Tobias Lutke

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.

Growing up, I spent my time doing useless stuff looking at computers.

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.

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.

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.

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

Every phase of building a company is really hard.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.