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" My early interactions with VCs were really, really poor. "

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" Commerce is a powerful, underestimated form of expression. We use it to cast a vote with every product we buy. It's a direct expression of democracy. This is why our mission at Shopify is to protect that form of expression and make it better for everyone, not just for those we agree with. "

" We are at our best when we are at our proudest. Canadians need to harness that confidence in every arena, not just the ice rink. The Maple Leaf stands for quality, thoughtfulness, and innovation, so let's brand it proudly on the things that we've invented, created, and figured out. "

" Change has to be fundamental to a company's culture, or there is no way it can survive. "

" Sometimes, when you're building a company, out of necessity there's just a gazillion things you have to learn and figure out. "

" 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. "

" I have serious, serious problems with personas - with unauthentic individuals. "

" If you go into business school and suggest firing a customer, they'll kick you out of the building. But it's so true in my experience. It allows you to identify the customers you really want to work with. "

" 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. "

" Once you've made peace with the fact that you're hardly ever going to work on anything that you're actually good at, the only thing that you can do is get good very fast on everything you have to do. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" No one benefits from us not taking credit for our successes. There is no virtue in allowing kudos to go unclaimed or elsewhere. "

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

" 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. "

" More and more people are opening online stores and online retail businesses. This market is expanding very, very quickly. "

" 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. "

" 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 got my first computer when I was 6, and I was part of that early generation of children who grew up with computers always being around. I fell in love with them early on. "

" People say Facebook connects the world. Facebook has 5,000 Ph.D.s that think about how to make you click on ads you don't want to see. Their business model is about something that most people would not perceive as making the world better. "

" 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. "

" I never went to university. "

" Products are a form of speech, and free speech must be fiercely protected, even if we disagree with some of the voices. "

" Everyone loves feeling comfortable. But it's actually completely useless. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Different people need different kinds of communication for it to have the same effect. That was something I had to learn. "

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

Overnight Success

" 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? "

" Being part of something that's growing fast is better than being part of something that isn't growing fast because opportunities are essentially everywhere, and you're not competing for something. "