Breaking the rules of growth: Why Shopify bans KPIs, optimizes for churn, and prioritizes intuition

Archie’s background (0s)

• When teams break down the world into different stages or points in the journey, it can be seductive to focus on individual conversion rates, but in practice, it's often easier to make the previous step harder to increase conversion rates rather than trying to convert more people, and this approach can lead to more people getting activated, even if it hurts the overall conversion rate (42s).
• Archie Abrams is the VP of Product and Head of Growth at Shopify, leading an organization of over 600 people across product design, engineering, data operations, and growth marketing (50s).
• Shopify is a unique and successful business that approaches building product and driving growth differently, with priorities and product roadmaps driven by a 100-year vision from CEO Toby, and core product teams making decisions based on taste and intuition rather than metrics or KPIs (1m20s).
• The growth team at Shopify optimizes for churn, which is an unusual approach, and they keep long-term holdouts for every experiment they run, automatically looking at the impact these experiments have had on the business a year, two years, and three years later (1m31s).
• Shopify's approach to growth and product development is driven by a long-term vision, and they revisit decisions down the road to assess their impact, which is a key aspect of their success (1m48s).
• Archie Abrams shares specific examples of changes that have driven growth for Shopify, and the conversation covers how the company organizes its growth team, runs experiments, and measures impact, providing valuable insights for product and growth teams (2m5s).

Shopify’s impressive growth (2m30s)

• Shopify is a massive business, with around 10% of e-commerce in the United States being powered by the platform, meaning that if a purchase isn't made on Amazon or Walmart, it's likely made on a Shopify-powered store (3m11s).
• In 2023, Shopify did around $235 billion in Gross Merchandise Volume (GMV) globally, which is roughly the size of the economy of Finland (3m26s).
• Many people are unaware that they are using Shopify when buying online, as it is a behind-the-scenes tool, and the scale of the company can be surprising (3m36s).
• Shopify's growth has been significant, and the company has become a major player in the e-commerce industry (2m54s).
• The company's impact is substantial, with a large economy and significant influence happening from Shopify (3m34s).

Shopify’s unique approach to churn and retention (6m17s)

• Shopify's approach to churn and retention is unique in that they do not prioritize increasing retention or reducing churn, but instead focus on making it easy for people to start their online businesses, even if many of them will ultimately fail (6m17s).
• The company's mission is to increase entrepreneurship on the internet, and they believe that by lowering barriers to entry, they can get more people to try their hand at entrepreneurship, even if not all of them will be successful (6m49s).
• Shopify's business model is based on a subscription fee, but most of their revenue comes from payments, which is tied directly to merchant success, so the success of a few big merchants can make up for the failure of others (7m36s).
• The company is not optimizing every new shop for long-term success, but instead focuses on making it easy for people to try and start their businesses, with the goal of getting a few big wins that can make the whole business successful (8m21s).
• This approach is different from most SaaS companies, which prioritize retaining customers and never wanting them to leave, whereas Shopify wants to lower the barriers to getting started and being successful (8m35s).
• Shopify's goal is to make it easy for people to get started with their online stores and businesses, and they are willing to accept a high churn rate if it means that a few successful merchants can drive the company's revenue and growth (6m57s).

Monetization model and success metrics (8m43s)

• Companies focus on churn and retention because acquiring new customers can be costly, but this may not be the case for well-known brands with strong word of mouth (8m46s).
• The monetization model of most SaaS companies relies on subscriptions, whereas Shopify's model allows it to grow with its merchants by monetizing on the gross merchandise value (GMV) they produce (9m1s).
• This model enables Shopify to have high net dollar retention or net revenue retention, driven by successful merchants who make the system work well (9m34s).
• The success of Shopify's model can be compared to Angel Investing, where a few successful investments can make an entire portfolio successful (9m47s).
• Shopify's primary goal is not retention, but rather optimizing for growth, which is measured by the total GMV produced by a cohort of merchants over time (10m4s).
• The company tracks the GMV generated by a cohort of merchants acquired in a given time period, such as a quarter, over the next few years to evaluate progress and success (10m18s).
• This approach is based on the power law, where a few successful outliers drive the success of each cohort, similar to the returns of a fund driven by a few successful investments (10m49s).

Long-term experimentation and metrics (11m8s)

• Shopify has different parts of the organization set up to think on various time horizons and ways of thinking about building products, unlike many companies that have a unified North Star metric for the entire company (11m26s).
• There are three major product groups at Shopify: core product, merchant services, and growth, each with different time horizons and focuses, such as building the right things for commerce 100 years from now, providing tools for entrepreneurs, and thinking about the end-to-end customer journey (11m51s).
• Shopify has leading indicators and growth metrics, but the key is to look at long-term effects of experiments, constantly re-examining them a year later to see if the results are different from what was originally thought (12m18s).
• This long-term monitoring of experiments over very long time horizons informs input metrics and holds the company accountable for moving long-term GMV in the right way (12m55s).
• Shopify's long-term thinking allows the company to run long holdout experiments to see if something is impacting the business broadly, and make adjustments over time, rather than having to drive a certain metric every quarter or year (13m16s).
• The growth team at Shopify drives metrics on a short-term basis but also thinks about long-term effects, refining input metrics and getting smarter about them over time (13m46s).
• Taking a long-term horizon allows Shopify to be better in the short term and make counterintuitive decisions, and it is encouraged that others look at their experiments' long-term metrics to see how they differ from initial expectations (14m11s).
• Many experiments in growth show a short-term lift in metrics, but after a year, there's often no incremental lift on Gross Merchandise Value (GMV) from that cohort, indicating that the effect size goes away over time (15m16s).
• In some cases, experiments have flipped the other way, revealing a pocket of extremely valuable merchants who were missed in short-term measurement techniques, often due to monetary friction (15m48s).
• Monetary friction refers to the difficulty of starting a business with little to no revenue, and lowering these barriers can causally change a merchant's ability to become successful (16m22s).
• Reducing monetary friction can unlock a class of people who might have given up without the extra time to try their idea, and this can lead to discovering valuable merchants (17m24s).
• It's estimated that 30-40% of experiments showing early impact have no effect after a year, which is a brutal reality for growth teams (17m48s).
• This highlights the importance of running long-term holdout experiments to accurately measure the impact of growth initiatives (18m27s).
• For those who can't run long-term experiments, finding good early indicators of success is crucial, although no specific indicators are mentioned in the provided text (18m35s).
• Most people do not have the time to wait a year or more to see the results of their efforts, so it is essential to be specific about the early signs of success in a product and instrument those metrics to ensure understanding of what is moving downstream in the funnel (18m38s).
• When conducting experiments, it is crucial to look at the further downstream metrics to ensure understanding of what is moving down the funnel, and if possible, wait as long as possible to see the results (19m10s).
• If it is not possible to wait, it is still recommended to ship the product, but be reasonable about the short-term impact and do not overestimate its effects (19m29s).
• It is rare for a product to have a neutral initial impact and then become positive down the road; it is more likely to be positive initially and then neutral or negative (20m0s).
• Shipping products that show short-term lift is not likely to harm the business, but it may not be as impactful as initially thought, and the growth team may be getting more credit than they deserve (20m21s).
• There are trade-offs to moving on from a product, and it is essential to consider these when deciding whether to continue shipping products that show positive results (20m30s).
• To run long-term holdout experiments, it is possible to hold out a percentage of users from seeing the new change, such as 10% (20m51s).
• Shopify has a two-layered approach to holdouts, with a 5% holdout for every change in a quarter, and a 50-50 split for changes that only affect new merchants (21m1s).
• For changes that only affect new merchants, Shopify runs a 50-50 split experiment for a few weeks and then ships the winner to 100%, while looking at the long-term effects on the cohort of users who were assigned to the experiment (21m16s).
• Shopify's experimentation tools update results at three, six, nine, and 12 months, allowing experimenters to see the long-term effects of their changes (21m56s).
• Shopify uses cohort curves to track Gross Merchandise Value (GMV) over time, which is considered a key determinant of long-term success, rather than traditional cohort retention curves (22m18s).
• GMV is one of the core metrics used, alongside gross profit, to measure success, and it correlates better with retention and profit (22m45s).
• The company also focuses on the absolute number of merchants on the platform and reaching certain growth milestones (22m49s).
• Shopify's approach to growth is centered around understanding the performance of different cohorts over time, using metrics like GMV to inform decisions (22m17s).

Examples of big wins that Archie’s team has shipped (23m0s)

• Examples of big wins that have been shipped include experimenting with monetary friction, trial dynamics, and different types of incentives, which have been found to be impactful in e-commerce, particularly on Shopify's platform (23m5s).
• Collecting the right information during the sign-up process and leveraging it to personalize guidance for users has been found to have a significant impact on long-term success, with a focus on building trust and providing the right amount of guidance in a personalized way (23m50s).
• Onboarding and personalization have been identified as key areas of opportunity, with a focus on setting users up for long-term success and driving retention, which is often overlooked but has been found to be a significant lever for increasing retention (24m43s).
• The easiest way to increase retention is often to constrict the funnel stage above the retention metric being optimized for, but this approach can lead to weird team incentives and a focus on local conversion rates rather than the total number of people who complete the journey (25m16s).
• Focusing on the total number of people who complete the journey, rather than rates, has been found to be a powerful way to incentivize teams to do the right thing and get people set up for success, rather than constricting the funnel to improve local conversion rates (25m54s).
• The approach of orienting teams to think about the total number of people who complete the journey, rather than rates, has been found to be a successful way to drive long-term growth and retention, particularly when combined with a focus on onboarding and personalization (26m0s).

Monetary friction (26m42s)

• Monetary friction is one of the levers that has seen success, and it encompasses various aspects such as trial dynamics, trial length, and trial amount (26m43s).
• It also involves incentives, including what is in the product that people value and need to be successful, such as app store credits in the case of Shopify (26m54s).
• Monetary friction can be broken down into two forms, with actual price point being part of a larger bucket (27m9s).

Metrics (27m14s)

• In large organizations, teams often break down the world into different funnel stages and focus on optimizing their conversion rates, which can be misleading and lead to unintended consequences (27m35s).
• It's often easier to increase conversion rates by making it harder to do the previous step in the funnel, rather than actually improving the process, which can result in fewer people with higher intent (28m14s).
• Focusing on absolute numbers of people who make it through each stage of the funnel is more effective than optimizing conversion rates, as it encourages teams to think about increasing the overall number of people rather than just improving the conversion rate (28m34s).
• Thinking in terms of absolute numbers can lead to the realization that the best way to get more people to a certain step is often to make it easier to sign up or reduce friction, which can hurt conversion rates but ultimately lead to more people and lower customer acquisition costs (28m56s).
• When teams focus on increasing the absolute number of people, they may see their retention rates and lifetime value (LTV) go down, but their customer acquisition costs (CAC) will likely decrease as well, allowing them to spend more and acquire more customers (29m16s).
• The goal should be to drive an incremental absolute number of new merchants, rather than just increasing lift or conversion rates by a certain percentage (29m40s).

Shopify’s growth team structure (29m47s)

• Shopify's growth team is structured into two main groups: Growth R&D and Growth Marketing (29m49s).
• Growth R&D includes traditional product teams such as product design, engineering, and data, while Growth Marketing focuses on paid acquisition, media buying, affiliate marketing, email, content, and SEO (30m10s).
• Within Growth R&D, there are three main pillars: Growth Products, Ad Pillar, and Customer Support (30m22s).
• Growth Products focuses on the full lifecycle of a merchant, from landing pages and sign-up to onboarding, monetization, and engagement (30m28s).
• The Ad Pillar builds tools for growth and the rest of Shopify, including experimentation platforms, communication platforms, business intelligence tooling, and mtech work (30m57s).
• Customer Support sits within Growth R&D, focusing on the merchant journey and providing support as merchants grow their businesses (31m15s).
• Within Growth Marketing, there is a more traditional channel setup, including paid channels, online and offline channels, SEO, email, and affiliates (31m38s).
• Growth Marketing drives people to Shopify.com, while Growth Product within the R&D team takes that user and tries to get them activated and enabled (32m11s).
• The Customer Support team builds tooling to make support advisers more efficient and provides a great customer experience for merchants through the Help Center and AI-powered self-serve tools (32m45s).

Goal setting and forecasting (33m3s)

• Goal setting involves focusing on the total cohort value, which is the total value of a set of merchants brought in during a given year, measured over three to four years, with the aim of meeting payback guardrails and efficiency standards (33m19s).
• Each channel within the growth marketing team operates with its own set of guardrails around Lifetime Value (LTV) and Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC), and content and SEO teams also use a guardrail model to measure the return on investment for each piece of content (33m52s).
• Growth products are measured on a combination of total Gross Profit (GP) and incremental cohort value produced from those teams, with the goal of measuring the impact of each sub-team along the way (34m10s).
• Each sub-team has a specific part of the funnel they focus on, and they are measured on absolutes, with the goal of producing a certain amount of incremental cohort value lift over a long period (34m37s).
• The way goals are set involves forecasting where things would go organically and then determining the desired lift from the work done by each team, with experiments designed to measure the actual lift achieved (35m1s).
• Experiments are held for a long-term period, with some experiments being called after three weeks, but the group is still held and watched to see if the desired results are achieved over time (35m28s).
• The goal is to create a loop of shipping value quickly while holding teams accountable for producing results over a long period, with the ability to learn from experiments and improve over time (35m41s).

Examples of long-term results within Shopify (37m10s)

• Product teams often ship features, run experiments, and see short-term impact, but later realize the impact didn't last, which can happen roughly a third of the time (37m37s).
• This phenomenon occurs because the initial success is often pulling forward success that would have been seen later on its own if the feature hadn't been shipped (38m10s).
• An example of this is the payment failure notification feature, which showed a significant short-term lift but no long-term impact, as the people who were reminded to update their payment information may not have been dedicated to their entrepreneurship craft (39m2s).
• The payment failure notification feature is an example of a selection bias, where the people who were reminded to update their payment information may not have been dedicated to their entrepreneurship craft, and thus the feature didn't have a long-term impact (39m8s).
• Another example is the preconfigured blocks feature in Shopify's online store, which showed no short-term lift in people converting to paying merchants but had a massive impact on the number of people selling and producing GMV six months later (40m50s).
• The preconfigured blocks feature helped merchants create better stores that were higher converting, leading to early sales and momentum, and ultimately, more merchants sticking with entrepreneurship (41m10s).
• These examples illustrate the importance of looking at long-term results and not just short-term wins, as they can be misleading and may not accurately reflect the true impact of a feature (41m31s).

Shipping neutral experiments (41m36s)

• Neutral experiments are shipped if they feel good and are neutral, regardless of whether the original control was better or not (41m37s).
• The decision to ship neutral experiments is based on intuition that the change will probably help merchants, even if it's not significantly better than the original (41m48s).
• When deciding between two neutral options, the choice is made based on which one feels better, rather than trying to determine which one is objectively better (41m59s).
• This approach is a departure from a culture of aiming heavily for significant improvements, and instead prioritizes shipping changes that feel right, even if they're not significantly better (41m46s).
• The goal is to ship what would have been chosen if starting from a blank slate, without being influenced by the original control (41m54s).

Building a hundred-year company (42m5s)

• Shopify's philosophy is centered around building a 100-year company, with decisions oriented towards long-term success for merchants, rather than short-term gains (42m17s).
• The company's principles include making the best product in the world, making money to do more of that, and never reversing those principles, with the job of building the best product for merchants over the long period of time being the top priority (42m36s).
• Shopify prioritizes supporting entrepreneurs and small businesses, as they believe that is where the company's long-term success lies, rather than focusing solely on large enterprise businesses (43m11s).
• The company recognizes that big brands of today may be out of business in 30-50 years, and therefore focuses on getting every business to start with Shopify and grow with them (43m46s).
• Shopify's investment and product decision-making processes are focused on long-term goals, rather than short-term gains, with the company willing to take longer to ship a feature or pass on certain deals if it means setting themselves up for long-term success (44m12s).
• The company's R&D group leads meet with Toby every six weeks to review every project across the company, with a focus on technical architecture and ensuring that Shopify has optionality in its technical decisions (44m42s).
• Shopify believes that the technical architecture of a technology company determines its strategy, and therefore prioritizes building a platform that is adaptable and flexible, even if it means taking longer to ship a feature (45m20s).
• Shopify's approach to growth is unique, focusing on the "why" behind building something, rather than just the "how" and "when", with a strong emphasis on technical detail and infrastructure, as seen in a 30-minute discussion about building CSV importers for people coming from different platforms (46m11s).
• The company prioritizes getting the technical details right to set up the infrastructure for future growth, which is different from most companies that would focus on making it easier for people to migrate their data over and then moving on (46m40s).
• Shopify's approach is similar to Brian Chesky's idea at Airbnb, which is to have a 100-year vision and think about the future, but with a different focus, as Brian is a designer and focuses on the experience and design, while Shopify's founder, Toby, is an engineer and focuses on the technical details (47m7s).
• Founders tend to lean into their strengths and understand the things that are essential to their business, which is why Toby's technical expertise is crucial for Shopify's growth, and Brian's design focus is important for Airbnb's success (47m44s).
• The approach to growth and focus on technical details or design depends on the specific business and industry, with Shopify's platform requiring a strong technical foundation, and Airbnb's travel and hospitality business requiring a strong focus on design and user experience (47m54s).

Why Shopify doesn’t use KPIs (48m4s)

• Most of the company, especially within the Core Business, does not have metrics that drive what they build, which may surprise many people who believe every team needs a metric and KPI to measure progress (48m7s).
• KPIs and OKRs are essentially banned, and metrics take a different form, especially in growth, where data is used as a piece of the puzzle but not the overwriting factor (48m31s).
• When shipping a feature in Core, teams are not held accountable for a specific metric over a certain period, but rather for shipping the right thing, which is determined through various lenses, including data, qualitative feedback, and product sense (49m2s).
• The upside of this approach is that it allows for shipping things that are incredibly forward-facing and taking more risks, but the downside is that conversations can become extremely subjective about what is the right thing to do (49m25s).
• To mitigate the subjectivity, the company relies on good discussions, openness from leaders and teams, and a small number of people, such as Glenn, who heads up Core Product, to enforce a consistent bar for quality and taste (50m39s).
• Glenn and his team go incredibly deep into every single release that is shipped, ensuring a central focus on quality and how it all fits together, which helps maintain a consistent bar for taste (50m41s).
• The approach is subjective but objective in the sense that it's a small number of people who really hold what that bar is and needs to be, which prevents things from going off track (51m12s).

Shopify’s “Get shit done” framework (51m30s)

• Shopify has an internal project management system called "GSD" (Get Shit Done), which is used to review and approve every project before it ships (52m4s).
• Every project requires a few-minute video with figos and everything that shipped needs to be "ok2" approved by the group lead, and then approved by Glenn, Carl, and others (52m28s).
• The "ok2" approval process means someone above reviews it, and Glenn reviews the core stuff, merchandise service, and other projects (52m49s).
• Glenn is in "founder mode" and has final say, but is not the founder, and this setup allows for a unique way of working (53m6s).
• Sometimes, Toby disagrees with Glenn, and they talk it out, and every six weeks, the team comes together to review every project and hash out disagreements (53m17s).
• The team reviews all core, merchandise service, and growth projects, and flags areas of misalignment, allowing for good debates and discussions (53m25s).
• Within the core team, Glenn and his team decide what to build for the next quarter, without driving a specific goal, but rather building for the long-term future (53m48s).
• Shopify has twice-yearly releases, with big additions and continual shipping, and the team packages these releases in a big launch (53m56s).
• Glenn's team builds projects based on what they think is right, and then ships them when they meet his standards, without being driven by specific numbers or goals (54m10s).
• The growth team, on the other hand, is focused on driving numbers and growth, and hitting specific targets (54m27s).

Cross-team collaboration (54m30s)

• Cross-team collaboration between growth and product teams is crucial, and it's intentionally structured to be almost at odds, but with a foundation of respect on both sides (54m31s).
• There's no magic bullet for collaboration, but rather a focus on building trust, understanding each other's quality bars, and finding reasonable paths to handle conflicts (54m41s).
• Growth teams approach problems in a faster way, while product teams prioritize quality, and they work together to find a balance between the two (55m3s).
• The teams have a "no wizard" principle, which means they avoid using wizards or carousels to onboard users, instead focusing on simplifying the product experience itself (57m19s).
• An example of this collaboration is the experiment with pre-filled sections in the online store editor, where the growth team's idea was implemented in a way that's consistent with the product team's principles (57m51s).
• The goal is to find a balance between driving growth and maintaining the quality of the product experience, and this requires a high level of trust and human collaboration between teams (56m20s).
• Onboarding is a key area of focus, and the teams work together to find ways to help more people succeed without compromising the product experience (58m37s).
• The teams prioritize building trust and following through on commitments to ensure that they can work together effectively and make decisions that benefit the product and users (56m32s).

The importance of an opinionated founder (58m48s)

• To make a team that focuses on building great products without being constrained by metrics work, it's essential to have a very opinionated founder or set of people who drive what good looks like and have strong opinions on what good taste is (59m39s).
• A company can either use metrics as accountability to drive focus or have an extremely strong founder or set of folks with strong opinions on what good is and what taste is to make this approach work (1h0m12s).
• Without one of these two elements, the worst-case scenario is that the team ends up building a bunch of cool stuff in a half-hazard way that doesn't work (1h0m22s).
• Having a founder with good taste and intuition, like Toby, is crucial for this approach to be successful, but it's rare for founders to have this level of taste and intuition in real life (59m23s).
• Most founders are more successful building things that drive metrics they can track in an experiment, rather than relying solely on their intuition and taste (1h1m0s).
• Founders like aop, Brian Chesky, or Elon Musk are exceptions, and it's hard for most people to internalize that they may not have the same level of taste and intuition (1h0m49s).

Growth and sales integration (1h1m12s)

• Shopify has historically been product-like growth and organic, but has layered on sales and a sales motion, which is an increasing part of the business, and this has added a whole new kind of motion to the product, making it better and able to serve the biggest companies in the world (1h1m14s).
• The biggest learning from the R&D side has been that scale is very different with sales, and it's really hard to use quantitative data to make decisions, so a lot of it has been building qualitative insights working with Merchant success and sales about the challenges they're facing (1h2m0s).
• To build import tools that work for large customers, Shopify has had to build empathy with sales about what the Merchant Journey looks like and challenge themselves to think differently (1h2m36s).
• Shopify has built two distinct funnels, a sales funnel and a self-service funnel, but has been working on creating hybrid Journeys where merchants can choose their own path (1h2m50s).
• This has broken a lot of metrics in the business and required cultural resetting and getting smarter from a metric standpoint about how to measure the hybrid Journey (1h3m26s).
• An example of something that broke is when a merchant comes in via self-service and then goes to sales, but the value of that merchant is not associated back to the ad campaign, leading to suboptimal investment decisions (1h4m3s).
• Shopify has had to move things around to value each component of the hybrid Journey and transparently measure the process, which is still a work in progress (1h3m49s).
• Rebuilding instrumentation is being done to improve LTV modeling, attribution, and incrementality testing across different types of outcomes, as the original systems were not intuitive and had complications with attribution (1h4m54s).
• The goal is to focus on incrementality, which is considered the gold standard, as it tells what causally drove something, unlike attribution which only assigns value to a given touch point (1h5m34s).
• Incrementality testing involves not showing ads to a certain group of people and comparing the outcome to those who were shown the ads to measure the lift (1h5m54s).
• The aim is to get more sophisticated in incrementality measurement for self-serve outcomes that drive sales and for sales-specific outcomes (1h6m6s).
• Having incrementality at the channel level will allow for more sophistication in bidding, budgeting, and other areas (1h6m21s).
• The key thing is to get to a point where incrementality can be measured accurately to inform decision-making (1h6m31s).

Shopify’s marketing structure (1h6m42s)

• Shopify does not have a Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) position, instead, marketing leads are embedded within the organization in various teams (1h6m48s).
• The company has different marketing teams, including growth marketing, revenue marketing, brand team, marketing embedded in core and product marketing management (PMM), and shop marketing on the consumer side (1h7m7s).
• The benefit of this structure is that marketing teams are closest to the primary goals they are trying to achieve, allowing them to move faster with less coordination (1h7m28s).
• The brand team sits with Harley Finkelstein, Shopify's president, who has a lot of influence over the brand and is an amazing communicator (1h7m12s).
• The marketing structure works because of the amazing intuition of Toby and Harley on what the brand needs to be, and they have a cohesive story of Shopify in their heads (1h7m59s).
• The downside of this structure is that things can be sometimes very messy, and the founder's background, interest, and skills can significantly impact the way work is structured and who is hired (1h8m33s).
• The absence of a CMO position means that some of the traditional CMO responsibilities, such as creating a cohesive story of Shopify, are held by other leaders, but the other critical pieces of the CMO's job can be closer to the action and drive more impact (1h8m22s).

Insights on discounting from Udemy (1h8m49s)

• Udemy's success can be attributed to discounting, which was a key differentiator for the online marketplace for online courses. (1h8m52s)
• Initially, people were unsure about the value of online courses, and discounting helped signal value by offering a high list price and then bringing it down to an affordable price. (1h9m29s)
• The list price for online courses on Udemy was often high, around $100, to associate it with the value of a college course, but the actual value people placed on it was similar to that of a book. (1h9m42s)
• Discounting the course to $10, which was a typical Udemy deal, made it seem like a 90% or 99% discount, but it changed the perceived value and willingness to pay. (1h10m1s)
• Education is often aspirational, and people's emotional job is to feel like they're making progress in their educational journey, which can be achieved by simply purchasing a course. (1h10m20s)
• Discounting with urgency allowed people to make this emotional journey by purchasing a high-value course at a cheap price, which led to good retention rates as people could keep coming back to that emotional job. (1h10m52s)
• The combination of high value, cheap price, and urgency enabled Udemy to do well with discounting and reach a large audience. (1h11m6s)

Lightning round (1h11m9s)

• The recommended books include "Scientific Advertising" by Claude Hopkins, which is considered one of the first direct marketing books and provides insights on copywriting and selling products effectively (1h11m18s).
• Another recommended book is "The Perfect Mile" about Roger Bannister's chase for a sub-four-minute mile, which is a story of perseverance and competition (1h12m28s).
• A favorite recent TV show is "The Sopranos", which was watched in its entirety and is highly recommended, and also "The Wire", which is a long series but an incredible watch (1h12m59s).
• A favorite product recently discovered is the AI music creator, which allows non-musical people to create songs and have a musical experience, and is considered a fun party trick (1h13m52s).
• The favorite life motto is "The plan is the plan until it's not", which emphasizes the importance of having a plan but also being flexible and adaptable when circumstances change (1h14m27s).
• A combination of having a plan and staying focused, while also being flexible and able to react effectively, is key to success, reminiscent of the concept "strong opinions loosely held" (1h14m58s).
• The importance of empathy, curiosity, and kindness in leadership style was learned from the speaker's late father, who was an entrepreneur in technology (1h15m29s).
• The speaker's father was known for being curious, loving to engage and learn from everyone, and showing kindness to everyone he met, which are qualities the speaker tries to emulate (1h15m45s).
• The speaker can be found online on LinkedIn, where people can send him a message, and is hiring for various roles at Shopify, including growth marketers, PMs, engineers, data folks, and uxers, with the option to work fully remote (1h16m28s).
• Shopify is one of the few remaining fully remote tech companies that is not returning to the office, and is hiring across all functions (1h16m56s).