20VC: Lessons from Mark Zuckerberg, Keith Rabois & Tobi Lütke | Why Remote is a Bad Idea for 90% of Companies | The Framework for How Shopify Builds Product Today | What Humans Get Wrong About Marriage and Kids with Kaz Nejatian, COO @ Shopify

24:57Like where in the stack should this thing be built rather than what we should build because that's like if you get that decision right you actually can end up building a lot more. This is why by the way more pms need to be more technical. I'm not saying all pms need to write code but all pms need to understand how code is written. That's an incredibly important thing in the stack of parodies. It's funny he said that about kind of most companies spend a lot of time talking about what. I had Gustav's a CPO of Spotify on the show and he said, you know, talk is cheap, so we should do a lot more of it.

25:31And I still disagree. I believe in dictatorial regimes. I believe in someone having a vision and and then executing against it, I think most of the debate is brainstorming fucking retreats that we did today are not right, actually, an ineffective. Do you agree with me or do you actually agree that talk is cheap and we should do more of it and communication amongst teams is the best way to people. So I actually just think we talk is cheap. Because most people actually miss, like when they talk about talk is cheap, what they mean is I can say things without that much consequence to me. What they miss is people have to listen to you.

26:07So, their time spent listening to you is very not cheap. In fact, we have this thing in Shopify where we calculate the cost of every meeting and put it in the meeting invite. I can tell you, talk is very, very not cheap. It's incredibly expensive. When you worried when you implemented that, you would then disincentivise meetings that could create moments of magic. Because I agree with you totally, but it almost reminds me of calories on menu, which is like, I get you. If you continuously show me this 1200 calories in the apple pie, I'm not going to eat did. But that apple pie might have been fucking sensational and I just missed a moment to be happy.

26:41I don't think so, man. I think it's okay. Obviously everything has, it's plausible we did that, but the way you do things matters more than the outcome. But I actually think it's actually, we've been, the world is tilting more in our direction. So Shopify, like the thing we want to do is for more things in Shopify to be communicated via words and code written down rather than in live meetings. That's what we want. We want to tilt the world more that way. But you show the world is going back to what going to you where thinking. Well, I'm not sure if everyone's doing it, but I'm very sure that the outcome will be more favorable to us.

27:17Look, if you think about how LLM's work, you need something to train the machine on. And the fact that we had this discussion in paper, we wrote our thoughts down and the mid -an -outcome, it's a very good thing for training the machine. Unbelievable. I totally agree with you. The lost data and the future of AI is how you work. You know, show you're working at school and we don't have any of that in data within companies. I'm just speaking to 10 CEOs a week of billion dollar plus public companies and they're all saying, dude, it's so much better in person. It's so much better. But we're all back.

27:48I'm trying to. I think being remote is an exceptionally bad idea for most companies. It is really, I encourage almost everyone to not do it. The reason it works for Shopify is because we have spent so much time and so much effort building Systems and tools and software to make this work if you go yellow remote without all the tools we have built all the teams We have focused on this thing you will 100 % for sure fail for most companies. They should not do it It's a bad idea, but anyway, that's a structurally true Shopify Like if you go back to and read the early memos on like investors in Shopify They were all like no one should do this.

28:29It's a really bad idea. Serving e -commerce, which everyone thought was a small bit, a small 10 opportunity. For small businesses, which everyone thought was again going to climb, insanely high churn. It's a definition we read zero to one, Peter Teel's book to like don't have a restaurant, it's very churny. Shopify dedicated its core mission to serving people who are the most churny. They're like a million times more churny than restaurants, on the pros. Shopping is very good at this thing where it would be a really bad idea for everyone else, but it's an exceptionally good idea for Shopify. What makes that, though?

29:01The process with which you approach it. Yeah, I mean, I think I honestly think this goes back to... Shopping has two core values that are different than most companies, and I know this is like a... I think they're actually also embodiment of Toby, our founder who is very much like this. The first is like, Thrive On Change. Now Thrive On Change sounds good, but most companies actually don't want to the thrive on change most companies are built such that they do incredibly well in times where there are no change. That's what most companies are like if there is change most companies are not handled not built to handle it.

29:32Shopwise built such it does better when there's change when there's dramatic change shoppers just was better it just like how companies built so we're like a very thrive on changey. The second is this is the learners thing we talked about where it's like shopwise built such a normal things take us longer at shopfight and it would take most companies. Let me give you like an example. If you want a higher person at a regular company, you go to HR, you give them a, like, hey, I have an empty head count. Please go hire this person for me. And the process they run through that works. When I got shot, fight there was no such process.

30:04So hiring someone was just very weird that you had to discover, like, if from the first time, how do we hire people? It took us longer to hire people than most companies, which bands are head count grew far more slowly than most companies. It's a real downside, right? If you're optimizing for speed and something, best packs. I didn't know it reminds me actually a founder's funds investment decision -making process where they actually say you want to increase the friction to an investment decision being made because it increases the requirements on the decision -makers' side to get it done. If you don't have an HR team, you can just throw it over the fence like, oh shit, I've got to do it.

30:38I've got a source candidate, so I've got to do it. This works for us really, but for most companies that amount of ownership would be really hard for people to understand, right? What changed did Shopify find hardest and what did you learn from that? You said like Shopify actually drives in change. What changed did you not thrive from and what did you learn from that? Two things going remote was incredibly difficult for Shopify. It took us a very long time to get right Honestly, tell you for the first six to twelve months it just strip was working house I just kept calm was breaking down Yeah before just Shopify Because you might Shopify went from being incredibly in person.

31:11Shopify did not even have cold look at it teams all teams had to be in the same pod. We went from that to fully remote, like that, and none of the cultural things that had made Shopify worked translated. So that change was very difficult. It was just incredibly painful. That was real. And then, I mean, if there's been other ones that have been, we made a change where Shopify pays people differently than most companies. Like most companies go to say, hey, here's your salary, here's your equity, here's your bonus, structure, whatever. a Shopify we say, here's a pile of money. Here's a software you can use to allocate that pile to salary, equity, bunch of other things.

31:49That change was a very weird change. That change required Shopify to change its equity process because like literally what we wanted to do was illegal in most of Europe. The ability to give people to take options or our issues or like pick between them was was just like very, it actually ended up with Toby personally writing a crap town of code to actually make this thing work because it was very painful. Now, now that we are through it, at the time it was just very painful because it was just people were reasonably worried that what the hell is happening here. But now that we're through it, I don't think any company does this as well as we do, but it was very painful.

32:27What are those discussions you have when it's not working? Did you talk about going back to fully in person. Because there's got to be a moment six to nine months in where you're going, shit, if we made the wrong decision. I mean, we burnt the bridges relatively well behind us, because we knew it would be painful. I think if we knew how painful it would be, I don't know if we would have done it. But once we committed to it, we burnt the bridges pretty well behind us. Like we encouraged people to move, give up our leases in a bunch of places, took the right downs. Like a lot of companies that went remote during COVID, kept their offices pristine, did not give up did the whole thing so that you had the optionality to go back.

33:03We hired people in places that we would know were nearer offices on purpose. So we made it very difficult for ourselves to go back. Do you think you make it difficult for yourselves with public markets? Because of your contrarian stance on remote, on how you thrive and change, on the way you hire, it's not an easy story for analysts to get their heads around. I think Shopify is insanely difficult to model for analysts. Why? First of all, our business is not a common one, right? We don't want a CPG. We don't want a traditional SaaS business. Our business is hard to model. Our growth is hard to understand.

33:36It's very hard to understand where shopwise growth comes from and how it shows up for analysts outside, whereas it's not that hard for me. I'm sorry to be naive, but the show thrives on basic questions. Why is it hard to understand your growth and how do you simply explain your growth to your children or a 10 -year -old or someone like this? Well, it's not hard to understand where our growth comes from. Our growth comes from people starting businesses and those business succeeding and making lots of money and we share that upside. That's basically where Shopify's growth comes from. It's not hard to say those words, but it's very hard to model those words.

34:06It's very hard for analysts to say, hey, this cohort of Shopify merchants will have next all words. In the same way, it's actually difficult for analysts to model VCs because what Shopify is essentially is like we invest in cohorts of startups, tens of thousands of merchants try to start a business on Shopify and they grow up and some of them become very big and many of them don't, they even die, some of them become very good lifestyle businesses, which is what people want or sight hustles. And you still make money from them and it's kind of the portfolio approach. In the venture game where you're kind of 1s and 2s, I totally get you there.

34:38But what you've done is you've realized, hang on a minute, all birds is kind of great, but supreme is probably better. And actually the older, bigger commerce enterprises are great. And there's been a very clear shift in Shopify's strategy to enterprise into the core existing I think we did it in a very different way than most people think. So I was here at Shopify. I was a person who used to tell enterprises away. Like one of the top 10 retailers in the world asked us to use Shopify a few years ago, and I said, no, you may not. We don't sell PowerPoint, where are at Shopify? Like we don't sell PowerPoint presentations that say, like, look at all the stuff we have, and then if it works, then we have a product rule called No Party Tricks.

35:20i .e. we don't show you a thing and it's that can work only in very specific instances. If we show you a thing, it can just generally work. So we don't do the party trick thing. Look at me doing this one thing, but as soon as you try to do it again, it just fails. So what we take great pride in selling the type of software we do. But over the last couple years, it's not like we went up market and Shopify. We just kind of like stopped saying no to all the enterprises that wanted to use Shopify. Why? Because the software is now very ready. The product is now very ready for that. Shopify is not an enterprise software company.

35:53We build software that enterprises use, and I think most enterprises that use Shopify appreciate this. We don't build bespoke software. There's no if enterprise line anywhere in Shopify's code base. But when you have enterprise clients, and again, I'm naive here, so correct me, that you need Sok2, you need levels of compliance, you need permissioning, you need a ton of different product features, which are a pain in the ass and normal, small businesses wouldn't have any customer service, any customer success at different levels. And enterprise, it's a different company, no? So two things first, luckily, because the way Shopify has worked, is we have billion dollar public companies that start on Shopify on day one, right?

36:35These are massive, massive companies that just start on Shopify, fashion overs are multi -billion dollar, retailer, fixes a public, like these are like very large companies that start on Shopify, so we've been able to model the business as they've grown up. So we needed Sok2 for fixed to go public. But most people end up doing is doing this the wrong way, right? They go to Sok2 saying, what can I build? And then they build the things Sok2 says you shall build, which is why all enterprise software ends up being shit, right? Whereas what we had to do is we had to do a first principle of pretend we have this piece of software, we have merchants who need so our brain is actually compliant because they're going public.

37:11Like, how do we, from a first principle, make that work for them? And that means a different software experience. There are many, many, many, many public companies that use Shopify, like many of them. But I'm telling you to them, it just looks different than like an ERP would. It just looks like good software. And I think that's down to that different, look, enterprises use Windows, small bits, this merchants use Windows. Like how you build the operating system matters. I agree how you build the operating system matters. Which means we wonder kind of going back to our core conversation there like the internal tools he build.

37:44Why do you still use Stripe? Because they can exceptionally good at what they do. But it's the one tool that you will take from someone else. No, no, that's not true. And it's probably one of the core, the movement of art. No, no, no. The reason we built internal tooling is because no one has built internal tooling this good and this opinion that the way Shopify wants it to be. Shopify is opinion about how companies should be built, be built. There's no one else that shares those opinions that can build external drawings for us. I get you, but by outsourcing that decision -making on the future, they could change that perspective.

38:16Oh sure, yes. And look, if Stripe and Shopify ever get to a point where like, we don't think about the world the same way, then we'll have a conversation. But Shopify has over 700 payment providers integrated into it, right? So we have a lot of them. Stripe is just by far our biggest partner. We have more payment integration on Shopify, and any other software platform in the world, Stripe is just our biggest partner. This Stripe Shopify relationship is likely the most value -creating relationship in the history of software. It would have been Intel Microsoft before Intel and Microsoft had the divorces to hard -to -word, but had the thing they did.

38:49Right now, it's Stripe and Shopify. These companies were both started when they were both worth. Single -digit millions of dollars, so they started working together. And now they're worth more than that. That combined value is very, very high. And it's because of each other, right? We like them, they like us, we're very happy to be their partners. It is not that we can't partner, we partner exceptionally well, except we're incredibly opinionated about what good software looks like, and therefore can only partner best with people who also have similar opinions. I get you, I just, when you hear, building for 100 years, there is an unknown future from an external party that they could change that perspectives their opinions on the world that is very likely.

39:31And then you do it. But like Timmy at Harry, this is like the alternative here. Like most software companies grow up in a very zero -some world. They are incredibly jealous of their adjacencies. Most software executives will spend their time thinking which adjacencies can I go to. And that means that like most software companies pick fights they don't need to pick. Like they're incredibly complimentary Shopify Stripe, Shopify and a firm, Shopify and Meta, shop and Google shop and Apple, like these are incredibly powerful partnerships. We have very deep partnerships with many tech companies and it's not because we're like Switzerland.

40:08It's because we are very incredibly aware of what our job is and what other people's job is. Talking to banks, we don't think it's our job. We think it's a striped job. What fight do you think you did need to take? We're very, very glad that Shopify type of software, one over the Yahoo stores, type of software, right? Thanks to Shopify and companies like Shopify, commerce on the internet is slightly more weird than it would be if yeah who stores it one which is like the Paul Graham product. That was more of like a conflict of visions than it was like a conflict of companies, you know what I mean?

40:40What was the most serious disagreement you and Toby had? Probably going over remote. He wanted to do you didn't? I mean he was 100 % right. He was 100 % right. When was Toby wrong? This is a very real thing because I think I am wrong so goddamn often I don't actually attach that much value to my opinion. What ends up happening is I don't really keep track of whose opinion was right at the end of the day. What is the most underappreciated element of Shopify's product roadmap vision today? I think people underappreciate how broad the product is. Like the surface area of the product is very, very, very big.

41:20And people under appreciate how massive it is. In that way, Shopify is much more similar to an operating system than an application. People under appreciate how Shopify's not really a point solution. And this is this is probably a hard part of reason where analysts have a hard time modeling it. It's hard to model that because like you want to build a bottom up model of something, it's really hard. The use cases of Shopify are incredibly diverse. This is perfectly good for us. like we are tool makers, we are not application builders. I always remember Toby talking about companies being worse -run than World of Warcraft Clans.

41:54And you know, the importance of tool makers in the world. And I always remember that. I do want to ask you know, on a more personal side, I've heard you say before you have a hard time not saying things you think are true. I'm actually not that nervous about saying anything I believe, because I'm a perfectly happy saying Kaz was wrong. I do a post very frequently internally to a whole company saying, Cas is biggest mistakes over the last few months. What was the biggest mistake you posted internally that you did? The biggest mistakes I have made in my career have all been of the same shape, unfortunately.

42:28I have limited the information flow and made it go through the org chart. All my biggest mistakes are of that shape. The information that someone needed to have didn't get to them because the org chart, like it went up the org chart rather than like dynamically. And most companies, the way it works is I have an idea, I write a note, I tell my boss about it, my boss likes it or doesn't like it and tells his boss about it and up the chain the information goes till someone says yes and it comes back down and I do it. That tree, that's a very common pattern. It's with every company, it's with even a Shopify sometimes.

43:02But incredibly terrible. Like one of the things I tell my team is to share information publicly and it's perfectly okay for your boss to find out about something at the same time as the whole company. But my biggest mistakes have essentially been when an information has gotten to me without being publicly shared, such that opposing views haven't gotten their hands on it. Do you really think it is okay for bosses to find out at the same time as the whole company? For most information, yeah, of course. Sometimes morale needs to be managed, sometimes you need to control messaging, sometimes actually it could piss off sales to hear that and see.

43:36I think as you need a lot more control. Oh, no, this is sometimes yes, but those times almost always involve a lawyer. Sure, sometimes information needs to be managed. But no, no, the default should be that all information should be shared publicly such that people in the company never think, oh, these people are just bullshitting me, when things are going well. They people need to see the ups and downs, need to see the decision making, need to build in the open, such that they can benefit from information from everyone. This is one of the benefits of values is that you only have a value if the opposite of it can also be true Apple is a company that's very on the opposite side of spectrum from Shopify on information flow and Apple is an exceptionally good company Right most people at Apple don't know what other people at Apple are working on and so you agree with me when you say you can't have like Integrity is a value Exactly 100 % yeah, it's dumb like values need to be things that a reasonable person can take boats the other side of But the way it works for us and for me, that's why I work here.

44:39Information openly shared from many other sources. People publicly disagreeing or publicly agreeing. It's allowing sunshine to fix things. It's best thing. And people being okay saying, hey, I was wrong. Hey, I was right. Hey, you want to build that collegiality. This is a real thing. I'm not a mon athlete, but if you look at great watch basketball, like if you watch a basketball game, you will see the players are literally always talking to each other. They're always giving each other feedback. You should be here. You weren't there. That's always happening. And that can just not happen if they're all secretive about where they intend to be on the court.

45:14This is a very similar thing to companies. And this is like a more or less what everyone else is building. You will never have two versions of one thing. You will always say, cool, let's unite work together and build this diff race with sits both of us. Kaz, speaking about alignment, you write a lot about marriage, which is a different type of alignment. Again, we're addressing the element of disagreement, but when we look at Google, when we look at Amazon, when we look at Microsoft, when we look at Elon Musk and X and Tesla, and when we then extrapolate that out across everyone worth over $100 billion, there's a terrible start that basically, I think it's like 84 % are divorced.

45:53US powers the value of marriage. The world seems to point the opposite. Also, first generally speaking, it's really terrible to model your life after people who are worth over a hundred billion dollars because they're just such the rare right? Their circumstances will almost never be your circumstances. I'm not saying you shouldn't desire to be a billionaire if you want to be. Do you think those divorce rates would be lower in the billion average? I don't think that's also a good measure. I think what matters is this. First of all, divorce rates are lower than people think they are. What divorce rates count is a number of divorces.

46:25It is just true to people who get divorced, frequently get divorced more than once. So there's a distribution, like most first -time marriages do not end in divorce, although significant number of second -time marriages end up in divorce. That's a real thing. Second, the data behind this is undeniable. Four men, specifically four men, graduate from high school, getting some job experience and getting married in that order as soon as possible of success, including health, wealth, and happiness, than any other thing. But we can't find something that is more into future happiness. The odds bankruptcies go down, the odds of health events goes down, cancer survival rates for married men is significantly higher than single men.

47:13Like there's a real thing about like bankruptcy rates are lower for married men than single men. There's a real thing here that is not true. You argue that marriage is good for downside protection, but a cap for upside maximization. No. I think at any given point in your life, you have to think about when did you get married, Kaz? What age? I got married relatively late. I got married when I was, I got engaged when I was 29, married when I was, I think 30. So like layered in like, I think most people in the US would. I'm not a married kind, but North America we've gotten married earlier. Look, bad marriages are incredibly bad, but are things you can do early in life and are things you can do to make to prepare yourself for a good marriage?

47:54And those things are worth doing regardless of getting married or not. And that, once you do those things, our good marriage is incredibly useful on every metric we can measure. Why is it that everyone says, oh, God, it's so good when my wife's away, when my husband's away, because I have time to work and I can focus on myself and I can really concentrate. And I think back and I mean, did we're both humans. It takes time being in a relationship. Sure, but it takes time to work out. Does it mean working out is bad for you? Like it takes time to like work. I mean work is bad for you. There's a real thing here is, for those two things.

48:33One, there are lots of things people believe that turn out to be not true. In fact, most human progress has happened because the thing that lots of people believe is true turns out to be not true. So that lots of people believe it is not an appeal to majority opinion is not a good sign that anything is true or not Second, I think this is a place where popular culture has misled us greatly Like it is funny to talk about sure sometimes information needs to be managed But no, no, no, the default should be that all information should be shared publicly such that people in the company never think, oh, these people are just bullshitting me when things are going well.

49:12People need to see the ups and downs, need to see the decision making, need to build in the open, such that they can benefit from information from everyone. This is one of the benefits of values, is that you only have a value if the opposite of it can also be true. Apple is a company that's very on the opposite side of the spectrum from Shopify on information flow, and Apple is an exceptionally good company, right? Most people at Apple don't know what other people at Apple are working on. And so you agree with me when you say you can't have like integrity as a value. Exactly, 100%. Yeah, it's dumb.

49:42Values need to be three -cylinder person can take boots. So it works for us and for me here. Information openly shared from many other sources. People publicly disagreeing or agreeing. Like it's allowing sunshine to fix besting. And people being okay saying, hey, like, that you want to build that, I'm not a man athlete, but if you look great, you will see the players are literally all each other. They're always giving each other feedback. You should be there. Like always happening. And that can just in if they're all secretive about where they're like, this is this is a mother's word on what you build.

50:26If everyone in the company knows more or less what is building, you will never have to think. You will always say, cool, let's unite work together and build this different. Because speaking about alignment, you write a lot about marriage, which is a different type of alignment. Again, we're addressing the element of disagreement, but when we look at Google, when we look at Amazon, when we look at Microsoft, when we look at Elon Musk and Dex and Tesla, and when we then extrapolate that out across, everyone worth over $100 billion. There's a terrible start that basically, I think it's like 84 % are divorced.

51:01you espoused the value of marriage, the world seems to point the opposite, actually. Also, for John speaking, it's really terrible to model your life after people who are worth over $100 billion, because they're just like what their circumstances will almost your circumstances. I'm not saying you shouldn't desire to be a... Do you think those divorce rates would be lower in the billion average? I don't think that's also a good measure. I think where is this? First of all, divorce rates are a little bit they are. With divorce rates count is a number. And it is just true that people who get divorced, frequently gets.

51:40So there's a, there's a, there's a distributions. Like most first time marriages do not. Although significant numbers, second time errors. Yeah, that's true. So that that's the rule. The data behind this is, this is, this is, there's, I mean, I wrote a book about this, but you don't have to read my book. You can academic research. The data behind this is undeniable. For men, specific, graduate from high school, getting some job experience and getting married in that order, it's more indicative of success, including health, wealth, and happiness than ink. But we can't have something. There's more indicative of future happiness.

52:23The odds bankruptcies go down. the odds of down, cancers for married men is significantly higher. Single men. Like there's a real thing about like bankruptcy rates are lower for married men, the single men. There's a real thing here that is not true. You argue that marriage is good for downside protection, but you know, a cap for upside maximization. No. No, I wouldn't. Look, I think at any given point in your life, you have to think about when did you get married, Cass? What age? I got married relatively late. I got married when I was, I got engaged when I was 29 married when I was I think 30.

53:08It's like layered and like I think most people in the US would. I'm not American but North America we've got married earlier. So I'm not saying look bad marriages aren't currently bad but are things you can do early in life and there are things you need to make to prepare yourself for a good marriage. And those things are worth doing regardless of their marriage or not. And that once you do those things, like all good marriage is incredibly useful on every metric we can measure. Like there are very

53:44few... Why is it that everyone says, oh god, it's so good, but my wife's away. my husband's away because I have time to work and I can focus on myself and I can really concentrate. And I think back and I mean, we're both humans. It takes time being in a relationship. Sure, but it takes time to work out. I mean, working out is bad for you. But it takes time to work. I mean, work is bad for you. There's a real thing here is, for those two things. One, there are a lot of things people believe that turn out to be not true. In fact, most human progress has happened because they think that lots of people believe with true terms are to be not true.

54:28So that lots of people believe it is not like an appeal to majority opinion is not a good sign that anything is true or not. Second, I think this is a place where popular culture has misled us greatly. where I admit it is funny to talk about, you know, oh my wife has got to confine me how fun it's just funny but I'm telling you the most fun I have in my days. What do you know about marriage now that you wish you'd known when you got married? Oh that's a really good question. It's a wonderful question. That when you are married there are three parties you need to care about, not two. It's you, your wife, and the marriage.

55:12Like, there's three entities they need to care about, and all of them need to be independently cared about. You take care of yourself, you take care of your wife, and you take care of your marriage. And those are three different things. And if you think about that, what ends up happening is that every once in a while, you realize that you're taking care of yourself and your wife, but not the marriage. And that's incredibly important. Like, my wife and I, like, look, we have four kids, we have four young kids, we have date nights almost every week. because we value taking care of marriage. Isn't, I've loved doing this.

55:43Should we do a quick fire round? Sure, man. What is the best and the worst incumbent to hire leaders from? The reason I said this, I was walking around the part with a public company CEO and he said, never hire leaders from Google. A terrible to ingest into a company. Who are the best and who are the worst to hire from? That's actually interesting. I have found that hiring people from Metta generally has worked out very well for most people, because just as a training program is just exceptionally good. Worst? I don't know if there is one generic horse, but industry switching is very difficult.

56:18Hiring marketers who are not from software into software generally doesn't work out. Hiring, hiring people who are not in software in software generally doesn't work out. So industry switching is very difficult. Okay, what have you changed your mind on the last 12 months? I changed my mind about the gold standard. Like I used to be used to market openly and I now think I was wrong. What character trait do you like in yourself, but you wouldn't want your kids to have it? I'm a hacker. I'm a hacker's hacker. Like I grew up hacking things and my five year old son the other day found a way to get his passport for his iPad for his time as iPad.

56:56At first I'm like I'm so proud of him for hacking the system, but like about 30 seconds You're like, oh no, my son has unlimited access to an iPad. So that has been hard. What one piece of advice would you give to a product leader starting a new role? Optimize for its bats. Optimize your first few years in your career for shipping as many things as possible, rather than career progression. Will Camila win? I'm not American, so I don't spend that much of my time caring, to be honest. Do you not get absorbed in the politics in the Twitter? No, not really to be honest. I find, I follow a bunch of like, like, thing things from across the political spectrum.

57:37And I'm like a capitalist at heart and love the free market and liberty for all. I find that you are better off following political news as though it is not a horse race. So check in once a week rather than once a day. Because if you check once a day, it just becomes kind of like useless. The final one, VW. What recent company product strategy have you been most impressed by? I'll give you two everyone will say Microsoft and OpenAI because I just like what they have done to search is just act like Scrap ad -murable, but give you a different one outside software I think what Exxon mobile has done is just to be admired from the outside This is an old traditional company their business isn't that complicated theoretically I think their profits are up about 160 percent on hard -of in this world, right?

58:26Like it's a real thing. They've essentially done it by like getting off -biting production. They're getting a lot more at -or -assets than people think they would and they placed themselves in a position to benefit from surge in travel post -COVID. That I think everyone kind of underappreciated. Like it's actually real. So if you think about the US produced more crude oil in 2023 they had ever before. These companies have gotten very good optimizing for production in ways that's just like very impressive. I think Canvas is incredible. Oh yeah, yes, 100%. Not just Canvas or it's worth, like the way Canvas builds is to be admired.

59:08The product is just beautiful. My third one would be Figma. Not that many companies can survive what happened to Figma. companies that usually like usually mergers that fall apart or articles that fall apart and up with in a really bad place. Because companies just typically have checked out by time the acquisition happens. Figma is thriving. And I think they're thriving because when the acquisition happened, they decided that they were going to pretend as do it had not happened. They kept the pace of innovation and they kept shipping product, which I think is actually a very risky thing to do.

59:46as a company because usually that causes it to happen, so you have to undo all of it, but it worked out well for them. Kaz, listen, I so appreciate you putting up with my roaming between conversations on children, product and all design. And so you've been a fantastic guest, and thank you so much for doing this, Ma 'am. Dude, I appreciate it. Thanks for having me. That was so much fun to do. I absolutely loved having Kaz on the show, and you can watch that full episode on YouTube by searching for 20VC. That's 20VC. But before we leave you today, Ever wondered what your customers actually do? The team over at They Do have been living it for decades, and they have recently built a product that is frankly enabling the world's biggest businesses to literally know what they do.

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1:02:25What is the social validity? 10 ,000 companies use Pendo and we also manage mind the product, the world's largest community of Product Management professionals. Where do we want to drive people? Give it a try and visit pendo .io slash 20 product hyphen podcast to learn how your team can use Pendo to start building better digital experiences. There you can also check out Pendo's lineup of free certification courses 12 hours of in -depth training for your product management teams on topics from AI to product analytics to product led growth. As always I sir appreciate all your support and stay tuned for an incredible 20VC with Capital G's Managing Partner, Laila Sturdy, this coming Friday.