I never went to university.
I'm always trying to think of ways to make something more efficient. If I have to do something once, that's fine. If I have to do it twice, I'm kind of annoyed. And if I have to do it three times, I'm going to try to automate it.
At Shopify, we are trying to make things as simple as possible, but for the business owner, it's not unlike starting your own little shop along Main Street somewhere.
I have serious, serious problems with personas - with unauthentic individuals.
It's not a principle unless it costs you something.
Shopify has been a perpetually underestimated company at every point of its history.
You have to put more of a well-rounded company together to make it in Canada, and I hope the Canadian market is going to be known for these well-performing, solid companies that people can rely on.
Being a start-up has nothing to do with the numbers. It's that everyone who works there has the chance to do everything and have an impact.
Growing up, I spent my time doing useless stuff looking at computers.
Why do Canadians sell themselves short? I've never been able to answer that question.
What could be more Canadian than working hard to figure out something new and sharing it with the world? The world wants to hear from us!
Every phase of building a company is really hard.
We need a lot more technically literate people. The computers are the tools that are going to solve essentially all problems, and the people who can use them better will be more effective.
A lot of people have a great business idea; they just need a little push to make it a reality.
It is incredibly powerful if you solve the problem you actually have yourself. It's really tough to develop a good product when you don't have very close proximity to the people who actually use your product. The closest proximity you can have to those people is to be that person.
I got my first computer at the age of 6. To me, it was magic. By the time I was 12, I wanted to know the secrets behind the wizardry, and that started my journey toward computer programming. This was the early 1990s, when computers weren't built for the mass market.
Computers are the most powerful tools that humanity has ever created. Yet, we treat them largely as a black box; as if it were an alien artifact that magically appeared on desks, in homes, and in our pockets.
In my worldview, time is energy that you can invest in things, and money is energy that you can invest. Time has significantly more leverage than money in terms of how much energy you get out of time.
We have a lot of really great companies in Canada, and I think there's always been this fear that 'great' in Canada doesn't mean great on a world stage. We need more self-confidence. We are building incredibly good businesses with incredibly good people, being loyal, dedicating themselves to solving important problems.
I am a worrier. I tend to do something about what I worry about.
