, the hi-

   20. KNKaz Nejatian37:20

       I think Shopify is insanely difficult to model for analysts.

   21. HSHarry Stebbings37:24

       Why?

   22. KNKaz Nejatian37:24

       First of all, our business is not a common one, right? This is, like, not a... We don't run a CPG, we don't run a traditional SaaS business, we don't run a... Like, we just don't... Our business is hard to model. Our growth is hard to understand. It's very hard to understand where Shopify's growth comes from and how it shows up for analysts outside, whereas it's not that hard for me. (laughs)

   23. HSHarry Stebbings37:43

       I'm sorry to be naive, but the-

   24. KNKaz Nejatian37:45

       Sure.

   25. HSHarry Stebbings37:45

       ... show thrives on basic questions. Why is it hard to understand your growth, and how do you simply explain your growth to your children or a 10-year-old or someone who does not-

   26. KNKaz Nejatian37:54

       Well, it's not hard to understand where our growth comes from. Our growth comes from people starting businesses, and those business succeeding and making lots of money, and we share in that upside. That's, like, basically where Shopify's growth comes from. So that's not hard to... It's not hard to say those words, but it's very hard to model those words. It's very hard for analysts to say, "Hey, this cohort of Shopify merchants will have next Allbirds." In the same way, it's actually difficult for analysts to model, uh, VCs, 'cause what Shopify is essentially is, like, we, we, we invest in cohorts of startups. Tens of thousands of merchants try to start a business on Shopify-

   27. HSHarry Stebbings38:30

       Mm-hmm.

   28. KNKaz Nejatian38:31

       ... like, every, I won't, I won't say how frequently 'cause that's publicly, (laughs) but, but, like, very frequently.

   29. HSHarry Stebbings38:36

       Mm-hmm.

   30. KNKaz Nejatian38:37

       And they grow, and some of them become very big and many of them don't. Many of them die. Some of them become very good lifestyle businesses, which is what people want, or side hustles.
10. 47:47 – 49:42

    Most Underappreciated Part of Shopify's Product Vision

    1. HSHarry Stebbings47:47

       element of Shopify's product roadmap vision today?

    2. KNKaz Nejatian47:52

       I think people underappreciate how broad the product is. Like, the surface area of the product is very, very, very big and people underappreciate how massive it is. In that way, Shopify is much more similar to an operating system than an application. Like, people, people underappreciate how, um, Shopify is not really a point solution. And this is, this is very hard, part of the reason why analysts have a hard time modeling it. 'Cause, like, it's just not... It's hard to model that, 'cause, like, you wanna build a bottom-up model of something, it's really hard to do it for a thing that's this... Like, the use cases of Shopify are incredibly diverse. And I'm like, "This is, like, perfectly good for us." Like, we are, we are tool makers, we are not application builders.

    3. HSHarry Stebbings48:42

       I always remember Tobi talking about companies being worse around than World of Warcraft clans and, you know, the importance of tool makers in the world, and I always remember that. Uh, I, I do want to ask, you know, on a more personal side-I've heard you say before you have a hard time not saying things you think are true.

    4. KNKaz Nejatian49:00

       Mm-hmm.

    5. HSHarry Stebbings49:00

       What do you think is true that you are having a hard time saying? So for example, I think that remote is terrible for 99% of people and for h- their mental health. I think that Kamala Harris is dangerous for the US future. I don't think Trump with JD Vance is much better, but I think he's better. I'm a bit nervous about saying both of those things. (laughs)

    6. KNKaz Nejatian49:23

       (laughs) I'm actually not that nervous about saying anything I believe, because I'm perfectly happy saying Kaz was wrong. Like I'm perfectly happy saying I was wrong. I have no problem saying... I do a post very frequently internally to, to the whole company saying, "Kaz's biggest mistakes over the last few months."

11. 49:42 – 54:30

    The Importance of Information Flow

    1. KNKaz Nejatian49:42

    2. HSHarry Stebbings49:42

       What was the biggest mistake you posted internally that you did?

    3. KNKaz Nejatian49:45

       The biggest mistakes I have made in my career have all been of the same shape, unfortunately. And it's like just, just very... I'll tell you the shape. And I like... And it's a lesson I will perpetually learn and need to re-learn every single time. I have limited the information flow, made it go through the org chart. Like every single time that has happened, like all my biggest mistakes are of that shape. The information that someone needed to have didn't get to them because the org chart, like it went up the org chart rather than like dynamically. This is like the, that's like the biggest mistake. Now, one of these mistakes is very, very large. I won't tell you the specific of it, but like that shape of mistake is very painful.

    4. HSHarry Stebbings50:33

       So just so I understand, what do you mean like the, the information flow didn't go the right way and you-

    5. KNKaz Nejatian50:37

       Let me give you an example, like, um, at most companies, the way it works is I have an idea. I tell... I write a note, I tell my boss about it, my boss likes it or doesn't like it and tells his boss about it and up the chain the information goes till someone says yes and it comes back down and I do it. That tree. That's a very common pattern. It's true at every company. Uh, it's true even at Shopify sometimes, but it's incredibly terrible. Like one of the things I tell my team is to share information publicly and it's perfectly okay for your boss to find out about something at the same time as the whole company. That's perfectly okay. Uh, but my biggest mistakes have essentially been when some... When information has gotten to me without being publicly shared such that opposing views haven't gotten their hands on it.

    6. HSHarry Stebbings51:28

       Do you really think it is okay for bosses to find out at the same time as the whole company? Sometimes-

    7. KNKaz Nejatian51:33

       For most information, yeah, of course.

    8. HSHarry Stebbings51:34

       ... sometimes morale needs to be managed, sometimes you need to control messaging, sometimes actually it could piss off sales to hear that and see, I, I, I think actually you need a lot more control on messaging.

    9. KNKaz Nejatian51:45

       No, no, this is... So some- sometimes yes, but those times almost always involve a lawyer. So like sure, sometimes information needs to be managed. But no, no, the default should be that all information should be shared publicly such that people in the company never think, "Oh, these people are just bullshitting me," when things, things are going well. They, people need to see the ups and downs, need to see the decision-making, need to build in the open such that they can benefit from information from everyone. Like the, this is a real, um... But right, the opposite is can... Like this is one of the benefits of values is that you only have a value if the opposite of it can also be true. Like Apple is a company that's very on the opposite side of the spectrum from Shopify on information flow, and Apple is an exceptionally good company, right? Most people at Apple don't know what other people at Apple are working on. It's a-

    10. HSHarry Stebbings52:36

        Sure.

    11. KNKaz Nejatian52:37

        Yeah, it's a

    12. HSHarry Stebbings52:37

        I totally agree. And so, and so you agree with me when you say you can't have like integrity as a value, because no one would want a low integrity value.

    13. KNKaz Nejatian52:44

        Yeah, sure. Exactly. 100%, yeah, it's dumb. Like values need to be things that a reasonable person can take both s- uh, the other side of. So the way it works for us and for me, that's why I work here, is, um, information openly shared from many other sources, people publicly disagreeing or publicly agreeing. Allowing sunshine to fix things is the best thing. Uh, and people being okay saying, "Hey, I was wrong. Hey, I was right. Hey..." Like, like that you want to build that collegiality. This is a real thing. I'm, I'm not a, I'm not an athlete, but if you look at great sports, like watch a, watch soccer or, uh, watch basketball, you'll see the players are literally always talking to each other. They're always giving each other feedback. "You should be here, you weren't there." Like that's always happening, and that can just not happen if they're all secretive about where they intend to be on the court, right? Like this is, this is a very similar thing to companies, and this is like, uh, this is what I'm saying, uh, where you build it matters more than what you build. If everyone in the companies knows more or less what everyone else is building, you will never have two versions of one thing. You will always say, "Cool, let's you and I work together and build this ??? both of us."

    14. HSHarry Stebbings53:57

        Kaz, speaking about alignment, you, you write a lot about marriage-

    15. KNKaz Nejatian54:01

        Mm-hmm.

    16. HSHarry Stebbings54:01

        ... which is a diff- which is a different type of alignment.

    17. KNKaz Nejatian54:03

        Mm-hmm.

    18. HSHarry Stebbings54:03

        Um, uh, again, we're addressing the, the element of disagreement.

    19. KNKaz Nejatian54:08

        Yeah.

    20. HSHarry Stebbings54:08

        But when we look at, you know, um, Google, when we look at Amazon, when we look at Microsoft, when we look at Elon Musk and you know, X and Tesla, and when we then extrapolate that out across everyone worth over $100 billion, there's a d- terrible start that basically I think it's like 84% are divorced.

    21. KNKaz Nejatian54:27

        Mm-hmm.

    22. HSHarry Stebbings54:27

        Um, you espouse

12. 54:30 – 1:00:18

    Value of Marriage

    1. HSHarry Stebbings54:30

       the value of marriage.

    2. KNKaz Nejatian54:31

       Mm-hmm.

    3. HSHarry Stebbings54:31

       The world seems to point the opposite, actually.

    4. KNKaz Nejatian54:34

       Generally speaking, it's, uh, really terrible to model your life after people who are worth over $100 billion 'cause they're just such... They're rare, right? They're just not... Like what they... Their circumstances will almost never be your circumstances. I'm not saying you shouldn't desire to be a billionaire if you want to be.

    5. HSHarry Stebbings54:50

       Do you think those divorce rates would be lower in the billionaire range?

    6. KNKaz Nejatian54:53

       I don't think that's also a good measure. I think what matters is this. First of all, divorce rates are lower than people think they are.... because, uh, what divorce rates count is the number of divorces and it is just true that people who get divorced frequently get divorced more than once.

    7. HSHarry Stebbings55:11

       (laughs)

    8. KNKaz Nejatian55:11

       So there's a, there's a, there's a distribution problem, right? Most first time marriages do not end in divorce. Like most first time marriages do not end in divorce. Um, although significant number of second time marriages end up in divorce.

    9. HSHarry Stebbings55:28

       Yeah, that's true.

    10. KNKaz Nejatian55:28

        So that- that- that's a real thing. Second, the data behind this is undeniable. Like this is- this is- there's, I mean, I wrote a book about this, but you don't have to read my book, you can read the academic research, uh, on this. The data behind this is undeniable. For men, specifically for men, graduating from high school, getting some job experience, and getting married, in that order, as soon as possible is, uh, more indicative, um, uh, it is more indicative of- of success, including health, wealth, and happiness, than any other thing. Like we can't find something that is more indicative of future happiness. The odds of bankruptcies go down, the odds of, uh, health events goes down. Uh, cancer survival rates for married men is significantly higher than single men. Like there's a real thing about like bankruptcy rates are lower, uh, for married men than single men. Um, there's a real thing here that is not... Now, there- it is true that-

    11. HSHarry Stebbings56:33

        Would you argue, would you argue that marriage is good for downside protection but k- y- you know, a cap for upside maximization?

    12. KNKaz Nejatian56:39

        No. No, I wouldn't. Look, I think at any given point in your life you have to think about, like-

    13. HSHarry Stebbings56:45

        When did you get married, Kaz? Or what age?

    14. KNKaz Nejatian56:47

        I got married relatively late. I got married when I was, uh, th- I got engaged when I was 29, married when I was, I think, 30. Um, so like later than like, I think, most people in the US would. I'm not American, but most people in North America would have gotten married earlier. Look, bad marriages are incredibly bad, but there are things you can do early in life and there are things you can do to make, to prepare yourself for a good marriage. Uh, and those things are worth doing regardless of getting married or not. And that once you do those things, a g- like, a good marriage is incredibly useful on every metric we can measure.

    15. HSHarry Stebbings57:22

        Why is it then everyone says, "Oh, god, it's so good when my wife's away, or my husband's away 'cause I have time to work and I can focus on myself-"

    16. KNKaz Nejatian57:32

        Yeah, I mean-

    17. HSHarry Stebbings57:32

        "... and I can really concentrate. And oh god they're back."

    18. KNKaz Nejatian57:36

        I think-

    19. HSHarry Stebbings57:36

        And I mean, dude, we're- we're both humans, it takes time being in a relationship.

    20. KNKaz Nejatian57:41

        Sure, but it takes time to work out. Doesn't mean working out is bad for you. Like it takes time to, like, work, doesn't mean work is bad for you. There's a real thing here that is, um... First of all, there's two things. Uh, one, there are lots of things people believe that turn out to be not true. In fact, most human progress has happened because the thing that lots of people believe is true turns out to be not true. So that a lot of people believe it is not, like, an appeal to majority opinion is not a good sign that anything is true or not. Second, I- I- I think this is a place where popular culture has misled us greatly, um, where, look, I admit it is just, like it is funny to talk about, you know, "Oh, my wife is gone, I can finally have fun." It's just funny, but I'm telling you, the most fun I have in my li- days is with my wife.

    21. HSHarry Stebbings58:32

        How long have you been married?

    22. KNKaz Nejatian58:34

        Uh, over 10 years now. Just over 10 years.

    23. HSHarry Stebbings58:36

        And is- is she on the other side of your computer right now?

    24. KNKaz Nejatian58:38

        No, no. No, no, she is not.

    25. HSHarry Stebbings58:39

        (laughs)

    26. KNKaz Nejatian58:39

        She's not. She's trying to get a kid somewhere.

    27. HSHarry Stebbings58:42

        (laughs)

    28. KNKaz Nejatian58:42

        This is, um, this is a part that's like unc- well, uncomfortable to talk about publicly, but married men have more sex than single men do. Married men are richer than single men are. Married men, like it is very, like there's v- all the things that you think "I should optimize for by being single," data proves you're wrong. And you'll-

    29. HSHarry Stebbings59:03

        I'm not surprised about, I'm not surprised about the sex. Um, I am surprised about the richer.

    30. KNKaz Nejatian59:08

        Yeah, it's- it's- it's- it's- it's not even close, it's not even close. It's not like a m- one standard deviation different, it may be like a two standard deviation different. Like there, I mean, the worst thing you can do for yourself economically is be divorced, obviously. Like being divorced is very bad economically. Um, just but being single i- like there are bad divorced, single, married.
13. 1:00:18 – 1:05:47

    Quick-Fire Round

    1. KNKaz Nejatian1:00:18

    2. HSHarry Stebbings1:00:18

       Should we do a quick-fire round?

    3. KNKaz Nejatian1:00:20

       Sure, man.

    4. HSHarry Stebbings1:00:21

       Okay, let's do it. So first one, what is the best and the worst incumbent to hire leaders from? I- the reason I say this, I was walking around the park with a, uh, public company CEO and he said, "Never hire leaders from Google. They're terrible to invest into a company." Who are the best and who are the worst to hire from?

    5. KNKaz Nejatian1:00:37

       I have found that hiring people, uh, from Meta generally has worked out very well for most people I've- 'cause just th- as a training program, it's just exceptionally good. I don't know if there is one generic course, but j- but the c- but industry switching is very difficult. Like hiring marketers who are not from software into software generally doesn't work out. Hiring financial people who are not in software into software generally doesn't work out. So industry switching is very difficult.

    6. HSHarry Stebbings1:01:07

       Okay, what have you changed your mind on in the last 12 months?

    7. KNKaz Nejatian1:01:10

       I changed my mind about, um, uh, the gold standard. Like I used to be, I used to mock it openly and I now think I was wrong. Um-So, this is one of the things my wife was right about and I was wrong about.

    8. HSHarry Stebbings1:01:22

       What character trait do you like in yourself that you wouldn't want your kids to have it?

    9. KNKaz Nejatian1:01:27

       I'm a hacker. I'm a hacker's hacker, and I grew up hacking things. And my five-year-old son the other day, uh, found a way to get his, uh, password for his, uh, iPad, first time on his iPad. And at first I'm like, I'm so proud of him for hacking the system, but like about 30 seconds in I went, "Oh no, my son has unlimited access to an iPad." So that, that has been hard.

    10. HSHarry Stebbings1:01:57

        (laughs) What one piece of advice would you give to a product leader starting a new role today?

    11. KNKaz Nejatian1:02:03

        Uh, optimize for it bats. Optimize your first few years in your career for shipping as many things as possible rather than, um, career progression.

    12. HSHarry Stebbings1:02:16

        Will Kamala win?

    13. KNKaz Nejatian1:02:20

        I don't... I'm not American, so I don't spend that much of my time caring, to be honest.

    14. HSHarry Stebbings1:02:25

        Huh. Do you not get absorbed in the politics and the Twitter...

    15. KNKaz Nejatian1:02:31

        No. No, not r- not really, to be honest. I, I find... I follow a bunch of like, like think tanks from across the political spectrum, um, and I'm like a capitalist at heart, and love, uh, the free market and liberty for all. I find that you are better off, uh, following political news as though it is not a horse race, so check in once a week rather than once a day. 'Cause if you check once a day, it just becomes kinda like, yeah, useless.

    16. HSHarry Stebbings1:02:59

        Uh, final one for you. What recent company product strategy have you been most impressed by?

    17. KNKaz Nejatian1:03:05

        I'll give you two. I mean obviously I think everyone will say Microsoft and OpenAI, 'cause that's just like what they have done to search is just a- like str- admirable. But I'll give you a different one, outside software. I think what ExxonMobil has done, um, is just to be admired from the outside.

    18. HSHarry Stebbings1:03:27

        So what've they done?

    19. KNKaz Nejatian1:03:28

        Just a whole traditional company, their business isn't that complicated theoretically, and I think their profits are up about 160%. Like, uh, and which is like unheard of in this world, right? Like it's a real thing.

    20. HSHarry Stebbings1:03:44

        What's the change?

    21. KNKaz Nejatian1:03:44

        Uh, and they've ess- they've, they've essentially done it by like getting, uh, optimizing production. They're getting a lot more out of assets, uh, than people think they would, and they placed themselves in a position to benefit from surge in travel post COVID I think everyone kind of under appreciated. Like it's actually real. So if you think about it, um, the US produced more crude oil in 2023 than it had ever before. These companies have gotten very good at optimizing for production in ways that is just like very impressive.

    22. HSHarry Stebbings1:04:21

        Wow. What's the second?

    23. KNKaz Nejatian1:04:25

        S- Second.

    24. HSHarry Stebbings1:04:25

        Oh, the first was Mi- the first was Microsoft and OpenAI and second was ExxonMobil. I think Canva's is incredible.

    25. KNKaz Nejatian1:04:31

        Oh yeah. Yes. Yes. Yes. 100%. I mean, not just Canva for what it's worth, like the, the way Canva builds is to be admired. The, the product is just beautiful.

    26. HSHarry Stebbings1:04:43

        Yeah.

    27. KNKaz Nejatian1:04:43

        Um, but I'll give you... Sorry, I'll give you a non-Canva one. Um, my third one would be Figma. Not that many company can survive what happened to Figma, right? Companies that usually like... usually mergers that fall apart or acquisitions that fall apart end up with... in a really bad place, because companies just typically have checked out by the time the acquisition happens. Figma is thriving, and I think they're thriving because when the acquisition happened, they decided that they were going to pretend as though it had not happened. They kept the pace of innovation and they kept shipping product, um, which I think is actually a very risky thing to do as a company, 'cause usually the acquisition happens and you have to undo all of it, but it worked out well for them.

    28. HSHarry Stebbings1:05:35

        Kaz, listen, I so appreciate you putting up with my roaming between conversations on children, product, and all design. And so you've been a fantastic guest, and thank you so much for doing this, man.

    29. KNKaz Nejatian1:05:45

        Dude, my pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Episode duration: 1:05:47