Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke: ‘Some specific instances of short sellers’ not productive

up until recently, Shopify has been a high flyer on the public markets. its stok has risen more than three hundred and fifty percent in the past three years. but the Canadian e-commerce player has been under pressure after a disappointing quarter and months of attacks from the short seller. citron research CEO Toby Luque sat down with BN n Bloomberg's Amanda Lange to explain why he's able to shrug that off sometimes once we get it really right, and sometimes it gets it wrong. that's what creates opportunity. this is what we generally recommend people to invest in the stok market because there's potential tears to be had. but I don't manage it. I've like I have no direct relationship to it and so some of mechanisms that exists of moving valued the value of a stok up and down have to have related to a short selling and I think that's actually a really positive thing because I think you need you need that on both sides. otherwise this sort of ideal of what Wall Street is supposed to do, which is, over time average value of a stok, too hard to no real market value of a company, is really hard to do without the shorts tank side. but there are some specific instances of short sellers which are- I wouldn't necessarily include in this very productive piece of the short selling. but when you look at your growth, you have so far grown by adding merchants at a really fast clip. how much of your future growth comes from adding services to those that existing base? it's good. it's going to be a mix- and I think it's been a mix already and in the past- like an initially Shopify was purely a subscription company. then we build Shopify payments, you know, then with the Shopify shipping and there's going to be plenty more of these kind of things. what we did never built products because of air. we have new potential. we- we build products because of them- were moving friction and like friction is such a small term it doesn't sound like much everyone toks about it, but it really is the only thing between maybe 10- 20 % of people in the world wanting to own their own business and and and and them doing it. it's like here's something that's, in a way, and that's enough to run out the momentum that people had when trying and therefore some distance is never gonna be created. so this is something that I had a personal experience with and I wanted to solve. so now, when you sign up again for one of us- $29 a month Shopify plans. you're going to get a full payment system with it and you can accept credit cards from around the world and everything is already set up for you. you started this business here in Canada, and what's your advice to other entrepreneurs who want to grow the way Shopify group? yeah, so I did. I started the business here in Canada and I've always, you know, I've been. I fell in love with Canada right after I arrived. I thought I thought it was coming from Europe. this is such a place where people are smart and hardworking and for an especially visit of power of. I wonder honestly how many people understand how unique this, this experiment that Canada has been running for the last 4050 years in multikulturalism, how unique that actually is the wall idea about not just simply assimilating people but rather actually embracing them the way they are and celebrating their different stories, and so I think people studying business in Canada already have a leg up, because the word is global. Internet is global and I think you know many ways makes Canadian sort of cultural norms and cultural values significantly more progressive and therefore like significantly more in keeping of how you have to put in a global internet company, then building it in many of as a from other cultures, and so my advice is: one gauntlet that everyone has to run then during a company in Canada is that where it is lagging a little bit in in role models of companies to be like, and so that is. that is false. that's a false narrative. it's a there's a really good reason so how this happened. there's like wonderful books written on each of the various failures that are sort of people tend to point to, but they all happen for internal reasons, are not systemic and reasons, and so I I was very Pro. Canada had lots of opportunities to move my company, but I always was what really wanted to try this experiment, because I think great companies are created when there's a regional consensus that there's. the smart people should congregate in one place and spend a part of their career together and then did something meaningful, and we have tried this in Canada and I found it works really well, and I think the thing you're seeing is there's a lot of interest in Google Earth now and building offices in Canada or even relocating our companies to Canada. for these reasons, it is a brilliant place to build companies, and I think this is just generally better understood now and I think you'll see a lot more of it. and in fact, you just moved your unites conference, which is a hugely well attended conference, back to Canada permanently. yes, it made me wonder whether we're at a new place of maturation in this country. I think so. so it's. unfortunately, this is sort of again little cultural inside it's like. it is very like almost as an immigrant and as someone coming outside of his culture. it is I. I spent a lot of my days running around shopping for offices and telling everyone: hey, you guys at work, last, what you do if it bears no inferiority to any other culture, especially my neighbors, right and so, but sometimes it just. we started a conference and we said, well, we're part of a tik industry. okay, where do you go? the Fed? oh yeah, let's to it. put it to San Francisco, because that's the text from right, let's. and we kind of didn't really think about it. and so we headed in San Francisco twice and then, funnily enough, on the last one we did, we had a massive power outage and so- which is ironic, if you will like- this is the place where all the tiknology comes from, and there's no electrons in the sockets, you know like. so we, we can take a hint and we said, okay, let's look around, baby should be. and we realized again, this is the other community where people travel from all over would, and I, I think we are better, like it is better to hitch a wagon to a city that puts multikulturalism on its banner and tiknology, and so I think it's a fantastik fit for us. well, let me just finish them by asking you: this is a company that evolves all the time. what does Shopify ten years from now look like? looking for future living statements. I think the shop evolved. ten. ten years from now, it's going to be, I think, yet again, a more self-confident company. I think it has more of its strengths and it has a few of its weaknesses. it will spend the war globe and I hope that it's going to be an institution where people can point to and say because this company exists, there is significantly more entrepreneurship. that is leads to successful businesses and leads to people putting their own voices and their own ideas and heritage and craftsmanship back into the global economy and leads to more success, and I think those are really really, really good externalities and I think those are the things that excite us, and so we are going to work the ni2 book on nerdy little details of our tiknology products to just make it remove one tiny little bit of friction so that the person who's trying to put their voice out there is not going to stumble and actually succeeds. at this point we have someone on the platform has their first sale about once every minute and in many cases this is the kind of event that happens and makes you an entrepreneur and it's a kind of event that happens which you will remember for the rest of your life and that motivates us and that doesn't motivate us. in 10 years and we hope be gonna get much, much, much, much better at enabling these kind of things. Shopify CEO Toby Lukey in conversation with Amanda Lange, who joins us with: more big growth brings big expectations, yeah, as we saw in the recent quarter, and that's a something else t.

Legacy 2017: Tobi Lütke and Josh Constine Speaker Part 1

all right now. we've had Josh Joshua's up here a minute ago speaking him. he gets the very distinct honor of sitting down with somebody that I believe is a is an unsung hero in the tiknology industry in the City of Ottawa it is. he is the CEO of a ten-year-old startup. Shopify has been around for 10 freaking years and it's finally getting the just deserves desserts. that that it that it actually it's meant to have. this is a company that, for all intents and purposes, was was nothing until it started to explode. it's a combination of timing and perseverance and and an absolute tiknology expertise in savviness. this, this company, is put Ottawa back on the map. when I was growing up in the tiknology community, there was a company called Nortel that when people would say, well, I would, I would say like I'm in the valley, and I'd say I was from Ottawa, and people would look at me the same way that they look at a crazy person: where the hell is Ottawa? otherwise? nowhere. if you're not in Silicon Valley, you're nowhere, and I would just simply say, well, the best way I can describe this is I would pick up any phone and on the bottom of that phone it said Nortel and I said: this phone. this is North, though. this is Ottawa. this was built in Ottawa, this is a company from Ottawa. and then then Nortel disappeared, so he, it was a void for Ottawa. and then what is so amazing is that in this city, in Ottawa, Shopify emerged. Shopify and tobi emerged as, as hope for the new generation of entrepreneurs, and not only that, to rekindle the brand of Ottawa someplace that can be innovative. and, to his credit, he's had many chances to move this company, to move himself, to get out of Ottawa, and he stood firm to the roots in the city. he is here, he's an Ottawa guy, he came to Ottawa, he loves this city. the tiknology and the company is pretty amazing and I think that I would like to introduce Josh, to come up and introduce Toby. so please, well-deserved, give these guys a warm recognition because their Ottawa come on. [Applause]. [Music]. hey, everyone thanks so much for having us. this is really really great. [Music]. hey, Josh, how did that email sending go? oh, good, so I guess I sit in this fuzzy chair. no, let's, let's see how they can. very far apart. yeah, yeah, I come around. let's, let's get close. let's buddy up. all right, good, yeah, there we go, cool, great. so earlier today I had toked a little bit about turning your passion into your profession. I'd love if you could just give us the story of how you turn your passion into Shopify. yeah, I love that topic. it's like this is: this is my you know chief. I never toked with like, yeah, people who want to go into entrepreneurship, and pretty early in this process, this is the thing it comes down to. it's like I think like success comes from somehow figuring out what your unfair advantages are and and then some building something around that. so my story is that I came to, I moved to Ottawa 15 years ago completely by random. my now wife is from otherwise, she was studying here and because I didn't have- like I'm from Germany originally, I didn't have, I didn't have a permit at the time, so I couldn't actually join anyone else company, which I only found out after I got job offers and sort of like an aha moment, like start was trying to understand globalization, you know right, right from get a front seat to this. and so I started my own company, just sort of selling snowboards, right, like that's best video, like I was snowboarding all day. and I'm a computer programmer. I apprentiked as a computer programmer for Siemens, which is you know a company, and so I figured out: hey, if I combine those two things, I can snow about all day and make money at the same time, which then I can buy more snow boats, which is sound amazing. so I built this business software, the soft like. throughout the process, I realized no one has ever built like good software for for helping people start online businesses. like Adam start a retail business online. everyone built things that could convert multiple multi-million dollar businesses online. that became Shopify and that's the company now. so you basically looked out there and said this is something that people really need, yet, surprisingly, nobody has already built this. it seems kind of crazy. I think most people would have assumed even back then that like, oh, of course businesses want to sell online. someone's built this tool already. I count. what was that realisation like when you saw, like wait a second, there's nothing here. a complete exasperation, honestly, because when I started I looked at every piece of software and I signed up for every single one of them and I I wanted to use them too, because I didn't want to code right like I want to snowboard. it wasn't my idea that I'm going to use the tiknologies, so much. and so you know, at some point I just threw it all out and just started, like a friend of mine from Europe- David Hyneman, Henson's and me, like told me: hey, I've been working with Ruby and I built this framework called Reuben rails. do you have anything you want to build with that? it would be cool to get more people to try it. and I said, all right, let's start building an online store. and I- that's sort of a story behind it. if I would have found good software in 2004, I would have never been Shopify, because I just built a software eventually which I wished I would have found myself. well, thank you, Amazon, for screwing up with Canada. thanks you, for sure. so when we tok about startups, a lot of times we tok about the, the money, the revenue, the product, even the founders and, like the founders, history. but one of the questions that I think is too infrequently asked is: why, as in, why did you want to make this your legacy? why did you want to put your entire life into this company? I honestly did. you did? I wanna snowboard and like I liked. I liked this was the worst thing ever. by way, i never snowboarded again. it was too much work, right? so that's totally didn't. your co-founder, harley, just sent me a photo of him snowboarding right now, so apparently somebody's getting speak on stage, the. so no, it was like, okay, I know, but still make some money. found some thing that like, clearly everyone overlooked right and and so I'm like, okay, well, I can, I can solve this, build the software, realized, hey, I can, I can do this completely by myself. needed some people, hired some people. at some point, you know, we almost ran out of money, so I figured out how to get more money from other people so it wouldn't. and then I eventually figured out how to make it, get it to make enough money so I wouldn't have constantly ask people for money, which was also great, by the way, with a lot of people in circuit I don't seem to be able to figure out, so I'm pretty proud of that. Silicon Valley is great at spending money. yeah, yeah, yeah. so being profitable feels pretty good to be profitable in 2017. stolen track. yeah, I mean III liked it a lot back then. we were profitable and I promise to be back. you know, did I wanted to build the world's best 25 people company. that was my goal. I thought that was all it needed and at some point I realized this has to be a growth company. and then, but looking a little bit more philosophically, you know at any point you could have sold this business and already been a success, but there's got to be some reason inside of you that says you wanted to keep doing this, that you wanted to make this your legacy. why, yeah? so I, honestly, I, what I love. so what I love the most about like first of all, I really care about the thing when I'm solving right again, III really really like like the idea of retail. I always saw it stuff to my classmates, you know, like it's just I love like, I'm actually perfectly like, I'm head wearing capitalist, so to speak. right, so I'm cool of that. I love tiknology, so like, the company like, like, nourishes me in this way that you know I- I helped create like this, almost 400,000 businesses out there that use, use myself for everyday. that's powerful, right, like, please. this is probably a couple million people have jobs because shop affects us s.

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Founder of Shopify's Humble Beginnings

how's everyone doing awesome? well, we're happy to be here and happy to see all of you. thanks for coming. Toby, you've founded a remarkable company and, if I'm not mistaken, it's valued at about fifteen billion dollars and, as I understand, it also has pretty humble origins. that you began by trying to start a snowboarding business and somehow ended up starting Shopify. could you just take us through that? by the way, I was driven here today by a guy who uses Shopify. yes, he's got a new business. he's selling a product that's supposed to help athletes recover faster. so we had all kinds of good things to say about Java. that's awesome. so tell us, just tell us- a little bit about how it all happened. how did you start with a small idea that became a really big company? yeah, it's a. it's a story of taking one step at a time. so it's true in avis. first, in 2004, I did. I just moved to Canada and I was spending my- you know the winters. I'm from Germany. winters are a lot longer than I used to, from Germany, it turns out- surprised to no one in North America, but news to me- and so I ended up spending a lot of time snowboarding. I needed something to do I did not yet have a work permit, so I I try to get a job. but then people told me: but then you do not actually need it, open it for this. and luckily someone find out at some point to me that you don't actually need a VOC permit to start your own business because you're not tiknically working until it's working and probably presuming that it would go nowhere anyways. and I couldn't understand that. what was it? I think the person was presuming that my business wouldn't go anywhere and therefore I would never have to register it and therefore it would be perfectly legal. so I ended up, combining my background as a computer programmer and my tiknical abilities with the snowboards, I built an online store called snow devil, so the good deal of snow bots in. in the wonderful environment of 2004, I was the only person advertising on the names of all the ski resorts on Google. I think I paid 20 cents per click. it was wonderful and but the interesting story was I tried to build the business using existing software. that peppers are essentially impossible given what I wanted to do, and I ended up building the software along the way and, after successful season, we ended up realizing that we would either in. you know, people stopped buying snowboards in bessemer, it turns out. so the IVA needed to sell skateboards. but at this point a few people asked me if I could license the software. I wrote, and so the idea for Shopify really came from that people. people wanted the software and spend about another two years working on it and then started selling it as Shopify. and specifically, what about? the software was unique. why did you have to develop your own software and why did people want to use it? yeah, so it turns out this was unclear to me in the beginning, but then I found figure, figure it out later. it is true that there was software like there was. I mean, there was multiple systems that your shopping cart software, but all of them were built for existing businesses that wanted to also sell online, because that was the word right. like everyone needed an online strategy and Riley 2000. there wasn't anyone who built software that was specifically to support people who start new businesses online, and which is a very different challenge. suddenly, things like: how difficult is it really? really matter, because these are not veterans of a retail industry attempting these kind of things? I should, I certainly wasn't. it was people who use the lunch breaks to make a reach for independence. this were people of who- and I think this is a large group of people in the world, for who often the kindergarten to school, to college, to corporate job thing is is not the right way to go over- would at least attempt to build something themselves and engage in this wonderful thing of entrepreneurship. and so I needed to build Shopify for those reasons. there was also a couple of other reasons. one is: this was really but dawn of what was called web to all, which we sort of make fun of now, but that to all was really the tiknology industry raising its hand and saying: we figured out how to make. in terms of them, we didn't figure it out in the 90s, we pretended we did, but we didn't actually do it. now we know how to make Internet software and the beginning of software service, which means that you can actually sign yourself up for software and you don't have to tok to salespeople and negotiate and get an install. it's just sort of self-serve. so all these things came together and really required me to like: let's, let's, let's you utilize these ideas, build software that's very approachable but specifically helps entrepreneurs have an experience very similar to my snowball, snow devil story and the business around that. that's exactly the situation that my limo driver was in. I mean here. I mean he's really driving a limo every morning and early in the morning. he gets home at about 10 or 11 o'clock and he starts working on his business. and he's got a good business, he's got a good product. I love that- and he's had some professional athletik teams buy his product. he's doing well there and now his next step is to go to general consumers and that's what he's using Shopify for. but that's his situation. amazing story, right, amazing story. and so here's the here's a crazy stat about Shopify. so they have about 600,000 businesses that use Shopify. every 60 seconds someone gets their first sale. Wow, so every 60 seconds someone is like but the person you met and they go from an experience of building something to being a like an entrepreneur because someone else validated that this thing that they built needed to exist. this is such a profound experience. I I can tell you this was back in 2004 when I opened my laptop in a coffee shop, but I always went to do to do my work and there was an email waiting for me from snow devil saying that someone from Pennsylvania or that snowboard and it's funny because I'm I wrote the software. I actually wrote that email at some point- it should be citrus office sent to me, yeah, but it was still profound. and it was profound because I everything about this day and I felt so in love with this concept that I- just I- I somehow felt like someone gave me this gift of insight into how powerful the potential is of this and now I need to dedicate my life to like developing this and then sharing it with other people. you're really like the Johnny Appleseed of entrepreneurship. you're making it possible for small people who are not in a business to start a business and do it online, and I think it's important that I wish a lot more people to it. right, because here's the interesting story about, like, let's zoom out on entrepreneurship for a moment. this should be very relevant to his contrast. the narrative I think we've all seen is entrepreneurship is two people have a laptop in a coffee store or in a garage. it's usually guys right, building some next billion-dollar tik startup, some app, whatever, right? this is sort of the enforced vision of entrepreneurship. now that's a very, very, very small group of people who can have any shot at doing that. only people who kind of reasonable to me middle-class kid- spend way too much time of computers growing up, how to program them, yeah, and have essentially it looks. I mean, I essentially skipped my childhood to learn programming right and that I was totally cool there. it was most interesting thing that happened. but it's not generally something that most people do right for big, for very good reasons, and so so what we actually have done is we made entrepreneurship much cheaper for almost no people ago- very few people- and the effect of that is profound because entrepreneurship worldwide is in decline. there's a lot fewer companies are being started now than 10 years ago and 10 years before. that it's the lowest it's ever been. success rates are also not doing great, and so it's interesting because if you listen to p,

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Tobi Lutke, Founder &CEO of Shopify | Core Summit 2019

My distinct honor to introduce our next fireside chat. We'd underscore- have been investors in commerce for a long time, And so it's a real privilege to have one of the best entrepreneurs and thought leaders in the commerce space with us today, Toby Luka, and he will be joined by his own board member and a very well known business builder and entrepreneur here in Boston, Gail Goodman. Gail is the bragged that you a little bit longer, sorry. Gail is the co-founder and Chief Product officer of pepper lane, which is a community and a platform that helps enable a new form of entrepreneurship for moms. She spent 16 years as CEO of constant contact And she's also been one of the very original members of the community. She is a tik visionary, She's a great operator and it is no surprise that she is sought out as a board member, And so she serves on the board of Shopify, but also low income entrepreneurship for all, as well as mass challenge. Toby, co-founder and CEO of Shopify, a multi-channel international e-commerce platform. I think Shopify doesn't need too much introduction. I would. I would bet that everyone in this room has either purchased or at least touched the Shopify software is now being used by over 800,000 businesses across 175 countries. But I think what's most interesting to me is that Toby's it is a developer in his core. He was part of the core team that worked on the Ruby on Rails framework and he's that continues to contribute to open source libraries along the way. Yeah, from what I've heard, he even sort of was building the initial code for Shopify, sitting in coffee shops in Ottawa because he wanted to sell snowboards online. and at one point you face an important decision: should I sell snowboards or software? And the entire e-commerce industry is very excited that you decided to sell software. So please join me in welcoming Gail and Toby to the stage. Hello everyone, Woo hoo. Well, just to get us started, We'll throw a bunch of questions your way. But, Toby, legend has it that you were a little bit of a reluctant CO, which is not that common actually. So what made you decide to take on the role? So, initially I didn't. Well, I was a CTO on snowboard business. So I got roped into this whole thing And I- the my co-founder, focused on what business as, after it, benefits, What's not quite a pivot- at some point decided that this wasn't the right thing for him itself anymore And I tried to say So. I inherited this seat, the CEO mantle, which had been really tried to get rid of by finding someone to who would actually want to do this, because I just really liked tiknology. So I've actually been probably trying to become CTO of Shopify for the last 10 years, unsuccessfully, and maybe output of at some point, But it was not. if the board has any that. So I think, well, this is a very healthy mindset, Like I would love to find someone who cares as much about Shopify as I do. I would love to find someone who has a clear commitment to figuring out what the future of commerce could hold for industry And this excited about steering the company to QuickBooks software for it at some point. But it's going to be someone who is more qualified for the job and I'm going to be perfectly happy to head that over at this point And I'm sure the board Tell me that the time comes. So I heard one of your staff tell me that your superpower is knowing when and how to stretch your leaders So they grow. So what? What is that superpower? What are you looking for? How do you know it's the right moment to grow your team? I think that staff members are incredibly kind. I think I don't think there's any superpower, I just apply it like I got. I mean, All of us here like and venomous. why are we doing this thing? because it's exciting, right, It's exciting to go on a journey that's exciting. The best thing, and a good, honestly, is go on a journey surrounded by friends, ideally accomplishing difficult things, right? I actually think once you realize that a really good life lived revolves around being ideally for the entire time on some kind of journey, surrounded by friends, doing difficult things, That's when you back into entrepreneurship Being a really good idea. So then, when I was thinking about this initial business setting it especially around the time that we've thought about should be- do not ever actually know what's going to Shopify- that the chance of success was super low, Right, but that kind of didn't matter because- and I remember seeing this back when we said it's probably not going to work, But we will learn a lot, right, because it's going to be difficult. It's like, sort of in a video game way, This is like an end boss which see, if you do it, If not, try it again, Do something else. You know the central approach. And so I am on this journey And it's gone so much further than I ever could have imagined. And the reason why I'm so excited about it, Why it's so much fun, is because I constantly learn new things And I hold everyone else to this as well, Like around me. because I think people have so many misconceptions around how far you can get in your career. People think that speed limits to how quickly you can advance- which you know it comes from, I think, education system there- And say, OK, this year you learn that and everyone learns at the same pace and you know in reality it's incredible what you can accomplish if everyone just sort of holds itself to this idea of let's become the best version of ourselves. And so when I watch what I do do, do as I see, and people sort of start becoming really comfortable around where they are and maybe it sort of feels like they veered beyond this past moving train and they're somehow looking to get out of the next station. And then I just want to let them, Because, even though that seems appealing, they don't want to be like the people who actually got off the platforms and left. they regretted after a while, And so I think that it's perfectly OK to take a breather, It's perfectly OK to slow down for a little bit. It's you have to on these journeys. sometimes they turn around and extend a hand to the people who might not match it over the partikular, the toll the rest of the team has cleared, But over time, just remind them why this journey is so exciting and have them invest and to fail. And so let's tok about your own journey for a moment. What do you do to develop your craft as a CEO? We'll tok about your code in a minute. and how has your like, has that changed over time? Do you do different things now than you did at the beginning, when you were first as CEO? Oh, yeah, Yeah, I feel like I have a completely new job every year And I always look in horror at what kinds of things I did a year ago, because so how did it develop? I mean, I mean sort of practikally, after I got this royal, I got to say I mean I just realized I have no idea how to be a CEO or how to Business was a black box to me. It's like this was. I was 24 and actually more like 26, and then specialized tik and like I I was, I dedicated my life to this point to become as good at programming as I possibly could, And I still tiknology, But it's literally anything I was had any business doing. And so I was like, OK, about to figure this out, like what do I do? And I ended up reading some books which I chanced on, really good books as a first books to read that had, and just took it from there. I mean eventually the good news for me most, that I think people generally underestimate how much the role of a CEO is actually an engineering challenge, because it's in so many of the problems are going to be solved by building systems and often changing an environment in such a way that people frankly do both kinds of things that they ought to be doing. And so systems design, architecture, a large system understanding, they all kind of part of building a good tiknology system as well. And so there was, I found, some angle which I found some familiarity in the new job, And then from there I kind of

Shopify Inc. (Stock: SHOP) CEO Tobi Lütke on Q1 2021 Results

thank you for standing by. this is the conference operator. welcome to the shopify first quarter 2021 financial results conference call. as a reminder, all partikipants are in listen only mode and the conference is being recorded. after the presentation there will be an opportunity to ask questions. to join the question queue, you may press star, then one on your telephone keypad. should you need assistance during the conference call, you may signal an operator by pressing star and zero. i would now like to turn the conference over to katie cada, director of investor relations. please go ahead. thank you, operator, and good morning everyone. we are glad you can join us for shopify's first quarter 2021 conference call. we are joined this morning by toby lutka, shopify's ceo, harley finkelstein, shopify's president, and amy shapiro, our cfo. after their prepared remarks, we will open it up for your questions. we will make forward-looking statements on our call today that are based on assumptions and therefore subject to risks and uncertainties that can cause actual results that differ materially from those projected. we undertake no obligation to update these statements, except as required by law. you can read about these assumptions, risks and uncertainties in our press release this morning, as well as in our filings with us and canadian regulators. note that the adjusted financial measures we speak to today are non-gaap measures, which are not a substitute for gaap financial measures. reconciliations between the two can be found in our earnings press release. and, finally, we report in us dollars, so all amounts discussed today are in us dollars, unless otherwise indicated. with that, i turned the call over to harley. thanks, katie, and good morning. it's been more than a year since the global pandemic began, which triggered e-commerce to grow at a rate that has transformed the traditional retail model. shopify's continued focus on bringing the best tools to our merchants to help them thrive in this environment drove our strong performance in the first quarter. our gmv growth accelerated year over year as merchants across cohorts and geographies thrive on our platform, backed by robust consumer spending, and more entrepreneurs launch businesses on shopify, trusting us with their livelihoods. as they turn their ideas into reality, we continue to reduce friction from our merchants so they can find new buyers, build strong customer relationships and more easily manage the increasing complexity of their back office operations as they scale. discovering new buyers is a top pinpoint for businesses. multi-channel selling, which is one of our core value propositions, is becoming more critikal as the cost of customer acquisition climbs and the lines blur between online and offline commerce. our sales and marketing channels help merchants to show up where future buyers are spending time. we are ushering in a new era of social commerce and helping more brands and consumers engage in the digital main street. the number of shops actively selling on facebook shops has more than quadrupled since q1 a year ago, as well as the gmv through facebook. while still small, the launch of facebook shops in may of last year is clearly starting to make a difference here. in q1, we expanded our marketing partnership with tiktok internationally to an additional 14 countries in north america, emea and apac. so far, we've seen good traction in the adoption of tiktok in the us since we launched the integration last october, and we recently expanded our pinterest channel into 27 additional markets, opening discoverability and sales opportunities worldwide. more merchants are leveraging the value of shopify point of sale, a true omni-channel solution, as the number of locations using our point-of-sale pro increase substantially. over the first three months of this year, businesses new to shopify as well as existing merchants started using shopify point of sale, enabling them to expand their buyers universe, seamlessly bridge their online- offline operations and make shopping more convenient for their buyers with features like curbside pickup, which is offered through our point of sale pro product driving. targeted discovery and rediscovery is key for merchants trying to grow their business. shop, our online shopping assistant, offers both these benefits. we found that a mobile reorder is 11 more likely when orders are tracked in shop. this may be helped by the fact that the average buyer status checks their order in the app multiple times, vastly expanding the number of touch points for brands to connect with their customers. and we've increased potential touch points even further by adding discovery filters for local shops, black owned businesses, asian-owned businesses, women-owned businesses in march and, most recently, over earth week, merchants practiking and promoting sustainable commerce. shop is one example of how we are removing the friction from commerce and helping merchants build relationships with their customers directly. in q1, we introduced in-app buy buttons, so buyers don't have to leave the app to purchase the products that are recommended to them. along with our accelerated wallet shop pay, our buy now, pay later, product shop installments and end-to-end order tracking, these features help merchants increase the lifetime value of their customers. our efforts to make commerce better extend beyond our merchant stores to services outside of shopify, such as the integration of shop pay as a checkout option with merchant selling on facebook shops and instagram checkout. merchants in the us are in the early stages of onboarding to this feature and buyers have already started to use shop pay on facebook and instagram to check out. in q1, shop had more than 107 million registered users, including both buyers that have opted in to shop pay as well as users of the app, of which more than 24 million were monthly active users. at the end of march, shoppay had facilitated over 24 billion dollars in cumulative gmv since its launch in 2017.. ahead of general availability in the coming months, merchant's adoption of shop installments accelerated with the roll out of one click onboarding. in q1, we give entrepreneurs the resources traditionally reserved for big business. shopify scale enables us to negotiate on behalf of our smaller merchants as we do shopify shipping. since it's launched five years ago, shopify shipping has really come into its own for self-shippers, with over half our eligible merchants in the us and canada now using it. revenue growth from shopify shipping accelerated in the first quarter, with label volume at nearly the same level as in q4. we are excited to bring shopify shipping to other parts of the world for merchants who aren't yet big enough to need to outsource fulfillment. for those who are, we are building the shopify film network. some merchants with greater volumes can trust their fulfillments will be handled the same care as if they were doing it themselves. while this building process is not fast or easy, we are making good progress. more merchants join our fulfillment network. in q1 and we fulfilled similar volumes as in q4, while maintaining the same high service levels. we are happy with this result, given the strong holiday shopping period that drove fulfillment to record levels last quarter. once merchants start making sales, capital is a natural follow-on to continue their momentum. shopify is creating better and faster access to capital through shops, like capital, which has been a lifeline to our merchants during the pandemic and continues to be an important source of accessible funding. in our first quarter of 2021, we funded over 300 million dollars to our merchants, up 90 year-over-year, and we are seeing larger merchants take on larger advances. this record level of funding brought us to an incredible two billion dollars in cumulative capital funded since the launch of shopify capital in 2016.. it took four years to fund the first billion and just a quarter of that time t.

Unite 2018: CEO Tobi Lutke and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau Fireside Chat

- [Presenter]. Please welcome Shopify CEO Tobi Lutke, the Right Honorable Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada and best-selling author, TV host and entrepreneur Amber Mac. (audience applauding). (calm electronic music). - All right, good afternoon everyone. - Good afternoon everyone. - Hello everyone. (audience cheering). Can I just say for a second that I had this moment where I'm thinking of sitting here up stage with Tobi and I have the reflection- anyone out there who ever said snowboarders can't amount to anything. Tobi and I get to be the counter-example on that. (audience applauding). - All right. so, Prime Minister, we're going to start with you with our first question. I have quite a few here. we'll try to get to as many as possible. The first question is about a report that came out in the Globe and Mail last week that toked about the brain drain that we're experiencing in Canada. They toked about it in the context that we're seeing a brain drain now that we haven't seen in two decades. But it's not about doctors leaving, it's about computer scientists leaving. So what do you have to say to that, about why and how we can get more people coming in? - Well, I think, first of all to understand that part of Canadians' success has always been that we've been willing to go out into the world and create success and develop and build and perform admirably on the world stage, And we can compete and succeed anywhere in the world. So I'm never going to say that having Canadians go abroad and succeed is a bad thing, 'cause it's a great thing. One of the things that we've seen, though- and it's a little counter to that narrative that's being put out there- is that a lot of people are choosing to come home right now. A lot of people are seeing the opportunities, the advantages. there's a lot of capital flowing from Silicon Valley back up to Canada. We need to do a better job of generating that capital here and making sure that the support is for here, partikularly around scale-ups, But there is something really exciting happening in Canada right now and we feel it. A lot of folks are looking to come home, a lot of folks are looking to launch things, And one of the things that I think goes to the heart of the success, of why Canada is doing well right now, is that we do diversity better than just about anyone else. We understand that a community and a society and a company can be strong, not in spite of its differences, but because of those differences And that capacity to think differently, to draw together different experiences, to challenge each other with different points of view actually leads to better creativity and better success, And that's what's exciting to Canda. (audience applauding). - Absolutely, And we are definitely going to get into the conversation about diversity a little bit later on as well. But just to keep on this theme of Canada Tobi, we were having a really interesting conversation in the green room about Shopify And we had this conversation about Shopify really growing into its Canadian roots. Can you tok a little bit about that? - Yeah, it's funny because it happened kind of without you really thinking about it, right, Something about sort of a process of just building a company up here. at no point did we sort of say, hey, let's put Canada on our homepage. And there was always just sort of this general assumption. I mean, I cannot tell you how many emails I got over the years of people in San Francisco saying, hey, we really like what you're doing, we should really meet for coffee, And I'm like: so I'm in Ottawa, right? So this is a 14-hour flight with a connection in between. And so there was this assumption and we kind of ran with that And it took us a long time for us to really ask ourselves- well, hold on a second here- like: why are we sort of hiding as sort of almost as a quasi-American entity, And rather than tok about the way we actually feel, which is that we're fiercely Canadian? I think one of the- and I toked about this this morning in my opening remarks- the really great news is that Shopify is a very successful company, and it's a very successful company based on a formula which is quite different from, I think, how most companies of this size are being built. I think what the Prime Minister says is absolutely true, And I think this is something that Canada has discovered as part of an experiment itself and that we have inherited by simply being immersed in it, And so we are toking a lot about becoming a much more global company. And one thing which is counter-intuitive to this is that usually, when companies want to go global, they have to hire people all over the world, And to a certain degree, we do. But if you are trying to bring a new product into a new market, you need to have people to do it who really understand that country, And if I go to Germany and ask the people there, it's like, hey, explain to me German culture. it's hard for them to do that right, Like it's a little bit like asking a fish to explain water And so. but we are in Canada, We have recent arrivals from all over the world And hiring the kinds of people who have lived for, like, moved across the Atlantik and then has the outside perspective to their own culture and then have lived for a little while somewhere else. those are the people who actually have the insights and those are the kind of people you bring in and that's how you do it right. And in so many ways, this is the same reason that gives you better decisions when you're in a room full of people who have just spent their lives very differently. And I think this is something that Shopify somehow figured out early or simply inherited as a derivative from a Canadian primary culture, And that has led to a lot of the success we have - Absolutely, Prime Minister. I've seen you speak a few times at events and there was a quote that you often share, which I love, And I think it really personifies what we're experiencing right now in this world of tiknology and changes, And the quote is all about change has never happened this fast before and it will never be this slow again. And which tiknological change do you think is going to be most important to Canada in terms of fueling this next generation of business? - One of the things that we think about is this pace of change is accelerating to an amazing degree And you're having to be more and more nimble, you're having to think forward, think ahead at the next thing and you realize we don't know what the next thing is going to be. So, for me, the most important piece to think about- the fact that the world is changing so fast and yet it'll change even faster tomorrow- which is that accelerating pace of change. So we need to think about how we not just brace for it but equip for it. You see, around the world, workplaces are evolving, Industries are in disruption, People are really uncertain about where the jobs are going to come a decade from now, where their kids' jobs are going to be, And we have to make a choice as societies. Well, do we drag our heels and resist that change and try and keep the way things used to be as long as we possibly can, Or do we say: well, you know what The world is changing, let's dive in, Let's head for it. let's help shape that change. Let's figure out: yes, AI is going to disrupt things, genomics and biotiknology are going to disrupt things for sure. Well, do we either be disrupted or we create that disruption And we help lead it, and then, quite frankly, we help shape it. And when I think about the ethical and moral challenges around some of these big issues, it sort of reassures me to think that Canadians will have a significant role in shaping this for the good of our societies and our world. So, as we sort of dive forward into all these different things, what I'm most focused on is not just giving people the tools, the education, the training, the opportunities to get that, but also give people the confidenc.