Shopify CEO: Most Businesses Are Using AI Wrong
Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke talks about how businesses misuse AI, how Shopify built an internal AI agent that writes 50% of its code, and why human judgment still matters.
The gist
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Lütke says taste and judgment are the scarcest human skills in an AI world, built by studying lasting systems and design across many domains.
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Run AI agents in open channels like Slack so teammates can watch each other work with AI and pick up habits naturally.
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A sub-agent council, where different AI models role-play analyst, engineer, and business perspectives, costs around $15 to $20 and can compress a month of work into 30 minutes.
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Lütke warns against Goodhart's Law: once a metric becomes the goal it stops being useful, so prefer paths with delayed feedback over quick, visible results.
Tobi Lütke recommends it
"James Burnham's books are fantastic, I think, and extremely relevant. He wrote the Managerial Revolution first and then a book called The Machiavellians, which is unbelievably good."
▶ Play at 1:03:04
Tobi Lütke recommends it
"His longer book is good. Fiction and the Foundation series is so good."
▶ Play at 1:03:50
Tobi Lütke recommends it
"The Lessons of History, which I just think is the densest — the highest token quality book in existence given the length."
▶ Play at 1:02:56
Tobi Lütke uses it
"I am a Meditations fan. I know stoicism is falling out of favor a little bit right now but it's been a lifelong thing for me, and I have a copy of Meditations in most rooms I spend time in. So I just do some random reading and it's like magical how it's somehow relevant to som..."
▶ Play at 1:03:227 creators recommend it, including Ryan Holiday, Ivanka Trump, and Jett Franzen.
See all on the Meditations page
Tobi Lütke uses it
"She lives in Slack. Slack is — we have 7,000 people there. Everyone is in a big chat. There's 10,000 different channels."
▶ Play at 8:2653 creators recommend it, including Riley Brown, Jason Calacanis, and Guillermo Rauch.
See all on the Slack pageWhat they recommend · 10 picks
Books
5 picks · Tobi Lütke ·Tobi's books →
"The Lessons of History, which I just think is the densest — the highest token quality book in existence given the length."
"I am a Meditations fan. I know stoicism is falling out of favor a little bit right now but it's been a lifelong thing for me, and I have a copy of Meditations in most rooms I sp..."
"James Burnham's books are fantastic, I think, and extremely relevant. He wrote the Managerial Revolution first and then a book called The Machiavellians, which is unbelievably g..."
Software & apps
2 picks · Tobi Lütke ·Tobi's software & apps →
"I'm mainlining as my computer an operating system called Omakub. It's a version of Linux started by a good friend of mine David Heinemeier Hansson as a sort of new passion proje..."
Productivity
2 picks · Tobi Lütke ·Tobi's productivity →
"Books I come back to — I often talk about Parkinson's Law, which I love. It's such a quick read. I almost always will mention it."
Other picks
1 pick · Tobi Lütke
"Affirmations are the easiest way to do it. If there's something you want to have different, if you want to edit something about yourself, just try to say that the goal has been ..."
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