Speaker unverified: prediction

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…re the first stuff I built was like, janky PHP webpages. But obviously PHP is actually very nice. You're just writing code directly in the webpage and you refresh and that's the execution environment. Yes, totally. Okay to tell my wonderful board member, David Heinemeier Hansson, the high watermark of the world of programming, at least web programming, was clearly when the FTP to PHP file went up and it was instantaneously deployed. How long does it take code to deploy these days? This is all choices now, right? I mean we've made some choices which are worth making. Maybe we'll do it again, but there was an immediacy and a visceralness to programming and that clearly has been lost. It's not most computer science degrees. And this is also how we eliminated things like aesthetics and beauty and stuff. From our codebases or from talking about it, they are beautiful codebases, beautiful code. It's this code that tells a story and clearly communicates what it's there for to everyone who reads it. Ideally, its an artwork of sorts. And so yes, I think we have progressed. I think we have also advanced, but I think we don't have a clear vision to drive simplicity and I think I personally really deeply appreciate and have always prioritized hiring electrical engineers into programming worlds. Just because they just have a better idea for the costs of inefficiency, waste really. You put too many chips on a thing, it's too expensive to manufacture, you will just never sell it. It's not a good product where the zero marginal cost of copying software just means all sins are forgiven. You really have to fit the whole system in your head as an electrical engineer. That's right. So anyway, I think we are immature. We don't know what great is. We leave a lot of this up to people and therefore the outcomes are so different depending on who's on the project. I mean again, we are all getting more conscientious about it and I think we are in a counter swing to the sort of horrors of architecture astronauts that have caused a lot of damage to our industry over the last, especially in the 2010s. So we are getting in a better spot. And then I don't know what AI it was, but the interesting thing is, I don't even think it's going to end up mattering because AI is going to solve all technical depth. So it's like maybe— better spot. And then I don't know what AI it was, but the interesting thing is, I don't even think it's going to end up mattering because AI is going to solve all technical depth. So it's like maybe— To the same question about on-ramps to entrepreneurship. As a kid you were selling things to your classmates. What I observe is a lot of entrepreneurs have the same origin stories, where they were entrepreneurial early, either something like that where they had some business in school. A super common one is Patrick, I did web development and when you're a kid getting paid thousands of euros to build a website, it is like infinite money. I didn't know such large amounts of money existed and obviously to a small business they're like, “Wow, I'm totally taking advantage of this kid for a mere few thousand euros.” And then another common one seems to be drop shipping arbitrage, this whole thing of buying on Ali Express and selling on eBay or something like that. But you maybe have a window into this with Shopify or something. Do you have a sense of what the right, like if a 13, 14-year-old is listening to this and interested in making money, what are the areas where you think are good to pursue today? Yeah, I think t these are the important thing. The mechanisms change and entrepreneurship clubs are really using Shopify a lot and I love that. And this is one of those areas I would love to go much deeper on just because it would be so fun to really, really build directly for them. The super important thing is just go through life understanding that everything around you is built. One of my favorite tweets of all time, probably actually maybe a higher watermark on X on this topic A museum of passion projects. That's right. And I love that because if you can teach that to students, it's worth more than most of the entire curriculums of subjects. And so I think the commonality behind entrepreneurs is that very early in life, somehow something happened that told them that the world is dynamic and it changes. Some of us. I had the enormous advantage of living exactly at the time when we went with computers to no computers in homes. I had one early and lots of my neighbors. So I had the counterfactual there of and being just absolutely fascinated with them. And then networks came in my teens and internet, so I had a front row seat to the world around me in a small sleepy town in Germany was irreconcilable with what was becoming possible. It was so clear that so much would change. And so I think that dissuades me of sleepwalking through the world. It just made me like this. Okay, that's fun. I am sitting on a piece of information that everyone around me doesn't believe yet, but it's clearly true and I'm going to bet on it. I'm going to take reps looking at things around me and figuring out how it could be done better. And that process is I think the most valuable process to cultivate as a young adult or teenager. So the meta process is more important than the actual domain you choose. t how it could be done better. And that process is I think the most valuable process to cultivate as a young adult or teenager. So the meta process is more important than the actual domain you choose. I agree. Yeah, absolutely. I think if you spot opportunities, see what you can do with it, it's a really important thing. I think we overemphasize those stories and deemphasize the process that causes this. It's building the habit of looking at things and thinking about A) do I know how to make a better vision of this? Which you should do anyway. And then we definitely underestimate and under celebrate and under-lionize— The Beatles’ Hamburg days. Going to and acting on this impulse would mean I'm going to spend the next five years of my life doing this and I'm willing to pay what that costs. And for you is that just doing a lot of programming as a teenager? Programming is how I just made things different. I went to these classical language schools. I was bad at Latin. We started with Latin, I only got English in eighth grade, hence my accent. But your Latin accent is excellent. Yeah, I imagine. Well no, because no one knows how that actually sounds and it's definitely not German. Anyway, I just hated doing the vocabulary tests. I was bad at it at, so at some point I wrote software for teaching myself basically similar to I suppose what's called space repetition now. And it's like there's little basic shell script and it's stupid, but something about making this and then using it made it interesting enough that I did it. And so, it is a very clear moment where I went from— I think I got a D on a test, which was starting to be problematic— to just As for the rest of my life. That is a crazy experience. This is a thing that didn't exist that fits me personally. Maybe my first internal tool. So it changes you. Exactly. It made you passionate about building your own software. Yes. You mentioned space repetition. The other interesting educational topic dujour is mastery learning and the Bloom 2 sigma effect. How do you put that into practice? Do you with your own kids? Yeah, so my kids, I have three boys, 15, 13, and 11. They go to a school, a boys school, which we are quite fond of. And I mean they’re my kids they're quite nerdy.I love them to bits, can't wait to go home. It's such a fun time. Everyone should have kids. The particular mechanisms by, I don't know. The most important principle of parenting principle I have is, everything's interesting. This is a saying you will hear a lot in our household. The kids say it. No one is allowed to say they're bad at something. They're only ever allowed to say they are not good at something yet. So that's basically the entire set of principles. Yes, we're not good at gross margins… yet.…

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