Shopify: A StarCraft Inspired Business Strategy | Hacker News Reader

Shopify: A StarCraft Inspired Business Strategy

nongaap.substack.com

114 pointsnongaap22 comments

Good Read. StarCraft and the expansion set (Brood War) had huge influenced on my student days (they way of thinking, overview of strategies vs tactics, economy, resources). To some extent it helped me to find passion and inspired me to be the me today (still benefit from the stuff I learned over the years playing SC when designing UI, Operational Workflows, software engineering, Architecture of IT infrastructure), and will definitely go further.

I was very excited to see Blizzard make StarCraft Remastered and purchased when it was made available, played with some passionate friends from time to time, unfortunately, it's so hard to find people with similar level of skills (intermediate) nowadays to have a good game (also, it takes time for a single game, which we don't have nowadays).

BTW: Grrr..., Slayers_Boxer, remember the names? StarCraft helped to shape up eSports industry and created 1 of the greatest pro gamers in history. Look at the eSports industry today, phenomenal and incredible. Cannot imagine taking a pro gaming career back then, parents would have beaten the shit of that dreaming boy.

Loved the original SC, I still remember how Slayers_Boxer put the relatively "weaker" terran race on the map with his supply depot wall strategy, dropship micro etc...

Before Boxer, everyone seems to be a bit reluctant to get Terran at random in a 1v1 game as it's relatively weak and requires lots of micro ops (high APM) to win against Zerg or Protoss ;-)

Starcraft saved my A-levels, when I realized that school can be considered a game with points and stuff... Turns out that lecture participation had a great ROI! Now, if my future product will have any success, then part of it will be due to the lessons that SC2 ingrained deep into my fabrics of thinking. Besides the countless hours of fun and memories.

I wonder what Shopify's next move is to expand past it's core business - really excited a Canadian company is doing so well!

Would The equivalent of Shopify's strategy be massing zerglings against a couple Amazon Battlecruisers or Google Carriers?

No no Zerg is the current OP race now so clearly Amazon plays them. They just Nydus + Swarm shipping all over the map until Shopify has 2 bases and 6 workers left. Government plz nerf.

Your unit comp is not micro, controlling them is

Yeah, unit comp, tech, expansions etc fall under macro

I always preferred to refer to unit comp/tech/countering as "Unit Control", leaving micro to actual microing of units.

Expansions, etc are clearly under macro, tho it depends on the overall strategy one is taking

Micro in SC is about micromanaging one unit - like keeping at 6 range when enemies is at 5 - not timing your economy.

Bit of a stretch

I think so too. But it was cool to see how they hired someone solely based on their professional StarCraft skills :)

> But it was cool to see how they hired someone solely based on their professional StarCraft skills

That's actually smart. It demonstrates a bunch of useful skills.

The CEO of Shopify thinks otherwise: https://twitter.com/tobi/status/1207704457796083713

Tobi came out on twitter agreeing with the write up

https://twitter.com/tobi/status/1207704457796083713

An interesting point in there on culture fit which I always had in the back of my mind. It's quite possible your "cultural fit" is way too restrictive. Being challenged with new ideas can be a good thing.

In 1990s is was not uncommon to be hired to IT solely based on your Mortal Kombat or Doom skills - pretty good proxy for geekness at that time.

I enjoyed this primarily as a bio. Surprised at the similarities in mindset (and even being a Zerg player) that I feel with Tobi! Definitely rooting for him, though working in the online payments space myself I can’t help but feel like he’s gonna put me out of a job someday.

There's an interesting podcast with Tobi here, where he also mentioned StarCraft.