Profile of Tobi Lütke | Hacker News Reader

Profile of Tobi Lütke

theglobeandmail.com

166 pointsohaikbai21 comments

Tobi is the one that taught me Rails back in 2004 when it first came out.

He told me he was working on some new thing called Shopify, but I didn't believe in it.

Later he asked if I could introduce him to Tim Ferriss, and I had to politely decline, because I didn't think Tim would be into it.

Now Tim is an investor in Shopify, which is a huge success, and I'm so happy to be so wrong, as usual. ☺

Any reason why you did not ask Tim first before declining? My assumption is that you had a fairly good relationship with Tim which was why you were asked.

I'm trying to understand the thinking when people refuse to do "harmless intros".

I've learned my lesson since then, and will do in the future.

I think it was just protecting my friend's time, and not bringing him anything that I didn't feel 100% "hell yeah this is totally your thing".

I'd like an introduction from me to be seen as a real endorsement.

I remember that! It was really surprising to get your email back and you had an entire explanation for why you can't make the introduction. You actually leaked a ton of insight in your personal style with that interaction. I admire your integrity greatly.

Tobi is how I got into Rails back in 2004. I was looking for a blogging engine and discovered his Typo project. I taught myself Rails to add some features to Typo that I needed. His code and blog were some of the first resources for Rails besides the 37signals blog. It's amazing to see how much success some of the early Rails adopters achieved.

Well-deserved. Tobi is one of the most impressive CEOs I've ever interacted with.

Two years ago he said this about golang:

I have now completed two projects in Go. I predict that it's going to be the dominant language for server work.

I'm very curious if he still feels that way. My impression is that it's growing but that the growth is more in its own niche than it is displacing things like Django or Rails.

I am guessing there are more Rails people curious about Elixir than Go at this point

"Lütke never went to university. Instead, after Grade 10, he entered an innovative apprenticeship program designed to produce Germany’s next generation of computer programmers." ... I've heard about this system in Germany once too often, I wished we would have this in Canada.

I'm glad to hear he decided to keep his German accent. Having a French accent and working in English in Ottawa, I always wonder if I should work harder on getting rid of it, as opposed to focus on less shallow problems such as coding :P

Completely off topic, I like how they call him Canadian. If he had moved to the Netherlands instead, people would still call him German, no matter how long ago he moved over. I'm really envious of this part of North American culture.

As a Dutch immigrant to Canada and a Shopify employee, I can assure you that the Germany-Netherlands rivalry is alive and well at this side of the ocean :)

All kidding aside, I cannot upvote this enough. The difference in how immigrated is treated is vast between Canada and the Netherlands. Yes, people complain about it here too, but success stories like this and a history of immigration makes sure the general opinion on immigration is favourable.

I found the imprecision of this sentence kind of funny, just makes me think of weed:

"Lütke enjoyed selling—as a boy in school, he’d made some money buying items in bulk and selling them at a mark-up to other school kids."

I suspect that many startup people got their first business experience selling weed.

It would probably be something less suspect like Magic cards.

I'm amused that that's the first thing to come to mind. I certainly went to schools with plenty of more criminal elements, but the first thing to come to mind was definitely the kids who marked up candy bars and sold them for pocket cash.

Never anything like that. I usually capitalized on whatever fads were around. I went to middle school in the early 90s so it was things like those MagicEye books. I'd buy a box of them from the publisher and sell them for retail price at ( back then ) 200% markup.

And this is why I love this site.

That line just made me think of the guys our our middle school who would buy up bulk soda and sell them for $1 or $2. But getting in on toy/widget fads is much smarter, though with a higher risk of the fad blowing over while you had money sitting in inventory.

Hey I used to do the same thing! Yo-yo's were a fad when I was in primary school, so I'd buy the from the flea market and sell them at a mark-up at school. Also, bulk lollies -- absolutely brilliant for making change at school. When we had a "paper hornet" war, I sold prepackaged "ammo" kits!

If you're curious about the biggest tech companies in Canada, then one source is the annual Branham300 list:

http://www.branham300.com/index.php?year=2014&listing=1

You can drill down into various categories (e.g. "Top 25 Canadian Software Companies") by clicking links in the left sidebar.

Probably the most exciting computer technology company in Canada ever since Blackberry's heyday in the mid 00's.

Nice to see a Canadian publication and startup here.

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