Tobi Lütke's leadership playbook: Playing infinite games, operating from first principles, and maximizing human potential (founder and CEO of Shopify)

Key takeaways

1. Give tough feedback that challenges people to aim higher; Lütke says everyone has more potential than they realize, and a leader's job is to help them see it.
2. Use metrics to support decisions, not make them. Focus on joy, pride and the satisfaction of a job well done, and the numbers will follow.
3. Think in a 100-year horizon: it favors lasting impact over short-term gain, makes positive-sum games with customers the growth strategy, and helps resist value extraction.
4. Pair a positional game (long-term strategy and trust) with tactics, rather than only chasing the next conversion or A/B test win.
5. If a launch feels scary, reframe it as an experiment so the focus is on learning, which lets you take risks and move faster.