Tobi Lütke on the AI agent revolution and future of Shopify

Toby, there was something that happened recently, and we had already scheduled to have this conversation, and I saw it, and I was like, "Man, I'm dying to know what Toby thinks of this." And it was when Amazon recently blocked Muse. I would love to know your reaction to that when you saw that. Yeah, I found out after posting that the embracing Muse, so that was kind of a fun experience. That looked pretty cheeky, because I think people sort of draw to a contrast, of Shopify and Amazon taking basically polar opposite positions to incredible, authentic capabilities that are coming out of big companies. Muse specifically, I think, is such a remarkable product. It's funny, because people's reaction was very surprised that Shopify and Amazon found themselves on different sites. But to me, there's been the last 20 years, there's a difference of philosophy, I think, in commerce, and I think Niveau-Vam is necessarily a philosophic, like a right position. There's just these two different approaches that I think Shopify and Amazon have always represented. One is the digitalization of a department store, which is bringing forward the merchandiser, the everything store, you go to one place, you get everything, and it's strength is for inventory and depth of inventory, but not through distinction, usually, or at least not for storytelling, and sort of the more boutique style, independence, people engaging in entrepreneurship, philosophy that's been represented by Shopify, and so I think it seems to me like another implementation of a long-standing collaborative thought project, like off the internet, to figure out which site it's on, or how people would like to consume the products. When I saw it, my reaction was, wow, that makes total sense to me, because Amazon has not only are they an aggregator in the Bentonpson kind of traditional sense of it, but they have a massive ads business to protect. Shopify doesn't. We'll get more into this, but your business model might be one of the most aligned with this rise of the analytic web that everyone's experiencing right now. Do you think that's the reason that some of these large platforms have already kind of started to instinctually throw up their walls to these agents, is ads to protect, or is it more than that? I don't know. I mean, the ads business, I'm not that deep into it, because to your point, you don't have one. The fairly intentionally build the business in such a way that up and down the stack via on the same side of a table as our customers. This is specifically the reason why we haven't built a marketplace in the traditional sense, because the marketplace is a free-sided situation. You have, of course, a corporate entity with its own interests, but you have buyers and sellers, and you need to make a sort of choice between them. The correct choice in that moment is, will always be the buyers, because also, once you optimize them, you're just like easy observable data too, so it's easier. We specifically, like, just have, we look out for merchants, we would like make it easy to for entrepreneurship, we, you know, this is sort of our obsession, like in this place. And so, you know, with the emergence of a genetic world, I think it's even too early to tell if this is truly playing into our sort of world view better than the aggregators. I think the aggregators have a little bit more concrete need to stay in control. And, you know, some of the things that I didn't do are kind of scary, right? Like, there's a lot of impersonation going on, of course. As, you know, browser use is sort of, it's cheeky, let's call it like this. It doesn't work well, but it makes everything possible. And I think that's more important right now, right? So, and so I understand why the agents go this direction. And for us, it's like, well, it's, we would like the check-out to work really well. Like, we are building lots and lots of APIs and systems to make the check-out work well, but we are totally like, if it's for person purchasing or like an agent on their behalf, that's fine by us. So it's, we, we try to support all. Yeah, you've also announced partnerships with instinct, with Grockbot recently. Is there a philosophy of like, which agents you want Shopify to work with versus not, or are you basically saying, look, any, any of these things, like, this is the next wave, and it makes sense for us to partner with all of it. So, like, the situation, like, Shopify is very well known for its online stores, but really is being used just for so, in so many other situations, right? Like, it's obviously, most people probably purchase things on Shopify through maybe an Instagram app or something like this. Well, it's, it's a very common sort of, we call it the LAube of small businesses, you know? And so Shopify is fundamentally just allows you to sell, and it's not like, for an online store as your home base, it's the easiest thing to see. It's the thing that merchants control, that's that they design, where they represent themselves, where they do their storytelling. But like, people sell through any of the social channels, people sell through a point of sale, people sell on craftspheres, and people sell, like, like, the more places people sell their products, I think the more valuable shop that comes. So, it's very natural for us to, like, make sure that, you know, we get the products that, like, I think shop first deciding over the most interesting product, how to look on platform, because most of new businesses building, you know, making, you know, the best fashion designers, all the way to the newest electronics, they have a shop, they start on Shopify often. And so, if you want to bring that catalog to, like everywhere, so it's very natural for us. This interview is presented by HyperAgent, hire AI co-workers that take on real roles, collaborate with your team, and help run your business. Learn more at hyperagent.com. Thanks also to Grinola, the AI notepad for people in back-to-back meetings. It works everywhere you do, unless you focus on what matters. Try to Grinola.ai/sources, and use the code sources for three months off. This episode is brought to you by Jira by Atlassian, where teams get the context, visibility, and control to move work forward. Try it free at Jira.com, that's J-I-R-A.com. This episode is also brought to you by Mercury, AI native banking that's loved by more than 300,000 entrepreneurs, including me. Visit mercury.com to learn more. Mercury's a fintech, not a bank, check the show notes for details. I'm curious to how agents are already in Ural's view changing, how people are shopping. Are there early trends you've noticed? Yeah, so it's really, I mean, it's definitely increasing. It's, of course, obviously, we end of this year with a fairly low base, so percentages are absurd, but they also don't mean much. What's really interesting is the changes, like the types of purchasing that's happening. Fairly often, it's the project-based purchases. Like, help me get everything I need for setting up my home gym. It's like the kind of action that we see. We can't see this, but imagine this conversation might even start with a picture of a room or a floor plan, like an entire phase of figuring out what should be in there or what you would like to do. So, deeply considered fairly high order value purchases happen with increasing frequency through agents. The things that I personally think are really, really fantastic. I mean, I guess for research is one part, but like things such as I would like to do a project, let's say I have a 3D printer or whatever. I would like a project with my kids on a weekend by me, everything I need that will be in time. And like, this is like, it's such an actionable, really delightful experience to say, hey, we're going to build a, whatever it is, something with a little bit of electronics in it, or maybe needing some magnets and some filament. And it figures this all out in just like places for order and places from a local stores, like sure, and things in place. So, I think this is the kind of thing we see more and more. But honestly, this is super quickly evolving. And there's entire forums now dedicated for people like just like posting, you know, I think the Muse case, Word is a fun one that the Muse team has started using for just finding delightful experiences that the people are doing with like, with agents. It sounds like a long-tell is forming that maybe didn't exist before based on the examples you just gave. Yeah. And again, this is, it keeps getting more and more. I mean, I just enjoy how futuristic today feels. Like, you know, in this way, like just like, I just model at this. Like, you know, I grew up reading lots of sci-fi and like, the word was always like, I just enjoy seeing the sort of imagination by the offers about, you know, like how do we describe the future. It's a really, really daunting task if you think about it, you know, extrapolating from the 60s to the 2020s or whatever, figuring out what the world is like, I would be like. And so, and some did it extremely well and some, you know, sort of got the details quite wrong, but like, plausible you look at today and you just like when you actually here what like especially the really sort of authentically pilled people do is like it's it's it's I don't know I I have endless like interest in here with like crazy stories like I like to stay on the music example like it's quite easy to put mues on what's called you like your tailnet which means that can like access devices in your house which again you have to be comfortable with this but for that weekend project of pretty printing something you can also just connect it directly to your printer and like it can reorder the filament when it's empty and like it's starting to like take more active roles in in this and this already works in some instances I think we we are currently in a phase where the agents are largely helping people do things that they are already doing better and I think what usually follows afterwards is a phase where we've discovered completely new things that weren't possible before and I think I think you're starting to see what glimmers of that and like that's going to that's usually the technology gets the most fun when people are finding sort of a digitally native new possibilities the sci-fi point you brought up your right sci-fi is often very prescient and it also motivates a lot of the builders in tech to build what they build I was curious and I know you read a lot is there anything from sci-fi that you've read that you're seeing now take shape that you're like wow how in the world did they predict that yeah I recently read CryptoNomicon from Neil Stevenson and which I loved reading when I was like early 20s and my god like my son just read it and we were talking about so picked it up again and I was like like literally everything in the book just happened you know and like and it's all sounded pretty fantastical but like you know just I he had an absolute even of cryptocurrencies and sort of fractional ownership at so on it's like how how did you pull that off yeah and so you know it just I mean that's more near future I think when it goes further out I think it's more like the overall picture it's like it's like no one got it right but like if you put all the pieces together so you sort of like what I've what I really really like doing frankly is like go through the books that I enjoyed and also just check when they were like written because at this point in my life I know enough about history so that I realize that a lot of the sci-fi books actually tell you more about the time they were written in then the time they were written about no interesting because you know just like fundamentally like you can even look at the spider-man comics it's like doing the nuclear age it was not atomic spider right it's like it's like it's like it's always like these are things are representations by the time they come from the question like the the sad thing is I that there was probably 50 maybe 20-year period that I don't think people wrote a lot of sci-fi that was like like it was very much when it was sci-fi it was hunger games it was very dystopian outside of maybe maybe the Andy Weer books or so I think that was like maybe a little optimistic sci-fi and I think that's actually contributed to sort of a tech mobiness in the industry that is around the era of a watchman and stuff too or it's it's exactly it's just like these kind of it just I think I mean you could also take a sort of commercial lens to this it's just turned out that writing dystopian sci-fi or like near-future scenarios ended up becoming best sellers and that was never true for the sci-fi books it was always it was always niche so it wasn't people just wrote the book they had in them I think instead of writing them for an audience so would whatever cost this trend it certainly was that like technology industry turned quite pessimistic and what's so lovely about I think now it's like there's just like like there's just more optimism around again and I think that's that's just really really good because technology is just progress it's a sort of core ingredient in progress and like for first time in in our lives we have software that we train rather than write and we then basically have to interview it for its capabilities afterwards and it just seems like even that's like sounds like straight out of sci-fi doesn't it and so I feel like I always want to look around to say my god I can't believe like I've like this infinitely patient uh agentic uh side kicks around that like it just helped me kind of do cool shit all day like and then do the stuff I have to do easier and make my my my life a couple percent better and so it's it's it's quite fantastical it's a wonderful time to be in tech do you think that optimism is just because of the feeling of invention and invention is a thing that naturally gives humans optimism yeah I believe it's exactly it I think it's your head and your head there it's I think humans need a frontier of sorts um because it I think we work best when there's opportunity because obviously it game theoretically if there's no if there's no frontier or no perceived not not enough perceived growth around us we fundamentally the correct strategy ends up becoming competing for what's already exists yeah and it sounds like a small thing but the difference in what it feels like to be in an in an environment of where there's zero sum thinking predominates or positive sum thinking where their opportunity is about and like people are going for new markets new ideas it doesn't it's it's it's it's about the biggest difference you can possibly imagine these are two separate sites on the points on a very very very long spectrum it's the thing that I think is so intoxicating joining a startup that's winning because you they're so obvious growth around you it's it's it's it's so the optimism comes easily like no one feels the need to be pessimistic of course pessimism is always what is the default of everyone because it sounds sophisticated you sound smart being pessimist optimism sounds naive therefore it's the domain of usually only very high status people or the crazy people or finding a niche a very small group of people where everyone agrees that it's okay to be optimistic which is usually comes these days in the form of a company or a startup and so but once pessimism like once the physics returns to this the reversion to the mean means that it's sophisticated to be pessimistic and that usually means you don't take advantage of as many opportunities which then leads to lack of growth and lack of appreciation of opportunity which then very quickly leads to zero sum thinking and competition and I think somebody in this story is also sort of a fate of what happens with often with companies that they go for a maturity cycle with industries I think this is precisely the thing I described earlier that happened to tech what's again like I just like I'm so fortunate we are also fortunate I think to have opened a completely new frontier not just one that is like always like you know new little item to explore for 15 minutes and the afterwards we are like we're good we're going back to what we had it's like it's like magical territory in which we teach sand to think and afterwards we have to reinvent everything and like it's like it's just such a wonderful opportunity to just like make like the best version of you know all bets are off path dependence is out of a window we can reinvent everything we can fix everything and our computers know for villages it's like unbelievable the way you said that is so interesting to me zero sum thinking in the contrast to me when I heard you say that it's like why is zero sum thinking such a a negative thing and I feel like there's a futility in it there's a futility in having a zero sum view of the world because there's only so much to fight over yeah and and what you're describing is like abundance yeah which I don't worry if you agree with that no hundred percent it's like I mean again zero sum thinking means that you have to compete for every piece of resource and that means for every time you win someone else loses and that is a mindset that's common right like and then and it leads to I mean if a world would be like this it would be a pretty pretty bad place like it's like we do not want this we are also lucky because it's zero sum thinking is a choice if you understand economics reasonably well or at least you understand how value is created in the world you realize that this we aren't probably even at the first basis points of value that's been converted into economic value from the potentiality around us right like we I mean this is what AI tells us ourselves like AI industry has already has added like probably trillions to of new objective value into onto planet of like and so all that value was hiding in floating point math so the difference like we we've had floating point math for a very very long time we we knew about matrix multiplications for a very very long time yet I don't think we realized that at the limit we could extract trillions and trillions of dollars of growth from just doing a floating point math and matrix multiplication much faster and in a particular way right so I think that's the way you have to think of everything including resources like before we knew what to do with uranium we had no idea what like the entire value of nuclear energy was locked behind this piece of knowledge the second, we figured out how to break the atom suddenly. There was an infinite amount of energy and then we chose not to use it for some reason. And so we, like this is the way the world truly works. It's like we are gifted with utterly infinite potential value. Every product that could exist is out there. Many, many, many, and most of us shouldn't exist for very good reasons that someone might or might not discover. But many products need to exist and I mean this is what we see in millions of businesses are formed on Shopify to create the thing that someone feels like needs to exist in a world. And that is not, like it would be so impossible for me to be thinking in zero sum. Because I see this every day, you know, again, you know, someone create their accounting job to create like a completely amazing business that now hundreds of thousands of people appreciate the product of and that was a choice at a lunch break at some point, right? And again, if that lunch break would have gone slightly different, you know, then that value would just not exist. And so I see this every day and it seems very, very natural to me, but I feel the need to bring that up every once in a while because it seems like most people don't have such a fortunate vantage point to see it play out in front of them every day. Yeah, I mean, if you think about Shopify's mission, you know, empowering entrepreneurship, I was going to ask this later, but hearing you talk about it now, I'm really curious what you make of this growing negative sentiment towards AI. I'm actually not sure we're here in Toronto at your office. I'm actually not sure totally how the difference is in Canada versus the US if there is much of a difference or maps, but I'm trying to ask everyone, especially folks who are outside of the US on the show, this question, because it also differs based on, you know, where you are in the world, obviously your economic status, but be curious to hear based on everything you've just said, the positive vision you're laying out, how you make of the moment we're in and how people feel. I am probably not the most representative person to talk to on this. I don't think I can see all these new businesses and, you know, I imagine there's more businesses being started on Shopify now than ever. Entrepreneurship is one of the probably jobs that is most benefiting from AI that they're imaginable, right? Because, again, you are trying, as an entrepreneur, you have to kind of do everything. At the very least, you have to understand every job because you have to hire someone and then judge if they are doing a good job for you. It's extremely hard and very, very daunting and once upon a time, we had about 80, almost 80 people, 80% of people on Shopify said yes to the question. If they have someone in their life who would answer entrepreneur question in 24 hours over email or text or something, and they didn't mean that, like, these people are abundant, that means that it's survivorship bias. It's for people who build the businesses, or for people who can ask for questions to someone, right? And so, this is now democratized, like AI is very good at answering every entrepreneur question often, better than some of the people who might have liked my emails, turns out. There's a couple of core myths that Western civilization is built on. And one of them is a pomethian myth. It's like, the pomethian myth means, a pomethian is brought fire from auto-limpers to the humans and got reward party going. And then, of course, was doomed to torture forever for doing such a thing. I think this myth is causing a more powerful spell over us than people generally admit. We have a very strong sense that everything that's good also has negative consequences of equal proportion. No doubt is, like, it's potentially the most powerful thing that ever will be invented by humans, or definitely in the top few ones. So, it's a level, and so obviously it can be used for really good, really bad. Some of, like, on an individual level, they will have enormous positive influence on some and negative on others. So, like, all this sort of as a proviso, like, I just don't think this usually plays out this way. I think the positive effects are going to be so vastly higher than the negative effects. And I get the, like, to say nothing about the sort of p-dume scenarios, which I just like, my p-dume is zero, it's, like, again, at the end of a day, it's floating points. There's going to be consequences, but, like, my god. Again, I'm a technologist, so I can say this, like, I think to me, dystopia is always just 40 years ago. Like, it's just, like, do you know how bad the Wi-Fi was 40 years ago? No Wi-Fi. You know, like, it's just, like, it literally teleport me 30 years back, and it would seem horrible from today's perspective. And I think this is just, we're just going to keep this going. I think things can get really, really, really great. I think maybe where it's coming from is you're describing AI as leverage, which I agree with, and I agree with you on the p-dume thing, and it's, it's math at the end of the day. But I think the reason a lot of people feel very strongly about this is some leaders are talking about AI's if it's an entity that we can't control that's a god, essentially. You obviously seem to disagree with that. Yes. Is there anything that can happen to, because it feels like it may get worse before it gets better in terms of the sentiment? And in the US, we have midterms coming up and all these things, and it's going to be this political lightning rod. And it's a thing to which people can assign a lot of pent-up frustration they have with their lives and the economy and the government. And I'm not sure it's going to get better before it gets worse. Yeah. I think, I mean, I think people are right to pay attention to AI a lot. And it would be extremely hard to sort out what opinion to have about it, given the public discourse. Again, I'll just go back to pessimism, sound smart, optimism sounds naive. And there's just like the incentives are such that it's a lot of people chose the pessimism route for one reason or another. And that's the predominant narrative you're going to get. I think this is not going to take too much, because personal experience with AI is going to become just like much more common, and people will very, very, very, very much like very eyes. Like, again, we've been trying to make software that makes it easier to make entrepreneurship for like 22 years now. And what we hear from our customers is that they now feel that computers actually are as good as how we techies used to describe computers, you know, like, then like I remember this as a teenager. I've tried to tell my parents, like, these things can do everything. We network them together, like it's with revolutionized everything. You just like, you just write this bit of thing and then it has this new capability. And like, to me, that was very normal, because that's what I could do. And then it turns out that was like a skill that ended up being not being that well diffused because it kind of you had to frankly spend your entire teenage years into an in a dark room, quit cultivating your programming ability. The terminal is intimidating. Which was exactly not exactly what up to me, but seemed like, why would I do anything else, right? So this is like not not exactly like I probably don't even know if I was anything else I could have been doing during this time. So it's like I suddenly didn't find out. And so I couldn't stay away. It was too interesting. And so it not everyone's like me and that's thank God. And so it turned out this like using computers in this way I can describe and I always felt about them was a very, very rarely diffused skill, which then meant that people like me should go and build as generic as possible software so that other people can experience at least a semblance of this through like software like Shopify and others. But now we have a completely again, I keep going back to this. Now you kind of have a person by your side and your computer fulfills wishes like it's like the future versions that people will experience of Shopify or and software like it are going to be just like remarkable pieces of engineering about, I, that's not actually very even engineering. It's like it's a remarkable pieces of collaboration between synthetic intelligence and real intelligence trying to create something that's like like it just can completely give, we want to give people cruise control for their ambitions, right? Like we just want them to be successful doing their thing. And I think so many more people can do that in the future. And I think that's like, I don't know, people that experience this, I think the stories were washed for pessimism away. There's some interesting stats in the US about how net new business creation is skyrocketing. And I'm curious to hear if that maps to what you're saying on Shopify or they're more Shopify storefronts being open now than ever can you talk about what's the curve? Absolutely. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's going really, really well and earlier to it's like it's younger. I think the new generation is extremely entrepreneurial. It's really, I mean, there's a combination of AIUs, but also their media as much as I think every generation, parents sort of malign some media consumption of the next generation, with no break. So I don't know how often Mr. Beast got banned in in various households, but like, I'm not so sure that was the right call because it's clearly entertainment, but it's very, very entrepreneurial by the way, like the kids grew up seeing money being used to build incredible about games and stages and competitions and like the particular content is you can think about whatever you want, but the meta content was like deeply entrepreneurial and very, very clear. Well, you can see that in the creator too, you can see their progression, then gathering more resources, becoming more established, building things, even just showing, hey, this is the kind of things that you can do when you get resources. It's like actually useful, because why are you, like, why strive? You can make good money working 35 to 40 hours for someone else, why spend a hundred working for yourself. And so I think that and then also just like the clever use and the clear sort of progression in scale office felt probably too many, at least my kids sort of confirm this, just like felt like a journey waiver on with Jimmy. And that is an intoxicating experience and you want to be part of more such journeys. So again, journeys of growth, journeys of opportunity. We see a lot more business formation now. And I think this sort of goes to your previous point of attitudes towards AI. Once again, it's leading in the US significantly. It's I think other parts of the Western world are on an early incline on that sort of map slope of America, but like it is just remarkable how America is a country of early adoption. And so I think it's interesting to see even we sort of societal almost stereotypes bear out in the data. So I think I spent some time in Europe recently and the AI added to this. It's not that it's more negative. It's a little bit, it's definitely more cynical, which I think it's just Europe and European, so I can say it. And definitely German, but like which is also fair, like things should, you know, it's fair for country to decide, hey, like stuff has to prove itself first, that's all good. But it's almost like it just in effect. Like it's when when you talk with some people about AI is like, Oh, yeah, yeah, I understand AI. I insert chat gbd when it came out. It's it hallucinates a lot. I mean, like, yeah, okay, there's like five more layers to this now. Like this is like it's like you're not completely in the meter there. So it's like people reason on bad priors. And I think that's hopefully like changing now too, because again, but Muse is not available in Europe, right? So this is also a problem in Canada. You're a little bit lucky. So we usually we usually still get. I was going to ask how is it in Canada compared to you said you, you know, you talked about us in Europe. What about Canada? I think I think Canada is as so often somewhere in between, maybe slightly closer to the United States and on the spectrum than Europe. I always call it Canada is America for Europeans. And it's like, it feels like pretty apt. Canada takes a lot of pride in having massively contributed to AI like here in Toronto. The like, I think Alex Net got trained here in U of T. And of course, Professor Hinton is here and go here and then there's some some some some labs now too, but like really sort of especially in the doing the nuclear winter of machine learning. Here was a pocket where where people continue pursuing it. And laid the foundations for for what came afterwards. And I think that's that's that's that's a that helps a little bit here. So anyway, I think it's it's not as unbridled as I see in Silicon Valley. It's and but it's like very clear. This is for future. We need to use it to, you know, make better companies, make better government services and, you know, bring productivity out these kind of conversations that being had here. Yeah. We were saying before we started that you go to California about once a month. I'm curious, given the energy you're describing there. Does this moment ever make you want to move Shopify to California? No, I'm very, very happy to be outside. I think it's like I love Silicon Valley really. I think a big skill of mine is like being an outsider and observing things at distance and allowing myself to not take the exact package and put it like into my neurons, but actually like do a little bit of an edit for sensible for sensibilities. It's Silicon Valley raw is it's so what? Not for the faint of heart. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You have to the swings are massive. I think of Silicon Valley as a pendulum that just goes like just rapidly. And I believe there's always some greens on somewhere. And I try to like just like spend more time in that. So I don't know. I think that's my criticism of Silicon Valley is that companies are very, very convergent. Like cultures are really not very different. It's like to try to find a company that truly escapes the OKR system. And, you know, just like it's just at some point gravity is too much to escape some of these ideas. And it means you can't really reinvent things very well. And time is getting better. Silicon Valley has a unique thing of so much business new business formation and the ability to grow new businesses so quickly that sometimes someone manages to build like enough of a different culture to then have almost a pull for everyone else to adjust to this. So it is able to evolve slightly. But like I think you like I really enjoy company building. I enjoy thinking about systems. I enjoy having a ability to make decisions that I just like go like a very different from the rest of the industry. And like either from first principles figure out what's like why no one's doing it or discover something new and tell others. I think that's it's not the most important thing in about every individual change we make. But like I think in the aggregate it's like I think there needs to be diversity of companies like companies for different types of people. I think it's bad when companies try to be everything to everyone. And so I find that just much much easier to do from a distance. We were talking also earlier about you know you've been on the board of meta for a while and I'd be curious to hear what it's like working with Mark and Mark spent on the show recently. We were talking about Muse and I assume you got to try Muse early as that I. And what it was like seeing that kind of take form inside the company and then obviously the world feels like it's changed now. But yeah maybe a little bit about like how meta fits into what you just described about Silicon Valley. Yeah meta is I think it's such a fascinating company. Marcus clearly one of the best entrepreneurs has ever lived. He's just sort of a marketable individual in the way he like really orchestrates a company but is able to just change on like I mean I think I think everyone to have got a bit of a front row seat here then you know I was incredibly thankful for the gifts that are at meta made to really all of us by open sourcing the Lama models that really started the trend or like actually I who knows what would have exist if there are any open source would have existed without that it created like a norm or like it's like if meta can do this others can do it too. And I think it's inspired more companies to to to to go for this and I think we all it bad is I think I think without the open source availability of AI models I would modify my optimism slightly. I think I think my optimism is like it would still not be even still be sky high but like maybe not as via on cruise control as as it is now because I think you need competition in a space and I think having so this was a massive contribution I was incredibly thankful for for that and it's one of our decisions you know like if Mark wouldn't like a founder wouldn't have been present there would be no way meta would have done this so that was great but then like there was a big setback with the Lama 4 which is like this happens this happens at every lab which just happened very publicly with meta that there was a mistrain it didn't work there was some ideas that didn't quite plan out that's you know just another result essentially in science and so seeing what Mark did and how quickly he jumped into action to reassemble like an amazing team that's now training like just absolutely insane models and like really just like the quickness by which they came back is like and anyway so I'm fascinated with this. I'm also really thankful for a personal perspective here just to be having this view because every time I come back I really feel like thankful that Shopify is not 70,000 people like I don't think I'm a leader who could deal with that. I think it's like you have to be Mark quality entrepreneur to do this not to be quality entrepreneur so like it's it's there's always another level and it's nice to live that that kind of scale vicariously rather than having to figure out from first principles that I probably can't handle that so employee AI staff to run your business with hyper agent agents can find new customers run campaigns and handle your business operations. They work in the cloud, collaborate with everyone on your team and pass work to each other like real co-workers. hire your AI staff at hyperagent.com. I spend a lot of time context switching between meetings, often with no time to process one before the next starts. Thankfully, Granola runs in the background the whole time. 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Framer brings AI agents into the same canvas where your website is designed, managed, and published so you can move faster without giving up your taste or control. I use Framer to make the sources podcast website be the destination for everywhere you can find the show, plus you can also see recent issues of my newsletter. Start building with agents for free today at framer.com/sources for 30% off of Framer Pro annual Plan. Framer.com/sources rules and restrictions may apply. You were saying, which I agree with, like, if Mark hadn't been there that moment with what's happening now and him rebuilding things probably wouldn't have happened or even their original llama, which I agree with. That made me think, are there things that, and you've talked a lot about how like the pandemic was very hard for Shopify, obviously. Are there things that you've reflected on over the last several years where you're like, man, if I wasn't here and I didn't have the setup that I have as the founder and CEO, like Shopify would be in a really rough spot right now. Is there anything you look back on and like, this is the call that I had to make and it was hard and I had to convince everyone, but here we are. - You know, like I think companies that have their founder slot filled are just completely different beasts because they have an asset that's like impossible to replicate, right? Like it's not actually as much about like, I mean, if you have Mark Zuckerberg in the founder slot, then that's really really like, like it's not just, like you have founders that filled you also at Mark. So that's excellent. But just having a founder is actually incredible because there's just like an ability to cut bureaucracy, cut to red tape, cut make decisions fast. Like one example of this was like, then as a technologist, I want to have a really good read on the future, right? That's important. We make products that take a while to create and so we have to have, we have to build for a future as it will exist rather than one that does exist right now. If you do this and we get it exactly right, we might actually change the sort of particulars about future, maybe not, it would have happened anyway, but we have, might have an impact on it, which is really, really fun. But once I build conviction of like here's something that needs to happen, I have tools that like a professional manager would be hired, just doesn't have, I can go and say, send a memo to the company about, hey, we are now requiring a reflex if I use for everything and I'm going to ask you every time you need something for me about how has UI experiment failed? I assume the committee did not review that. That's right, that's where you sent that. So that's very true. And yeah, committees. They had, maybe that wouldn't have been sent. Yeah, I'm pretty down on committees, so I just like, I call it, it's, that's, I, I, It was controversial when you sent that. There's a lot of headlines about that. But not in Shopify, it was fun. So like in Shopify actually started, I think more people ended up paying attention to the memo after the press made a big deal out of it and said, oh, that's like, my mom asked me about this. It's like, oh yeah, so I could have this wonderful conversation. I was obviously, I used it to be a doing, I actually just thought this sounded exactly like what you say at town hall. So like, that was actually gratifying because it was seen as controversial, but really not inside of a firm. That just means we've managed to transition already pretty early. Now we're like a year and a half later. So it's just nuts what's happening. So it's like, really, it's, I wish people could have a good look and what it's like in the specifically, highly eye-pulled companies right now. It is absolutely fantastical. It's just like in a way that like, I could not have predicted. And I just like, I go from review to review. And I'm like, just like, it's just like, I'm a true technologist, right? Like I love computers. And I hire people who love computers. And I don't think this is any problem. Like it's just this is perfect. Like this is what we should be doing. I just, as someone who loves computers and loves the power that can be extracted from them and it's just delighted with when someone invents something, I just go from meeting to meeting and like, I'm like, I see the craziest thing I've seen in my life, basically once a week. It's just absolutely wonderful. So, you know, I don't know is it possible to point the companies so directly into a direction by if your mechanism of management and leadership is speeches or the creation of an annual plan that then you build equity in that then everyone follows, I've never had an annual plan. Like it's just like it's like we run a function over all the inputs to figure out what's the next step every day. Right? And it's like, it's not just me doing it. I teach the function and I want everyone to run this and just do what they see as here's the next best step. And we try to get everyone to move into the same direction but as loosely coupled as possible. And so I think this is how you get to high creativity, to innovation and for into a place where people build, hopefully work class products, right? And so, obviously say your question is whether the situation is where I was needed. My hope is not. If you read my letter that I wrote, then tropical and public is 11, 12 years ago now. I included a little letter from Toby. And yeah, which was a nice thing, but where I see a lot of us do. It sort of just came around to a view that it's okay to include a section that is not every single claim substantiated. It's like, it's okay that it comes from something. It's very new. So I use opportunity to write something. And in it, I write a couple of things, which are similar to what I'm just saying. And specifically it says, I would like Shopify to be a company that sees the next century. And that's my ambition. I want a company that's like, doesn't need me. But while I'm here, I'm trying to also try to be the biggest asset to a firm. And I think I hope I'm doing this reasonably well. What was Shopify's market cap on you in public? It was sub 10 billion, right? It was one and a half, I think. It was sub two. So I think you're doing okay. That memo though, I want to come back to that. There were two things that people focused on. It was the bring AI into the performance review aspect. This was in 2025, which I think is also why it was controversial. It's people doing exactly. And then there was, you know, basically you have to ask the AI question before you add head count. You know, can I do this with AI instead? Are those two things still happening inside Shopify? Are there still the roles? Yeah, I think they are happening entirely organically now. I think this is like, I think this is like, I don't have to enforce these kind of things. I mean, the performance review, I think we went through a few sites. I make sure you don't know if it's in a current one. There was like a question about this sort of peer rating kind of thing is like how reflexively does someone will show up like a prototype for me iOS. something. It was, you know, sometimes you play a little bit of tricks there. Like it's like this was in a performance review questionnaire, but of course it didn't matter. Like what the answer was, but like the funny thing is just the fact that it's in there means like it's, you know, sometimes you can just sort of give a company a reputation to live up to when it even it, you know, it does. And so there's very big AI skeptics or like even people like there's many, many open source projects that have now banned AI contributions, right? Like which is, to me, it's like the source of endless entertainment that people somehow have a morality conversations about whether or not the code got hand-chiseled by humans or somehow computed by math. It's like, it's cold. It's good to accept it, right? Like it seems pretty simple as a position to take, but like apparently that is, you know, what do I know? Anyway, there's a situation we have. It is like, I think, I said earlier, like there needs to be diversity and companies. Diversity means you, like you have distinction. Like the diversity means the opposite of books for everyone. Books for everyone means no one minds it. So milk toast, the kind of, you know, average of everyone's favorite color is brown. Right? So, which no one likes. And so what you want is a place that like has a very specific decisions of like who gets for and who it's not. So hiding with misalignment with the people you don't want is actually almost more important than having a good careers page. Right? So I think that's also good. It's like, if someone is like an AI skeptic and it's just kind of trying to lay low, they are never going to be like a top performer in a company where everyone around them is just using like a data send of agents to accomplish their tasks. Like this is just not going to happen. And so just like make it explicit, because I think everyone deserves to work in a place where they have where they are or have a really good chart at becoming one of the top performers. And so once we know this is no longer a possibility space, we also want to help you get back to industry to look for such a place for yourself. Right? There's this consensus forming right now with these personal agents that the business model that will support all these is some kind of take rate business. Mark has talked about it with me for Muse, Noah's talked about it, I think for instinct. And I hear it with founders all the time I'm meeting with of these if there's it's a it's a absolute Cambrian explosion of agent startups right now. Yes. And they all seem to think they're going to get a slight cut of transactions that flow through their platform. And that's going to be how these businesses get built as someone who is running one of these take rate businesses at scale for many years now. Do you think that's actually the model? Because I'm trying to figure out, okay, where does this yeah, where does this take rate come from? Yeah. Like we'll Shopify. I think you you take roughly 3%. We'll Shopify give most of that goes to a credit card company. Right. Right. You have to share that margin. So it's not a lot to fight over or to give. And so is there a world will Shopify shares some of its margin with these agents because it creates more GMV that flows through Shopify or do you increase your margin because Shopify is becoming more valuable in an agent world like how do you think this is going to net out? Because I'm actually really fatalistic about these kind of things. Like I honestly just find that and I think this is the right position to take for for agent startups. You know, assuming we can get for financing, it's just like these agents are tremendous value. Like it's like once you have this set up, the money you would have to pay someone for them to agree that they can never use their muse again. It's like like increasing by the day. Right. Like it's like so on like best of reverse money tests. Then maybe the model is just charge the user. I think it just depends on how much value you can provide. How much how many unique things can you do or like how much where you're in the right place at the right time. How much did you have with onboarding? I think I think there's and frankly, what is it? Two percent of American households pay for AI right now? Yeah, it's very low. It's like it's this so early here and you know, I think there's this plenty documented. Mark, since we talked about him, has in many cases built enormously impressive businesses by just saying, hey, we're going to start thinking about making money when we have like a hundred million users or being users or something. I mean, of course, you need to you need to be able to stay liquid throughout this period, which is, you know, another thing. But like, I'm just going to. Well, this previous era of startups didn't have the compute costs that these ones do. That's there. So, although, you know, and frankly, the analogy is to.com where everyone had to go to Larry, I just didn't give them a million dollars to just be able to receive a database. So, I guess that didn't go so well. So it's, look, I the last time I was a startup founder was 22 years ago, right? I mean, 20 years ago. Come on, you're so startup founder. So, like, I mean, I feel like one, but like, I, I, I'm sort of almost in the video game version, the sort of fantastical version of startup founder. Like, I have a company that feels like a startup that is, I think, as nimble as a startup, I think that's as fun as a startup. It's in fact, remembering startup days, they often not so fun, because like, I, you know, back in most days, I had to ask my father-in-law who we were living with for a check to meet, meet payroll. That wasn't so fun. So I, you know, Shopify is doing very, very well. So I don't have to think about these things anymore. And so that's wonderful. I don't know what it's like to actually have to go fundraising. I'm certainly just as surprised at some of these fundraising rounds that I'm hearing about as others. And I added a job as a venture capital, so about two months ago, and it's unbelievable, the valuations. And there's a sense of just throw the money in the pot, and go, go, go. It kind of reminds me of like, maybe Uber, like, just capital as a weapon. But the capital this time, it's all going to GPUs. And it's all going to Jensen. And that's why I ask about the take rate thing, because like, what is going to actually sustain all this? Yeah. And I don't, everyone seems to think their agents are going to be just taking 2% of transactions, but I'm like, who gives that? I get 2%. I mean, welcome to a world of basis points. People come in with, like, I am in conversation sometimes where people don't have all of their priors fully arrayed yet for some of these things. But like it's, again, the agents are providing a ton of value. And I think people will also pay for it. I mean, I'm certainly a extremely, like, professionally a job with Shopify. And in privately, I have very large consumers of AI tokens. And I'm very happy to pay money for them. My situation, again, is a little bit of different here. And these things are very expensive. And I, you know, I have a resources to do this. And this will all get cheaper. And, you know, they'll address different spending classes at the same or better level of intelligence very quickly. And so I think, I don't know, I honestly, this is one of those areas where I'm just honestly, like, I'm concerned, like, there's going to be so much exchange of value here. And there's significant exchange of value, whereas there's opportunities to monetize. And maybe it's going to go away of like electricity metering in a background, or maybe it's going to be in a way of transaction flows. Like, maybe it's going to do all of those things. Frankly, just optimizing people's lives, whereas like, people are spending money inefficiently. You know, like, there's a lot of buildings of banks over there. And they all can afford a lot of these buildings, because people are probably paying more in fees than they're probably auto. So, like, and both of easily things that can be discovered by anyone who has access to your email, synthetic or not, right? Like, and so, you know, who knows where things are going? I think there's the world is not as optimized as people think, and agents can help people save money. And I think that's the kind of position that I think will always be your value to people. With the tools you have with SideCake and Canvas and the ability that Shopify now has to abstract the way the complexity for the merchant. Do you think Shopify eventually can command a higher percentage of all this because you're taking more and more off your user's plate? Do you think about that? Yeah, I would prefer a lower percentage and more. Like, I just like, I care, I don't care about percentages. I don't care about gross profit. I care about gross profit dollar growth. And that's a very, very different. Like, I can get to gross profit dollar growth by making Shopify cheaper, and just having like, like, like, having a larger wave of entrepreneurship be, explain why, explain why that's the thing you focus on. Because that's the mission. It's like, it's like, I mean, that might sound not terribly fit, like, I'm performing my fiduciary duty here, but like, I just find that, again, I think, and again, maybe this is also one of those founder things. It's usually companies as like, the companies that become quite big are started with a mission and often transition to more a custodian ship over the point that has been reached when they are transitioning to a professional manager afterwards with some notable exceptions and companies that reinvented themselves. Shopify wants to see their entrepreneurship to be a more common and easier attainable thing for more people like the fusion of entrepreneurship deeper into the economy deeper as a plan more as a plan A rather than a plan B for your career. Number one time stamp for business creation on Shopify is the local time zones lunch break it really is it's crazy it's like a love that's that because it means it tells you how businesses are created maybe after a bad meeting maybe after hearing that someone is losing a job or maybe after a friend of yours leaving or maybe you know just maybe have some some form of dissatisfaction use your lunch break to sign up for Shopify because you're going to try the plan B that you've always been thinking about about for your career and then you build something you probably learn something in the process maybe you catch lighting in a bottle and the thing that you wanted to build is something that other people deem of where we place orders and you're gaining your reach for independence finds purchase and you end up building a business hopefully a large one in the future but like it doesn't have to be larger it can be just exactly the thing that you wanted to to have and so that's what we love and so we want to see that a lot and more and more people are learning about Japanese paradox throughout the wonders of AI it's like when things become cheaper they people will consume more and they'll use them more I do I often wonder if this is an impediment for Shopify I mean Shopify is like really really affordable of course like basically most most people use it in the first month probably spend more time more money on Starbucks when on non-shop fire you know like so but it's something I think a lot about a lot I just want I don't I want there to be basically no impediments there so we're working with a lot of in the AI world make it so that AI can sign you up for Shopify you know much the further point like like when you again when you use Shopify to gain value then we want that should be like the beginnings of a exchange of value which then as you grow becomes fair I suppose but like yeah like Shopify has always been in such a way that we have millions of businesses on them and they are very subsidizing too big of a word but like we're certainly the reason why we can build such amazing software for new businesses is because we also have a lot of businesses that are growing to be billion dollar businesses and so we can amortize the all of our engineers and tokens over you know a large pool of people and we spend a lot of time thinking about how to make the beginning easier even though that's like clearly not the source of most of our revenue so again my company is very much tied to its mission and it's pretty prudent through and I think that's important I was going to ask what you think the risks are to Shopify in this agent role and it sounds like it's the impediments you could possibly have to people signing up well I mean like I mean no the risk is much more acute it's like you know someone might build a better Shopify right like I always think a lot about this in fact I spent the beginning of every year trying to figure out how I would build a better Shopify and then spend the rest of the year trying to make it more like that so like this is my entire loop here myself enforcing loops so to speak I don't know I like obviously I have the best vantage point probably a very privileged position here but like I I've always found opportunities to go after Shopify it's not it's not perfect before short of all and stunts all the time because yeah it's a huge piece of software it's a we have a massive diversity of industries and customers and again this thing needs to work perfectly for someone in a signing up in a lunch break while also supporting billion dollars of businesses that that everyone's heard of and inner vets just like and prog managers start this company we're like holy shit it's like this is a this is this is pretty metal this is what you what what what we're doing that wasn't quite clear I sort of thought of Shopify as insert 10 percent of Shopify you know so I'm proud of that in a way so again but like that's also means you know we have just wanted this because we do have a lot of existing customer base and sometimes that makes it harder for us to to to evolve so we have to operate at a level that we are as quick as Nimbala ideally first to every new possible way of creating significant value for kinds of people we want to like to serve before two people in a garage plus a data send of agents can get to and that's fun but that's fun for you know like I don't know I when I started 2004 we had a similar situation lots of incumbent companies many of them you know back in the day was tens of billions not hundreds potentially but like tens of billions dollars existed and maybe one or two hundred I don't know we knew we had that number right like it's like it's like we like a web was a new like all clients over software like it's like I don't know very expensive to talk to a salesperson and probably go play fucking golf with someone like to buy a software I'm like I you know how to do this better so I think that's why I do that almost everyone in AI is taking now it's like but the thing I want to change is like I don't love calling myself incumbent but clearly I am so I probably should but like this time around you're gonna you have everyone around for the money yeah if you think maybe I am an incumbent you have to challenge that constantly does that mean you need to self-inflicted pain to make sure that's not the case you have to be willing to I mean I think Apple's probably one of the most famous examples of this the way you talk about it got a knife your own baby sometimes like yes it's terrible to have to do this but yes it's sunk host fallacy kills everyone yeah and again what you have to do is you have to figure out what does the perfect version of Shopify look like if I start right now and had a magical wand that would do it all software in a nanosecond and then you have to share like you you have to look at probably got to get stiff drink and sit down and then run the diff between the thing that you're just like magically created in your head and thing that you have and if a gaps wherever the gaps are that's that's your that's what I'm trying to glaze you but it I honestly don't know if there would be anything different with Shopify right now you have probably one of the most late at the things you're launching you'll it'll become pretty obvious what what was wrong the trick is to be at the solution before other people realize there's an opportunity but fundamentally what you're doing the way you ride with like entrepreneurship feels structurally enduring I'll venture to say there's maybe 10 companies in the world that have a mission that can endure like that well and we have a part of massive inheritance here like I mean people have traded forever like you find like cadavers and valves the chap and then I was a teenager like in like the you know we're quite dirty like I think misadventure died some in Alps and had like it was a trader with products from like I think 4,000 no I can't be right 2,000 kilometers radius on him it was 6,000 years ago we've always been traders we've been traders we've been merchant we've been entrepreneurs some of the earliest clay tablets are like these three people are taking these products to that market and so on so is expecting this profit these are startups right like we have we have species of entrepreneurs right like it's the most it's extremely core to our very existence and people have traded and create products for each other 10,000 years ago people will do it in 10,000 years it's it's a it's a great bet we don't address all of that but like we are addressing a particular storied part of you know merchant entrepreneurship here which we find is deeply important to us so yeah like I think it's a nice trick to pick as your market the thing that we've been doing for 10,000 years like it's just like so worked out great for me coming back to the startups in this space it sounds like your advice to the agent startups is not be too tied up in knots about margin and take great points and to think more about capturing value and then the opportunities will present themselves is that a fair summary? Yeah and then be so important to people that you're you're deserving of a value yeah right like you like if you want to build a company that's like successful you need to build a company that's too good to ignore and if you want to have a fantastical career you need to be gain the skills and attitudes that make you too good to ignore that's the best advice you can possibly have even in the sense that be too good to ignore when competing for the limited resources that people have and but we will I don't know stop having the extra cup at Starbucks once a month to when be able to afford you like it should be able to you most people luckily at least when you building a company in the west you're competing with people spending money on coffee right like that's what you're really competing with at least in consumers and enterprise everything's different pricing my newsletter year ago and I left my traditional media job I was thinking about cups of coffee. Fun and monthly basis. You're totally right. You're exactly right. So you know just like people like their cup of coffee. Yeah. It's hard to get. I mean we didn't manage you. Yeah. It's like these, you know, these places always are, you know, very curated and everyone's setting it up nicely. Yet I have my just muck here. Yeah. Like switch, you know, I'm sure everyone behind the camera right now is upset with. So I'll update our state presence. But like, you know, it just tells you like cups of coffee are really important to people. If you build something that's better than a prop of coffee, you're gonna probably endure. And what is your advice or how should the companies that are wrestling with their aggregators, they have large advertising businesses to come full circle here and they're throwing their walls up to agents or they're figuring out what do I open up, what do I not, how should they think about it? That best way to do it is to, you know, like your advertising system and your monthly fee, both are all solutions to that. You have created at some point in your company's history. But the company exists because you're solving a problem. And if you need to go back to problem solving mode, if you do that very well, then you will get to a point where you can implement whatever solutions are again, like, a presenter says for, for making money. You seem to be somewhat pessimistic about advertising. I'm not. I actually, I think it's, I think it's a bit strong. I'm not, I'm just not, I'm not sure how it's going to net out with agents. Yeah. I think it'll probably shift its shape slightly. But like, yes, it will definitely evolve. And maybe it's not even going to be quite advertising. But like, the fundamental thing is, like, there needs to be a discovery and growth engine that's probably run as a market that allows companies like the ones on Shopify to connect with their future of 2002 fans, right? Like Asian impressions. I think there's so many ways about doing it. The problem, like, the problem people facing with agents, and that's, this is a real thing to overcome, is that it seems to be that the biggest growth for agents is, I mean, it's also implied in the word that people like these things are agents on behalf of me and you, right? Like, and so advertising is challenging here because if it would turn out that your assistant is being paid to make, to choose products, you know, like if I know this real real world stuff happens, they're pocketing the, I don't know, airmiles or whatever, you know, that's that's a breach of trust. And so this is very active conversation. We also, and we love to help and we have these conversations about like, how can we make more socially acceptable ways of doing this, right? Because we are clearly extremely interested in this connection, like the one thing we always wonder and I hope will not happen is that sort of the changes and the emergence of AI and so on is going to cause a lot of head concentration. Like, all the business goes to the largest businesses, which, you know, you, like, the world of department stores and all school merchandising was very much so. It's like, you know, you were the biggest consumer package good company in your space. You had best chef space, therefore you had all the sales and it's like all. So the beautiful thing about the internet and why it's, and then why I also really, really, I'm so into Shopify is because it helped with breaking this and like it meant much more interesting products could be created, not the one that works for everyone, but rather the one that thousand, that, that kind of a thousand true fans. Once you have a thousand two fans, you created a product that people love and have, or that some people have a capacity to really love, which means you have overcome the largest change in product creation, which is indifference. You can also create something that a lot of people hate. Even that's better than indifference over harder to monetize. Usually you get both, hopefully, in proportions that you can deal with on social media. More products people love is really the goal and that necessitates that there's a fairly liquid market of like being able to bring a new product by a new company that might not be like the most well recognized company, but bring it to an audience that then they can consider to do a want this. And, you know, so this is like the thing that has worked so beautifully by especially matters advertising engine, which has been the greatest boom to small businesses of all time, I think, and also Google's, although slightly less so, but still, they go to have both of them. And I think this is why we've seen so much formation. Hopefully we will see much more of this. Like in a funny way, advertising, either things are quite maligned and in a lot of ways, but it's actually really, really beneficial. And it also acts as a little bit of a proof of work in a way. It's like a business that can't put money behind that product. It hasn't made money. And in a way, it's actually a fairly good filter that like buying from especially small businesses that can advertise because you're likely buying into something that's growing and that's needed. And I think that's so creating continuity to bear is really, really important. Figuring out how that works for agents. And an incredible business opportunity to figure out. Again, launching new forms of advertising or matchmaking markets is all of these, especially with a great primitives of blockchains. We now have better mature mature and so is this so much of a priority. And so I think this is a fun thing, like we get to reinvent everything now. You posted on X recently that you swapped your wine cellar out for a server rack. My rack cellar. Your rack cellar. I promise I'm not going to make a distillation joke. But I do want to know what are you doing with that rack? Oh, well, okay. So look, there they're layers to this one thing. It's like there's a long, again, Holly is my Did you throw wine out too? I didn't have enough to fill out the room that you already had. So like this is also like wasn't technically, it wasn't, it wasn't very well used. And it was sort of central. It's like glass. It's beautiful. It's not like so staircase. I'm like, I always look at an empty room. And I felt the need to it's like I found at some point, like maybe I should just like do this thing. Harley doors where he goes like to an estate sale or whatever and just buys a lot of wine at one go or whatever. Like this is so not you. And then I'm like I sometimes consult my inner 16 year old when I'm sort of like stuck, you know, just I find that often more interesting when sort of playing very great minimization game because that just like usually makes you be fairly conservative. So what would be awesome to do here? And like, you know, I have a lot of tech. And so anyway, you just got it like, you know, found someone who was excited about it and was excited to do a couple days of cable management and a lot of procurement and and just build something really, really cool. I think I think service. Again, I love computers. It's like this is always, here is for me. I think these things are beautiful for themselves. And you can just put them in scene. So now I have a rec seller as Luru Christian did. And it has like one of those GB 300s from from Dell in it. So it is actually like fully training models and my, my, my, I being a public company CEO is a little bit harder for me to experience some of the sports of technology industry for agents and so on. If I would have to go out to allow to send, again, there's lots of things I can't send there. So now I can, it can all run local. So I have my own version of the globe. Exactly. Something totally clear that has, it's completely local and it's remarkable and runs all in my house. And I think that's awesome. So is the historical corpus of Shopify in that in that rack seller? There's, you know, I just, I am lucky in that I've been pretty good. I'm sort of an atoms minimalist, but I'm a digital archiving maximalist, oddly, which is clearly a contradiction, but like, now this works really, really well. I just, I basically have everything I wrote and lots and lots of logs. I know what I've done on my computer basically for the last like 15 years. Like it's just like, it's actually, again, I just given what I spent my last 20 years or even longer. A lot about me is in the pre-trains. So like I think my experience using agents is actually pretty close to being ideal because they already, like they already know about me. Like I've played this game actually when I set up this new machine that we're close running on because it called like asked you like, okay, well, let's introduce ourselves. I'm so and so right now, you can rename me. Who are you? And it's like, guess. And what's the, what's the day in the life now with your claw? Are you getting, I've heard you say before you would, you get audio digest some of the more you work out and listen to. And then like, are you getting like hourly updates from it? Like what's the, it'll run through like a script. I just finished that story after I said I said to get, give it a guess. Of course, the user was told booby on Unix and like it geolucated to Toronto and it figured it out and like it's I have a screen shot of it it's actually I was like fuck that's crazy so it set itself up perfectly like what are we going to work on together I love commerce or something it said so it was ready to go for a job so you know my use case I'm really really really I'm excited about the class I think it's probably most compelling product I've encountered in life it's it does so much it does a lot of research it does it write briefing notes that when I have a read or not but it's yeah it runs a script that sort of makes a collection of all sorts of things including my Fitbit data like and you know obviously as my calendar it has a little up it knows my geolocation like it just like again it's it's logging everyone so I come up completely like you know all the best ideas in the world are stupid ideas really or at least the best products you should start as a stupid idea and like recently I realized you know I did a lot of you know for for my for for my hobby I do a lot of health style analysis but then given that I've always data like I have a hardware data for you know for this and I figured out who my most stressful meetings are with like it's just a query no oh man so have you told those people oh yeah yeah totally guess here's a funny thing I just find out guess what and then they didn't find fingers no there's funny that stresses them out so anyway so it's it's just like I don't know you can just like do funny things that is a terrifying thing here so I know I just think it's all felt funny and you can ask it how your heart rate was after this yeah yeah exactly it's like you know who's like maybe I send a report card about my heart rate to my to pay his podcast oh my gosh is it do you feel like you can't live without it now I can live without it but it was just like people like I would be like remember the days and be had this amazing technology like it would would feel like one of the most significant regressions this is what I say like I think this topia that people fear is always just like like 30 years ago like if you actually would go back there and realize all the stuff that's missing but you really really appreciate I think this would become more clear so which I like to point out when people are saying oh we're going towards a dystopian future it's like you know what like let's actually just like not like let's just like keep the strain going because it's been pretty good for us I it would it would really suck to lose it and I think you can adjust to anything but I there would be a lot of things I would sacrifice on the altar of Ford experiments long before my claw well tell me those are my questions thank you then the pleasure thank you very much this interview is presented by hyper agent higher AI co-workers that take on real roles collaborate with your team and help run your business learn more at hyperagent.com framer is the AI native website builder that lets you build faster without giving up control visit framer.com/sources for 30% off rules and restrictions may apply granola is the best AI notepad I've tried it works everywhere on a video or phone call in person or an apple watch try it now granola.ai/sources and use the promo code sources at checkout for three months off gira by adlacian gives teams the context visibility and control to build with clarity and ship with confidence try it free at gira.com that's j-i-r-a dot com banking should feel like modern software get everything you need in one place visit mercury dot com to learn more and apply online in minutes mercury is a fintech not a bank check the show notes for details you