Quotes from Tobias Lutke

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.

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.

I'm a liberally minded immigrant, leading a predominantly liberal workforce hailing from predominantly liberal cities and countries.

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!

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

My early interactions with VCs were really, really poor.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

To me, a great company starts with a great product and ends with a great product.

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.