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" I care about working on interesting problems, and Shopify is this gift that keeps on giving for working on interesting problems with amazing people. "

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" 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. "

" We're trying to build the largest start-up ever without becoming a big company. "

" It's this concept of 'just fill up a building of smart people.' It sounds so basic, but honestly it might just be the secret behind Shopify's success. We just do that and get out of the way. "

" Shopify has been a perpetually underestimated company at every point of its history. "

" It's not a principle unless it costs you something. "

" You really want a company that's full of people from all these different backgrounds and then allow them to be creative as possible, come together, and come up with great ideas. "

" A lot of the best technologists live and work in Canada, and every once in a while, they are aggregated by a Canadian company, and then suddenly, they're not anymore. But the people are still here - they're just working for American companies to the benefit of American bottom lines. "

" 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. "

" A lot of people have a great business idea; they just need a little push to make it a reality. "

" One of the most important tasks as a leader in a startup is to pick the right metric to track. This is often referred to as the 'compass metric' because it will be your compass for growth. It's important to note that 'compass metrics' will likely change over the lifetime of a business. "

" Why do Canadians sell themselves short? I've never been able to answer that question. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" To kick off a merchant is to censor ideas and interfere with the free exchange of products at the core of commerce. When we kick off a merchant, we're asserting our own moral code as the superior one. But who gets to define that moral code? "

" 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. "

" Shopify was built as a company that could be run remotely anywhere. "

" 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. "

" Our hiring is almost completely built around just going through someone's life story, and we look for moments when they had to make important decisions, and we go deep on those. "

" All of us in Canada have to be better at making a dollar count, because we have fewer dollars. "

" I'm against exclusion of any kind - whether that's restricting people from Muslim-majority nations from entering the U.S. or kicking merchants off our platform if they're operating within the law. "

" E-commerce is not an industry; e-commerce is a tactic. "

" It is my strong belief that computer literacy should be part of our educational system's core curriculum. "

" I never went to university. "

" 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! "

" If you believe something needs to exist, if it's something you want to use yourself, don't let anyone ever stop you from doing it. "

" It took about 10 years' time for Shopify to be an overnight success. "

Overnight Success

" I find the strongest predictor of people who do well at Shopify is whether they see opportunity as something to compete for, or do they see opportunity as essentially everywhere and unlimited? It's a rough proxy for pessimism and optimism. "

" Computers add convenience to our everyday lives, but we are limited in what we can do with technology others have imagined. The ability for humans to teach machines entirely new things - coding - is nothing short of a superpower. "

" I always loved retail. I love the ideas behind it. I think small-business retail is one of the areas where capitalism works so wonderfully well. "

" 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. "