Parag Patil

passionate & curious about building/ making things better | constantly thinking “why?” and “why not like this?”

[Parag Patil @paragnpatil]

To build is to be human!

[Startup Archive @StartupArchive_]

Shopify CEO Tobi Lutke explains Goodhart’s law and why he doesn’t like KPIs or OKRs

“Goodhart’s law is real. The moment a metric becomes a goal, it’s no longer a useful metric… No metric by itself is a complete heuristic for a complex business. There’s a million different tensions in a company, and you can’t keep all of them in harmony by optimizing for one thing.”

For this reason, Shopify doesn’t use KPIs or OKRs. But as Tobi explains, this doesn’t mean they don’t value data and metrics.

“We are extremely data informed. We have invested enormous amounts of money and time into systems that give us basically everything at our fingertips… But what Shopify attempts to do is just not over-fit for what’s quantifiable.”

People love optimizing for highly-quantifiable things because there’s immediate gratification that comes from seeing a number go up. But Tobi thinks that the most important aspects of a product are rarely quantifiable:

“The overlap of the most valuable things you can do with a product and the things that happen to be fully quantifiable are like maybe 20%. Which leaves 80% of a value space unaddressable by the people who only look at quantifiable things.”

He continues:

“Shopify is comfortable with unquantifiable things like taste, quality, passion, love, hate… The sort of deep satisfaction that a craftsperson feels when they’ve done a job well is actually a better proxy if you allow it to be.”

They then have robust analytics systems that tell the company if something’s wrong or a new rollout breaks something.

“We think about it as a cockpit for a pilot. The decisions are still made by pilots, and we think this leads to better results… I think there needs to be more acceptance in business of unquantifiable things… And then metrics take a support function.”

Source: @lennysan (Feb 2025)

[Srijan Mahajan @srijan_mahajan]

the most interesting people i know are those who have learned to be comfortable holding two completely opposing view points in their heads & understand nuance in everything, especially the application of ideologies

[Parag Patil @paragnpatil]

@kaustubhn Needs, wants, desires (so far..)

[Parag Patil @paragnpatil]

@readswithravi By author, Christopher Alexander!

[Shweta Kukreja @ShwetaKukreja_]

❤️

[Startup Archive @StartupArchive_]

Naval Ravikant: “Networking is overrated… Go do something great and your network will instantly emerge.”

In the clip below, Naval gives the following advice to startup founders:

“Don’t spend your time doing meetings unless you really, really have to. I really think networking is overrated. There’s all these articles about how you’ve got to network more, and it makes me want to vomit.”

Instead he suggests:

“Go do something great and your network will instantly emerge. If you build a great product or if you get a good customer base, I guarantee you will get funded.”

Recruiting (customers and employees) and learning from really smart people are two exceptions. But don’t worry about building relationships with VCs or going to conferences early on. Just focus on your product, your team, and your users.

[Parag Patil @paragnpatil]

so much to learn, so much to do, so little time!

[The Transcript @TheTranscript_]

$NVDA CEO's advice to students:

"resilience matters in success...I don't know how to teach it to you except for, 'I hope suffering happens to you'..greatness comes from character & character...is formed out of people who suffered..I wish upon you ample doses of pain & suffering"

[Naval @naval]

The great ones don’t do it for money or fame or power.

Or to build an institution, or to help others, or to save the world.

Like a child tinkering, they create it for its own sake.

Free of the burden of ambition.

Deaf to the demands of the world.

[Carl Quintanilla @carlquintanilla]

NVIDIA’s Jensen Huang, on leadership:

“No task is beneath me — because, remember: I used to wash dishes. I used to clean toilets. I cleaned a LOT of toilets. I’ve cleaned more toilets than all of you combined.”

$NVDA ⁦@StanfordGSB⁩

[Parag Patil @paragnpatil]

“Don’t keep me posted, make it happen!”

[Parag Patil @paragnpatil]

Back then, it was all about fixing and less of “storytelling”!

[Hrush Bhatt @hrushb]

“Back in the day, if something was broken, you just fixed it. You didn’t ask permission, you didn’t make a big fuss, you just grabbed your screwdriver.” ~ Henry Reagan

[David Perell @david_perell]

This video tells you so much about human nature.

The world rewards people who take risks, and to take a risk is to bet on what’s unpopular in the eyes of the crowd.

Pioneers are lauded in retrospect but mocked in the moment.

Big business opportunities are low status at the beginning. Startup studios like Y-Combinator were a strange concept when Paul Graham founded it in 2005, but he's now one of the most influential people in Silicon Valley. People laughed when somebody bought a pizza for 10,000 Bitcoin in 2010, but the people who bought and held their BTC have 1,000x’d their money.

The trend I'm betting on is that we are still in the very early days of online writing.

Most of the world thinks creators are still weird. The creator economy is still a bit cringe — and that's why it's worth betting on. I recently heard about a person who has a very successful podcast. Despite making a lot of money and having significant influence, they’re effectively banned from discussing their show at family gatherings.

People still haven’t caught up to the extraordinary influence of various online writers: Bill Gurley was writing about marketplaces in the 90s, which led him to invest in Uber (one of the best startup investments of all time); Y-Combinator grew out of Paul Graham’s How to Start a Startup essay and I don’t think he’d be so successful without them. Other examples include Emily Weiss with Glossier, Alex Hormozi with Acquisition dot com, Mark Sisson with Primal Kitchen, and Nathan Barry with ConvertKit.

Whenever you find such a disconnect between perception and reality, bet big.

Beware of chasing prestige.

It's no coincidence that the Latin word for prestige is praestigium, which translates to illusion or mirage.

When you watch the video below, look at how strange the guy looks when he’s dancing alone at the beginning of the video, and compare it with how cool he must feel when he’s surrounded by hundreds of people.

[Norgard @BrianNorgard]

Wisdom, experience and taste never go out of style.

[Hrush Bhatt @hrushb]

“A designer’s job is to improve the general quality of life. In fact, it’s the only reason for our existence.” ~ Paul Rand

[Hrush Bhatt @hrushb]

“Design should help people. That is its role.” ~ Dieter Rams

[Parag Patil @paragnpatil]

The collective behaviour is fascinating!

[Massimo @Rainmaker1973]

Over the course of 3 days scientists pumped 10 tons of cement into an abandoned ant hill. After weeks of digging, the colony’s intricate & impressive structure is revealed. This one

[full video, from "Ants! Natures Secret Power": https://t.co/ol5WJZU6A8]
https://t.co/G71KrCYafP

[roon @tszzl]

move fast break things era is over. it’s time to think deeply and make generationally good decisions

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

True creation eventually becomes independent of its creator. Evolution takes the original product far from its origin, with an uncertain outcome.
– Dune, The Machine Crusade