Tobi Lutke on why you want rivals for your company

February 04, 2026

“If you compete with another company, there’s a lot of copying,” Shopify founder Tobi Lutke begins. “Companies tend to get obsessed — there are companies where the most active channel in their slack is the competitive analysis channel, where people just share everything everyone else is doing. While that has some merit, I think the problem is that makes companies very reactionary.”

Tobi explains:

“In the arts, part of everyone’s art studies is copying the great pieces. You make copies of great works. But your painting will never be at the quality of a Van Gogh if you just copy it. Mimicry is actually not an excellent way for getting to excellence, and companies end up falling very much into this.”

He contrasts this with treating your competitors as rivals:

“If you treat other companies in your space as rivals, it’s much easier to have a positive-sum outcome there because rivalries inspire you to be your best.”

He draws some examples from the sports world:

“[Andre] Agassi could not have been Agassi without [Pete] Sampras being there, and he very clearly states this in his book . . . The rivalry [Agassi] created for himself created him in a very real way. In The Last Dance, Michael Jordan admits that he might’ve made up a slight at some point, which to me is one of the most profound moments.”