Harley Finkelstein

That's the commitment.

And then every year you have to requalify for that commitment.

When you look at other companies, I've sort of poked on Google a little bit on this only because I know a few people there that are like this, but you do see much more well-rounded executives and more well-rounded leaders.

It's actually the reason why net-net I always prefer founder-led companies than professionally managed companies.

I think founder-led companies are more interesting.

It's sort of, I mean, it's in the sort of same way that like we have this trust battery metaphor that at Shopify, those with autonomy have a very high trust battery.

And those that end up having to leave the company, it's because their trust battery is so low that like an old cell phone, it just cannot be recharged.

You don't know exactly are you at 46% or 66%, but you know direction where you're at.

The same thing exists for this requalification, that you can tell when someone, I think you can tell when someone is requalifying for their job.

What that means is, if you think about the growth of Shopify, which it grows, you know, we're growing a lot, forget sort of the top line revenue or free cash flow margin growth or anything like that, but just like the growth of Shopify, product areas, GMV, the number of merchants, the geographies, the impact we have on the world, it is growing at this massive pace.

I think in order to be on our team, especially to be a leader at Shopify, you have to believe that you have to want to keep getting better, meaning stasis is not acceptable.

The thing you did last year may have got you a high five and an attaboy and a pat on the back and whatever.

All the great stuff that comes along with that, that is not good enough anymore.

And actually, at Shopify, I think that's truly, I mean, the source of that energy is Toby.

That there's probably no one that I've ever met on the planet.

I've worked with Toby now for almost two decades.

You know him very well, too.

He's a friend of yours as well.

There is no one that pushes himself to be the very best at product and technology the way he does.

And so he inspires all of us to just continuously say, okay, last year was pretty good.