Navin Iyengar

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)

The moment Ron Taylor won #FunnyAFwithKevinHart LIVE on Netflix!!! Winning the live vote, Ron will go on to star in his very own Netflix comedy special.

the braintrust at pixar is a pure “standard‑holding” mechanism. it concentrates experience, pattern recognition, and taste, but not authority. directors are obligated to listen and to engage seriously with the feedback, but they are not obligated to obey it. so you still get the benefit of accumulated taste without freezing the system around a small set of decision‑makers. new work can still emerge that doesn’t look like the previous hits, because the standard is advisory rather than veto power. basically, architect your organisation so that taste is maximally shared and consulted, but minimally centralised in the actual decision pipeline.

Japanese engineers developed a “Sword Tip Visualization System” for the Fencing World Championships, and it makes fencing look absolutely incredible to watch.

We see our home planet as a whole, lit up in spectacular blues and browns. A green aurora even lights up the atmosphere. That's us, together, watching as our astronauts make their journey to the Moon.

i did not expect to identify so deeply with the method of taking damage in sonic games: i accumulate bits of gold, then suddenly, i am struck by an unexpected force. the capital explodes out of me in all directions, i see and feel it recede from me. can i gather it again? unknown

PMs don’t just ship features. They kill them. Shipping isn’t the job. Shipping the right product is. A great PM doesn’t fall in love with the roadmap. They fall in love with the problem and have the guts to say: This isn’t solving it. This adds complexity. This doesn’t matter. Every feature, setting, UI, element should fight to exist. At Nest, we had one rule: If you can’t explain why it matters, it doesn’t ship. You had to tell us the why. The reason a real person would care. That one rule killed dozens of features.

LINK NOOOOO!!!!!!

IT’S WILD THAT THE MOST EFFECTIVE WAY TO SAVE SOMETHING AS A PDF IS TO LIE TO YOUR COMPUTER THAT YOU’RE ABOUT TO PRINT IT 😭😭😭

We finally made it to perfect February. What a beautiful calendar

Curry instincts are crazy 😭

I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say this is one of humanity’s great athletic achievements. Alex is too humble to make that case but given the severity of failure and the pressure of the crowds, I think it’s up there. Congratulations @AlexHonnold!

Star Search returns tonight as a LIVE interactive show. You'll be able to use your remote to vote on who wins, with results impacting the show in real time. Can't wait for everyone to see what the team has built! Episode 1 goes live tonight at 6pm PT. netflix.com/tudum/articles…

The Japanese style of wrapping gifts

Fascinating slow-motion footage of what happens when a droplet falls into a pool of water, a phenomenon known as a coalescence cascade. 📽: Steven Trainoff

Proof our planet isn't flat

There’s an essay where a famous magician says the secret to magic is doing an inconceivable amount of work for a trick. So much work that it’s easier for audience to believe you are magic. I think this might be the key to doing anything great.

I asked ChatGPT to invent 10 new words and they were mostly lame but "nullcraft" is pretty good.

my favorite lynch moment isn’t a film scene but a memo to the projectionists for mulholland drive. caps lock type juxtaposed with a gentle tone, visual illustration for clarity, perfect use of red, and a very saucy signature as the cherry on top. graphic design masterclass