My Conversation with the excellent Tobi Lütke

 [[{“value”:”Here is the audio, video, and transcript.  Here is the episode summary: Tyler and Tobi hop from Germany to Canada to America to discuss a range of topics like how outsiders make good coders, learning in meetings by saying wrong things, having one-on-ones with your kids, the positives of venting, German craftsmanship vs. American agility,
The post My Conversation with the excellent Tobi Lütke appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.”}]] 

Here is the audio, video, and transcript.  Here is the episode summary:

Tyler and Tobi hop from Germany to Canada to America to discuss a range of topics like how outsiders make good coders, learning in meetings by saying wrong things, having one-on-ones with your kids, the positives of venting, German craftsmanship vs. American agility, why German schooling made him miserable, why there aren’t more German tech giants, untranslatable words, the dividing line of between Northern and Southern Germany, why other countries shouldn’t compare themselves to the US, Canada’s lack of exports and brands, ice skating to work in Ottawa, how VR and AI will change retailing, why he expects to be “terribly embarrassed” when looking back at companies in the 2020s, why The Lean Startup is bad for retailers, how fantasy novels teach business principles, what he’s learning next, and more.

Excerpt:

COWEN: Are Canadians different in meetings than US Americans?

LÜTKE: Yes, as well. Yes, that’s true. It’s more on the side of American, definitely on a minimum quality bar. I think Canadians are often more about long term. I’ve seen Canadians more often think about what’s the next step after this step, but also just low ambition. That’s probably not the most popular thing to say around here, but Canada’s problem, often culturally, is a go-for-bronze mentality, which apparently is not uncommon for smaller countries attached to significantly more cultural or just bigger countries.

Actually, I found it’s very easy to work around. I think a lot of our success has been due to just me and my co-founder basically allowing everyone to go for world class. Everyone’s like, “Oh, well, if we are allowed to do this, then let’s go.” I think that makes a big difference. Ratcheting up ambition for a project is something that one has to do in a company in Canada.

COWEN: Is there something scarce that is needed to inject that into Canada and Canadians? Or is it simply a matter of someone showing up and doing it, and then it just all falls out and happens?

LÜTKE: I don’t know. Inasmuch as Shopify may be seen as something that succeeded, that alone didn’t do it. It would’ve been very, very nice if that would’ve happened. Now there’s another cohort of founders coming through. Some of them have been part of Shopify or come back from — I believe there are some great companies in Calgary, like NEO, that are more ambitious.

I think it’s a bit of a decision. The time it worked perfectly was when Canada was hosting the Winter Olympics, which is now a little bit of ancient history. There was actually a program Canada-wide that’s called Own the Podium. That makes sense. It’s home. We have more winter than most, so therefore let’s do well. And then we did. It’s just by far the best performance of Canada’s Olympic team of all times. I think to systematize it and make it stick — changing a culture is very, very difficult, but instances of just giving everyone permission to go for it have also been super successful.

And this:

COWEN: Say we compare Germany to the Netherlands, which is culturally pretty similar, very close to Koblenz. They have ASML, Adyen. Netherlands is a smaller country. Why have they done relatively better? Or you could cite Sweden, again, culturally not so distant from Germany.

LÜTKE: You’re asking very good questions that I much rather would ask you. [laughs] I don’t know. I wish I knew. I started at a small company in Germany; it didn’t do anything. So, it’s not like people didn’t do this. I came to Canada, again, this time it worked. Then I was head down for a very long time, building my thing because it was all-consuming, so I didn’t pay too much attention to — I wasn’t even very deliberate about where to start a company. I started in Ottawa because that’s where my wife and I were during the time she was studying there. We could find great talent there that was overlooked, it seemed, and gave everyone a project to be ambitious with, and it worked.

I think that if you create in geography a consensus that you’re a company really, really worth working for because it’s interesting work, great work, it might actually lead to something — then you can build it. I don’t quite understand why this is not possible to do in so many places in Germany because, again, Germany does have this wonderful appreciation of craftsmanship, which I think is actually underrepresented in software. I think it’s only recently — usually by Europeans — being brought up. Patrick Collison talks about it more and more, and certainly I do, too.

Making software is a craft. I think, in this way, Germany, Czech Republic, other places, Poland, are extremely enlightened in making this part of an apprenticeship system. I apprenticed as a computer programmer, and I thought it was exactly the right way to learn these things. Now, that means there’s, I believe, a lot of talent that then makes decisions other than putting it together to build ambitious startups. Something needs to be uncorked by the people who have more insight than I have.

COWEN: I think part of a hypothesis is that the Netherlands, and also Sweden, are somewhat happier countries than Germany. People smile more. At least superficially, they’re more optimistic. They’re more outgoing.

LÜTKE: I think it’s optimism.

COWEN: It’s striking to me that Germans, contrary to stereotype — I think they have a quite good sense of humor, but a lot of it is irony or somewhat black. Maybe that’s bad for tech. I wonder: people in the Bay Area — do they have a great sense of humor? I’m not sure they do. Maybe there’s some correlations across those variables.

Definitely recommended.  Can you guess which is the one question Tobi refused to answer, for fear of being cancelled?

The post My Conversation with the excellent Tobi Lütke appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

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