Lemonade Stand - The Longest Shutdown Ever | Ep. 036 Lemonade Stand 🍋

Episode Date: November 5, 2025

On this week's show... Aiden asks about Canada, Atrioc watches 60 Minutes, and DougDoug isn't here....so we talked to Harley Finkelstein, President of Shopify, instead. We launched a Patreon! - https://www.patreon.com/lemonadestand for bonus episodes, discord access, a book club, and many more ways to interact with the show! Episode: 036 Recorded on: October 4th, 2025 Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCurXaZAZPKtl8EgH1ymuZgg Follow us TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@thelemonadecast Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/thelemonadecast/ Twitter - https://x.com/LemonadeCast The C-suite Aiden - https://x.com/aidencalvin Atrioc - https://x.com/Atrioc DougDoug - https://x.com/DougDougFood Edited by Aedish - https://x.com/aedishedits Produced by Perry - https://x.com/perry_jh Segments 0:00 Intro 1:55 Shutdown Watch 11:30 SNAP 24:01 China Tariffs 28:20 New York Elections / Zohran Mamdani 40:09 California's Prop 50 vote 41:17 Quince Promo 43:28 Air Traffic Controllers 46:05 Interview with President of Shopify 1:27:21 Post Interview discussion 1:38:12 Outro New takes on Business, Tech, and Politics. Squeezed fresh every Wednesday. #lemonadestand #dougdoug #atrioc #aiden Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the stand. Just the stand this time. Just the stand. It's just cleaner. We dropped Doug. We dropped the lemonade. It's just the stand when it's us to. Our co-host and compatriot, Doug, Doug is out this week.

He's already in Japan scouting the place out for our eventual arrival. And we have a lot, a lot, a lot of news going on right now, including the worlds, but the world. I guess America's largest shutdown in history. It's so American. The world. It's so American to say the world. The entire world.

It's the longest shut down. Every experience. There's never been one longer. Don't start doing it ironically because you will do it for real. I've already fallen into that. I'm all on the stream and I'm doing this regularly. He actually invented such a great emphasis. Speaking of him, he had an insane 60 minutes interview last night.

We'll talk about that for a bit. And then also in New York, as we are recording right now live, Zoran Mamdani is leading this mayoral election and May, I mean, it's seeming pretty clear he's going to take it. So we'll talk about all that. Yeah, and we're going to round out this episode with something new.

We've been discussing doing shorter, like non-full episode call-in interviews for a while. And we have Harley Finkelstein, who was a guest of ours that we've already recorded before this. That'll be at the end of the episode and our discussion of that interview after. He's the president of Shopify.

which just released its quarter three earnings, recently became the largest company in Canada by market cap, and it's just an interesting interview to get to, you know, speak to somebody who runs a business. It is that you like scooter over here from the yard set, like talking about God knows what and then interview CEOs. Yeah. Yeah, that's my job.

That is my job. A deranged world we live in. But, Brandon, we are on day 35 of the government. Shut down. World record. And it is the longest government shutdown in U.S. history, breaking the record of the 34-day shutdown that was also during Trump's first term. And I think there's a few, I wanted to do a short recap.

We did an episode at the beginning of the shutdown where we discussed the reasons why this is being the case. And basically, the budget resolution that is necessary to pass in order to continue funding the government is being held up by the, The Democrats are putting their foot down. They won't vote on a budget resolution until they get three things. They have three stipulations at the moment.

One is that the ACA Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, subsidies that allow a lot of people to buy or afford their coverage are expiring in December of this year. And that has a huge increase to the premiums of a ton of people's health care across the country. I think it's like tens of millions. You can go back to the episode

where we talked about the first time. That is a bad idea. And also, second, reversing the Medicaid cuts that were passed in the big, beautiful bill earlier this year. We loved the BBB. That we also discussed on an earlier episode.

And then three, a point that goes unmentioned a little more often, is Trump throughout the year has, or Trump's administration has chosen to make unilateral decisions about cuts to agency spending, breaking from previously past budgets by Congress.

So Congress has laid out some sort of budget plan that would fund some sort of agency or organization within the government. And Trump, throughout this year, has made the decision to cut funding to certain areas, fire employees through organizations like Doge or through himself. Doge, what an era.

Wow. Way back when we were talking about that a lot. It actually does feel like, well, much longer ago than it is. Yeah, but it's not actually. It's a piece of everything movement. It was the beginning of the year. But the Democrats, I think fairly have a problem with the way these cuts have been handled in that there, if it is the responsibility of Congress to pass and approve budgets,

and then the executive branch chooses to make its own decisions about how cuts can be made to those. budgets, then you're overriding the decision-making power of Congress. Yeah, what was the point of the whole legislative process and voting if it just gets overruled by the exact? I think that's a fair point. And it also means that if there's any commitment in the negotiation of this budget resolution now, if there's no agreement about no longer doing this in the future, that means any decision you come to.

It doesn't even really matter in the future. I mean, we talk about this. The similar thing is, you know, we come back to that TikTok example, but it's like a lot of people went through a lot of effort to get through that through the House and the Senate and the judiciary and everyone vote on it and then it didn't matter. He just wrote an executive order and it changed. So it's like this.

And nobody wants to fight that one. Nobody cares about the TikTok thing. Nobody cares about that one to fight it. But I think if you worked in that part of the government, it's like, well, what the fuck is the point? What are we doing? What are we doing? So those are the three stipulations that

Democrats have have chosen to put their foot down in a situation where they don't have a lot of like political support or credibility right now. And for them, this is a move to show some spine, hopefully gain back some support, and they have very little to lose. And then on the other side of things, the Republicans have throughout the month seemingly refused to negotiate. I've seen basically no news. I don't know if this is different for you. I've seen basically nothing about progress on the negotiation front. I have seen that this week some quotes about people becoming optimistic,

but no concrete progress as to a resolution to end the shutdown. Yeah, I will say like we talked about this when it was way earlier in the shutdown. The thing that usually stops this train is people stop showing up for work on critical roles like air traffic control. They all play D&D? They all play. Yeah, they all go play D&D. They put on fur suits like you, Aiden. And sorry, I'm just so stupid.

That's make such dumb fucking jokes. But it's happening. It is happening now. That prediction that you made has come. I mean, credible look at the past has come to pass. People are calling in sick. They are, you know, they're taking their PTO. They're not showing up.

Airlines are, I talk. to someone whose mother is an air traffic controller and he was giving me exact details of what's going on. They are changing the flights so that flights can longer be within five miles of each other. They'll be within 20 because they're stressed about having understaffed people. So they're reducing the chance of risk by making flights farther apart. I mean, they're adapting. They're offering people. They can't give them money, but they're offering them paid credits for like pre-worked hours.

You can take time off in the future. So if you work eight hours now, you can get an eight hour show off in the future. And a lot of people, this woman who's older told me that the older generation are all taking all the credits and working extra hours. And the millennials are calling it sick. That's what she said. It's a little generation bias. That's what we're seeing. And so, you know, we've already seen some shutdowns at LAX and some major airports.

And I assume that's going to continue to spread. So there is that pressure. But I will agree with you that like, I don't remember that well the last shutdown. but I remember it having more of at least the pretense of negotiations during that weren't. This one feels like nobody's bothered. Yeah, there was a loose idea. This is all vibes. Yeah, this is a vice.

Because it's hard to remember how exactly I felt at the time and what the news cycle day to day was like at the time. But this is the first one where I have a feeling of, oh, we're not even trying to figure this out. Like, that's what it feels like. That is what it feels like. It feels like both sides concretely think the other one will cave. and they have nothing to gain by negotiating, really. Maybe that's more the Republican stance than the Democrat stance, but I listened to Trump's 60 Minutes interview last night.

They asked him this question, and he essentially said, like, they're going to cave. That is his plan. It's two-part plan. He said that or we're going to get rid of the filibuster and then just force this thing through. Yeah, so I wanted to talk about that quickly. I had a misunderstanding of the filibuster before this.

I thought the filibuster was exclusively when you delay the progress of a bill by continuously debating or talking about it. But they've been voting on the resolution, the budget resolution over and over and over, the stopgap bill. I think they voted maybe 12 times as of today. And they just keep not passing it, right? They don't have the 60 vote majority

that they need to progress the budget bill, which still is a filibuster, if you just continuously vote no on the same bill to impede its progress. And it's fun. I'm not surprised by this at all, right? But it's whatever party in power has the short-term view of, let's get rid of the filibuster to create progress here.

Because this was something the Democrats were seriously discussing, I think maybe two years ago, three years ago. Yeah. There was a push for the Democrats to end the filibuster because they would politically benefit from it at the time. And now it's twisted in the other direction where all of the Republicans that were obviously against it at that time

are now coming out in support of it. Sorry, this is not a, I don't think this is a unilateral thing where I think people in both parties understand the long-term consequence of eliminating the filibuster. So there's not like this entire support for this direction.

But now it's being brought up at a, you know, whichever party happens to be in power and is being impeded brings up the idea of getting rid of filibuster. Yeah, but I will say not all Republicans in that Senate Majority Leader John Thune of the Republican. flatly said no. No, we're not going to do this.

No, this plan. Like, to the question asked that Trump was proposing. And Trump was asked about John Thune saying that in the interview and basically said, he was like, he did like this. Well, I think that's wrong. Like, you seem like annoyed. Like, so I don't know what kind of pressure he could put on John Thune to get that changed or that there's two different views because he also,

Again, I'm not alarmist here, but Trump talks about, you know, the reason you don't want to do that, as you said, is that in the future, the shoe will be on the other foot. Someone else will have power. Yeah. They'll be able to use it against you. But Trump talks like that is never, he's like that. He doesn't have any. If you, if you're fully on the train right now, you don't think it's going to have. Right.

But John Thune thinks that's real. Like he is operating under his longer term political view that eventually they'll have someone else in the Senate. Trump does not seem to operate that way. He doesn't have any fear of that, which I thought was interesting, if not slightly alarming. The other thing we talked about is the systems that start to break around the one plus month mark, right? And one of those things is snap or food stamps.

And those benefits have been probably the biggest headline coming into the beginning of this month because the funding for that program through the Department of Agriculture is a living. by the shutdown right now. And there was a ruling. This is a little confusing for me to follow.

I read a bunch of articles over the last few days. I was hoping you could illuminate for me. I've tried to parse it as best as possible. Per usual, I would say Trump's responses on any given day make this a little harder to follow. Just a little bit of inconsistency in the messaging. Okay. But basically, it was committed

that a certain amount of emergency funds available through the Department of Agriculture that are still there that total to about 4.6 billion or going to be used to partially fund SNAP, which costs about 8 to 9 billion per month. And also, 42 or 41 million Americans are on this program.

12% of the American population is on SNAP in some form or another. I didn't know that. I mean, I know this going into this meeting to this, this call or this fucking podcast. But I didn't know it when I first heard the stat in this shutdown. And that is, that is an absurd number. Yeah. That is, I did not know that at all.

And not everybody receives the same amount of benefits. It varies by your income. It varies by the, how big your family is. So there's a range in how much you get paid out. I think the average amount that each person is receiving is something like $130, $140, I want to say. it might be a little higher than that. But, so there was a commitment of that amount of funding going towards Snap

and then a federal judge, there's two federal judge rulings, one of them, McConnell Jr., ruled that Trump has to fill the gap. No, I don't think so. That would be crazy. Trump has to use excess funds that are lying around

that is available to, to him to help fund the remainder of Snap. Okay. And the initial reaction to that is, you know, tell us, tell us how, like, I'll comply with this if you give us a pathway to, like, finding this amount of money. It's a little confusing.

In the tariff bin. There's always money in the... There's always money in it. There's always a spare $5 billion in the tariff bin. And this is where it got confusing for me is where this money is actually from. whether or not they actually wanted to commit to it and what are the trade-offs of that money being used?

Because there's a bunch of arguments about, well, if you take this money from somewhere, then is it shorting some other program that's also limited right now? Are you withholding it just as a leverage point to use against the Democrats? And they had until Monday to comply with this demand to fully fund snap.

and the weird thing is the initial response from Trump was basically that give us a pathway to do this and we'll do it. But then on Monday, they said, I'm actually not funding SNAP. This is on the Democrats. I'm not going to provide this extra money, which leaves the program half funded for the month

and also delayed in the funding. So anybody waiting on their SNAP, payments that would normally be receiving it at the beginning period of November has a delay in when they're going to receive it and also a decrease in the amount that they're getting. And the way SNAP is distributed is through the states who like define eligibility. And it's on the states to figure out the change in eligibility for money with this reduced budget that they have. So the process is very wonky right now. It's very difficult to figure out who's still going to receive money when they get it and how much they get because the program is not being fully funded,

apparently because Trump is choosing not to use excess funds to fill the stopgap on what remains of the Department of Agricultural's budget. Yeah, I'm reading now. A federal judge directed the Trump administration late last month to use available emergency funds to keep SNAP benefits going. The White House said on Monday it will not be tapping into these other funds, calling it an unacceptable risk. So that is, I mean that, I was under the impression that the judge's order had, had funded SNAP, but it's not the case. It was initially supposed to be the case and it seemed like that was going to be the case. And then I forget if this was, I'm sorry, if this was this morning or yesterday, but Trump more recently came out in truth social and said, SNAP benefits, which increased by billions and billions of dollars, which billions and billions is all capitalized for some reason.

Oh, yeah. many fold during crooked Joe Biden's disastrous term. Wait, I can I about this? I want to jump in a line because I didn't look into this. So there was a graph that I saw of SNAP benefits and spending

wildly up since like 2021. I was wanting to know what the cause of that one. I looked into it. And the truth is, look, I'm a government spending, watch out kind of guy in general. But the actual math of it is just that there's a higher number of people

enrolled in SNAP, which means more people need food assistance. it's like 12% more. And then the vast majority of the increased spending is because food prices have gone up so dramatically. That is the vast majority is 12% more people and then like, you know, 70, 80% higher food costs and things they're buying

and that combined to a dramatic increase in the amount we're spending on SNAP. So it's just, you know, it's more people with more expensive food. But they're not like, the system's not being abused in some way. It's not, I thought it'd have been like fraud or something, but it literally is just.

I think hearing a lot of people's, anecdotal experience of, you know, what it means to not have this money available to them is really heartbreaking, just at an individual level. An interesting side of this outside of just, you know, I'm struggling and I no longer get my SNAP benefits and I'm unable to like put the food I need on the table. Yeah. Which is the standard thing we're probably all thinking of when we hear about something like this is the opposite of, you know, maybe a small owned like grocery store or just places that sell foods or accept SNAP as payment.

Somebody in our Discord, Flores said, I'm a grocery store worker here. Grocery stores are not getting money or purchases from SNAP customers, so the store is just making less money, which means less money for payroll and other expenses. So far, they're just cutting overtime hours,

but we might see them cutting hours in general. So as this is maintained for longer and longer, right? The knock on effects for all this stuff is crazy. Exactly. All of these programs that are cut, right? It inhibits the ability for people to keep people employed, and then that has cascading effects of what those employees are able to make do on. And it's the same thing with the millions of furloughed workers who can't buy or

spend in the way they would if they had a stable income. That stuff leads to other businesses that relied on their income, cutting hiring. You know what I'm saying? It's, there's knock on effects. We're only beginning to assess. And my understanding from reading about it is had this shutdown stopped immediately day 30, and they paid everyone. back pay, the effects are relatively minimal. But as every day this continues on, those ripple effects start increasing exponentially. So it really is a strong pressure to get it done. And I'm I am frustrated. I also am frustrated, you know, this is a bit of a, this is a bit populist, honestly. I don't even want to say it. But I, I honestly, I felt angry watching that 60 minutes

interview because this is small. It's not a big deal. Yeah. There's just so much fucking gold, Aidt. Every time, every fucking time I see a clip in this guy, there's more gold. It keeps getting exponential. And it feels like almost like a comic book level of, a cartoonist level of dissidence between you can watch a clip about people on Snap and then you watch someone with more gold

and a $300 million ballroom in the, I, I don't know. It's frustrating. I wonder. Everything's fine. It's frustrating. It's a frustrating thing to say. But you know what's funny is like I have to assume, have to assume that there's an electoral price for that.

There is so far in the polling at least. Like this is, there are people who voted for him for different reasons that are not seeing. This is not a good look. There was an interesting, the Daily had done an episode this morning about the shutdown consequences related to SNAP and they're interviewing people at a food bank who would normally be SNAP beneficiaries, right?

Yeah. And this is another thing is like food banks are where else people go for help in times like this. But those systems are being strained further. They don't have enough resources. Yeah, food banks are out there, like they're all time, maybe since the Great Recession, but the all time in recent years, utilization, people are, there's lines. There's, you know, yeah.

Exactly, exactly. And hearing, there was a very specific woman there in West Virginia, and she's talking about how she feels disconnected from Trump as somebody who voted for him now, because he was supposed to be this guy who represented it and fought for people struggling in these situations and this is this is the working class person that was hoping that this guy would turn things around for and i know there's a portion of people who listening who think that idea is ridiculous to begin with and that person's like stupid for believing that but you need to understand like that's the primary you know that's the primary block of people that were really getting

behind this guy is like economic circumstances were dire for so many people and he is for whatever reason the guy who's going to turn that around. And now she said it in the interview where she's like, I feel like all he is doing is catering to rich people and not, and forgetting about us, forgetting about the people

who voted for him. And I don't have a poll who, I can't you give you this outlook on how pervasive that sentiment is, right? But that's one person who's looking this situation in the eye. At large, the feedback from these people is not like the Republicans

of the Democrats specifically are at fault here, the collective reaction is more like, government do your fucking job. And that was her opinion. It's like I, this person who is struggling is being left in the dust by the guy I voted for. And I wonder how much that's catching on, if at all, because of situations like these.

Like how many more people feel that way when they're under this much stress to be able to put food on the table? Again, I mean, same as you. It's tough to give specifics, but I did look into it. I mean, he recently had, I don't know if this was UGov or Newsweek,

but it's his lowest poll of both terms. He just recently went under his polling at January 2021, which is right before he left office. This is after January 6th and after losing the election. And during the height of COVID when Merck was pretty pissed. So he's 1% lower than that on terms of approval,

or I mean, 1% higher in terms of. disapproval. So it seems like there's the impact. I will say the feedback that I saw when I was reading some of the individual stories like you're talking about was the thing that I mentioned that I didn't really think about was that he talked so much in the election about domestic issues, about America, about internal, about pulling back from, but he has spent so much of his time, especially recently, traveling and focusing on foreign issues, talking about foreign issues. And this You know, for me, I think a president kind of has to do both.

But this came up a lot. People were mentioning that they felt he was not focusing enough domestically. And I did want to mention because there was a big thing this past week with the negotiations in China. He did a trip, a whirlwind trip of Asia, meaning a lot of leaders there and got us a truce in our Chinese trade war. I was going to give you an update on that. So how's Doug's mug sitting? How are they looking? The 100% tariff is off.

the mugs are coming and there's still a tariff. Yeah, I was going to ask, are we back to, are we down to zero? What number have we fallen back to? We're not down to zero. I think it's depending on the product, it's between 30 and 47%. And I think we're back to something like May, May or June. After, after, uh, liberation day. But before a lot of the escalation is basically a big de-escalation.

And I have a lot of thoughts on this because, um, To be honest, if I have to give credit, not a ton of credit, but it's better, a better outcome than it could have been by a lot. It is a de-escalation. It is a walking back on both sides. America walked back, you know, one of its recent escalations,

which was an expansion of the semiconductor sanctions, which were like not just the companies in China, but any company doing business with China, it was like the secondary sanctions. That was what escalated and caused, you know, Xi Jinping to bring out the rare earth card. They both walk back that. But it is a one year truth before they make an actual deal.

It's basically like we'll walk back to May and we're going to figure this out in a year. So the real question is it's a race now between America and its allies to build a rare earth mineral pipeline in a year. That doesn't feel. Versus China to make, who's going to make more progress also on rare earths or them on some I can on chips. That is the race. And Scott Besson was out on TV talking about how, you know, this was a mistake by China and we're going to use these 18 to 24 months and we're going to warp speed and we're going to build this stuff out. But he also in the same interview was like, China's been building this for 25 years. So I don't, I see a big disconnect between like,

you know, China moves pretty fast and they spent 25 years on this. We're not going to realistically get close in a in a two-year spam. But in the short term, in the one year. You just don't believe in your country. You're so wishy watching it. It's not that I don't think it's possible over a long period of time. I don't think there's something uniquely special, but it feels hell optimistic. I'll be honest with you.

So some people have said completely different things. People have said this is the greatest. Trump said there's a 12 out of 10 deal. As people say, you got totally dog walked. I've seen both. And honestly,

it falls somewhere in the middle in that like he got them back to buying soybeans. I like on a scale of dog walks to 12 out of 10. It feels more. more like a cautious, I don't know, a cautious four in my mind where it's like they're buying the soybeans, they're getting rid of the rare earth restrictions. We can buy it for defense. You could stockpilot, which would be a smart thing to do. But nothing solved. And a year is not

a long time. And the scales, what they're talking about. A year is going to come up really quickly. And I think we're going to be in the same squeeze on rare earth minerals. That's what I think. That's the update on that. I don't know if you anymore. No, no, I hadn't followed what the, what the results of like the summit were. I will say one, two things. They had a good handshake battle. Trump and G. They both like did a little pull and stood firm.

And then Trump did make Xi Jinping laugh in a way that I have never seen and I've watched Xi Jinping clips for coming on five years now for my show. What did you do? I don't know. I wonder if you could pull it up Perry. Trump like they're all across the table.

Trump pulls out something. He shows it to him. and Jiu Ping smiles and laugh like I've never seen. Like a giddy kid. He was like a, maybe it was like a first edition Charzard from his face set. I don't know what it was, bro.

He was, he was all smiles, which is, I don't know, a little charm offensive, I guess. Oh, I want to know what it was on that so bad.

I want to know so badly. I want to know what was on it so bad. There's no, they don't reveal it. I wonder what he said or did. New York? Or what else? we're going to talk about. Well, yeah,

what we can talk about New York. The, as of recording right now, the election isn't over, but it is looking like Mom Dani is going to win. Imagine he doesn't win some out. It's the Cuomo comeback tomorrow. We look like fools.

Cuomo's massive in-person last-minute voters is going to come swoop in and take this. No, it looks like Mom-Dani is going to win. I think at this stage it was very expected that he was going to win. I mean, he is the Democratic candidate

in New York City. And I think from a campaign perspective, it seems like he has a lot of boots on the ground support. The number of people canvassing for him was pretty ridiculous. I think it was like over 90,000 people he said were canvassing. Yeah. So, yeah,

personally, exciting to see it finally come to a conclusion. I've been seen so much Mamdani media and Cuomo stuff on my time. minds. Like, it is, it's, it's funny that like a city's mayoral election could spend so much time occupying my feed as somebody who lives literally across the country. Yeah, on the side of the country. But I do think this is exciting in the sense of, I really want

to know how this plays out. I want to see how he fulfills the base promises that he's campaigned on, which primarily have to do with a commitment to free buses. the five grocery stores that he wants to open, the freezing of a rent on a subset of apartments in New York City, and universal child care program. I think those are the four things, though. Those are the things that he really hammers home.

You propose a tax in the city's wealthiest residence and an increase in the city's corporate debt is a proposal. I mean, who knows if that's core part of it. But my main thing with this. It's a bottom thing, though, right? It's like, this is a, it's kind of a big moment, especially if this does confirm any win. It's like,

it's going to be so bad if this episode comes out and he loves. It's a blowout and he lost by 40 points or something. But, you know, I think we've mentioned this, but you know, my first initial thought is, even if there was a couple small things that I've disagreed with Mondani on,

first of all, he's running against fucking Cuomo. It's like, I'm thinking people, people who I've seen, you know, I listen to a wide range of political economic opinions. People who have seen criticize them, I feel like are not being honest enough about who the fuck Cuomo is.

And what a low bar that is. Dude, Trump endorsed him. Yeah, that was another thing. Dude, Trump gave him, I think, honestly, the kiss of death. New York is a majority blue state. And Trump last night gives him an endorsement. He got to vote for Cuomo. That is not, I could not have helped in any way.

And, you know, I think I'm excited about this. Cuomo himself said this. Like, this is a war for the future of the Democratic Party. But he said it in a way where he thought he was the... He's not the guy. Yeah, he's not the guy. Like, he's... If that's the case, then I'm glad you lost.

You know what I'm saying? Like... Even in the world where Mamdani utterly fails at everything he's promising, right? Either he delivers everything, and for some reason it works out badly, or he fails to deliver what he's promising and people don't stand behind him.

It's not like Cuomo was going to be the guy who guides the Democratic Party into the light. He is the old-time version of everything that people hate about the party right now no matter who the opponent is. 100%. And the idea that he is going to be the one to move the city or the party into the future

is insane to me. And that's, I don't think, I think it shows in that even the people standing behind him. Like Channel 5 just did a video where they went to a Cuomo rally of support. And every person there basically is like I just can't, Mumtani can't win.

And they don't like Cuomo. There's no guy who's stepping up to the plate and is like, Cuomo's my guy. He's gonna be the best. I haven't even in all of the video headlines. I haven't seen the guy. I don't know if that guy exists. I don't think so either.

I have not seen it as well. Yeah. Yeah. And so I think that's what's exciting about Zoron more than anything. I agree with you. Like whether or not any individual policy plan works out, I think it sounds simple, but he's, he's young and not corrupt. You understand how like, that's the refreshing part.

The bar's so low. The bar is so low. The bar is so low. Can I? And it's, and it's, it's exciting to see. I think there's a, there's a support. for him that maybe, you know, maybe I'm consuming, maybe it's the media that I watch, right?

But there seems to be a genuine excitement and support for a politician in a way that you just do not see right now. I think that's why I'm excited. And why I don't, I really don't want him to fail. Like I have faith in, I think, I have faith in like, he's someone I would have voted for, right? But the idea of someone like this, stepping up to the plate finally, winning,

and then not succeeding, I think is going to be so demotivating because people are just looking for like a trickle of somebody to hope for. And he is that guy right now. I would say, can I show my screen real quick? There is a book that I read called The Confidence Map by Peter Atwater.

He talks about how confidence distills into broader society. Not an individual level, but as groups. Okay? And he talks about this way you can, people are broadly seeing the world. So on the bottom axis, you have certainty from low to high.

On the right, let's say you have control. How much control you feel. So basically how confident you are and what the future will look like and then how confident you are that you can make a change to that, like have control over that.

And he says basically recently, especially young people, especially people that are probably prime Zoron voters, people have felt under this middle line of control. Whether or not they're confident what the future will look like, maybe people feel like here, which is the worst spot to be.

They have no idea what the future is going to look like, and they feel like they have no control over it. But even if they feel like they know how it's going to turn out, they feel like they have no voice. Yeah. And he says, historically, when this happens, when enough people are in these areas, they will, they almost have like a fuck it moment.

They have like a fighter flight type, where they jump above this line, usually right here, no matter what. And that's what this feels like to me from, from people in the Democratic Party. People are just like they want to feel like they have some agency or some control or some ability to have a voice and change. And Cuomo is not fucking that. Cuomo is the is the epitome of everything that is not of just running it down mid in the same old way.

It is running it down mid. It is. And I think they're willing to take risks. The risk is the biggest risk is doing nothing, I think, in their mind. And that is why he's getting such support. And so what I say is you sound worried on whether or not, you know, some of these things work out. I believe based on sort of this map, it almost doesn't matter. He's a, he's a beginning of a broader trend.

Do you know what I'm saying? It's like it's like saying like the Tea Party. If that didn't work out, then that would have stopped. It's not about that. It is about like they, they wanted Jeb Bush and Romney out of the party. They wanted to take control. And they did it in their own Trumpian way on the Republican side. It's going to happen here where it's just a new.

group of people who have had no voice would like a fucking voice. And I think it's going to, I think you're seeing it too with, you know, we talked about grand platinum. You know, grand platinum, uh, I think understanding we got some criticism and some flashback, some pushback from, uh, revelations about his tattoo and things he said on Reddit. But the polling, especially among younger people didn't budge. In fact, it increased in some areas because they see it as he is an outside. Like this almost makes him more likable because they want change. I think that I think it's a

struggle to regain agency in some way. That's what it feels like. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, I guess my fear, I do think this could be a marker of who is able to gain seats in

democratic positions no matter what. Like is, you know, regardless of his long-term success, this symbolizes a change. that may be happening in the long run for the Democratic Party. I think my fear of him not being successful doesn't even come from specifics of the policies

that he advocates for. I think it's this overhanging, I've talked about this way more on the Patreon. It's this feeling that I find difficult to shake right now of there being so much like institutionalized rot that even if you come in with the best outlook and the best approach, your ability to create the change

that you're looking to create feels so limited. Maybe I'm in the bottom corner of that right now. Like I don't have the agency. Yeah. Or I don't think any person that steps into a mayoral position has, you know,

no matter what they do, can fight back against the greater trends that are pushing our country or our cities, or the world in what feels like a negative direction right now. That's my most pessimistic, fearful POV. That's hard for me to shake. I don't want that to be the thing I spread into the world and have everybody believe around me.

I don't think that's good. And I think outcomes like this where 90,000 people get out in Canvas and fight for a guy they're excited about because they want to create change. That is what I want. That is what I think is good. But, you know, you have the...

The mind, fear is the mind killer. I agree to the wholeheartedly, but I would say like, you know, if he is part of a broader movement, that is exciting as a bigger trend on its own. And if one person in one, this is a big position of power, but it's not a massive position of power, you know, even if you can't make massive change, I see it as a tide, you know, like a bigger, a bigger shift in a direction of,

people, I would see, generally younger people just claiming more power, like finding some way to claw into this gate kept system of boomers that I feel like that's awesome, but I feel like, I feel like there's like they're, they did hold on way past expiration date.

I guess what you're talking about with Graham is an example, right? It's like controversy aside, I'll do anything except vote for Nancy Pelosi. Exactly. Who's confirmed not running? now I think, but it's just the idea of like this old establishment, like should probably be in a crypt in a pyramid politician, just cannot be my guy anymore. It just can't. Yeah, it just

can't. And so that, on it, on that level alone, I'm excited for me. Honestly, I really, I really think there's a broader movement and he's spearheading and I really give him credit for that. Yeah. Of like getting people excited about it and seeing the fact that they could be represented in politics again. I think another nationally relevant vote that's going to be finishing tonight. You know, I'm gonna, you already voted. I'm getting out of voting. Is Prop 50 in California.

We covered this a little bit too, but California is changing the laws around the way redistricting works in the hopes of adding five more Democratic seats to the House of Representatives. And this is being done to, you know, to be honest, to combat an issue at the national level.

I wouldn't say this is, to the benefit of, you know, explicitly California, the idea is that other Republican states, Texas leading the charge, are changing the way they're redistricting to shore up seats for the midterms. And California is part of this national effort to try and combat that.

Yeah. And voting yes on 50 will, you know, if you agree with utilizing our state to combat that, that's why you would vote yes on it. Yeah, we talk about the show. I mean, it's a dangerous skitts. race to the bottom, but it is a reality that we're fighting and it is... Yeah.

Yeah, it is a response. Local news is in decline across Canada, and this is bad news for all of us. With less local news, noise, rumors, and misinformation fill the void, and it gets harder to separate truth from fiction. That's why CBC News is putting more journalists in more places across Canada, reporting on the ground from where you live, telling the stories that matter to all of us. because local news is big news. Choose news, not noise.

CBC News. I did want to end this before we get into our interview with Harley. With one more note on the shutdown, I think we've talked about planes and air traffic controllers a lot because it's probably the number one thing. I see people bring up when the subject of shutdowns comes around. And somebody in our Discord did have a response about this. They said,

I just graduated from the Air Traffic Control Academy me like four months ago. I got sent to Long Island and I'm currently still working without pay. I'm not actually on the floor yet, but still training for the New York airspace. I got my first zero check a few weeks ago. Is this, I mean, it's funny, it's like, is he literally receiving a check with zero dollars on it? That's crazy. And it sounds like we might get another one. Luckily, I have enough in savings plus family support for rent, but I know a lot of people who are not as stable. In our facility, more experienced controllers who have more money are lending out rent money to newer hires who don't have as much savings yet.

Other than the no money, the biggest thing I have to do is to log every hour I am working, plus any extra overtime pay I should be getting. The ATC union heads have said that you have to do this because whatever back pay you do will almost certainly not actually be correct to what you are owed. Turns out the people who run the books are also furloughed. So an example of what they're dealing with on that side of things. I'd also just anecdotally, of the friends who are flying right now,

literally every single one I've talked to has experienced delays on their last trips, like in the last week and a half. Yeah, they fly coming up. I'm honestly a tiny bit nervous. I'm a tiny bit. I'm just picturing the most overworked old air traffic controller of all time

falling asleep at their desk every day. I just keep thinking about that scene for breaking bad. If I'm being real with you. Like, I think about it every time. I'll put that in my head. Yeah, I'm sorry. Open that in my head. But we're-

We have, we have an interview. Yeah, we are interviewing the president of Shopify because they just put out their Q3 earnings. We ask him a bunch of different questions around, you know, what, you know, what does an earnings call actually mean? What does it mean for the company? Their past success,

also the future of business in Canada, you know, how he balances his company's outlook on AI with the realities of how, you know, viewers like you engage with it. So let us know if you enjoy that. We have a little postmortem afterwards. And, you know, so hold your typing while you're watching it. Yeah, we might bring up some of the thoughts that you have while you're listening to it afterwards.

Afterwards. Check it out, though. Thanks, thanks, Harley, for coming on. And thanks for watching. Thank you. Thank you for joining us. We really appreciate it. This is the first time we've done a call in an interview, which we've been talking about doing for a while.

Yeah. And I know you just had... Amazing. I love that. Yeah, you get to be the first one. Yeah, if it goes good or bad. Yeah, I guess it's all my fault, no matter what. If I never see another remote guest, then I know, oh, man, I really screwed this thing up.

Very cool. Awesome. But I know your guys's Q3 earnings came out this morning. Yeah. And we, I mean, I'm, we wanted to start just by having you, maybe walk us through the high level of what you wanted to share about that. And then we had a couple questions about the earnings, Shopify in general. And you're feeling on making such a big business in Canada specifically. Yeah, I want to set the stage a little bit before you answer, just for our audience,

who may not know. I mean, Harley here is the CEO of Shopify, which is president, president, president, president. This is already not going very well. And it's the largest company in Canada, not just large tech company, but largest company in general by market cap. and you had a big earnings report today. And again, you know, for me personally, I think both of us, I'm interested to hear, first of all, what that's like. This is a, this is a insight we haven't got to hear before. This is a big day.

What does that mean to an average person? What does the earnings day mean? Oh, I mean, look, I mean, to our investors that have owned our stock, you know, since the IPO, this is, I think, the 42nd, maybe 43rd earnings call we've had. We've been public for about 10 years, and there's four per year. So I think this is number of 40. or 43. We in public May 2015

on the New York Stock Exchange and the Toronto Stock Exchange. From an investor perspective, it's their opportunity to hear how it's going. What are we excited about? How are we performed? I think it's also, you know,

I think ultimately publicly traded companies, what is critical is to be, like any company can go public. The key, though, is to be a trusted publicly traded company. I think the way you become a trusted public trade company, company is it's actually very simple. It's you do what you say you're going to do. And so I think

the earnings calls that happen four times a year are a bit of a check-in with the investors and the analysts that cover our stock. I don't know many analysts cover our stock. I think it's probably in the 30s or 40s. It's a way for them to say, yeah, Shopify did what they said they were going to or did not do what they said they were going to do. So I think from a Wall Street perspective or a capital market's perspective, it's a check-in. But from my perspective, it's just this amazing opportunity to tell our story, to update our story to the world, to people that are merchants, our partners, the media, our investors, people that are just generally interested in tech and entrepreneurship. And so, I mean, the high level numbers are really, you know, we're really strong.

We, you know, our GMV, which is the sales on the platform, we're of 32% year and year. Our revenue was up 32% year and year. And our free cash show was 18%. But actually, just given, you know, who I'm talking to, now in the audience that I know you folks think a lot about. Like one of the things that I think is most interesting is that we put in a number today that every 26 seconds, a brand new entrepreneur gets their first sale on Shopify. So we've been talking for three minutes now.

So, you know, a bunch of new entrepreneurs got their first sale. Why does that matter? It matters because, and we can get into this if you want, but I believe right now we're living in like this golden age of entrepreneurship. And part of one of the ten, of that golden age, I think, is that the velocity of business growth is unlike anything any of us have ever seen. So what I mean by that is, you know, someone that just got their first sale right now, maybe their identity changed. Like, you know, they, they went from being an aspiring

entrepreneur to being a real entrepreneur. I mean, when you get that first sale from someone who's not your mom, like it, it's, I mean, you guys probably remember that. Like, that first deal you got, that first sponsorship you got, that first, you know, I sold T-shirts all throughout college. I remember that first purchase order I got from McGill University, it was like, it was a life-changing thing, not because of the money, but because now I wasn't just aspiring. I actually was an entrepreneur. The cool part is doing that in 2025 means that someone who's starting right now may be the largest in their category in five years or 10 years. Like that velocity, that, you know, I mentioned on the call Este Lauder is now, you know, coming to Shopify. And I mentioned Michael Coors. And I mentioned these

incredible brands that keep coming, you know, Shopify, these big enterprise brands are on running or Birkenstock. These brands are, in some case, 100 years old. But what's also fascinating is that some of the biggest stores on Shopify today, like Viori or Aloe Yoga or Jim Shark, these are like the biggest brands in their category. And I mean, Jim Shark is maybe 10 years old. It was started by Ben Francis in a dorm room outside of London, England. And now Jim Shark is ubiquitous. It's competing with Nike. So just from a, you know, a perspective for I'm being this, being on the show, that's why I think earnings are cool because I get to tell these stories. And it's like a, it's a, it's a storytelling opportunity. There's a lot to unpack there. I mean,

first of all, I'll tell you, my mom still doesn't watch this show. So I'm trying to get that first. Oh, wow. That first. Yeah, I'm still aspiring. Uh, look, one of the angles I'd love to take it, if you don't mind, because I think you have an insight into the commerce here that we won't have. You know, your revenues is up, you said. Your free cash flow is up. And you're a consumer facing business at the end of the day, which means you're seeing a resiliency in the consumer that some other businesses aren't seeing. And I want to know if that's unique to Shopify or if you're seeing better signs in the economy than some of what we're hearing or feeling from some of our audience. You should watch because what a great question. That is a deep macro, you know, consumer confidence

question. Your mom definitely should watch Lemonade's Dent. Okay. So let's let's let's kind of level set here. Or give me her number. I can call her and tell her. This was all a ploy to get your mom's phone number. Exactly. I wasn't trying to, you know, that sounds a little weird. Okay. So level set. So this quarter, Q3, 2025, we saw about $92 billion of budget. product sold on Shopify. So I mentioned we were up 32% year on year. That's, I think, Shopify's ninth consecutive quarter where our GMV growth was above 20%. So when you kind of look below the hood on that GMV number, what you actually see is millions of stores that are selling on Shopify every single day. Some very large ones, Mattel, I mentioned, you know, aloe yoga.

There's obviously, you know, most of your, most of consumers favorite brands are on shopping. My favorite is James Purse. I'm wearing this t-shirts. My favorite sneakers are Tom Sacks. Those are on Shulls on Shopify also. So most of the, you know, if you're listening to this, the brands that you have a relationship with, a connection to as a consumer, most of those about all of them are on Shopify. The way that we measure consumer confidence, which is sort of what you're asking is we measure it at checkout. Like, you know, what are we seeing on the checkout. And on Shopify, what we're seeing is that consumers are, they keep buying, they keep returning, and generally the demand has been really resilient. But there is something that I think

is, you're kind of picking on here, which is worth of mentioning, which is that it does feel a little bit that consumers are being more selective, meaning like they're buying from brands that they have a connection to, that they love, that means signing to them. This isn't just a black t-shirt. This is a James Purse black T-shirt. I've got a chance to know James. personally, like this guy is obsessed with making like black t-shirts. It's all he thinks about. And generally those brands that where consumers have a relationship with, where consumers are voting with their wallets to buy from, are on Shopify. So that's not to say that the entire economy, every area is going really well, but generally the people that are, the consumers that are buying

on Shopify stores tend to have, tend to vote with their wallets to buy from those brands. And for those selective consumers, you know, they continue to buy. I think in a time where the labor market feels so uncertain, a lot of people are either getting laid off or struggling to find a new job if they're looking for a new one or even within the context of the shutdown, right, in the U.S. having, if you're employed by the federal government right now, you might be looking at 30 plus days with no pay. You're kind of describing a scenario where while other parts, you're, you're, parts of demand in the consumer market might be falling or struggling. You guys are providing something unique in how people can select what they buy. So you guys are still going strong.

Well, so yeah, so the answer is yes to that. But actually, I think what you're describing also is sort of the two sides of our of our business. One is I just mentioned, you know, like the merchants on Shopify tend to be brands and retailers that we all love. Like, you know, I don't know what your favorite stores are. Mine are like Kith, for example, or Allo or Viori. Those are doing really well. Those are all Shopify stores. That's not to say that, you know, Walmart is seeing the same sales that we are because,

you know, the demographic that people buy from Walmart is different than those that are buying Allo Yoga Yoga Pants or a Viori sweatshirt or a pair of Tocovus boots, which I think Toccois makes the most beautiful cowboy boots. So that's on the consumer side. On the merchant side, you know, we've been leading this company now. I've been at this for 16 years, almost half my life. I'm a little bit less than half my life. I'm 41 years old.

I've been in Shopify now for 16 years. What we've seen is whether it's 2008 or it's some choppiness like around the pandemic, is that what people tend to do when they worry about either losing their job or they've already lost their job or maybe they have a reduction of hours is often they turn to entrepreneurship. in those moments to either supplement their income or actually to like replace their income if they've lost it. So actually if you if you look at the general health of the economy and you overlay sort of business creation, not just in Canada or the U.S. but on a global level, entrepreneurship tends to work really well when people are unsure about their future.

In fact, my father's an immigrant, my family, my family were immigrant family. My father immigrated to Canada in 1956 from Hungary. He was just a kid, but my grandfather, when he came here, he became an entrepreneur. He began to sell eggs at a farmer's market in Montreal. My grandfather did not call himself an entrepreneur per se. It's just like he had no choice, he had no options. And so entrepreneurship, even though, you know, would you guys talk about a lemonade stand? What I talk about is entrepreneurship in a little bit of a glorified way that it's like

the greatest way for humans to self-actualize. It's a creative pursuit. In actuality, you know, the core reason people became entrepreneurs, historically was they had no choice, right? It was forced entrepreneurship rather than I think what the three of us are doing, which is more of passion-driven entrepreneurship. We've choosing to do this thing called entrepreneurship, to create a show, a podcast, to run a company, to start a company.

And so generally, even though it seems almost, you know, it seems like it would be the opposite, like, almost like, it's like, you know, it's almost a paradox. But like when people are struggling, they tend to turn to entrepreneurship as a a way to struggle less. I really appreciate that perspective. And I thank you for being candid on it. I do want to press a little bit.

And again, this is, I know this is a difficult question to discern, especially from your position, but based on what you said about the consumer side. And again, this is not something that you created. This is something that we're just seeing. It sounds a bit like what we're hearing about kind of a K-shaped economy. Or the tail of the K-shaped or the tail of two worlds, right, is often what you hear about. And that is true. that absolutely that some people are doing really well right now and some people are really struggling right now.

And the ones, at least, again, as I mentioned earlier, like consumer confidence from my perspective is measured at checkout. But, you know, given that we're seeing these types of growth rates, given that we're seeing almost $100 billion transacted on Shopify for the quarter, which is up over 30%. Generally, what we're seeing is that consumers on Shopify, which tend to be higher income consumers, are definitely still buying. There's one aspect of that I didn't want to dig into, though, which is that. So I looked at the earnings. And again, all the numbers are excellent. But there was an area which had a growth that I think was, it was transaction and loan losses. So those were up from $58 million to $148 million.

I don't know exactly what that means. Does that tie back into like buy now, pay later? Or is that, is there a part of the consumer that is taking on more, would you say, debt as part of this? No, I mean, basically we have these guardrails. effectively. So we have this amazing program called Shopify Capital. Shopify Capital exists because most small businesses, I mean, so the business cannot go to the bank and say, we need money. Partially the reason that banks do not underwrite these types of businesses because they just don't know how they're going to do, right? It's just, they don't have enough data. But we have a lot

of data on these, on these merchants. And so we're able to do, like, we're able to do cash advances for these merchants. And we kind of have these guardrails in place where, we believe within these guardrails, in this payback period, you know, we can lend. So as long as they're in that guardrail, we're happy to lend and they always are. Sometimes it will tick up a little bit higher for a particular quarter on the payback or lack thereof. But generally, as long as within this category or this band of what we call acceptable payback rates, we're going to continue doing that as well. It's not something that gets a lot of attention because it's, you know, people think about Shopify as like e-commerce or point of sale in a physical

retail store or a gentic some of the partnerships we're doing now with open AI, which I'm happy to talk about too. But it's a part of a business that I'm very proud of because for a lot of these merchants, they do not have other sources to get a cash advance from or for cash flow. And so we're able to say, based on your history on Shopify, we're able to extend, you know, a cash advance at this amount. And, and we, you know, you pay it back as money comes back in. Okay. I understand. I mean, I would actually, you mentioned AI there. Our third co-host is normally the absolute AI bull. He would love to do this. Yeah, he's obsessed.

But, you know, I'll try to channel him for a second. Please, yeah. I think it's interesting to hear from a CEO's perspective, especially at a tech company. What are the positive cases of you, AI, that you're seeing or how it's helping unlock certain parts of your business? We'd be interested in seeing that. We hear both sides from a lot of people on the show.

And I'm interested you hear downsides? Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. And to be honest, that's the same. second part, you know, to the, to the question, because I assume you have like a pretty positive outlook, which I think is fair, especially from your position, but I think from the bulk of our, maybe not just our audience, but even the sea of, I would say, 20 to 30 year olds who are not,

you know, not becoming entrepreneurs and not becoming, you know, not becoming a business owner. People who are just trying to get to their next job or figure out what their next day is like, AI is viewed very negatively right now. They don't see a positive effect in their life and in any real short-term future either. So with that context in mind of how, I would say that average person views it, especially in that younger cohort,

how does that balance with the benefits of it that we've also talked about on this show? Let me give you a- I would add to that. I would just say, you know, I wouldn't say universally negative, but I'd say there's a sense of, They don't see the upside yet.

Yeah, it was a little uncomfortable. It's trepidation. Yeah, it's a little bit trepidation. And I'd love to hear. I get, look, I, I'm a consummate optimist. I am, I think you have to be to be an entrepreneur generally because, you know, the reason I didn't become a dentist is because I think, you know, this idea of building something. No offense, all the dentists out there, but just not my style.

I mean, I say dentist because it's a little more of a predictable career. Yeah, of course, yeah. So I think you have to be an optimist. Let me take it from a couple different angles. We can talk about a gentic. commerce, which is like, you know, using chatGBT or using perplexity to have a conversation and have kind of a personal shopper with you, which we announce we're doing with OpenAI. But that doesn't answer the question you're asking. I'll give you this really good example. One of the people,

one of my mentors, one of my friends that's sort of, you know, older than me that I really look up to and get a lot of advice from is a kind of Mickey Drexler. Mickey Drexler is probably as close to retail royalty as it comes. He created, he was the CEO of the Gap for many years, 20 years. He also created Old Navy. He helped create Jay Crew. He was on the board of Apple for, I think, 20 years or so as well, working very closely with Steve Jobs. So I've got to know Mickey really well. And I asked Mickey about the merchandising team inside of the gap, like the people that took product photography, that were product descriptions, that decided what goes where and how does you make it look, and so people want to buy it, what's called merchandising. And I think

Mickey had said that, like, at the peak of the gap, there was like 300 or 400 people working inside of the merchandising department at the gap. Okay. If you're a small business on Shopify or elsewhere, you can't go and hire 300 people. You don't have the money. You can barely hire one person. Maybe you're a solo entrepreneur. Shopify has a product.

This is not a Shopify pitch, but just run with me for a second here. Shopify is a product called Sidekick. Okay. Shopify Sidekick is effectively this. it's effectively, you know, every superhero needs a sidekick. We think every entrepreneur needs a sidekick. It is effectively your assistant that works with you. Then it was everything about your business and it was everything about Shopify.

And in Q3 alone the past quarter, over 750,000 shops use sidekick for the first time. Now, a lot of these shops are small businesses. And what they did, what they used sidekick for was they ran, they did analytics with sidekick. They did media editing with sidekick. They did, you know, they helped figure out. out like how to do replies to merchants. So, you know, if a consumer sends you an email says, where's my package? Sidekick can actually write a reply and send it right to the consumer. It helps you, you know, you can upload a random photograph and it'll take a bunch of different

photographs and it'll send a bunch of photographs back to you as if they were professionally done. If you're not sure what the product description should be, Sidekick will write it for you. If you don't know what geography, a particular product is selling, Sycich can do that as well. that all comes like baked into Shopify for 39 bucks a month. So I showed this feature to Mickey. He was blown away by it. Not blown away because like it did things that he couldn't enter the gap. He was blown away by it because what used to take 300 people

is now available for 39 bucks a month to anybody that uses Shopify. That is like people talk about leveling of the playing field. People talk about the democratization of all these sort of. of, you know, buzzy terms come around, but that's what it is. That's what AI can do. It means that you can be sitting at your mom's kitchen table. And within your Shopify admin, you have this incredible assistant that has affected you your co-founder that can help you make better decisions faster. And you don't have to go and hire more people. If that doesn't get you optimistic about where things are going, you know, I don't know what to say. So I think there's, I think there's two ways

Yeah, but I think there's two ways to kind of look at it. One is, oh my God, like, I'm going to get disrupted. So you've heard this. This is like right now, but like people are not going to lose their job to AI. People are going to lose their job to someone who knows how to use AI to another person who's really good at using AI. And so rather than simply adopting AI, my advice to anyone listening who's an entrepreneur, small business owner is begin to use it reflexively, begin to teach it everything you, you know, if you give, if you write an article or you give a talk or frankly, you have a conversation. with someone that's compelling. Take some notes and feed it into, you know, your chat, GBT, your perplexity or your anthropic and be like, hey, this is a really interesting conversation. Remember this for next time. And the next time you have something like that, feed in this and begin to build some context so that you actually have this like superhero assistant with you all the time. And I think when you look at it through that lens, you begin to realize that it's not

that it's not that Ben Francis and Jim Shark had an unfair advantage. It's that when you combine someone who's an incredible entrepreneur with this, of the art technology that didn't exist 10 years ago, the velocity of business growth for small businesses is unlike anything our parents or grandparents could have even dreamed of. I'm so dead. So sad Doug wasn't here for that. You would have a, you would have a love that that speech particularly. I have a, I mean, I, first of all, yeah, thank you for that answer. I, I think Shopify, from my outside perspective, is sitting in a unique spot in this changing dynamic where I do think you do give an opportunity for people.

who want to dive into this new world face first. I think you're you're democratizing something. And now I feel like I'm defending AI. No, no, no, no. I don't want to be that guy. Genuinely, these are good answers in the sense that I think you've democratized. You're helping democratize the tools of what allow people to become successful if they want to pursue that thing, which, you know, in the past, in the grand history of the world,

was not available to so many people. Exactly. I can appreciate it. And not to say that everyone's participated, but yeah, more people are. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, I feel similarly about YouTube years ago in a way that like a democratized access for someone like me to create. I couldn't create. No one. That's right. No more gatekeepers. That's right. No more gatekeepers. You built something incredible. And more importantly, think of how many people watch Lemonade Standard. Like, I want to have my own version of that. And now they can do it also. There is this virtuous flywheel that is happening now.

And it's allowing more people to not like do stuff they don't want to do. But actually find their life. life's work, which frankly, our grandparents, like the concept of life's work, they weren't entitled to that, or didn't, they couldn't do it because they were just trying to put food in the table. So, so let's say I am, you know, you're selling me. I get, yeah, I'm on board. Yeah, I want to have, I'm a, I'm a natural skeptic, uh, on a macro level, especially. Which is fascinating because you have an entrepreneurship podcast. No. It doesn't make my, it doesn't make it, yeah, the math is not mathing here. I, uh, I, uh, you know, I think I'm actually, I'm a long term optimist, but I get nervous in the short term lately.

So I want to ask you some questions because I think you know more about the environment. Specifically, you mentioned, you know, this AI package that you're selling $39. People are finding great use from it. There's been a challenge, maybe not with your company, but with other companies,

to find revenue with some of these AI solutions. Specifically, I want to ask, you know, you mentioned a deal with Open AI. I'm seeing every three days, open AI is another big, massive deal, another multibillion dollar deal with someone whether it's Amazon or whether it's Invidia or AMD or Google. And there's questions about their ability to fund that through revenue.

I don't know. I want to know the optimist. I want to know a better stance of what you're seeing. Is this, it sounds like it's delivering real return for your customers. Maybe as, you know, on a, on a, just a personal level, what, what are the things, are the things that you're not, or is there risks you're seeing? That's more my question. It's like, yeah, an optimist B.

Is there a risks you're seeing? Well, look, I think, so just to be clear, just to kind of set the stage, you know, the idea is, agentic commerce is a. effectively, you know, someone once said to me that if you want to see where technology is going, look to see what, like, rich people do and all of that kind of goes down to the long tail of all demographics. I grew up with very little money. I've been, you know, I've been supporting myself and my family since I was 16 years old.

So the idea of having a personal shopper, like, I don't even know anyone that ever had a personal shopper, okay? But I know that people with means historically have had personal shoppers. Right. So I think what agentic shopping really is, agentic commerce really is, is allow everybody to have their own personal shopper that has a full understanding of your preferences, your pricing preferences, the brands you love. And just think of this idea of like saying to chat GBT something like,

what is the best shirt to keep me cool when I'm running? And then all of a sudden it goes and searches across every Shopify store, millions of stores and products, and this is the one based on everything I know about you, based on all our search history, you should buy this. That is really cool. The reason that's really cool is because right now, typically what you would do is you go to a search engine and you type in Best Shirt for Running

and you get whoever paid the most amount of money for that particular keyword. So now, not only are you going to get results from, not necessarily, like, you may not get the biggest companies. You're going to get results that are relevant to you. You're going to find new brands that you may love, maybe a local brand because the chat knows that you prefer to shop locally.

So you find someone in Montreal for me that you're like, you know, I just did this thing called 29029, which is like this Everesting race, a very cool race. And I want to buy, you know, hiking shoes. And so I was doing research. And I find a company called NORDA, N-O-R-D-A.

Never heard of them before. Montreal-based. It turns out, in my view, they make the very best hiking shoes. I found them because of social media and a little bit of research on a gentic. But if I would have gone to a search engine, I never would have found them

because it's a small company in Montreal. They're like, you know, a couple dozen people out of a small warehouse, you know, at a small manufacturing facility. So this idea of agentic is really cool because I can say, I'm having a birthday party for my daughter. I have two daughters six years old and nine years old. She's really into unicorns and she's really into rainbows.

And tell me everything I need to know for this birthday party. And the agentic agents, the agentic chat will say, here's everything you need and I can one click buy all of them from across a whole bunch of stores. that is amazing. It's amazing for me, the consumer. It's also amazing for the brands that show up because now they're showing up in places

they otherwise would not. Yeah, we have talked about this benefit on the show before a while ago. And I think much, I have a question, much like search engines early on, I think we all probably have a universal experience of search engines, maybe 10 years ago, had a better experience in finding a good,

maybe not as specific or as niche as you've described. I don't think it was ever as effective as the example that you gave. But I do feel like search engines have been compromised by sponsored ads for products over time. It's become more challenging to find something like a product or a restaurant that you might want to look up than it used to be. Do you have any fear or any protections of how this same way of searching for things will not be compromised by companies looking? to advertise in the same way. Like, I mean, look, maybe this is the greatest feature for the next three years, but then 10, 15 years from now, my AI results are inundated with sponsor searches. Look, I don't have the answer to that. I don't have a crystal ball in terms of what other companies

are you to do. What I do think, though, is like, look, social commerce teams type of thing, right? Like, the reason we follow, I follow you guys on Instagram is because, you know, you guys are influencers. I know you might meet that term. And I'm like, what are they into? I don't actually know if you guys are getting paid or not. I'm just going to trust you that Because I think you guys are good guys. You care a lot about entrepreneurs. You care a bunch of your audience. You care a bunch of your followers.

If you're endorsing something, I'm going to take the leap of faith and say, you probably actually really like the product. I certainly, everything I talk about in social, like, I'm not getting paid for this. I mean, you sold me on those black shirts. And I'm not getting, and I'm not getting commissioned for these bad shirts.

And I'm also not getting commissioned. But the reason that the reason that you're interested is because like, you've no reason to think that I'm trying to sell you. I'm just telling you what I really. really really like. So I do think though that that agentic commerce has the opportunity to be more objective, to be more context, you know, have more context. I think the other reason that I'm hopeful is because if I've done a bunch of research on on running and then I'm looking to go

hiking and the the chat tells me, the agent in the chat says actually on running is a brand new pair of hiking boots. We know you like on running because you've researched before. That actually feels like it's it knows what I want. I quite like that result. I actually think some of the personalized ads that I get are really quite relevant. I mean, years ago, I used to love writing a boosted board, this motorized skateboard. I always thought about, like, how are they targeting me?

I was like, I like technology, and I like skateboards. And like the Venn diagram overlap is like boosted board. I should like, I love, you know, another one is, and if you guys are into like water sports, but flight board has like this efoil, which I think is like a surfboard, really, really cool. So sometimes the results that I'm getting, even if they're sponsored, I actually

quite like. But I do believe that the agenic shopping model will have more objectivity and hopefully will, you know, introduce me to brands. I never would have found otherwise. And I have no reason to believe otherwise. Oh, you, oh, yeah, you mentioned Montreal a couple times and we talked about the status is Canada's largest company in the intro. I wanted to know if you could give us some insight into into business and economics in Canada right now. Yeah, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, the main thing that I had in mind here was when you look at, T-shirts. When you guys had,

when you guys became the largest company by Market Cap this year, we had looked earlier in the year. I'd looked at this list and I saw Shopify at number two. And I was like, wow, it's the second biggest company in Canada. That's, that's insane.

And then looking at it more recently, I was going through the list and I was like, oh my God, bank, bank, bank, energy company, energy company, bank. So with, I wanted to get a feel for your optimism for, uh, entrepreneurship in Canada specifically because I think Canada has been in a rough economic spot a lot. In the past few years, from talking to friends, from, uh, looking at election results,

all of these things, right? And I wanted to get your optimistic take on this, which I, I heard you're pretty, you're pretty bullish on Canada as a place to, uh, start a business. And I wanted to get your feelings on that. Well, first of all, you know, let's just sort of contextualize. If you look at the top 10 largest companies by market cap in Canada, other than Shopify, the second youngest one is TD Bank, 1956, I think. That's number two. That's crazy.

Okay, so I am optimistic. I was born in Canada, but I did not grow up here. I grew up in South Florida. So I say that only to provide some insight. into like, I'm choosing to live here. I can live at the stage anywhere in the world. My wife and I, Toby and I were both living in Ottawa for the last 20 years or so. I moved to Ottawa for law school.

He moved to Ottawa because he met a girl who was now his wife. We both had ourselves in Ottawa and we lived there for last 20 years. And then a sort of post-pendomit, we both decided we want to leave Ottawa. He wants to come to Toronto. And I was thinking about Miami, New York. I mean, spend a lot of time in New York City. I ended up picking Montreal because, frankly, it's my favorite city on the planet. my wife's favorite city on the planet, we both went to McGill for undergrad. So I very

intentionally selected to stay in Canada and very intentionally selected Montreal, which I just think is like the most entrepreneurial, cultural, interesting city I've ever been to. And I've been there now for two years. We've been living in Montreal for two years. It is one of the best decisions I've ever made. What they call the joie de vivre, like the joy of life quotient there is unlike anything I've experienced anywhere in North America. Okay. So, so, why I'm out to him to Canada? Well, first of all, I do think, though, that there is, I like the culture here, but that's not really the reason why, like, I've stayed here. I think Canada suffers this tall poppy syndrome. People talk about it, but I don't think we fully realize it. If you look at

companies that are built here, traditionally the path that these companies take, particularly technology companies, is they raise some money from venture capital lists or private equity funds, or in some cases, angel investors, which means they're basically committing that at some point they're going to have some sort of exits, either an IPO or they're going to get acquired. They tend to take the acquired route more than the IPO route.

That's the reason why you don't see a lot of Canadian publicly traded technology companies. And the ones that do go public, the examples we have are like RIM, like BlackBerry and Nortel. In fact, one of the things I lament the most is if you walk into any bookstore in Canada and you ask the clerk to show you some books on RIM or Nortel,

it's like a row of the demise of Blackberry, losing the signal. It's like all, it's like this is a cautionary. There's not a single book that talks about what Blackberry did, which is it created the smartphone industry or what Nortel did. There's no books on Al-Lam Bouchard who created Kushtard. There's no books on Sam Brofman who created Seagrams. There's, you know, the story of Chip Wilson and Lulu Lemon is often not a very positive one, even though what Chip built, you can say what he wanted about Chip,

but what he built is incredibly inspiring. I mean, he created a new category. So I think this top poppy syndrome here does not serve us and is not helpful. And there's a couple things I think we can fix here. One I think is at the government level. I mean, you know, you mentioned that, you know, that I care a lot of this topic. I was very vocal last few weeks. The Canadian budget comes out today, but I wrote a memo about how to basically to improve shred SRED.

Shred is a program that federal government has where they give it $5 billion of the B every year at a technology companies that are doing R&D research. It turns out that 80% of people that are filing applications to get Shred use a consultant because it's so complicated.

So what's the result of that? 30% 20 to 30% of the $5 billion that gets out. It goes to the consultants. Right, yeah. So that doesn't make sense. Think about the consultants. Get together with a group of people. We don't want to leave the consultants in the street.

I mean, sorry with the consultants, but like, like consultants should add value. That to me, I mean, it's adding value, but it shouldn't be value add that should exist. No, I understand. The second thing is, is education. I don't think we're teaching students to like consider entrepreneurship as a viable career option, which to me is so sad. Like, you know, you get this list in fourth grade. It's like doctor, lawyer, accountant, magician, singer, actor, but entrepreneurship is our list. So I think that's part of it.

And maybe the kind of the last one is, we have. have to just celebrate like our our own we have to become champions forever for all of us like you know i just met you guys today but asked like i've been talking to lemon eight stand for a while because i think what you're doing is really compelling and anyone that talks to me about like small business podcast or shows a great great content i bring you up as an example of someone that i think a group that's doing things really well they do that well in the u.s they like you know they sell each other all the time we don't have to be like the american But this idea of grow big, but if you grow too big, your head gets chuffed off la, you know, tall poppy.

I don't think it's working for us. Here's the good news. I've had more engagement. I've personally had more engagement with the government in the last six months than I have in the last six years. They seem to want to listen. We'll see what happens in terms of the results. The second thing is I see companies like Ada and League and WellSimple and Lightspeed and

Super.com and Cleo in Vancouver. and I'm seeing all these incredible Canadian companies that are getting really big. And there's an appetite to stay independent, not get acquired. So I'm really excited by that. And third, if you think about funding, the best investors on the planet from Silicon Valley to London, New York, California, wherever they're from, they're agnostic to geography. They're investing in the best companies. And a lot of those investment dollars are coming here to can. I mean, well simple, I think just raised that a couple, $8 billion valuation.

in Cleo is that a billion dollar valuation. Like we're beginning to see kind of this new version of Canadian capitalism. And I think it's exciting and it's driven by entrepreneurs. That's really cool to hear. I'm Canadian myself. So I think this is a story that you don't hear from Canada very often, which is that there's, you know, there's a lot of light at the end of the tunnel right now, a positive future to look towards. I think that's really...

Shopify plays the role of role model because of our size. That's cool. take that seriously, but I don't necessarily, like, I want Shopify to keep growing bigger. I also want to create, like, I want that top 10 list. Okay, so we talked to the top 10 in Canada. Now look at the top 10 list in the U.S. in the U.S. by market cap. I think most of those companies, maybe other than Apple have been created in the last 20, 25 years. I mean, Google maybe, it's 25 years ago, but like in the last 50 years, I'm pretty sure the entire list of the top 10 by market cap valued companies in the U.S.

have all been created in the last 50 years, whereas there's only one, only one in Canada. Yeah. That's awesome. What do you think? I'll honestly care. I think that's,

I think it's exciting. Because you think about it from a Canadian, I'm not Canadian, but if you think about it from a Canadian movie, you'll never be. You know, it would be exciting to have new high growth companies in the country

and not have them be acquired elsewhere, not be growing in a different country. Like that, that is a positive moment. something that I think is cool. What do you think was different about... Success begets success. More success gets more success.

You mentioned the role model effect. What do you think was different about Shopify? Because I'm wondering why... I mean, why didn't you go... Yeah, because I figured you must have faced pressure along the way. Maybe not an acquisition necessarily, or I'm sure there were acquisition offers at some point. But what sort of pressures did you guys face

to take the company to the U.S. and why say no along the way? I mean, early on, a few venture capitalists, a few VC firms had said, hey, like, we want to invest in Shopify, but, you know, the qualification has to be, you guys have to come to the U.S. But honestly, we just said no.

We were building in Ottawa. We were focused. Access to talent was amazing. There was no reason to do it. What was different? I don't think we just, we just never had the, you know, the overhang of pessimism

or the overhang of Top Poppy syndrome. I grew up in the U.S. Toby grew up in Germany. And we were both building in Ottawa, Canada. I just don't think it ever crossed our mind that we would have some sort of, we would have less of an advantage being here. And now, like, you know, we've millions of stores on Shopify. I'm pretty sure most of the merchants on Shopify don't even know where we're based.

And they don't care because what they're buying from Shopify is software. Incredible, well-built, well-crafted, scalable, easy-to-use software. And, you know, most people that use, I don't know, like, mouthful, But most people use Spotify don't know that they're based in Sweden. And most people that use, like, a lot of these SoundCloud don't know they're based in Germany. And they don't care. Consumers and users of our products, what they care about is, are you building something that is truly valuable? So I got to run, but I just want to kind of lend, you know, and one more thing, which is, like, I think what you guys are doing in talking about and distilling and explaining and making small business creation and entrepreneurship, just more, I don't know,

accessible is exactly worth doing also. In many ways, that's what we have in common is, is we, you know, I think one of the greatest creations of humans was the lemonade stand. Why? Because it got children, kids, to think about this idea of going to their kitchen and making this thing and then going outside and selling it. And they learned about profit margins. They learned about revenue. They learned about change. They learned about all, like, the lemonade stand. I know that, you know, it's part of the brand. But at a very fundamental level, we need to create more lemonade stands at different stages of our lives so that more people consider entrepreneurship. I think the world becomes a lot more interesting if all of us are crafting things that we want to exist in the

world and then consumers are voting with their wallace to buy those things. So thank you for giving me some time today. Thank you. Thank you for coming on. We really appreciate it. And yeah, we'll hopefully get a chance to speak with you again. Have a good risk to do today. And you guys should keep doing you guys should keep doing these earnings things like you know part of the earnings cycle. I did Cmbc. I did Fox business. I did a bunch of investor and animals. I mean, lemonade's down. It's perfect. Yeah, we're in the media circuit. Amazing. Thanks guys.

Thanks, Charlie. I'm going. Bye. We're really important. All right. All right. I can read between the lines. We're really important. I can see the feedback matrix before it already happens. You see the code. And I know, I see the code. I see the code on the walls.

And I think I just wanted to kind of post more to it with you. Because I think there's a fair, because what I'm gathering from Harley is that he is really excited about the success of their business. Like I looked into his background before we did this interview a bit. And he has been, he started selling stuff. He became the entrepreneur he talks about when he was 17, literally.

He started a business and started selling shirts at school. Oh, yeah. And I think from his perspective, right, we do exist at a time where things are being economically squeezed and it's forcing people to look for opportunity and find new things for themselves to do and a lot of people are choosing to start a business in some way or another and I do believe that in in the history of things people have been gate kept from that because of the amount of capital your lack of tools your lack of network, your lack of ability to easily sell things. You only have access to the,

like, the town that you're in and how much you can carry on your back or in your cart to the market or something like that, right? But he has made, or he has helped build a company and a tool that democratizes the availability of that opportunity. And for the people, we were talking about getting, getting squeezed. Like, the economic squeeze, he's, he's making the Jucero. This is, that's an unfair comparison actually,

because it's a failed company. But the idea is like, all of the, the maximum number of people that would want to pursue the option of entrepreneurship are available, they can pursue it

because of the availability of a tool like his. And that's what he's psyched about. I think we had similar reactions to some of things he was saying. I think we can see the reaction in real time, as he's saying.

It's like walking into oncoming traffic and we're, I get it. I'm like, Harley, no, there's a rake. There's another. Ray Carly.

And it's, but, but I, I, I think in a lot of ways, I agree with a lot of what he's excited about. No, that's what I wanted to say is like, it's, your squeezing example is like, I don't think this guy is the guy squeezing. Do you know what I'm saying? Yeah. He, he's adapting to a world that is being squaws. And he's giving people opportunity. Like, I don't, I don't blame this guy.

I know there's a tendal sense to be like, oh, it's the CEO. Yeah, you know what I'm saying, but he's the president. He's the president. He's the president. I keep calling him the CEO. That's a different guy. It's a different guy. It should be one role.

He's a president. Elon Musk is president and CEO. I want you to know that. So get it, figure it out. So I, like, it seems like a nice guy. And I, and in some ways, I do agree with somebody saying. And I think for some people, that is a, I mean, actually, it's factually a provable path that worked quite well. Shopify has helped some people.

But, um, I did want him, I wanted him to reconcile with the idea that, no matter what, not everyone can become an entrepreneur. It's just not possible. That was the main thing I'm trying to get at there. And he is the president of a company that relies on this flow of entrepreneurship. So he's not going to, like in his position, there's no reason to not feel positive about the position that he's in. And the service that their company is offering.

And I don't discredit him for that. And I don't, I think the main thing when I was parsing through how I felt about, what he's saying is I don't think he was saying entrepreneurship is the solution for every single person's economic strife. He was saying that for those who have the desire to pursue it, the tools and resources are available to you to pursue. But it did remind me a lot of that diary of a CEO debate with Gary Stevenson and the other guy where other guy just keeps saying like you have more tools and resources to start your own business than ever

and Gary is like, they just can't all do that man. And if you always tell everybody that that is their way out, then people have a really depressing outlook on how their economic situation is all their fault because they just didn't become an entrepreneur.

And I don't think he's saying that. I do not, I want to be so clear, I do not think he's saying that. Look, I want to steal mad him a bit. In that, like, he's not a politician. right? He is just providing a service to people that do have that worldview.

Exactly. And so and I am, the parts I like the most were the Canada parts because I do think it is somewhat admirable to stay in a country like Canada and help build a business there when there, I think he understated the amount of pressure there is to do that elsewhere. Can I give you just a personal anecdote about this?

I really did, I looked earlier this year at the biggest companies in Canada and I was very surprised to see, oh my God, Shopify is the second biggest one right now, next to all these giant Canadian banks and energy companies, right? And I noticed what he said, I didn't have the exact year. But I'm like, all of these companies are old as shit and work in some ancient business. It doesn't feel like anything like flashy or innovative is really like filling out this list. But the fact that Shopify can exist there, I do think matters to people who have business ideas in Canada.

Like there, I think Canada, part of the reason it's in the economic situation it is, from what I know, is that they rely heavily on these old, like, commodity industries of like, you know, it's timber, it's oil. Yeah. It's, and in banking, and by proxy real estate. And that's the economic opportunity in the country. And when you have a company like this that's providing, you know, kind of a novel new service. and breaking out and becoming the biggest. And globally competitive, sir. Like it's, yeah, it, yeah.

People need that hope and representation in that way. It's funny to talk about representation in this context, right? But just even opening the list as a Canadian gave me some hope. I was like, oh my God, you can do it. And having that bit of hope means a lot to a lot of people. I'm not saying it's a policy solution to problems. And I think that's the important thing, right? He's not a politician.

He's not writing the policy prescription for lack of affordability in Toronto. He's not that guy. He's the guy offering a tool to those who wish to pursue starting their own business. I think I have a pretty wildly different worldview from that guy in general. But I had no problem hearing. I think I was, you know, the optimism is interesting to hear. And he, I don't blame. him for these problems. I guess I just don't. I don't. No. Yeah. No, I don't think so either. I was excited

about what he had to say about Canada the most, the fact that he has that outlook and there seems to be a growth of like new companies in the space. The tall poppy syndrome thing is interesting because I, I hear that about the Nordics a lot. Yeah, you hear it about everywhere outside of the US. I think this is the way that this is all my Australian friends talk about this, all my Scandinavian friends talk about this, European friends in general. Canada also similarly, I think Canada, because of its proximity to the U.S., I have always felt is the least like this, but I also didn't grow up. Like, I didn't go to high school in Canada, right? And I didn't go to college in Canada. So maybe I'm just, the window of that is not there for me.

So it's interesting to hear it from him and really point that out as a culture of why people don't want to push new innovative ideas there. I know, it sounds like the tide is turning a bit and I think that's interesting and cool. But I think when he was wrapping up and he's talking about the lemonade stand thing, I can already, I can feel the collective eye roll. I can feel it.

I understand. I mean, part of it is like, you know, that reflects a certain unfamiliarity with the show. You know what I'm saying? I'm having the idea that we're telling everybody to get out there and open their own limit. That's the name of the show. That's fair. You know,

for me, it's a balance because I genuinely like hearing from people in vastly different circumstances and locations for me. Like this guy, I've always wanted to ask a CEO what's going on in their head during earnings seasons. I've always wanted to ask that. Yeah. For a big day company, I think that's interesting.

And he didn't shy away when I asked him about rising loan laws. You know, you answer the question. No. I respect that. So for me, it's a balancing act where I don't, I can hear it and I have an internal eye roll, but I don't want to roll, I don't want to be an asshole. I don't want, you know what I'm saying?

I want, I basically want the audience to be able to hear it and understand that your worldview can say the same. You don't have to, you know, this new next challenge. You can just take the parts you want to hear or learn from. And I think that's fine. I think hearing him out at the end is like, what is he actually trying to say, right? he's just

And what do you want to say? That's the question I would say is like Is he really going to get up there And honestly is like yeah Fucking fucking You know what I'm saying He's not gonna do that He's not gonna be like

It's fucking dog shit out there It's fucking dog shit out there Yeah probably doomed bro He's not gonna say that And so like Have your expectations somewhat said He's a he's a He's a

People in that position generally Have to be like Constant sources of momentum You know what I'm saying They have to constantly be like They have to Almost gas themselves up to keep things moving and going because that's that is what their job is.

Yeah, I think you kind of need to be that guy to be in that position. It's just not. Yeah. So I think take that for what it is. I'm glad we did the call. I was interesting. Yeah, I liked talking to him. It's he has an energy for for the work and it's fun to hear it from a company that I've

actually like engaged with and used so much too. It's like I, yeah, they make a good product. It is a useful, good product that is. It'd be interesting for you to try that, that AI thing, too, because I can't judge that stuff as he's saying it. Like, it sounds useful. You know, it's nuanced. It's fucking nuanced. It's just so fucking horseshit.

Everything's got to be got to be gotten. God, why is it all I have nuance? Fuck. I want everything. I wish. God, I wish it was black and white. God, I wish. As a wrap up on the interview, I think this is an opportunity that we will have more.

And I'd be open to hear. more questions from people that they want asked. We will have the opportunity to ask people in similar circumstances, more questions in the future. And I just want them to be ideally just well thought out in what the person is able to realistically tell us. Because it's like he doesn't have the answer to how do we transform society so that everyone is better off

in the wake of a... And I just didn't ask him and he's got it. He was just waiting to say it. ever got asked. Yeah. Yeah, I agree. I mean, listen, you know, I think we're circling the same thing, but especially with regards to AI, it's like the things that that line of logic would lead down is, is some way of redistributing the, I think people not working in Amazon warehouses is a great thing. I, you know, one of my friends is working Amazon driver. He fucking hates. He talks about how miserable is all the time. Like him, that job doesn't need to exist as a human thing. But the,

the benefits that accrue from having a job have to exist. Yeah. And so he's not the guy to figure that out. And I agree with you that we should, I just, if you're genuinely curious and have questions for someone like that, let us know. I think that's a good question for a politician.

Like the next politician we have on, that's what I want to ask them. Because that's who's responsible for that outcome. It's like, yeah, I don't want you. Figure the shit out. On the spot on Lemonade's Day. Anyway, interesting. Guys, that's the end of our show.

We'll try something different today. Different, different direction. And we'll see how it goes. Yeah. We'll see you guys next week in Japan.