Tobi Lütke: belief

Transcript context

…What do you think is the most common mistake your third-party retailers make in modeling the world? Thinking we have to build products that other people like. I think this is the silent killer. Shopify — someone’s called it Kevin Kelly’s “1,000 True Fans” essay applied at scale. Yes, everyone’s different, but actually, there are clear clusters, [laughs] and the people who are willing to dedicate themselves to build a product and go through that entire rigamarole and put themselves out there . . . Well, actually, inside of a cluster, more like the people everyone else wants to be. And if they build things that they would love to have in the world, turns out they have extreme insight and authority over this rather than running. There was some cross-pollination from The Lean Startup book to the retail world, and I think that, especially in retail, this has been bad. I’m actually wondering if that was a good set of ideas. I think there are good ideas in the book, but it feels a little bit ungenuine to just . . . Customers are not the people who should say what needs to be built. I think they need to explain their problems, and the builders have to figure out how to solve these problems better. Otherwise, it’s an abdication of vision. I think the best companies end up following a long-term vision and a long-term mission. I think that’s part of it. Then the people who have access to capital — they underinvest in growth. That always happens, too. I know, it’s scary to do internet marketing as it’s getting harder and harder, but it’s not priced out yet. Did you learn all this selling snowboards? Or it took until Shopify?…

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