Shopify CEO Says Long Hours Aren't Necessary For Success

Tobi Lutke, the founder and CEO of $48 billion e-commerce cloud-software company Shopify, took to Twitter to remind us all that we don't need to work 80 hours a week to be successful. Business Insider reports: "I realize everyone's twitter feed looks different. But I'll go ahead and subtweet two conversations that I see going by right now: a) How the heck did Shopify get so big this decade and b) You have to work 80 hours a week to be successful," he tweeted. He says he and his cofounders have grown this company from a profitable bootstrap to its multibillion-dollar status without him ever sleeping under his desk. "I've never worked through a night. The only times I worked more than 40 hours in a week was when I had the burning desire to do so. I need 8ish hours of sleep a night. Same with everybody else, whether we admit it or not," he tweeted. Shopify has had a spectacular few years. Its revenues have doubled since 2017, solidly beating Wall Street estimates quarter after quarter, growing from over $171 million in Q3 September, 2017, to over $390 million in Q3 September 2019, its latest complete quarter. It's expected to finish the year at about $1.5 billion in revenues. And Wall Street has noticed. Shopify went public in 2015. In the past year, the stock has soared over 200% from around $134 to about $407 giving the company a $47.6 billion market cap. But even at the scale of its current operations, he says he doesn't let his job overshadow the rest of his life. "I'm home at 5:30pm every evening. I don't travel on the weekend. I play video games alone, with my friends, and increasingly with my kids. My job is incredible, but it's also just a job. Family and personal health rank higher in my priority list," he tweeted. "For creative work, you can't cheat. My belief is that there are five creative hours in everyone's day. All I ask of people at Shopify is that four of those are channeled into the company," he wrote. "What's even better than people are teams," he wrote. "We don't burn out people. We give people space. We love real teams with real friendship forming." He adds: "None of that is even about product, or market fit, or timing. It's all about people. Treating everyone with dignity." "We are not moist robots. We are people and people are awesome."

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