How an Early Employee Made Her Mark at Growing Startup Shopify

Poornima: “Hi Brittany! Thanks for taking the time to do this interview with me. Let’s begin by talking about Shopify’s early days, and then talk about how you got involved.”

Brittany: “Sure. Back in 2004, Tobias Lütke had just moved from Germany to live in Ottawa, Canada. He loved to snowboard and wanted to start selling snowboards online. Frustrated with the e-commerce options available at that time, and being a programmer at heart, he decided to build the software himself. He then quickly realized the value wasn’t in selling snowboards but the actual software, and Shopify officially launched in 2006.”

Poornima: “That’s a pretty cool epiphany, how did he get there?”

Brittany: “At the time, there were only a few options for selling online. You either had to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to build your own site or use a very generic and boring template. Neither were very customizable. So he knew there was room in the market.”

Poornima: “Got it. So, let’s talk about how you got involved with Shopify.”

Brittany: “I went to school for human resources and I was looking for a position. My dad, who was pretty active on Twitter, showed me a tweet by Tobias. Tobias was looking for an office manager and my dad encouraged me to reach out. I had no idea what to expect. It wasn’t in my field, so I took a chance and went for it anyway. I arrived for an interview and immediately fell in love with the company. I knew they were going to grow. I pitched them on starting off as an office manager, and eventually doing HR work.”

Poornima: “What happened next?”

Brittany: “I was an office manager for two months but then I switched to recruiting, onboarding new employees, and figuring out compensation structures. It was a really creative period.”

Poornima: “How did the company grow over time?”

Brittany: “We were doubling in size each year and now we’re at about 500 employees in three offices: Ottawa, Toronto and Montreal. We have about 115,000 merchants all over the world. The majority are in North America.”

Poornima: “And how was Shopify funded?”

Brittany: “Initially we were bootstrapped, with a little bit of help from friends and family. Since 2010, we have received funding from some notable VCs. We raised $7 million in a Series A in 2010, $15 million in a Series B in 2011 and $100 million in a Series C in 2013.

Poornima: “Who was your initial customer and how did that change over time?”

… continued in How to Transform Your Ideas into Software Products