Tobias Lutke

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

“I spent my time, growing up, essentially between two things: technology and retail. I was fascinated by selling and loved the idea of making a profit, but I also spent a lot of time on technology.”

“Every phase of building a company is really hard.”

“Our mantra has been, 'We will not buy a company unless we think the people that make up the company have a better job the day after the acquisition than before.'”

“I have serious, serious problems with personas - with unauthentic individuals.”

“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.”

“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.”

“My early interactions with VCs were really, really poor.”

“When the market turns down, a lot of people lose jobs... and that's the time people become entrepreneurs. Downturns end up being the best times to start companies.”

“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's not a principle unless it costs you something.”

“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.”

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

“I'm ridiculously lucky.”

“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.”

“Given the success rate, if you want to get wealthy, entrepreneurship is a horrible way of doing it. There are significantly easier ways of doing it.”

“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.”

“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.”

“We are reluctant to do these bigger acquisitions that are then integrated, especially if they are committed to a certain product that they want to build that we can't guarantee we will keep evolving.”

“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.”