Buy the why

There's a famous TED talk (and book) by Simon Sinek that was all the rage in the early 2010s.

Sinek's whole message was:

People don't buy what you do they buy why you do it.

Here's the ~20 minute talk if you want to watch it — it's worth the time to get a sense of what Sinek means and to see some of his examples:

Whose why

I have always thought Sinek is a good speaker, and a tremendous writer.

But while this message has something compelling about it, it has always sat a little uncomfortably for me.

For a while, I wondered if the issue was me. Surely I can't think Simon Sinek — New York Times best-selling author and world-renowned expert on such matters — could be wrong?!

But the issue with this concept, for me, has always been around the “why”.

Consumers absolutely consider “why” when making a buying decision. But from everything I've seen, people rarely give a damn about why you do something.

People buy because of why they want something.

It's the nuance of just a word, but I believe it changes everything.

TiVo as an example

Sinek seems to reinforce my point here. In the talk he uses TiVo as an example of a business that didn't figure their "why" out and failed in the market, despite having a great product.

In the talk he's suggesting people would have bought TiVo in droves if they understood why they would want it. Not because of some glorious raison d'être of TiVo itself.

First-hand experience of the nuance

We find this ourselves with EcoSend. We have a clearer answer to "why we do what we do" than we've ever had for our work on GoSquared, or other projects. While this is compelling to some, it pales in comparison to being explicitly clear on answering "why does the customer need this?".

Answering that is just categorically more important, and without it, you're stuffed. And I've got the battle scars to show for that...

Yes, this applies to Apple

Today, Apple released the new MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display. It's a ridiculously long and ugly name if you ask me, but the two biggest new features are that it has a touch screen and a glowing Apple logo (again!) on the back. Lovely!

The missing piece for me, from today's MacBook Pro announcement, and for the HomeView announcement, and to a lesser extent the iPhone Duo announcement, is the clarity of the why.

Why do I need this product? Why do I need a touch screen on my laptop? It may not be for me, but why does anyone? And it is worthy of the trade-offs? Does it actually make sense? Why does this product exist?

I don't mean to hate on the new MacBook Pro. Far from it. It just seems that many businesses

If you get the eyes right, nothing else matters

It's a busy time in Apple land. At certain times of the year, not a lot happens. Right now, it's hard to keep up.

There are new products hitting us on a seemingly daily basis like the iPhone Duo, HomeView, and the imminent first-ever touch screen MacBook Pro.

Not only are there new products galore, but there are also historic milestones worth reminiscing about.

Last week marked ten years since the introduction of Portrait Mode — Apple's clever approach to making portrait shots of people's faces look more like professionally taken photos.

The feature gives photos an artificially narrow depth of field, so that the subject is perfectly in focus, while the background is soft and beautifully blurred with a bokeh effect.

It does this without actually having the information of a proper big lens SLR camera (and very few people would like a phone with a hefty huge lens sticking out the back of it!) so the effect must be artificially created in software.

I found this X post from Johnnie Manzari about the creation of Portrait Mode fascinating. As with many wonderful inventions and innovative ideas, the feature didn't come from science or technology or art or design alone — it came from a combination of all of these and more.

There’s a saying in painting that if you get the eyes right, nothing else matters. Inspired by this principle from oil painting, the idea was to make sure we never got the eyes wrong.

We brought in a machine learning block to find the eyes, and draw a mask layer that protected them, then paired that with the disparity depth map. Counterintuitively, the solution was not to decrease the amount of blur, it was to increase it.

The additional blur that we could add once the eyes were protected allowed us to hide the artefacts that were created by bad depth calculation.

I never knew about this saying from the art world, but now I think about it, it makes so much sense. It also explains why many of my drawings at school didn't quite look right!

I love this story — it shows that even with the most brilliant, cutting-edge technology, to find the best answer for today's challenges we sometimes need to look back at the masters from hundreds of years ago.

One of my favourite Portrait Mode photos: Harvey. And they said it wouldn't work on pets!

Be the best customer of the day

I really enjoyed this quick piece from legendary writer and marketer Seth Godin: Hospitality in the Mirror.

In it, Seth argues that the best hospitality comes to those who most deserve it.

For too long, the entitled customer has demanded emotional labour without offering support or sustenance in return. It’s exhausting and unfair, for both parties.

When you’re the best customer we’ve had all day, it’s likely we’ll be the host you’re hoping for.

When I'm at my best, I try to be a good customer — at the local shop, the café, checking in to a hotel, or messaging someone on the customer support live chat.

I tend to do this because that's how I was brought up — to be kind to your fellow human. Smile and the world smiles back at you.

But as per Seth's post, I do believe that I tend to receive far better service because of this.

At its most basic, it's smiling, making eye contact, saying please and thank you, and asking the other person how they are. And genuinely listening for an answer.

Of course, you can be an even better customer than that, but supposedly basic manners can go a long way.

On the flip side of this, I find it rather irritating when I try to be a very good customer, and I receive very poor customer service. The human-to-human connection is broken when the "human" on the other end turns out to be a robot. Or the order is forgotten after multiple reminders.

This short post made me think more about how I can be a better customer, and how we can be better hosts.

25 years of the iPod

Screenshot of the iPod Easter egg on the Apple website

Apple introduced the iPod 25 years ago.

I didn't know what an iPod was back then, and I was barely into computers at all.

But by 2003, when the third generation iPod came out I absolutely knew, and was fortunate enough to get the device. I felt so fortunate, and I couldn't see how I would ever need another device to take with me for music listening. All my music? In my pocket? And it looks this cool!?

It makes me feel quite old to see the iPod now viewed as some sort of vintage device. But I am thrilled to see Apple celebrating it in such a fun and quirky way — if you go to any wrong URL (causing a 404 error) on the Apple Music website, you're greeted with an interactive original iPod. You can use the click wheel to navigate, and you can even play songs from a selective catalogue of Apple-blessed songs.

Is this a sign of Apple remembering how to have fun, now that John is in charge? I think so, and I am very much here for it.

Thoughts on iPhone Duo

‘Different’ and ‘new’ is relatively easy. Doing something that’s genuinely better is very hard.

— Jony Ive

It's day one of the iPhone Duo, and I made a visit to the Apple Store in Covent Garden to try it out.

I have chosen not to buy the new iPhone Duo for a variety of reasons, but I'm fascinated by the device. Please don't consider this a review — rather, it's a few notes and impressions from a geeky and interested observer.

The Duo is, in my opinion, the most interesting iPhone since the original was unveiled some nineteen years ago. Apple has rolled iteratively with an ever better version of the original idea in 2007. Until the Duo.

When unveiled, the device looked stunning, so I have been very keen to see if, in practice, the hype is real.

Craft

Apple has done a phenomenal job with the integration of the software and the hardware. Obviously, this is to be expected, and it's a line Apple themselves has touted since they were making computers in a garage.

But with the Duo, you just can't help but appreciate how much Apple cares about this stuff. Look at the Duo next to any other foldable device on the market and the level of care and craft is night and day.

The thing feels high-end. Luxurious. Futuristic. Clever. And in many ways, obvious. There are so many thoughtful details that are truly delightful. It's clearly a device that has had a lot of care and love poured into it by many incredibly talented people.

Compromise

Every year, when Apple introduces their new Pro models, they inevitably tout "this is the best iPhone we've ever made."

Before the Duo was unveiled, many rumours circulated about it being called the "iPhone Ultra".

Ultra implies something more than pro: the ultimate. The best.

The iPhone Duo is categorically not the best iPhone Apple has ever made.

In fact, I'd argue it's the most compromised iPhone Apple has ever made.

While I find it exciting to see Apple breaking free from the standard "candy bar" iPhone shape they've had since day one, there is no denying that to make a phone foldable involves making some difficult choices.

Cameras

The cameras on the iPhone Duo are clearly not as good as the best and latest Pro iPhone models.

To begin with, from a distance you can already see there are only two lenses on the iPhone Duo compared to three on the Pro. In addition to that, the cameras themselves are not as good as the latest Pro models in terms of the quality of the lenses, the image quality, pixel count, and more.

While I may not be able to always perceive those differences, I find it very reassuring when getting a new iPhone to know that I have the absolute best camera I could possibly have on me at any one time.

Having said

Friday finds #4 — iPhone Duo edition

If you've been following my writing over the last few weeks you might have noticed I am trying to keep to a very regular posting schedule. Every Friday I've been sharing links to cool things, usually apps for iOS, Mac, and the web.

A few recent issues:

  • Friday Finds 1 which includes the most radically crazy way to delete apps from your Mac.
  • Friday Finds 2 which includes a site dedicated to past (imperfect) predictions of how key technologies will transform society.
  • Friday Finds 3: which includes a Swiss government website to help you prepare for Doomsday.

But this week, it's all about Apple's latest little gadget, the iPhone Duo. I will assume you are aware of this device as Apple has done a teeny little bit of marketing about it.

While I'm not buying one (which may come as a surprise to anyone who knows me as Apple's #1 fan), it doesn't mean I can't appreciate the work developers have done to bring beautiful and useful apps to the new device.

Here are a few apps that have caught my eye:

  • Things. I have been a user (and fan) of Things for a very long time. They're the ultimate definition of what it means to be a great Apple developer. They of course have a beautiful and well-considered update of the todo app ready to go on day one.
  • Flighty. If you fly a lot (or at all) and you don't have Flighty, you need to change that immediately. It's one of the best iOS apps, period. And of course they're ready to go for Duo on day one.
  • Fantastical. If you want more than the built-in calendar app on iOS, then Fantastical is the app you are looking for. They've been developing Fantastical for as long as I can remember, and they've built one of the best reputations for being great developers for Apple platforms. Fantastical is of course ready for the Duo already.
  • Check the Weather. I only came across this today but it's an old app that has received a big update. If you like to know the weather like a weatherman, then this is worth a look. Beautiful large weather maps and it makes great use of the extra screen real estate of the Duo.
  • Quiche Browser. This is an alternative browser to Safari. I love how thoughtfully designed, minimal, and yet utterly customisable it is. An incredibly thoughtful browser app that is ready for Duo on day one. Update: I got this wrong, it’s coming soon! Still great for all non-Duo iPhones today.
  • Monzo. I have to give Monzo a shout-out for being, what I can only assume, the only bank to be ready for iPhone Duo on day one. So many people have joked that "your bank will only get around to supporting iPhone Duo for the next model", but most banks aren'

A Vonnegut errand

When reading John Gruber's review of the imminent iPhone Duo this morning I stumbled upon an interesting phrase he used: "a Vonnegut errand".

What on earth is that? I thought. I couldn't help but follow my curiosity to find out.

Fortunately, Gruber linked the phrase to an explainer about Kurt Vonnegut purchasing an envelope.

Kurt Vonnegut, if you haven't heard of him (admittedly, I hadn't!) was a very successful American author.

While it would be easy to quote the whole piece (and tempting, given the website is chock full of ghastly ads), the premise is in this screenshot of a Facebook post that went viral:

Screenshot of a Facebook post about Kurt Vonnegut purchasing an envelope

To quote from the article directly:

David Brancaccio: There's a little sweet moment, I've got to say, in a very intense book — your latest — in which you're heading out the door and your wife says what are you doing? I think you say — I'm getting — I'm going to buy an envelope.

Followed by this:

Kurt Vonnegut: Oh, she says well, you're not a poor man. You know, why don't you go online and buy a hundred envelopes and put them in the closet? And so I pretend not to hear her. And go out to get an envelope because I'm going to have a hell of a good time in the process of buying one envelope.
I meet a lot of people. And, see some great looking babes. And a fire engine goes by. And I give them the thumbs up. And, and ask a woman what kind of dog that is. And, and I don't know…
And, of course, the computers will do us out of that. And, what the computer people don't realize, or they don't care, is we're dancing animals. You know, we love to move around. And, we're not supposed to dance at all anymore.

Ultimately, Kurt's summary is "We are here on Earth to fart around".

What a wonderful thought for the day — I suspect many of us could do with a little more of this approach to life lately.

Invert, always invert

Invert, always invert

— Charlie Munger

I read these words a while back but never gave them much thought.

Only recently while reading more of Charlie Munger’s essays (via the wonderfully crafted Stripe Press book Poor Charlie’s Almanack) did they become clearer.

The whole idea is an incredibly simple framework to help you reframe a problem: just ask the opposite of what you are trying to figure out.

For example, instead of asking “how do I become healthier?” You could ask “how would I get really unhealthy?”

Or instead of “how do I become rich?” you could ask “how would I become poor?”

The simple reversal often is easier to answer. We seem to naturally be good at answering the reverse of the question.

The benefit of this is that it gives you a good list of habits, approaches, and actions to avoid.

By actively avoiding the negative factors, rather than exclusively relying on doing the good stuff, you might just give yourself a better shot at achieving what you want.

Infinite dopamine-fuelled todo lists

Recently I wrote about how alarmed I was to see how much time I had been spending on social media.

I deleted most of the apps, but every now and then I open one of the sites in my browser. Then I lose a few minutes.

Now I am more conscious than ever about how much they suck me in — losing track of how much time they steal from me.

It's endless. The only way to stop is to interrupt the flow somehow.

Social media is unlike most other experiences on our computers.

You email inbox has a finish line.

Your actual todo list has a finish line.

Newspapers had a finish line.

But Instagram, Facebook, Threads, Twitter, YouTube and the rest — none.

They're infinite.

One of the best ways to avoid getting sucked into the endless vortex is to set a limit with Screen Time (or similar) to kick you out automatically after a little indulgence.

The best way, though, is to not start in the first place.

“Vibe coding” is a category error

The phrase “vibe coding” has bothered me for some time.

It’s usually said with a smirk. Usually by experienced engineers.

And that was appropriate for a while. 2024-25 were full of crypto-bro levels of fanfare fuelled by big egos building small apps in days.

Most of that was hype was unwarranted.

But we're in 2026 now. The slow boil has reached us.

What is now possible with AI has evolved unimaginably.

We've moved past "vibes", yet the term “vibe coding” has stuck.

Empowerment isn't a "vibe"

To many, the term implies that what’s happening is casual. Loose. A founder waving at an LLM and hoping something compiles.

But “vibe” massively undersells what’s really going on.

For someone like me — not an engineer by training — being able to build working software isn’t about vibes. It’s about empowerment, velocity, momentum. It’s about user experience. It’s about customers and satisfaction.

Your product is a conversation with the market.

I first heard this quote from Des Traynor on the Cheeky Pint podcast with John Collison and it’s really stuck with me.

For years, the path from idea to implementation looked something like this:

Have an idea → explain it → write a spec → justify it → debate it → prioritise it → design it → refine it → debate it more → build it → test it → ship it → get feedback → repeat back to step 1.

Every step added latency. Not just time — cognitive drag. Social drag. Justification drag.

Not to mention, the very number of steps, the time consumed by passing through all these steps, and the very thought of even going through these steps, meant many ideas were never even attempted.

It may sound harsh, but I've seen it in so many teams: engineering is where good ideas go to die.

Now? If you're set up to embrace the world we're in, the journey is radically transformed:

Idea → build → test → refine → ship → improve.

And that is not a cycle that happens in months, weeks, or even days. It's a cycle that can happen in hours, if not minutes.

Speed of iteration isn’t a "vibe"

Forgive me for linking to another Stripe founder, but I have long found Patrick Collison's "Fast" page immensely inspiring: examples of people quickly accomplishing ambitious things together.

Iteration speed is leverage.

When building something new, the most valuable thing is rarely elegant code, a beautiful user interface, or following a set process or doing things in a certain way.

It’s really simple: all you really care about, to begin with, is whether the thing you are building is actually valuable.

Does this flow make sense?

Is this interaction clear?

Does this feature solve the actual problem the user has?

Before, for any product manager or designer or non-technical founder, exploring those questions meant being away from the product.

Drawing, writing, designing. You would do a lot of work in places that were not the actual

The complete book of self-sufficiency

On my recent holiday and a trip to Barter Books (my new favourite place), I picked up a second-hand book: The complete book of self-sufficiency, by John Seymour.

It’s a big book filled with illustrations and information and I haven’t read it fully yet.

But so far I’m captivated.

There is a lot of talk about preppers lately. There are many wondering how we can be more resilient to the changing world — climate, supply chains, price fluctuations and more.

There are people questioning how much plastic we have in our lives.

There are people wishing for healthier diets, and improved gut health.

There are people who are desperate to save money and reduce their expenditure.

This book has some answers and ideas for all of these topics and plenty more.

I will share more as I explore some of the ideas and techniques here.

Wish me luck.

P.S. If you’d like to get this book yourself you can get it on Bookshop.org (affiliate link)

Built to last

Many projects don’t seem to prioritise longevity very much these days.

Think how many buildings built over a hundred years ago are still standing, still cherished, and have great uses.

How often do we build buildings today to those standards? It seems, not often enough.

I don’t know why. I’m not a qualified architect. But I suspect it comes down not to designers or materials, but budgets and policies and priorities.

What if it came down to pride? Not being told or due to requirements, but because you want to?

It used to be impossible to build cheaper or take shortcuts. Now it seems to be the default.

But the default doesn’t have to be the only way. And pride doesn’t have to cost more.

Friday finds #3 — tools and links for your weekend

I hope you enjoy these, too, and if you have found (or made!) anything decent lately, please let me know.

  • Worse on Purpose: a site that keeps track of famous brands (and their owners) and whether they're still worth it or have declined in quality (also see enshittification).
  • Flowstate is a service that transforms handwritten notes into digital formats that can be used in the tools you already use.
  • Want to become a little more resilient and self-sufficient? Want to prepare for Doomsday? Here's a Swiss government website that shows you exactly what to get, in what quantities, depending on the size of your household and how long you want to survive for.
  • Uplock is a lovely native iOS and Mac app for securely saving everything but your passwords — think passports, ID cards, private documents, and more.
  • Want to own Stanley Kubrick's directors chair? It's going up for auction along with a few other collectors pieces soon.

Enjoy the weekend!

Decisions are made by one person

It's bugged me for a long time — the process of decision making.

Sometimes I think I'm quite bad at making decisions and I take too long to make them.

That's absolutely true at times.

But when in a team, there is sometimes a sense that decisions are made by a group. You get together as a team and collaborate to make a decision.

If the team is healthy, you collaborate and you listen and you give each other time to share thoughts. Great ideas and suggestions can come from anywhere.

But decisions… those can be harder.

In reality, most teams are not purely democratic, so decisions are rarely ultimately made by the team as a whole. They are made by a person on the team.

Often, all too often, in a team, things fall down because it isn't clear who the person to ultimately make the decision is.

Sometimes it's because the person who makes the decision isn't qualified or doesn't have the right information.

Sometimes it’s to do with the health of the team — the psychological safety of putting your neck on the line. Toxic cultures can make decision-making a more political or emotional challenge than necessary.

But from what I've seen, often it's because the person who needs to make the decision isn't aware that they are the ones who need to make the decision in the first place. There is ambiguity and misunderstanding within the team.

In startups and small businesses, often one of the few advantages over bigger companies is speed — you can move more quickly than a thousand-person behemoth because you can strip away the politics and bureaucracy and risk aversion that larger organisations tend to accrete.

You don't have a lot else: you have less money, fewer people, and less time. Which is why speed is not just advantageous but necessary.

While there's a lot of information and tooling around building and designing things faster, there's relatively little about making decisions faster and more effectively, even in a small team.

It could be the difference between life and death. Sometimes a decision doesn't just wait for hours. It waits for days, weeks, months, if not years.

Figuring out how to change this is a constant endeavour of mine. And I believe primarily it starts with making sure it's clear who makes the decision. 

Inevitable criticism

It's worth bearing in mind that very rarely does anybody get criticised for not making a decision.

It's very easy to criticise a wrong decision being made, because you can usually see it play out on a given time horizon.

A decision not being made though: in most companies this can be invisible.

The very absence of something makes it hard to pin down. You rarely see the negative impacts of indecision directly. But you ultimately pay the price.

Which is why a culture where decision-making is

Barter Books

I've discovered my new favourite place, possibly in all the world: Barter Books.

It's a second-hand bookshop, one of the largest in the UK.

It's in an old train station, for a railway that was controversially closed down in the 1960s.

They have a log fire, arm chairs, a model train set, and a delightful independent cafe serving traditional English food and drinks.

Notably it's also the epicentre of the famous "Keep Calm and Carry On" poster.

It's heaven.

Use the goddamn product

Being customer obsessed is easy to say, but extremely hard to consistently do.

Whether you run a five star hotel or a SaaS business, the best way to understand how to make your product or service better is to experience it as a customer would.

Yes, it's crucial to gather customer feedback, to actively seek their feedback, and to execute on improvements based on what they tell you.

And as a software business you can instrument your app with metrics and tracking so you have every datapoint you could ever dream of.

But I'm convinced that customer feedback and metrics can only take you so far. No matter how direct and open your customers are with you, they likely will never tell you everything that could make your offering better.

And, the act of responding to customer feedback inherently means building something and waiting for feedback to improve.

You can make your offering better without a single piece of user feedback by doing something simple: use your service yourself.

For a software business, you should sign up for your own product. And you should use it on a regular basis.

And I don't mean "use" it in the sense of testing. Of course you want to make sure a few common workflows always work. I mean really use it like a user would — to carry out an objective, under realistic conditions.

In EcoSend, we've fixed hundreds of things that users have never (and I suspect would never have) told us about. Does that mean those issues don't matter? I believe they do — they all add up to an experience, whether vocalised or not. They're not show-stopping issues, and they're not necessarily bugs. They're quirks, things that could be more obvious, flows where we can save the user a click, or guardrails that help the user avoid a mistake.

I love making these kinds of improvements — they often go unnoticed, but they add up to an experience that feels more robust and reassuring, and at times delightful.

It's this approach that leads to good software. No matter how much AI is used in software creation, the process of using your own product cannot be outsourced.

The best software will always come from countless iterations based on feedback and refinement. When you are a user, you can run so many more of these cycles without users ever needing to tell you.

Do nothing

It’s amazing how intelligent it is just to spend some time sitting. A lot of people are way too active.

– Charlie Munger (American investor and philanthropist, business partner of Warren Buffet)

Some people call it meditation.

But that term can conjure up all manner of associations that don't help.

It's not about becoming a Buddhist, or tending a zen garden.

What I need more than anything every now and then is some time and space to just shut everything out. To do absolutely nothing.

I'm not talking about making time to read. Or write. Or run. Or podcast. Or catch up with a friend.

I'm talking about truly doing nothing (except breathing).

The modern world makes this close to impossible.

If you take your phone away, perhaps you still have a smart watch. You take that away and your iPad or laptop might be in close reach. You take that away and you may have a smart speaker or a TV on in the background.

And if you take all of those away, then your brain might be so accustomed to stimulation that you immediately reach for something — anything! — to distract. A book, an old magazine, a newspaper. Heck, even a cereal box will do.

And then, even if you remove ALL of that, if you live with someone else, or work with others, you might just find that your attempt to do nothing is interrupted again. On the basis that "you didn't seem to be doing anything so..."!

Doing nothing in modern society is not easy.

But I think it's more important to try than ever.

So many products don’t need to exist

So many, if not most of the products that surround us in modern society don’t need to exist.

But they do — they offer us choice, efficiency, fun, value for money, convenience, and many other attributes.

But what is the cost of that convenience?

The price tag is what the consumer sees. That's the cost, surely?

But that price tag doesn't account for everything. As an economist would say, there are many externalities that are not priced in.

When the option of a cheap bag or item of clothing is presented to us, it can be immediately more tempting to even the most conscientious of consumers.

I feel this more so now at this time of year — with Halloween and Christmas approaching.

Shops full of plastic, cheaply produced tat. Labels with AI-generated imagery to suck you in. Carelessly designed products that are designed for a single use, and then to be binned.

It's easier and cheaper to buy, throw it away, and then buy again than to buy and keep.

It's also often so cheap that people are encouraged to buy what they don't need. People start to think "Why not just buy that? It's only £2!"

"I can just use it and if it's no good I'll just chuck it."

This kind of consumer behaviour is frowned upon by some, but it is legal.

But really, the consumer is not the primary issue here. While there are many ways we, as consumers, can buy better, there's only so much one can expect every consumer to act in the interests of the planet.

Really, the attention would be better placed on the companies, their incentives, and the regulations that they operate within.

And (perhaps this is a little lofty...) we could collectively establish how we evolve our thinking as a society. Rather than rely on rules, wouldn't it be great if we shared our purpose as humans to look after each other and our planet?

Is it not quite obvious that we cannot continue to consume like we are today indefinitely?

For the companies that make and sell countless, thoughtless, cheap, throw-away products, this kind of consumer behaviour is exactly what they want. It is encouraged.

Can the market alone really figure this out for us? I don't think so.

When it comes to cheap consumer goods, the current market incentives (in the UK at least) seem to be almost entirely at odds with what our planet — and ultimately, what we — truly want.

I'm desperately keen for us to change that.

Tobi Lütke of Shopify on AI, slop, and responsibility

I really enjoyed this discussion with Tobi Lütke, the founder of Shopify.

I’ve always admired him for leading and building Shopify into the business it is today — one that is both financially successful, strives to build truly great products, and champions entrepreneurship itself.

Tobi shares the ups and downs of how they’ve been using AI as a company of thousands. They appear to have developed an incredibly valuable “team agent” that assists their team members in their daily tasks, and continuously evolves based on feedback.

This talk introduced me to the concept of “slop grenades” — huge and thoughtlessly verbose documents generated by fellow team members that get dumped on your desk to wade through.

Perhaps most interesting to me was Tobi’s remarkably simple answer to whether AI would ever take his job as CEO of Shopify: “no”. Tobi argues that AI cannot lead because it cannot take responsibility for its actions. Only humans can do that, and that’s a huge part of what makes any leader.

This talk seems to have been picked up by a lot of tech community thanks to its discussion around AI, but it’s well worth a watch regardless to get an insight into the brain of someone running a highly successful and large software business in its prime.

Friday finds — tools and links for your weekend

Following on from last week's "tools and links" post which some of you really enjoyed, I thought I'd do another one this week.

As you might know, I am a bit of a geek. I love finding new tools, gadgets, and things on the internet.

I hope you enjoy these, too, and if you have found (or made!) anything decent lately, please let me know.

  • “The computer will allow man to return to the Hellenic concept of leisure”. A wonderful site dedicated to past predictions of how key technologies will transform society. The Techno-optimism archive.
  • Bookpile takes an ISBN and tells you which bookshops, chains and libraries near you could be asked for a copy.
  • Trackables turns the data your Apple Watch already collects — activity, sleep, steps, heart rate — into a clear, friendly, transparent interface. Found this via Gruber — it's free of charge, private, and made by a small team of ex-Apple folks.
  • whoami.wiki looks like Wikipedia but if it was focused around your life. It's a system that turns your digital archives of photos, chats, documents, location history, and different types of data into a living encyclopaedia about your life. Not sure on the background of this and haven't tried it but it seems like a very interesting project.
  • Moment is a timer I've been using lately to help me stay focused. It puts your wellbeing first with Apple Health integration (it asks how you feel after a focus session) and provides on-device insights.

Enjoy the weekend!

Humans vs machines

Are we treating our fellow humans worse and our tech better?

Many people I speak to seem to be working harder, feeling burnt out, and generally exhausted.

We’re so focused on how to speak to AI — how to write the perfect prompt — we seem to be forgetting how to speak to each other.

It doesn’t have to be that way.

Be kind. Make eye contact. Listen.

Be human.

First vs only

Earlier this year Elon Musk became "the world's first trillionaire".*

That wording made me pause.

The use of the word "first" inherently implies that there will be more.

More trillionaires?

I would rather write "the world’s only trillionaire".

"Only" does not imply momentum.

"Only" implies uniqueness. Isolation. Loneliness.

It takes the edge off the statement.

"First" suggests we might want more trillionaires.

We don't.

* In desperately sad news, Musk's trillionaire status has fluctuated, and shortly after the IPO he lost it.

Revisiting the agile manifesto in the age of AI

If you’re an engineer I can already hear you letting out a sigh.

As long as I’ve been in the world of building software I’ve heard the term “agile” and I’ve never really dug into it too much.

It’s always had connotations of “work” and project management and, to be honest, Jira.

Yuck!

It was only recently when someone shoved the core principles of the Agile Manifesto under my nose that I thought to take a closer look.

If you haven’t come across the Agile Manifesto before, you can find it on a website that appears to be unchanged since the 90s. It’s gloriously old school.

But the words are as relevant as ever. If anything they feel more relevant and important.

For convenience, here are the principles, with a little interpretation of my own.

Satisfy the customer

Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.

Satisfy the customer. Satisfy the customer.

If nothing else, this is the most important principle of all. If this was the only principle, and every single organisation and individual adopted it, I think software would be perceived in a much more positive light by people. And I think we would perhaps have a lot less, but better, software.

Embrace change

Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes harness change for the customer's competitive advantage.

Changing your mind when new information emerges is a good thing.

Working software in weeks

Deliver working software frequently, from a  couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a preference to the shorter timescale.

I'd argue this should now be hours, or days, in the age of AI.

Don't ignore the business

Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project.

By "business" people I'd include customer service, marketing, sales, and leadership.

Trust motivated people

Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done.

Speak to each other

The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation.

Technically Google Meet and Zoom are face to face. But nothing beats being in person.

Actual working software is the priority

Working software is the primary measure of progress.

Yes you can get a fancy dashboard to measure user numbers, activity, and more. In fact, I am inclined to believe analytics can be very helpful! But don't lose sight of the top priority: working software.

In an age of tokenmaxxing, and having witnessed previous phases of optimising for "lines of code written", this feels like a rather important goal to keep in mind.

Sustainable development is sustainable

Agile processes promote sustainable development. The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely.

You can only move fast and break things

Focus means saying no

Ask anyone who's been in business for a while how they got successful, and they'll almost always highlight the importance of focus.

In the famous Apple video called "Intention" that opened one of Tim Cook's first keynotes as CEO — there was the unforgettable line:

There are a thousand no's for every yes.

And as Jony Ive has said many times: people think focus is about saying yes to one thing. In reality, it's about saying no to (sacrificing) many fantastically good ideas. All so you can focus on the one thing that really matters most.

That all sounds rather obvious, perhaps.

But of course, that is all a lot easier to accomplish if you're incredibly sure of what you should focus on.

The challenge, I have often found, is choosing what to focus on.

What is actually most important? And can those other ideas, asks, and requests really be a "no" right now?

Surely there is a balance?

The more you can gain conviction on what is truly important — what truly deserves your time and attention — the more confidently and therefore successfully you can focus.

And with that focus — only with that focus — can greatness be achieved.

A non-exhaustive list of suggestions for a better life and a better world

Shop local.

Shop independent.

Eat less meat.

Eat less processed food.

Drink less coffee.

Get to bed earlier.

Use your phone as little as possible.

When you’re bored, sit with the feeling a little longer. Creativity often comes from boredom.

Make eye contact.

Smile.

Say please and thank you.

Hold the door open for someone else.

When you travel, eat, drink, and live like a local.

Avoid plastic like it’s a disease. It is.

Think more about the second and third-order consequences of your decisions.

Price is not the only metric to make a buying decision.

Discomfort is a signal, you don’t always need to find a quick fix for it.

You tend to learn a lot from mistakes, so don't be afraid to make them every once in a while.

Comparison is the thief of joy.

Your true health will never be measurable as a number on your Apple Watch.

Most of what we call "normal" has only been so for at most a hundred years. So it's OK to be "weird" every now and then.

Read more books and fewer tweets.

Pick up litter when you can.

Don't do things to please others, do things out of pride.

Leave the world better than you found it — every day.