Here is the audio, video, and transcript. Here is a summary of the episode:
Tyler and Tobi travel from Germany to Canada to America to discuss many topics such as how expats code well, learning from meetings by saying the wrong things, being one-on-one with your kids, the benefits of venting, German art vs. American creativity, why studying German made him sad, why there are no other German technology giants, untranslatable words, the dividing line between North and South Germany, why other countries should not compare themselves to the US, Canada’s lack of exports and branding, skiing to work in Ottawa, that how VR and AI will change sales, why he expects to be “very disappointed” when he looks back at companies in the 2020s, why Lean Startup it’s not good for salespeople, how fantasy novels teach business principles, what he’s studying next, and more.
Quote:
COWEN: Are Canadians different in meetings than US Americans?
LÜTKE: Yes, again. Yes, that is true. On the American side, it’s definitely a small quality bar. I think Canadians are very common about the long term. I have seen Canadians often think about what is the next step after this step, but also with low ambition. That’s probably not the most popular thing to say here, but Canada’s problem, generally culturally, is thinking about copper, which is not unusual for small countries attached to cultural or very large countries.
Actually, I found it very easy to work. I think a lot of our success is due to me and my co-founder basically allowing everyone to travel on a global level. Everyone’s like, “Oh, okay, if we’re allowed to do this, let’s go.” I think that makes a big difference. Raising ambition for a project is a must-do for a Canadian company.
COWEN: Is there a rarity needed to inject that into Canada and Canada? Or is it just a matter of someone coming up and doing it, and it all just comes out and happens?
LÜTKE: I don’t know. As successful as Shopify may seem, that alone didn’t make it. It would be great if that could happen. Now there is another set of founders emerging. Some of them were part of Shopify or came back – I believe there are big companies in Calgary, like NEO, who are very interested.
I think it’s a small decision. The time it worked best was when Canada hosted the Winter Olympics, which are now a bit of ancient history. There was actually an all-Canadian show called Own the Podium. That makes sense. It’s at home. We have more winter than most, so let’s do it right. And so we do. Canada’s best Olympic team performance of all time. I think fixing it and making it stick – changing culture is very difficult, but the conditions of giving everyone permission to follow it have also been very successful.
And this:
COWEN: Let’s say we compare Germany and the Netherlands, which are culturally similar, very close to Koblenz. They have ASML, Adyen. The Netherlands is a small country. Why did they do better in comparison? Or you can quote Sweden, again, culturally not so far from Germany.
LÜTKE: You ask me very good questions a lot I was going to ask you instead. [laughs] I don’t know. I want to know. I started in a small company in Germany; it did nothing. So, it’s not like people didn’t do this. I came to Canada, again, this time it worked. Then I looked down for a very long time, I built my own thing because it was consuming everything, so I didn’t pay much attention – I didn’t even consciously think about where to start a company. I started in Ottawa because that’s where my wife and I were when she was studying. We can find great talent there that was overlooked, it showed, and it gave everyone an ambitious project, and it worked.
I think that if you create in geography a consensus that you are really a company, that you should work for because interesting work, good work, can actually lead to something – you can build it. I don’t really understand why this doesn’t happen in more places in Germany because, again, Germany has this amazing appreciation of art, which I think is actually not well represented in software. I think it has just been raised – usually by Europeans -. Patrick Collison talks about it a lot, and I certainly do, too.
Software development is a craft. I think, in this way, in Germany, the Czech Republic, in other places, in Poland extremely enlightenment in doing this part of the apprenticeship program. I studied computer programming, and I thought it was the best way to learn these things. Now, that means, I believe, there is a lot of talent that is then making decisions without putting it together to build ambitious startups. Something that needs to be discovered by people with more insight than me.
COWEN: I think part of the hypothesis is that the Netherlands, along with Sweden, are happier countries than Germany. People smile a lot. At least superficially, they are very optimistic. They go out a lot.
LÜTKE: I think it’s hope.
COWEN: It’s surprising to me that Germans, contrary to popular belief – I think they have a sense of humor, but most of them are funny or dark. Maybe that’s bad technology. I wonder: people in the Bay Area – do they have a good sense of humor? I’m not sure they do. Perhaps there is a correlation between those variables.
Definitely recommended. Can you guess which question Tobi refused to answer, for fear of cancellation?
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