Most local tech watchers are proud to say that Shopify was born in Ottawa. And while the growth and success of the e-commerce company have been impressive, they are the very things that have turned Shopify into a Canadian — or even a global — company, and no longer Ottawa-based. Still, the city continues to […]
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Most local tech watchers are proud to say that Shopify was born in Ottawa. And while the growth and success of the e-commerce company have been impressive, they are the very things that have turned Shopify into a Canadian — or even a global — company, and no longer Ottawa-based.
Still, the city continues to benefit from what some call a “ripple effect,” with a number of former Shopify employees taking the lessons they learned and applying them to new ventures across the city.
We take a look at just a few.
Bevel Workforce
Ottawa’s Bevel Workforce has more than 30 employees but no formal hierarchy.
“We hire people and treat them as if they’re the CEO of their role,” said co-founder Richard Hall, a former Shopify executive. “We’re bringing them in because they have an expertise we don’t have. So they run with their role.”
That flat structure mirrors the autonomy that Hall and fellow Bevel co-founder Casey Whalen experienced at Shopify, where employees were encouraged to be owners of their work, with a culture that emphasized speed over perfection.
“You get to the top of the mountain by doing things well and doing things fast,” said Hall. “Just execute, execute, execute. And it’s okay to make mistakes. You execute. You fix it. You move on.”
Whalen, also a former Shopify executive, pointed to another principle that shaped Bevel’s approach: radical customer service, even at the company’s expense.
“Tobi (Lütke) always used to position Shopify as not being front and centre,” Whalen recalled. “He said if we help our customer, then we’ll get ours down the road. It was always very much about empowering customers and creating more value for them.”
It’s a customer-first mentality that now exists at Bevel, right down to the billing practices. The company, which embeds fractional specialists into small and mid-sized businesses to handle everything from payroll to software systems, doesn’t charge clients for work that doesn’t add value, Hall said.
The approach seems to be working, since Bevel has been profitable since it was founded in 2022. In fact, Hall and Whalen landed their first client before they even opened their doors.
“We were profitable from the first day,” Whalen said. “That’s something we’re proud of.”
That early success reflects another Shopify lesson: Ottawa’s tech ecosystem has matured significantly in the past decade.
“The city is full of people who have seen what hyper-growth looks like,” Hall said. “That changes the advice you get, the kind of support that’s available.”
Gadget
After spending more than five years at Shopify, Mohammad Hashemi co-founded Gadget with Harry Brundage, another Shopify veteran.
Hashemi remembers joining Shopify when it had 200 employees and leaving when it had 4,000. During his time there, he became a general manager reporting directly to the CEO and COO, exposure that gave him confidence to start his own company.
“You sit in the room with the C-levels and the other GMs and you start to see how these people work,” Hashemi said. “You’re like, well, I can do that, too.”
Gadget builds tools to help developers create web and Shopify apps by providing a complete back-end stack and automation. The company has raised US$8.5 million in seed funding from Sequoia and Bessemer, according to TechCrunch, making it one of only three Canadian companies ever funded by Sequoia.
Hashemi said Shopify proved something to Canadian entrepreneurs: major success doesn’t require relocating to Silicon Valley.
“It proved you can do it here,” he said. “You don’t have to move and all the talent you need to be mega-successful is right here in Ottawa.”
He also credited the Shopify experience for inspiring confidence and helping to spawn new tech companies across the city.
“People leave Shopify, they take a break for a while, and they get tired of taking breaks and decide to put their newfound skills to use,” he explained. “If you were part of the team that saw that hyper-growth happening, you kind of just assume, well, you can do it.”
He credits Shopify with instilling two key values that shaped Gadget’s culture: product obsession and growth mindset.
“Shopify had a great way of making it very clear to people that this is a value that not only do we value, but we kind of judge on,” Hashemi said. “Any stasis is actually bad. So a straight line is bad, but a line upwards is an acceptable line and how far upwards was really up to you.”
Tease Tea and Founders Fund Canada
Sheena Brady started working at Shopify in 2013 as a customer service representative making $17 an hour. At that time, she already had a side business, Tease Tea, which she’d launched with $500 and a Shopify store.
By 2018, Tease Tea was generating seven figures while Brady continued to work full-time at Shopify. She had risen to a leadership position by then, managing teams of people at both workplaces.
“I had a team of seven at Tease Tea and I was running a team of eight at Shopify,” Brady said. “I was doing both in parallel.”
Shopify actively supported her dual path rather than forcing her to choose. “Shopify said, ‘You do you,’” Brady recounted. “As long as you’re fulfilling the obligations of your role and delegating responsibility, we’re not going to tell you otherwise.”
That experience inspired her to launch Founders Fund Canada, which distributes grants, hosts events and offers educational resources to women entrepreneurs. The fund has distributed more than $300,000 since it was founded in 2019.
“Shopify proved you can have this intersection of personal and professional values,” Brady said. “A lot of people who’ve left carry that same sense of audacity and empowerment to just go bullish on what they believe in.”
Brady left Shopify in 2022 and has since made Canada’s Top 40 Under 40 and helped countless aspiring entrepreneurs reach for their dreams. She said Shopify’s support for her entrepreneurial ambitions taught her a crucial lesson about building an inclusive business culture.
Trexity
Alok Ahuja founded Trexity in 2018 after leaving Shopify, where he helped build the partner ecosystem for Shopify Plus and oversaw office openings in Waterloo and Montreal.
Ahuja said one Shopify principle in particular helped shape how he built Trexity, a delivery platform that connects small and medium-sized businesses with local couriers to provide delivery to customers.
“One of the mantras was act like an owner,” he explained. “Everybody treated what they were doing like it was their own startup, so I was able to apply that to Trexity when I started it.”
Employees at Shopify were encouraged to write one-page project briefs outlining what they wanted to do, who would be involved and a paragraph on why they shouldn’t do it. Ahuja said that exercise forced people to think like owners.
“When you have to sit there and write about why you shouldn’t do this it’s so satisfying because then you really feel like an owner,” he said.
Shopify also gave him financial resources to bootstrap Trexity without seeking outside investment initially.
“Shopify gave me enough of a platform to bootstrap Trexity on my own,” Ahuja said. “It allowed all of us ex-employees to reinvest back into the tech community here in Ottawa.”
Shopify’s ongoing impact on Ottawa
Hashemi sees increased investment activity among Shopify alumni, albeit quietly.
“There’s many formal angel groups among ex-Shopify employees,” he said. “And then there’s tons of informal; kind of people letting each other know what companies to invest in.”
He noted that former employees also do advisory work with startups and venture capital firms, sharing lessons from their Shopify experience.
For Hall and Whalen, the ripple effect of Shopify is only just beginning.
“I think you’re really just starting to see some of that ripple effect,” Whalen said. “A lot of people exited and it took a little while to shake it off before everyone figured out what they wanted to do next. And then COVID hit. But I’ve gotten the sense in the last six months that there’s really starting to be more of a trend.”
Hall said many former employees share a common motivation. “I think you’re seeing a community of people coming out who’ve got some money in their pocket, who’ve got a tremendous amount of experience, and they want to find something they really care about to build and to share.” 
