Breaking the rules of growth: Why Shopify bans KPIs, optimizes for churn, prioritizes intuition, and builds toward a 100-year vision | Archie Abrams (VP Product, Head of Growth at Shopify)
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When you have teams naturally break up the world into different final stages or different points in the journey, IT gets very seductive to look at my part of the function and what's my conversion rate through that part of the, and then the team starts to optimize for that conversion rate as their north star.

But in practice, it's actually almost always easier to just make harder to do the thing right before your step in the fund to increase your conversions instead of i'm trying to convert a bunch of people. I just want more people to get activate and IT. Once you start thinking that way, you realize actually the best way to get more people to get to a step.

They just get more people in the door in the first place. That will always hurt your conversion rate. But I may actually give you more people on the outside.

Today my guest is R C abrams. R C is V P R product and head of growth that shop fy, where he leads and org of over six hundred people across product design, engineering, data ops and growth marketing. Shop fy is both an incredibly unique and also an incredibly successful business, and they do things very differently.

And as a result, there is a lot that we can learn from how they approach building product and driving growth. Some examples include their priorities and product road map are driven by a hundred year vision that comes from toby. The o and the core product teams don't have matrix or KPI.

They are essentially banned, and instead decisions are made based on taste and intuition. And building towards this long term vision, also the growth team optimizes for turn, which is unlike any other company i've ever come across. And once to you hear why this will make a lot of sense. Also, they keep long term hold that for every experiment they run and they automatically look at the impact these experiments have had on the business a year later, two years later and three years later, and then revisit these decisions down the road.

And in our conversation, we dig into all this, plus how shop fight organizes that grow team, how they run experiments, how the growth team collaborate ates with the product team, how they measure impact, plus R, G shares, a bunch of very specific and interesting examples, changes that have driven growth for the business and so much more. This is such a fascine conversation, and I know this will give you a lot to think about in terms of how you run and organize your own product and grow teams. If you enjoy this podcast, don't forget to describe in following your favorite podcasting up or youtube, it's the best way to avoid missing feda episodes, and that helps the podcast tremendously. With that, I bring you R, G, ms. R, G, thank you so much for being here.

Welcome to the pot test. thanks. thanks. I to be here.

okay. So what I want to do with our time together is to basically do kind of a living of how sharp fy grows and what you specifically I have learned about growing a company like sharp fy into this, just juggle, not of a business that is turned into to give people a little bit of a sensor, just like how shop I has gone. So may be surprising about the scale of this company this point. Did you share some steps that uh, about the scale of business at this point?

Yeah, absolutely. So overall or about ten percent of of e commerce in the united states. So basically, if you're not buying on amazon or warmer, you're probably buying on A A shop of fight powered store.

And behind the scenes globally, we do about twenty thirty five billion and G M V in twenty twenty three, which is roughly the size of the economy of finland. So we got a big, big economy and big impact. Have different from shop fight.

Wow, uh I think interestingly would chop fy, it's canada behind the scenes tool. And so I imagine many people have no idea, are using shop A A A lot of time on their bring stuff online. And I think some of these numbers can to creep up on. People just have large company like .

chop of ice is gun hundred percent.

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I want to start with something that I think is most unique from what i've heard. And I think there can be a lot really unique approaches to how you all think about growth. One of the most interesting things i've heard is that are you think I turn in retention to most companies? The most important thing is to increase retention, reduce, turn.

My sense or understanding, as you guys are kind of the opposite, you one don't think turns a Better, you most optimized for turn. Talk about that. How does that work the way .

we think about to go back to shop fire as a kind of our mission in what we want to, which is to increase the amount of treatment on the on the internet, we can. So as a business, we want make IT as easy as possible to get started with with your online store, with your business. But most businesses do do ultimately fail into the way we we look at IT.

Is can we lower the barriers to getting started and get as many people in the door trying their hand at entrepreneurship? If we do that, can many those businesses, many spokesman, maybe on the first attempt, not be as successful, why we're going to have a set of merchants who go on to become extremely big businesses? The Albert of the world, figs eeta in the way the shop fy business model works is we do charge subscription, but both of our revenue comes from payments, which is tied to directly to emergence success, so on to giving cover emergence.

A lot of people start. Some of those people on their first attempts on the ship might not succeed, but the folks who do go on to be successful will have to make that entire cover of started, something that make sharply fy as a business extremely successful. And that's why we lower the barriers to get started and help folks grow and those winners make the whole thing work.

I love that. So kind of what i'm hearing as it's it's not that you don't want people to stick around. You don't want people it's not that you don't want people to succeed. It's that you're not optimizing every new shop for sticking around long term. It's basically make IT as easy as possible for people to try IT and all you need a few big wins for its all workout, correct?

And and that's really kind of a different inside the most as companies that know they get to discuss where they really never want that person to leave. And we want to look at that barriers to get started in and be successful.

One of the remain reasons companies focus so much return al attention is because IT costs them a lot of money to drive new customers and users. I imagine there's an almost implied it's really cheap for you all to find you customers because that maybe the brand and more mouths is that is that true?

I think that as some dynamics, I think the bigger factor is the motivation model for most as companies they are making for a subscription, right? The twenty nine box a months is the only way that they're going to really motivate. Whereas our business works, you have a folks who are paying a subscription, but as folks get bigger because we're monetizing on that G M V, that, that merchant is producing the revenue merchant producing in the former payments and other services, IT allows us to grow with the merchant in the very successful merchants, make the whole system work well.

got IT so basic, a dot attention, reveal attention, is just absurd for the winners. And IT makes up for all the losers. Sash users, people that have tried to use and only .

try try and have been first discussed. And you can think the other parallel, you know an Angel investing, right? Most of Angel investments are not going to work out, but the couple that do make an entire investment a got a portfolio successful .

with retention, uh, not being the primary goal and the metric guys focus on optimizing. How do you know if you're doing well? Is that some number of these winners have to come out every quarter year? How do you think about progress and and achieving and and success basically for for growth?

Is lai talking about a quality users we acquire in a given time periods a quarter. And then over the next year, two years, three years, four years, five years, how much G M, V have those merchants produced in total? Not a permanent ent basis is, but I in total, did that cover generate G V? And if they generate G, V, that will translate into revenue and gross fit in all of those things that we can use to reinvest in growing business.

So looking at the total value, but on that GMV basis in GMV as a power law based Patrick, into a during that power law that drives the success of each coho, again, going back to investing, same thing there, eat vintage from a fund. How much did that return? Kind of is a fun and is withdrew the few, if you very successful outliers.

So as big as a question, that sounds like a very long feedback loop, and I don't know what I do with that information in five years or now. Oh, okay, that was a really good idea we did five years ago.

correct. Come on.

And that is attaches on something you said about how metrics aren't actually a driver of all. Think you opp fy, so take that where everyone to go.

Yeah so it's it's interesting on I think we shop ify, we kind very purposely set up different parts of the org to think on very different time horizons and with very different ways of thinking about how to build product and the like, very different that a lot of company that typically have maybe one kind of united fy, this one north star that the entire company is rolling around. And so there's three major product groups that chapter fy.

There's core product, which is basically building the hundred year the right things for a commerce one hundred years for now. There is merchant services, which is building things like payments, shipping, kind of the tools that entrepreneurs need to be successful with a more kind of shorter medium term horizon. And then growth is really thinking about of that end and customer journey.

How can we bring folks on and make sure is successful? And then from a metric standpoint, we do have some obviously some leading indicators and growth that we're looking at on a given experiment or or what have you. But the key in what we try to instrument in our experimental is the ability to really look at long term effects of of experiment.

So we've constantly will relook at an experiment a year later, see that the way the G M V curve for the distribution was different than we might originally thought. Now actually change what we do with from that previous experiment. And there's a lot of long term monitoring of experiments over these very long time horizons to both inform what those input metrics s are, more importantly, holding ourselves accountable to do we actually move what we cared about, which is that long term G M V, in the right way.

wow. okay. I want to spend more time here.

See you at the way you're describing IT is the way the business Operates as you think what is our hundred your plan? How do we think or does this need to be in one hundred years? And with that, IT allows you to run these long hold out, kind of hold that experiments to see is something we're doing impacting the business broadly. And and because you think so long term, you couldn't take a year or two or three to see if there's an impact and then make adjustments verses. You am having to drive a certain metric, a record of year.

correct? And I mean, on growth, we're def fully in the we wanted drive metrics on a short term basis, and we can do that obviously. Uh, but we we we have the the luxury is the way kind of to be kind of think about the world and the way we Operate to really think about these long term effects and make sure that we're holding ourselves accountable with these long term hold outs and a constantly refining the input metrics that we're using and getting a lot smarter about that.

But because we take that long horizon, IT allows us to be Better in the short term and get last mother and a lot of counter attukal things. And I would encourage everyone if you can look at some of the experiments that you thought were your biggest winners, look at the downed metrics for a year, two years on that experiment. And I bet you would be surprised how many times the metric is different than what you thought I would be after a year.

Because where people just make a call at a certain point in time, here's the IT. Here's the experience. I love this because very few people have experiences running A A long term experiment. And so this is a really interesting insight they are sharing that I guess, uh, how often do you find this to be true in your long term? Hold out where things end up being very different down, down.

down stream. I think there's there's spite two things that have been very common. And I would say in a few cases, you get to show you get a left on the a metric up front and more shorter metric number of people who become a paying shop and number of people will make their first shell and choppered es.

And then you look a year later and is actually no incremental left on G M V from that cover. And so I think you like actually trained a lot of us and and growth are look at the short term metrics like a lot of the time, that is actually more poor effect. Then you fully, fully realize or an incremental user that is really not worth that much that one.

And then to the so it's just effect. Size goes away. There are cases where the experiment has flip the other way. And then there are all cases missing the most interesting ones, where you realize that you uncovered a pocket of merchants that are actually extremely valuable entrepreneurs who go on to be successful, that you missed in your your kind of Normal for term uh measurement techniques and kind all across the board. We see that. But actually the most common is actually isn't a long term lift from a lot of things that you might think of the short term are is an example of that .

second bucket of what you mean when you say there's like a pocket of valuable merchants?

Yeah, I think what are this has to do with we call a monetary friction, right? So one of the the hardest things to do with the business is when you're getting started is you might have been a revenue coming in, right? And and you are kind of oot strapping with age in shot.

His case might be thirty nine box a month, but it's still it's a real expense. And so typically, when you can lower the barriers to monetary friction in some form that could be all sorts to monetary friction early. The common belief is that will usually get lower quality.

Folks coming in the door, guys, usually discounts are associated with lower quality. If you think about in a business case, if I give you a little less monetary boost and reduce that monetary friction, I can actually causes change, your ability to become successful because i've given you a little bit more time to try that idea little bit longer. I've given you that opportunity to move your business over the sharp fy. And so often in those types of experiments, you see that you've basically unlocked the class of people who might have given up without that monetary, which is that monetary friction interesting .

and giving them time to actually make IT work.

to make IT work OK.

So uh, just roughly do give a sense of how often you find no effect after a year that you saw earlier impact.

Just it's in the thirty to forty percent, right? Like I think you're .

tearing the heart out of so many growth people right now and nobody wants to hear of this that works on. Or you're saying potentially a third of the experiments they are running today that are showing lift probably don't have that same don't have any impact down the rope.

yes. Unfortunately, I think that's brude more common than we like to go like to believe.

yes. And that's going to nobody wants to hear this. A except except people that, you know, you should want to hear this because if you want to build a business that grows and creating you to grow, it's Better than IT .

to learn that out.

Yeah okay. Uh, so for people that can't run hold long, hold out experiments, I guess is there anything you've fine is a good early indicator that, that might be the case because most people don't have time to sit around and way to year two or three, they are not thinking one hundred years.

I think, I think end of the day, that is going to be the most effective than you actually lower the most. I think IT is even in shorter term horizons um really being as specific as you can be about what are the the early signs of of success in your product and making sure instrument those and then making sure particularly kind of up function experiments, you are actually looking at those the further downstream metrics to make sure you have some understanding of of what's moving down so deep as you can go on the fun offer as long as you can wait.

Do that if you can't you know what I D say still you should just bet on if something is showing lift up function. Still, ship IT is probably not going to hurt you, but don't always restin ate the amount of impact that this is having. So very like two things here is like, don't like my recognition.

Foxes don't like all my god. I have to wait all this time. Is that because if you didn't move the upper the short term impact, you're not going have a long term left.

So still ship with the shorter term left. Just be reasonable that if you can do measure at longer term, you'll get Better. But identifying what things are that .

really practical got IT. And so you so IT may be positive initially, but often neutral. Rarely is IT neutral initially and then positive down the road.

We seen, we seen there are some there are some cases of that, but it's rarely i've seen neutral be positive, but I haven't seen negative got IT.

okay.

So all resulting .

positive got IT. okay. So that's reassuring. It's not you're not .

harming the business.

but you're probably getting out more credit and you deserve as a growth team shipping things that likes likely, yes, great likes. And this there's also just like trade doff to like moving on, you know and on baLance that should you're probably doing good things if you continue to ship things that are showing .

positive hundred percent O K.

this is awesome OK. Uh four people that want to run long term hole that experiments, I imagine you build your own experimental system internally that we have yeah and is that basically hold out ten percent say IT was some percentage of users from seeing the new changes that have projects are different.

Two things. We have two layers hold out. So one is the church more the hold out of, like every change in a quarter hold out five percent across the board.

Second is for a changes that only affect new merchants. What will do is will take that group of folks with got a fifty, fifty split, and then run that for in a few weeks. And then what doing with the long term effects is actually ship the winner to a hundred percent.

But we're looking at the h the code to folks who was in assigned to the experiment. We're going back and looking at those people who are signed a year later. So IT allows us to still ship get off out, but we've kind of held the experiment in a way that allows us to see those those launch resets just for the cover that was exposed.

Not only works if you're doing our new users for existing, it's a little more complicated. That's okay. And then in our experiment tools, all experimenters are paying at three months, six months, nine months, four months with you the update results.

So you can't really get hide from. What do this really result in over a longer terrorizing? See.

are two emails, everyone that involved every experimental, like cars. What this cohorn is doing now? correct.

I love that OK. That's also some. It's interesting to use kind of these cohort curves for G M V. And is that the corn metric you look at to see?

There's a few G M V I recently gross profit, but those but GMV is kind of like the a key he determined IT of term success. So .

interesting, most people use cohorn retention curves. You're using cohorn because you don't look at retention. You're looking at for GMV overtime. So that's really interesting.

G V over which correlates and product there's a retention and profit. And then really, really like the absolute number of version who are on the platform and then reaching her A G V O K.

i'm gna going to not following back because there is we can go while in the topic of just experiments and what you've done, i'm curry. If there's just any examples of big wins that your team has shipped that might inspire people as they're thinking about launching experiments, I know there's probably some trade secret stuff you don't want competence to know, and I know this is particular to shop fy and platform in commerce. But I guess this there anything that would be worth sharing like hope here's a huge in that may .

be we can expect going back is always a lot of value in thinking through um kind of monetary friction, as I mentioned, like that's always going to be something to to explore trial dynamics, different type of incentives. All those things are are very kind of impactful, I say, on things that are maybe more I practical and and for everyone, there is an enormous amount.

We do see this with long term effects, but just the nuts symbol ls of sign up, collecting the right information and usually want to collect more information than most people think you do in your sign up flow if you can leverage that to personalize the guidance. And this is first as per the guidance that someone can get when they on boarding to shoplifting. So whether you're coming on chapter is a very diverse product in person, selling online, selling different channels.

There's the nutts and bolts of get more information from folks, build trust in there, give them right the matter guidance when they come on a personalized way. And that may sound like, okay, that's when I but the amount of impact by just knowing those flows has never cease to to amaze me in setting up that person for a long term success so can match friction. And I just really good on boarding personalization, the well of of opportunities there.

I love that on wording comes up every time I asked anyone where they have ve ongoing success and opportunities, particularly in actually surprisingly driving retention like interesting that is not what you look at, but turns out that to what the big levels for increasing retention, interesting that even for company and look at retention, that's a the Operating .

this and IT really visit setting people up for to choice this case I think the big thing about um our metrics s is what we get very nervous about is the easiest way to increase retention is always to construct the final stage one above the retention metric you're trying to optimize for the simplest way to increase my sign up to activate the thing and just make that harder to sign up, right?

Like that in balls that will always happen is when you have teams on that kind of like local conversion rates, you kind of get all these weird team incentives is they're optimizing to basically implicated, make IT harder to do the step before them. And because we focus on that long term, G M V number emergences are successful orienting every team to think about the total number of people, not the rate, but the total number of people who got to the end of their kind of part of the journey is a very powerful way to incentivize people to do the the right thing in terms of gaining people. Set up verses do the i'm going to constrict the top of final set right before me to make my local conversions rate look Better, which is the band of my existence, but something I see a lot of teams like implicity explicitly do they, when they get two focus on rates.

a instance, power wever.

I definitely, to a little bit more about metrics.

You have a really interesting take that's canna build on which you just talking about. But first of all, you mentioned this term monetary friction as one of the levels that have seen success with you just describe. But that .

actually means totally so IT seems like trial trial annamite s trial length trial. And now that means, you know, incentives. So what is in your product? What do people value and need in order to be successful? So the job, this case that might feel like astor's credits or things like that, but those are the two forms of monitary friction we we talk about. And then of course, at the Price point, but that's what the kind of the larger bucket monetary friction is.

So it's follow the thread of metrics. You're big on absolute numbers. You've and you've been talking about the third versus like percentages and ratio. Talk about that and how you encourage your teams to think about matrix.

Yeah, I think one of the things that I think I have a particular large, I looks like when you have he naturally break up the world into different final status or different points in the journey. IT gets very seductive to look at my part of the function and what's my conversion rate through that part of the photo, right? And then the team starts to optimize for that conversion rate as their north star.

Over a longer time period, I am going to try to move micon version rate from ten to twelve percent or or what have you. But in practice, you talk about like it's actually almost always easier to just make that harder to do the thing right before your step in the fund to increase your conversation. If I make IT harder to sign up, it's going to be very easy to increase sign up to activated rate because I just have fewer people and the people may through our higher tent.

And so I see teens get really stuck when they I got trying to open my conversion rate, but they just make that harder to do. The previous thing versus everyone is thinking about absolute number of people who made IT through their, quote, stage of the fund. So instead of i'm trying to convert a bunch of people a conversion rate, I just want more people to get activated.

And then once you start thinking that way, you realize actually the best way to get more people to get to a step is sometimes and often is just get more people in the door in the first place. So make IT easier to sign up or reduce friction. The opposite, right? And so like because that will will always heard your conversion rate, but IT may actually give you more people on the outside and a lot team you have very nurse through retention rate went down, their L, T, V went down.

Oh my god, this is going to affect our ability to pay. No, your cat also went down by probably more. And so now you have the ability to like we spend more and you have more people through the door getting to each point in the activation or the emergent journeys.

What i'm hearing essentially teams are gold, not on increase lift, lift this conversion step by some percentage, drive some incremental absolute number of new merchants.

But you merchants exactly this.

a good, sad way to, I want to hear how you structure your girl team a chop fy. Like essentially, what's the rage structure? What are the different teams and what are they focus on and and what do they like the functions within each teams?

We have two big a groups within within growth. So one is we call growth R N D. So this might be your traditionally consider product design engineering data, your traditional product teams.

Then we have growth marketing, which in traffic cases, paid acquisition, media buying, failure marketing, email content in A C O. So that's kind of like growth R N D. Growth marketing within growth R N D three, uh three pillars. One is what we call growth products. And so this is basically everything from kind of landing pages, sign up on boarding monetization.

So trial incentives to, like all the way through to home r will we call home feed our engagement to basically get more emergency and they retain, but to give keep giving entrepreneurship a try to become bigger and bigger businesses, that growth product kind of a full life cycle there. Second is what we call in maple pillar and this tea pillers building tools for both growth in the rest of shoplifted. So things like experimental platform or communication platform of our business intelligence tooling that, that powers a lot of what we're doing, our more tech work to support our growth marketing team.

And then our third bucket, which is maybe a little different from most growth teens, is actually our customer support groups is within growth because we want to think about customer support as part of this merchant and journey of coming on, giving up further, ship a try all the way through to hear this. What I need as i'm becoming a multibillion dollar business on chapter fy. So those are I like the three big growth product buckets and everything worth marketing. The more traditional channel set up paid all the different channels online, offline. S O, email inflates.

super cat, okay, so we can grow through the just note, i'm going to summer ze, which you share you some. So there's kind of three big buckets. One is growth product, which essentially is like on boarding, feels like it's like the top of function, get people uh in.

okay. So growth marketing feels like the top bring yeah IT. The growth marketing drive people to shop fight a com, then right growth within R N D team. Growth product takes that user and tries to get them to activated. Enable helps IT feels like that's like internal two lin ways to make the teams internally more efficient.

correct old growth and outside growth.

awesome. okay. And then the uh, customer support team, that's really interesting. So there is a customer support product .

team that helps .

new merchants be successful. And does that include like actual customer support agents? Is that like within .

a team that's not we build a troy to make those support superheroes and then on that the help center over A I stuff, uh to make of A A great customer experience for people who are aging in a self, the tooling in the experience for fermitage. okay. So with these teams.

is there anything you can? sure. But just like how you think about metric ash calls for these different buckets, we don't need to get too deeply. But just does everyone basically have like an absolute new merchants goal is is a little different.

So yeah so you know the the highest level we think about that, that total core value, right? We bring in a set merchants in a given year. How much jv imation was that set of merchants worth um over the next three, four years to shop lifed, right? And that's that's the most important thing that we want to focus on in the that of course the for efficiency standpoint that of course meeting are our payback card rails and all that.

So that's like the macroscale perspective covalent over got of cost and and payback that that's the macro o point of view. And there within growth marketing that each channel Operates with certain goals around their ultimate same thing for conn S O that Operates with of a garden model for each piece of content. How much is that going to come back and and down the line for growth products? It's a also accommodation of total G P, incremental core value that's produced from those those teams, right? So everything is basically going to be measured on from from experiment, ideally measured over very long time for IT.

What is the incremental core values lift that this this generated? And and that's how we think about how to measure the impact of each of those, those subtext s along the way, each of us have a fix part, the final they play with. But because their measure absolute and they really think about that absolute value, we don't get caught til I did. You are conversions ate over the course of this year, go up or down. Kind of revere was the sum of the impact over a long period on that total core value that we're trying to produce from the four merchants.

And the way you come up with this goal, imagine, is you a forecasts where things would go organically? And then like here's the lift we want to see from the work the team does the scar this year.

correct? Um and and then we're going to measure against for each experiment didn't actually get to where we yeah we expect that to be.

And those experiments again, are there was all long term hold that experiments where you look way to year or some, you you call we all.

we call the experiment after three weeks. But in all cases, the group is held, we watched, and that's where that ping comes back. Every three, six months, twelve months to relook at was as actually .

successful OK and I create .

the loop of shipping value quickly. But making sure we're hold ourselves accountable to do this actually produce results over a long period. Or did IT actually to stop this neutral effect ago? They need to learn from that and get Better.

This episode has brought you by duv tale, the A I first customer inside tub. For all teams, the tail has always been the go to tool for teams who want to find insights and customer calls, user interviews or documents. Now they've stepped IT up with the release of the tail three point.

Oh, that's three new products and a ton of A I features that make IT faster, easier than ever before. To truly get at the heart of what your customers are want, you can get a real time post on what your customers are thinking with duff s automated feedback analysis platform channels or pull summarize and insights from every custom interaction your team has ever had with their AI chat box. Asked dev tail, you can even recruit from over three million participants directly in detail.

All this is just the tip of the iceberg. Data wants to give everyone in their organza instant access to their customers at any time, from road maps discovery to strategy sessions and more. It's never been easier to make customer centric decisions.

The good news lenny's listeners can try dt ls profile, along with our newest products and features free for thirty days. Just got a dub tail dcom flash. So maybe they just dig into this again because it's so interesting.

Basically, product team ship stuff, they run an experiment. They see impact. Is five percent live done something? Ha, uzi, you did a great work. Performance review ing up your succeeds you're doing greatest teams killing IT. And then a year later he realized, oh that that in last how often do you find like a team that is shipping winds looks back and ends up seeing like that wasn't actually as successful I know said like me be the time yeah okay, so it's still like roughly yeah and .

it's great learning and that's where we take is like, well, okay, we we really uncovered something that's like such a successful discovery wow. Okay, we thought this thing, but now we learned that actually wasn't a choose. We thought, cool. What what can we take from that and be smarter and next time we know, just double down on the wrong, the wrong things. So interesting .

and to get and you've mentioned most of the reason, this is the case when something doesn't show lift down the road as it's pulling forward success that would have been seen later on its zone if you had not even been to this thing. Career as an example by any change that comes to mind of something like that. That's just like wow was a big winner and like I see, we just pulled forward some, some revenue from the future. Yes.

I think one one good example is, is something around payment failure notifications. So one of things that a lot of teams have or see is we got dunning effects where somebody might have a payment, uh, not go through credit that doesn't go through. So we did a bunch of experiment around, hey, how can we alert people that their credit card is failed, their payment tempt failed.

And it's a typical kind of growth win usually produce a lot of shorter impact. That's what we saw here. We were doing much Better, alerting, reminding people, sending them a million emails about IT ool.

We got some pretty major left. You look back six, twelve months. There is really no long term that in wise, that is a ruiz as a little bit of selector bias.

There are the people who are letting that, that payment feel probably weren't actually that dedicated to this entrepreneurship raft. They may have updated their credit card, but they still really weren't in IT. And so that was a good example of in a bunch of this stuff around kind of payments you have, quote, preventing turn. We look like at six, twelve, eighteen months on A G M V metric, not a lot of left over that long term horizon.

I love this example. Like, I could see so many people having run experiments like this. And like, we found such a huge win, this seems killing a, what a great idea. Of course this makes sense, duh. Then turns that it's nothing long term.

Yeah, what a great people are spending, and we're going to spend a lot of time. Okay, what else can we do here? No, actually bigger fish to fry in, in a lot of other area. So IT helps the team just feel really good that their their work is really the things that, that ever good.

You know, another one that that went the other way, what is really interesting was in our online storm is might be very sharp fy if sections in blocks that come complete configured um and three, we tested okay, if if you give you a precondition ure block of like you should have a image up top than a text banner and then a collage with your food products that should hell folks understand what to do when they're building the online store. IT actually had no lift in people converting to A A paying merchant. However, when we looked longer term on that six months later, and I prema sive impact on the number of people who are selling a producing G M. V.

And why is that? Because I didn't likely really influence anyone to, like, buy, shop, fire or pay for shop fy. But the people who who use IT created Better stores that were higher converting.

And so they got early sales. They actually converted one of their visitors and they got momentum and they stuck with entrepreneurship a little bit longer. And we saw that in that opposite way.

And so this is something with that neutral. So we tend to ship neutral. It's like IT could be positive. And so let's like let IT go if we have good intuition about IT and it'll turn. So we see a bunch of these things go in very different directions.

So fascinating. I didn't realize that you ship neutral experiments. That's an interesting insight is so it's like if you feel good about IT and it's neutral.

you ship IT in our in our culture of vab c aim. Can I aim heavy at the intuition is right that this probably is helping merchants. Why do we start with that? The original control is Better for neutral. We start with the vote of shift. If we are a blank slate and if the neutral actually needs is Better, so just fix the one we feel Better about .

and ship that make so much sense of my okay. So let's start about this a little bit more of this aim heavy concept, this idea of thinking one hundred years out can just share more about just that inside mate philosophy, I know sounds like IT comes from toby of how you likes to think .

about the business total. This all toby of really make sure shop like so or enter around. We are here to build a hundred year company and said the decisions we're gonna are really oriented towards the wrong term. Successive of merchants of sharp fy, you know, embedded in all of our principles, are make the best product in the world, make money to do more of one, never reverse principles, tumor in every kind of executive meeting, every town hall that slide comes up like you're going to shop, fly if I seen that slide ten thousand times.

But is an important reminder, like jobs is to be the best product for merchants over the long period of time and in all of kind of the metrics and how to make money part of IT secondarily to that. So we care about that, that long term IT. IT has a little a bit to that, that original conversation about kind of entrepreneurs and being the core of like why we just want more people to start businesses and go is very, uh, productive.

I think in kind of most companies, including in trap vibes, we want we can support large enterprise businesses today, right? Big brands who want to get off outdated solution and come over to sharp fy. It's very easy to just say, oh, that's very concrete.

There's an existing business. We want to have them come join shop fy in. In the short term, IT feels really good as IT brings a lot of revenue right away. But if you are talking about the one time one hundred years now, guess what? All the big brands of today be out of business and maybe they will be out of business in thirty, forty, fifty years.

The real success of sharp fies, getting every business to start with us and go, but but making that type of investment and being so focused on that entrepreneur segment and make IT easier is how we build kind of a very, very long term oriented company. So just even how would your capital investment, how would your product decision making comes back to? Hey, we can't chase. Get of the short term in more concrete things is an example .

that comes to mine where you did that, where something short term look like h we should definitely do this, but we're thinking long germin thinking hundred years out. So we're going to approach to this way.

It's kind very much just in bute, in the culture, almost, almost everything kind of feels that way. And I give practically speaking, every six weeks, we are the kind of orange group lead. We get together and we sit with toby and each other and review every single project across the company.

Every six weeks, every single R N D. Pulled at ashford and look at IT. And in that conversation, so much of the conversation is about both the technical how how are we building this in a way that allows for shopping by up optionality in the technical decisions that we are making.

And I think for tobi, one of things that i've learned that the how the technical architecture determines strategy in a technology company even more than the kind of what and who are building for if you build the right kind of technical how and set yourself up to have a platform that can be adaptable, flexible, that is incredibly valuable. Longer r IT means we will sometimes take longer to ship the future and means we will not chase kind of certain deals or what have you, but we're going make that at investment. And that comes through in all of our reviews and just how we got to do our work together.

Well, that is really think i've not heard of that. Where the how usually if the opposite is not how we're gona build this thing is why are we building this thing and then when are we building IT? And not just like the architecture is the is the most important thing.

So I mean, it's like in the last one, we had a IT was great. We had a thirty minute discussion about we are how to build cst importers for people coming over from different platforms. And IT was all about are using an open source library doing IT internally ever doing in the core code base, rebuilding a separate first party p to do IT IT was incredible.

Detail is what it's amain. That would be the technical detail of how we're going to do. This was incredibly important to get right to get to set up this type of structure and most of years to be okay.

What you're going to make IT easier people to migrate their data over cool team. Go figure out the how and team just be out that how we work on IT with kind of toby in the details is that how is so important that we build for the future? fascinating.

And usually it's how do we do this as quick as possible. Cvs import is not to recall different traders just feel something good enough for ship that only want to the opposite. That is fascinating.

I was also really interesting about this, as I think about branch chest guitar being being where I worked through a while. And his so one, he also had this idea of the hundred year vision and thinking for the future way out one hundred years. But interestingly, he since this is a designer, he had a very different focus.

So toby, he was an engineer. He still codes when I can see, and twitter still, uh, so I could see why his brain goes there and why he's really strong in the how bright and their hand is very focused on experience and making sure the design is amazing and uh, the APP is exactly what he wanted you to feel like. You know it's very like experience oriented.

So it's interesting that founders these founders lean into the thing that they're strong yet and understand deeply and that ideally connects with the way this business specifically wins and grows. And IT makes sense a platform. I can see why engineering and be so essentially get right travel, hospitality, consumer out like, see, I design is important .

hundred .

per fascinating one war to bitten that i've heard about how you all think about this is, is metrics s and you you mention before we start according that, a lot of the company doesn't actually have metrics that drive what they build, especially within the core business, which I think which surprise a lot of people. Most people, like every team, needs a metric and A K, P, I, and is how we measure progress. And this is how we know if they're doing well. Talk about just how that works, how company have mostly company design metric.

Yeah it's funny. We ve ranked against K P S are basically banned as a in OKR are banned and and all that. So certainly like in in growth y the metrics, but they they take a different form. And then in court, IT, IT truly is do we have conviction that this is the right technical foundation to build the future of commerce and that is built through certainly looking at data. So it's that teams are not looking at data and using IT has a piece of their puzzle, but it's not the overwriting.

And when we go to ship of future and core IT, not like a team held accountable for this metric over this six months is much more do we ship the right thing and we're going to get at that through a variety of lenders. Ah could be some of that could be data quality tato, just our own and our product sense of what good or not can so that you know I think the the opposite of that is I think we tend to ships in core and that are incredibly um for facing any way you take more risk. I think the acknowledge some the the downside of that though sometimes conversations get extremely objective a about what is the right thing to do and so that that requires got of a um the right way of of having kind of good discussions is kind of openness from all leaders in front teams to debate those things. But IT does result in some cushy ss which again, as is also coins for kind of taste is kind of a drives a lot of where shipping in core .

yeah got you touch that. I was to say OK, everyone would love this idea just builds that we think you're awesome, going to be great. But then you build a hok org with teams and people building stuff. How does one know if they're building things that are good and helping versus not? And you're pointing out there are posing costs to that. The process as were not optimizing for some short term winds and driving and for metric mccomas, you might shift stuff that like there is a lot of subjectivity and people may not agree and it's a lot of kind of squshy stuff.

Yeah totally a gland who is in a head of core product. I me what I think is so impressive about glad to guy that court team is they go incredibly deep into every single release that are shipped. And though you have to have a central kind of iron, the quality and how IT outfits together.

And so that I think helps make sure is a consistent kind of bar for taste. That's glam fur fox, toby. Obviously that kind can enforce that. So he creates its subjective, but it's objective in the sense that it's kind of a small number of people who really hold what that that part is in needs to be. I think if its just subjective via ship, what we want without kind of a couple of people really holding that, that quality, that taste bar, that where things go really .

always awesome, that's exactly I can ask who who's the also a decider of testing and what is good. And so that sounds like basically toby above and then he's kind of deputize glen and realize on him to make a lot of these final calls yeah and yeah OK. And then imagine glen has some folks that he can deputised to make smaller decisions along away or not, yes.

or he's very involved. And yeah and I think I think this is the fun thing. I shop like literally like we have our own internal project management system that's going to craft to just for shop fy.

And every time I call, by the way.

it's get like a cool name.

IT gsc G S T, they have gets done something yeah get done.

And every project they ve got a core project, you ember service got growth project. And the expectation is that the group leads every .

single .

project that goes out has a few minute video. The thing was in everything and everything, that ship needs to be OK tude. So approved by the group ly, there's nothing that can ship without that okay to approval and that okay to approve us to be clean coral myself, different groups.

And so that is kind of how the everything is review. Now of course there's great mazing teams that you amazing work um but IT is kind of that. That's how the system just to work.

And OK two specifically means someone above refused or all you. This whole team.

everyone looks like no. So gland reviews the core of, okay, too. So it's interesting. It's basically gland .

as founder mode and not as a founder where he's involved. All the details has final say. So this is a really cold example of founder mode, but that was a founder and correct. And the way guys Operate, and I imagine sometimes told disGrace glm, and then they talk about IT and things get out to.

and I thought we come together every six weeks, kind of everyone in a person to review every project so we can hash out those disagreements. Go to all the core projects on the work service project, the growth projects, and is a great form to say, hey, here's where we disagree, room of how and the the tactics of what's happening is and we can flag those things, have good debates of that where there might be missing .

a amazing what what are unique way of working. I'm so fascinated by all this. So what i'm hearing essentially within core, glen and his team come up with here's we're going to build the next quarter. You guys have twice a year releases that, right? Or is that every season?

Yeah so big kind of additions twice a year, I was continually shipping, but we have package them twice .

a year and a big, big, big lunch up something. okay. So he's like here's we're going to do in the next release where is going to build this because we think this is alright and we're not driving a specific goal were building four hundred years in the future.

Let's just build IT and basically you build IT. He's like there's a great not great iterate until us to this good and then and and great. Okay, this is a great.

okay. So then there's that that team and your team, which is like drive some breaking numbers, drive growth, hit these goals. How do you collaborate across these two teams? What you have a model for, how you work together because these feels very differently are working.

Yeah honestly, i've been one of the things. Very proud of like we built a really great partnership at the last three and eight years. It's intentionally meant to be almost that odds.

And that's like part of the structure of how you want to work. But but IT come through, I think, a place of every spect done on both sides. And I say for anyone, it's okay.

Here's the growth. Is gonna really going to do in a way that, that is high quality, that is shipping really good stuff for merchants. If I going to approach IT any in a faster way, we might disagree on things, but we're going to have reasonable past to GTA handle that conflict.

And so that is no magic bullet. IT wasn't like, these are the circuses that growth can touch. These are not is like you go anywhere in the product. But let's go figure out how to work together to figure out that quality bar, to understand when you're going to be different on IT on the quality bar to get something out to learn and just building trust along the way that we're actually going to chip high quality things and we ship up to one hundred percent and move. And so livery work on the team to make that the relationship really strong.

got. So basically, you guys like movie in this button here is going to drive so much growth and then going like, no, this is not acceptable. We don't want a button here. This looks terrible. I really going to hate IT so such a healthy tension like i'm describing I come to me.

yeah toy and it's like, okay, so we going to work to fear us out. You might be able going to move the button, hey, what was run the test, but see the short life, you know, going to monitor a long term. You know, when we ship IT, it's going to be high quality, like high quality polish, okay, then you trust us to like make those those trade off.

And I wish I had a Better answer. If it's very human, right? It's very that trust that's very is very important. Any of these I think growth with other teams is like no replacement for this to human trust in and falling through our commitments of. Now we are actually going to make this thing really good.

Is an example of that, that came to mind where you had something that was you thought was going to drive, meaning qual growth. You showed IT to gLance is like now know about this and then either you iterated or you just like, forget IT this isn't right for the place even that's gna drives and meaningful growth.

The place that we we often come back to is this is with you think toby is great. Toby and glen is on wizards.

So with your sells .

on voting care cells, some way that basically has folks get set up by not using the actual product. And so we've h we've always kind of the answer around and we have very specific no wizard principle, but I think sometimes that the tension is wizards do serve a can serve a purpose and certain circumstances. And so we've but we've avoided doing that.

But we've always worked to try to make the principles voter wizard does really well, which is that IT simplifies the product into something that allows people to have a lower bar to try to work with core to bring that into the actual experience itself. So the example that experiment I mentioned to you of giving prefiling sections in the online store editor, you could have solved that in a wizards way of like enter a few things and we're going to generate the sections for you. Instead, we actually took those regenerated things based on what we know that you input IT into the actual prior experience itself. So I tried to get at some of the principles or what a wizard can do well without avoiding the the wizard principle, without creating actual wizard. So that that's been some of the like, how do we work together to get the intention with the growth ideas in a way that consistent with the the way I want to build a core got IT.

And I get why that you think about this a lot because you talked about one of the biggest levers is on boarding and helping more people get to activated. And so I could see why spent a lot of time talking about that we help more people succeed there.

Yes.

I want to ask your insight on this idea that people might be listed to this and feeling like, oh, we need to build a team that just build great product and is not constrained by metrics and driving growth. Short term thinking, long term thinking. Hundred years like this is inspiring, I think, to a lot of companies, because that sounds great.

What do you think IT takes to make something like that work? Because in a bad case, the team just sit around and build whatever they want. And the rest of the companies I got down the sucks that show success in metrics and moving in metric in this team there just build beautiful things, is IT like you need a founder like toby, that paradise es this and values IT and has really good taste and intuition. Like what do you think are important and means of something like that of of the supposal working at a company based on m. You've seen.

I think IT IT needs to have a very open ated founder set of people who are driving what good looks like. I think if IT is, and I think shop five you know of years ago before yy, sometimes is drifted into the mode of we are just gonna build stuff and each kind of team is just going to build stuff, not very accountable for IT. And that is a very, very bad state to end up.

So I think you either have to use, I said, as metrics, as accountability, which is the most common kind of waiter drive accountability and focus, or extremely strong, found her a set of folks who have extremely strong opinions on what good is and what taste is. If you have one of those two, you can make a work. But the worst cases, let just go build a bunch of call stuff and kind of a hap hazard way that I don't think would work.

Yeah, this is great. So either you need matrix to tell you you're doing dating or really correct and good taste in in your founder. Create cool.

I think that's a really good with him and like I imagine every founder isn't going to think, oh, that's to me. I have this. I can do this.

I think it's rare in real life like it's surreal that you're like a take your bright just here or long yeah either but yeah hard to internalize that. But I think that the reality so most people be more successful building things that are driving metrics they can track in an experiment. Yes, awesome.

This is very fascinating. I am so happy with making so much shiny list. Okay, there's a few other rank things.

Are we going to touch on? One is sales. So historically, shop of has been very protect, like growth, very organic.

Go trick IT out, sign shop, a store start, a store grow. And you guys have laid on sales and a sales motion that's increasing part of your business. What have you learned about your team, the group team working with sales and make you a successful relationship?

Yeah, no, he has been great over the last couple years. As built out, he says, already be his adhered a full new kind of motion to chapter as chauffore. Is product up Better? IT was he can serve the biggest companies in the world, is like the natural evolution.

Well, let's what do you can do that for people to grow up on trap flying to be the biggest companies, but also have to take folks another, bring them over for growth and sales. I think the biggest learning from the kind of the orange decide at least has been the scale is very different with with sales and say it's really hard to use as much. There are quantitative data to make noising growth to make some of those decisions.

And so what if IT has been building, but we're quality native insight, working with merger success, sales about with the face the chAllenges are facing and on boarding a large customer. So how do we build import tools that work for them? How do we make sure they have the right guidance in the product for a very different set of use cases.

So I would just been like very much empathy building with sales about what that merchant journey looks like and quite Frankly, chAllenging ourselves to think differently to one thing. And then second, we can built two very distinct funds through for a little act that's IT. There's no mention of self service.

There's no this is just like drive and qs boom, then there's the self service thing. There's no mention of sales anywhere. And so one of the last thing the year you've been really doing is how to create these hyper journeys where there is we shouldn't forced to merchant the choose.

You want to talk to sales, you want to self service SHE gave them the options whenever path that they want to go on. And so a lot of us, and building into the self service journey over the sales and then from sales into self service, that's broken a lot of necrosis in the business, that's broken a lot of ways people have thought about their jobs. And so there's been a lot of kind of cultural resetting and just getting smarter from a metric.

Same point about how do we measure this thing of hybrid journey. They came in the a self serves that went over to sales. How do we value you to those components in the process and transparent. And we're so getting Better at, but is very important to to get there.

There's there an example of something that broke that would be illustrative of which.

right? Yeah yeah. So that breaks is to try someone to a from an ad over the self service. We did we look at only the self service ltv of that person, but what else they come in, they sign up the self service and then they go talk to sales.

They get change to a sales driven merchant, which means that that value, that merchant, which is usually after quite word, does not get associated back to that ad campaign. Oh, guess what that makes that means you have pride reduced investment on that ad campaign because you weren't valuing that. This system had two different models for a good hill TV still driven one and a self service one. Ah oh, we're going to make sub often on investment decisions now by kind of moving things around even though the right thing to do. So a lot of us in rebuilding instrumentation have we do ltv modeling, how we do attribution, how we do incremental ity testing across each of those different times of outcomes because IT was not kind of an intuitive thing for us originally as we built all these systems, but the much more .

now makes so yeah.

basically .

attribution gets a lot more complicated 啊。 Are you going like a multitude attribution direction or something even more clever?

My friend is I have A I volte touch. Attribution has its as its place. I think ideally what we want to get do is what we really care about creating toity. And so incremental ity is got of the the gold standards of people who are just like attribution measures like how do you assign value to a give a touch point right click of view eeta, but doesn't tell you cauSally we drove something right.

That's where incrementally tells you an incremental test is basically don't show ads on meta for certain other people, show to the other set, see what the lift is in the outcome. And so a lot of what we're doing is trying to get a lot is doing get even more. Sophy cared in incremental ity measurement for not just self outcomes but for self service outcomes that then drive to sales for sale specific outcomes. And as as we have that kind figure mentality at the channel level, we can get a lot more sophisticated in terms of our our bidding, budgeting. All but that's know if the key the key thing we want to get to there .

are certain topics that a little can be the podcast conversation to just David, the stuff when i'm going to stop myself and how go further done that track. Let me touch on a couple more things before we before I had to go. Uh, one is marketing.

So we take about sales marketing. You guys don't have a cmo. There is no shop fy c mo. Instead, you embed marketing leads within the work for folks that are trying to wrap that should rehash c mo. So we do something else. What if you learn about maybe the benefits and also maybe some downside of approaching IT the way you guys approached IT?

The benefit is so there's there's growth marketing who sits in and growth there is revenue marketing who sits over cost for the sales. There's A A brand team under hardly the amazing work or president. Um there's marketing evidence core in P M S.

Sit with product managers there. They're shop marketing on a consumer size. Markey is truly everywhere in the work.

And I think the benefit of IT is is closest to the primary and goal that those markets are trying to do, right? They sit with growth so we can focus on kind of that self service motion hardly is an amazing communicator. So brand sits with with him so he can be you can have all of influence over that.

So I think IT sits with the people. It's most roof and outcomes are driving, which is great because I was just move faster with less gun coordination. I did only works because toby harley have such amazing intuition on with a brand is needs to be and all that, that some of what the cmo does of kind of creating the cohesive story of shop fy, it's going to held in in their their heads and they kind there, they have a pen on that.

And so that allows them that the piece that see the most job to not be as important, but the other pieces are critical, but they can be now closer to the the action and where they are drive the most most impact. The downside of things are sometimes very messy, right? So that's yeah another example .

where the founder can their background and interest and skills can impact significantly the way the world, the structure didn't who you aren't do here. okay. One last question. Totally different topic. Discounting, say, worked at you to me for a long time and for my understand was one of the key reasons you to me six, he didn't in one of the big different shatters. I'm curious what I learned about discounting the part of discounting as a girl lover.

Yeah so so you need is a very you know you know this online marketplace for for online courses. So come on course. And I think what was happening in and I started with there, he doesn't twelve sh with people.

What is this online course thing? I really understand what IT is. I understand what the value is and i'm going to pay. And so what discounting is a really powerful effect on is a can signal value with a high list Price, but then bring something down to an affordable Price.

And I may see, like, of course, that's that's obviously in online courses, what is important, the list Price to be high at a hundred box that is associated with, like a college course. But what people really have value this thing as was a book. And so you could signal very high signal quality through Price, which is very monkey at that point in online learning.

Signal value through Price discount IT to ten box, or that was a typical united deal. And then so ninety nine percent off, ninety percent off. We might feel like fire cells, but but IT changed the value and willing us to pay. And then IT tapped into the fact that, and still is, education is very aspirational. And so what a lot of people missed in that in education is, yes, we want people to actually take the course, but that's actually many keys is not the jo B2Be don e tha t the re's an emo tional job tha t's eve n mor e imp ortant, which is i'm feeling like i'm making progress in my educational journey and just the act of purchasing a course that the act of buying a book is progress. And if you can make IT very enticing, very high value thing, cheap urgency, you can let people make that emotional journey by the act of purchasing, which is not allowed us actually a very good retention because you could keep going back to that emotional job over and over again, which is kind with urgency, allowed us to do amazing.

Well, with that, we reached our very exciting lightning round. R, T, are you ready?

I'm ready.

First question, what are two, three books that you recommended most? Two other people.

So one, I I love to go back to like marketers who role in like to twice. And so one that I I love is scientific advertising by the hacking. So actually, one of the first kind of direct marketers that came out and kind of innovated on some of the concepts of coffee writing and just how you like, sell a product around, can make this product, can sell the product, you tell the product, will help customer achieve their goals.

And that is really fun. I find that really fun to go back in time. And there's a lot of really good first principles thinking that I think we've actually lost in more modern stuff for its like personalization band, its optimization, all of this stuffers like now, like how do you actually write and cell things? Very effective scientist. Advertizing is is a great book.

just like the name alone. That sounds really cool, especially for someone in your in your shoes that feels like the perfect book for you, your role. And I think there's so much wisdom in, just like the thing someone figured out many years ago about what can this is be able to buy something is still true and people over complicated and just going .

back to the original al often released ful alright and the perfect mile about our the the chase for sup four minute mile by brother bannister and a few other um folks is that just a wonderful as a runner is a really fun book to read about of perseverance how these folks really they are all competed to get to that that really amazing goal of about four minutes. While .

awesome, you are favorite recent movie or T, V show you really enjoyed.

Know I went back in time and I watched for the first time, actually the entire these are all the opposites of the sonus, which was quite, quite a highly recommended to that in the wire in the last lake six months. So want to watch you work out in the morning on my olympics or bike. So it's a nice the nice mark work as show think good motivator to .

just work out as something to watch the next episode the war is like it's like our long episode, five seasons times twenty eight, twenty two episodes for season rate yeah how cheese. It's a lot, a lot of watching. But and I I do that once and was like, have you got a lot we get a lot of episodes watch, but incredible.

Okay, it's funny. I you should say, to spend as I feel like a number of people recently told me they're watching the false brand is again like a trend reselling for some reason. L H. Justice, anyway, give a favor product. You recently discover that you really .

look so the AI music creator um my kids and I am the least musical person in the world is amazing, my kids that I will create songs together about our days about what's going on such has been been really fun to you to have a musical experience for not musical person and have that creative experience for that minutes then has been really awesome so insane I think .

it's soon know that A I hops to when I check IT out and just it's just like such a fun party trick to just like red a song on the spot about something maybe thinking about awesome to more questions the other favorite life model that you often come back to find helpful in worker in life.

Yeah, I often come back to the plane as the plan until it's not and it's face. So like we have a plan. If the plan our best was commit to IT, but acknowledge might change and will do with a than but the combination of like we have plan stay focused on that with also the acknowledgement that can need to be flexible and tried to combine those two contradictory things of focus plan with we got able to react effective way.

reminds me of strong opinions loosely held as a concept toy. Awesome OK final question. Ah thanks your wife. What to ask you when you came on the podcast and SHE suggested that ask you about your late father who had a lot of impact on your leadership style so here's my question, just what the jewelery from your dad that impacts the way you work today?

yeah. Who, like my dad a lot, is like a father, and he was is an entrepreneur and technology and anyone of things that I so appreciate about his leadership style was the empathy and curiosity and kindness that he he showed everything, and I hope in some of the stories that of, you know, him sleep no matter who anyone was like curious love to engage, learn from and I hope that's of the guy try to inspiration from is like just be with everyone kind and and learn for everyone you you're with around so so I think a lot, a lot that .

super resonates. He sounds like a one derful human. H S R U R G, this was wonderful.

We touched them so much. We covered so much. I feel like we could go on for many more hours. We go around to, as you learn more things, your time to chop fy two final questions working folks finally online if they want to potentially reach out to follow the .

stuff yap to and how can listeners beautiful too guess so not super on social video but on linked in checkout send me message um and. Then yet folks are hiring a bunch of folks, growth marketers, pms, engineers, data folks, u xs, you want to work and sharp fy and growth and other parts fully remote, so you'd love to only have grade people join.

awesome. In that last point. I think I ve just highlight of one of the fewer remaining fully remote tech company. Yes, that is not returning to work.

returning to the office, office .

which work?

Yes, amazing. And sounds like .

specially are hiring and across all functions.

all functions .

so perfect. Archie, thank you so much for being here.

Thank you like fun by everyone.

Thank you so much for listening. If you found this valuable, you can subscribe to the show on apple podcast, spotify or your favorite podcast up. Also, please consider giving us a rating or leaving your view as that really helps other listeners find the podcast. You can find all past episodes or learn more about the show at lenny's podcast dot com. See you in the next episode.