The Trust Battery

The concept of a trust battery comes from Tobi Lütke, the CEO of Shopify. It's one of the most useful mental models for understanding how trust actually works in a team.

Tobi Lütke introduced this concept in a 2016 interview. He described it as the way Shopify thinks about interpersonal dynamics at scale.

How the battery works

Every working relationship has a trust battery. When you first meet someone — a new hire, a new co-founder, a new board member — the battery starts at 50%. It's not empty, and it's not full. You're giving each other the benefit of the doubt.

From there, every interaction either charges or drains the battery. Kept a commitment? Charged. Missed a deadline without communicating? Drained. Gave honest feedback in a tough moment? Charged. Talked about someone behind their back? Drained.

The critical insight is that the battery charges slowly and drains fast. It takes many positive interactions to move the needle up, but a single significant betrayal can drain it to near zero.

Why this matters for founders

As a founder, you have a trust battery with every person on your team. And they have one with each other. When you feel that nagging sense that something is off with a relationship — that you're watching someone's work more closely, that you're hesitant to give them a stretch assignment — you're sensing a low battery.

Many founders describe this as "a gut feeling" that something is wrong. The trust battery gives that feeling a name and a framework.

The power of naming it is that you can now talk about it directly. Instead of vague dissatisfaction, you can say: "I think the trust battery between us is around 30%. Here's what I think drained it. What would it take to recharge?"

Diagnosing your team

Map out your direct reports. For each one, estimate where the trust battery sits today. Then ask yourself:

• What charged it? Specific moments where they came through.
• What drained it? Specific moments where trust was damaged.
• What would recharge it? What would they need to do — and what would you need to do?

This isn't about performance reviews or competence. A brilliant engineer can have a drained trust battery if they consistently commit to timelines they can't hit. A less experienced team member can have a fully charged battery if they communicate openly and follow through on every commitment.

The hardest part

The hardest part of the trust battery framework is accepting that some batteries can't be recharged. If the battery between you and a key team member is at 10% and has been for months, no amount of one-on-ones will fix it. The honest move may be to part ways — not because of performance, but because the foundation of the relationship is gone.

That's not failure. That's clarity.