Tobias Lütke Quotes

“Something that potential investors must understand: we do not chase revenue as the primary driver of our business. Shopify has been about empowering merchants since it was founded, and we have always prioritized long-term value over short- term revenue opportunities. We don’t see this changing.”

“Literally the only time in the last year where I’ve thought about this is when I read The Globe and Mail, talking about my net worth. It is not something that motivates me, so I don’t particularly care about money. I care about working on interesting problems, and Shopify is this gift that keeps on giving for working on interesting problems with amazing people. That’s really what I’m preoccupied with.”

“I work under the assumption that we have no idea how to build companies yet, and that 50 years from now people will look back at the companies of today and they will seem like the black-and-white footage of the first hockey games. We have no idea how to build the best companies yet.”

“Your Audience is Your Lifeblood.”

“I never cared a lot for school. I categorized school as a history lesson because it was so obvious that computers were different. My parents didn’t understand them, my teachers didn’t. You can imagine the authority problems that stem from a situation where the people you know don’t know anything about the things you care about.”

“When we start new interns in our R&D team, we make sure that within their first week they actually make a change to Shopify that impacts our customers. Minutes after they send the code over, it’s going to be in front of a hundred million shoppers. And it just blows people’s minds, because that’s the kind of personal impact they want to have in the company.”

“I really encourage people to find a place that sort of culturally aligns with what they’re trying to accomplish, and then just go for it.”

Time is energy that you can invest in things, and money is energy that you can invest. Time has significantly more leverage than money in terms of how much energy you get out of time.