Courage Is the Rare Thing
Inspired by Tobi Lutke episode
Tobi Lutke hires for courage at Shopify because it's rarer than intelligence—same reason you need brave parents, not just smart ones.
Tobi Lutke built Shopify by hiring for courage. Intelligence is common. Problem-solving is learnable. But courage—willingness to make the hard call, to hold the line when everyone's pushing back—that's rare. You can't teach courage. You can only find it.
Parenting requires far more courage than intelligence. You know what you should do. Hold the boundary. Let them feel their feelings. Don't rescue them from every uncomfortable moment. But doing it when they're screaming in the cereal aisle? When your mother-in-law is watching? When it would be so much easier to just hand over the iPad? That takes courage.
You can read every parenting book ever written. Doesn't matter if you don't have the courage to actually implement it when your kid is losing it over a broken cracker at 5:47 PM on a Thursday. The hard calls don't get easier with more knowledge. You just need to get braver. Or you don't, and you spend the next three years negotiating with someone who still can't tie their shoes.
Courage is the rare thing. Intelligence is table stakes. Courage is the game.
