Harley Finkelstein

But

What we really mean is that there's no consultant in the world that would have put together a team at Shopify.

In the early days, kind of in the sort of the middle, you know, post-IPO days, and certainly modern days right now in 2025, there's no team that, like, there's no one who will put together this team.

But it works.

Why?

Because there is this commitment there.

on our team that whatever, whatever the thing you're responsible for, you are going to try to be the very, very best in the world at that particular thing.

Product design, sales, storytelling, finance, legal, whatever that might be.

That's the commitment.

And then every year you have to requalify for that commitment.

When you look at other companies, I've sort of poked on Google a little bit on this only because I know a few people there that are like this, but you do see much more well-rounded executives and more well-rounded leaders.

It's actually the reason why net-net I always prefer founder-led companies than professionally managed companies.

I think founder-led companies are more interesting.

It's sort of, I mean, it's in the sort of same way that like we have this trust battery metaphor that at Shopify, those with autonomy have a very high trust battery.

And those that end up having to leave the company, it's because their trust battery is so low that like an old cell phone, it just cannot be recharged.

You don't know exactly are you at 46% or 66%, but you know direction where you're at.

The same thing exists for this requalification, that you can tell when someone, I think you can tell when someone is requalifying for their job.

What that means is, if you think about the growth of Shopify, which it grows, you know, we're growing a lot, forget sort of the top line revenue or free cash flow margin growth or anything like that, but just like the growth of Shopify, product areas, GMV, the number of merchants, the geographies, the impact we have on the world, it is growing at this massive pace.

I think in order to be on our team, especially to be a leader at Shopify, you have to believe that you have to want to keep getting better, meaning stasis is not acceptable.

The thing you did last year may have got you a high five and an attaboy and a pat on the back and whatever.