2015
Lütke said Shopify went public in 2015 at a valuation of about a billion and a half dollars.
“You might remember, we went public very early, billion and half valuation in 2015.”
Topic
Shopify
55 facts from 10 episodes, in date order. These are what speakers said on the shows, each linked to the moment it was said. They aren't independently verified.
2015
Lütke said Shopify has historically been operationally efficient and kept most money it raised from financing rounds in the bank at its IPO.
“Shopify is just a company that makes every dollar count.”
2020
Lütke said a Shopify colleague built a 3D engine during COVID, which became the basis for his Terrarium environment.
“he built a three D engine where everyone can hang out and do meetings while doing small activities.”
2020
Lütke said he has a founder Slack channel of founders who joined Shopify through acquisitions, and he turned to them during COVID executive turnover.
“people who over the years brought into Shopify through talent acquisitions and so on.”
2022
The host says Shopify has about 2 million merchants and Amazon has over 30 million sellers.
“We've got something like 2 million Shopify merchants and over 30 million Amazon sellers.”
2025
Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke circulated a company memo making AI use a baseline expectation, which GitHub later adapted in modified form.
“Toby Lutke, the Shopify CEO, recently had this, you know, memo for the whole company saying AI is now, you know, baseline expectation at Shopify.”
2025
Jess Hertz says Toby Lutke's March 2025 memo on AI made reflexive use of AI a baseline expectation for Shopify employees.
“that memo made being reflexive in AI a baseline expectation for our employee base”
2025
Bob Safian describes Toby Lutke's memo as requiring teams to prove AI cannot do a job before hiring new staff.
“Toby Lutke's controversial memo last year, dictating the teams prove AI can't do a job before hiring any new staff.”
Undated
Benchmark's partner dinners have included guests such as Toby from Shopify and Jeff Bezos, and the partners travel to Bezos rather than bringing him to the table.
“Toby from Shopify. Jeff Bezos has been, we travel to Jeff.”
Undated
Tim Ferriss says Shopify's growth in Ottawa, Canada has spawned an ecosystem of startups there.
“say, in Ottawa, Canada, where Shopify is based, and the presence and growth of Shopify has spawned an entire ecosystem of startups.”
Undated
Jaffer says many shoppers meet Shopify through the purple Shop Pay button at checkout.
“You may have gone to the checkout and seen that purple shop pay button.”
Undated
Shopify has used classification models for fraud detection since its early days, giving merchants a fraud score on transactions.
“We did things along the lines of fraud detection, where a transaction comes in and it's not as easy to tell whether this is fraudulent or non fraudulent.”
Undated
Shopify created a suite of generative AI products called Shopify Magic, embedded in merchant workflows.
“we've created a suite of products called Shopify Magic. And the idea behind this was how do we embed this directly into the workflows”
Undated
Before generative AI, Shopify built product classification that assigns a product's category from its text and image.
“one of the more recent ones, even before generative AI, was product classification. So the idea of being able to determine the category of a product using its text and as well as its image”
Undated
Jaffer says merchants struggled with writing product descriptions, and billions of descriptions exist across Shopify.
“we saw them struggling with product descriptions daily. There's billions of them across Shopify”
Undated
Jaffer describes Sidekick as Shopify's AI assistant built specifically for commerce.
“building Sidekick, which is the first of its kind AI enabled assistant, purpose built for commerce.”
Undated
Shopify built an internal ChatGPT-style tool, including one for searching its internal wikis, to encourage staff to use AI.
“we've built our own kind of internal ChatGPT instance equivalent. We have it for our internal wikis for search and discovery.”
Undated
Jaffer says many Shopify merchants were already using ChatGPT and similar tools before Shopify added its own AI features.
“we already had merchants that were using ChatGPT or whatever was out there to be able to prompt it”
Undated
Shopify's guiding principle is that AI never publishes without user involvement, so merchants see any message before it goes out.
“the AI will never write without user intervention, and so the merchant will always be able to see what the message is that's gonna go out there.”
Undated
Shopify's image tool lets merchants upload a product photo and swap in a different background.
“you upload a product image and then you pick what background needs to be switched out on.”
Undated
A merchant wanted to launch an outlet store for overstock inventory covering 3,000 SKUs (distinct products).
“he wanted to set up an outlet store for some of the overstock inventory that they had, and they had 3,000 SKUs that they wanted to put together”
Undated
The merchant said that without AI he would have hired a team and spent about three months building the outlet store.
“I would have hired a team. We would have taken three months to get this thing spun up”
Undated
Jaffer estimates that about 99% of Shopify employees understand what AI hallucination means.
“I can almost guarantee that 99% of Shopify knows what that means and how that happens”
Undated
Lütke said Shopify's fulfillment network was a pivot decided in part because of the arrival of AI.
“We were in fairly stable times. Things weren't changing so much. And building for the minimum network was super valuable.”
Undated
Lütke said that after he cancelled meetings, average meeting load fell from five and a half hours to three and a half hours.
“Meeting load goes from people average five and a half hours to three and a half hours for the next year”
Undated
Lütke said Shopify is built on the Ruby programming language, which originated in Japan.
“Shopify is based on a programming language called Ruby, which hails from Japan.”
Undated
Lütke said he controls about 40 percent of the votes at Shopify.
“I vote 40% of the thing, so it's not the traditional share company in that way”
Undated
Lütke said zero-interest-rate periods turned Shopify's frugal characteristics into a liability because competitors spent freely.
“I think the zero interest rate periods really they made all these characteristics of the business basically a liability”
Undated
Lütke said he worked closely with his CFO Jeff when Shopify went public nine years before the conversation.
“My CFO, Jeff, is someone I've worked with intensely nine years ago when we took the company public.”
Undated
Lütke said he thinks Shopify could have survived a ten-year boom cycle intact but was swept up in the later years of zero interest rates.
“I think I could have survived ten years of a boom cycle intact.”
Undated
Lütke said Shopify began as software he built for himself because he did not like the tools available.
“Shopify is an island from the beginning, and is my life work.”
Undated
Lütke said Shopify is often the cheapest software in a merchant's stack, with some paying ten times more for their CRM.
“Very often, Shopify is the cheapest software people have in their entire stack.”
Undated
Lütke said he was in his twentieth year at Shopify at the time of the recording.
“I'm year twenty now in Shopify.”
Undated
Lütke used a team of AI agents with personas to produce a talk for a company summit, then revealed it was AI-generated.
“I saw the talk that you gave, or I guess that the AI gave”
Undated
Lütke described Shopify's product philosophy as making the important stuff super easy and everything else possible.
“my philosophy is humans are absolutely awesome”
Undated
Lütke said Shopify serves both people starting out in their lunch break and billion-dollar businesses that began on the platform.
“The billion dollar business on Shopify started on Shopify.”
Undated
Bob Safian says Shopify and Duolingo announced that staffers must justify work that is not produced by AI.
“Are you like Shopify and Duolingo, who've announced that staffers have to justify anything that's not AI produced?”
Undated
Bob Safian says Shopify and Duolingo have announced that staff must justify work that is not produced with AI.
“Are you like Shopify and Duolingo, who've announced that staffers have to justify anything that's not AI produced?”
Undated
At Shopify, Toby has an agent named River that sits in a Slack channel where everyone can talk to it, and Toby is responsible for it.
“Toby has an agent named River. The agent is in a Slack channel, and everybody at Shopify can talk to that agent, but Toby is the, uh, person responsible for that agent.”
Undated
Jess Hertz says Shopify powers over 14% of the US e-commerce market.
“We power over 14% of the US. e-commerce market, and what's incredible about that is you can sit at this kind of wide aperture of commerce”
Undated
Jess Hertz says that last year about 10% of new Shopify shops made their first sale within a day of signing up.
“it was about 10% of new shops made their first sale within a single day of signing up, which is just incredible”
Undated
Jess Hertz says 75% of AI-attributed orders on Shopify last quarter came from categories outside the top one hundred.
“So 75% of AI attributed orders last quarter came from categories outside of the top one hundred, which I find particularly interesting.”
Undated
Jess Hertz says Shopify's River agent lives in about 10,000 Slack channels, has been used by about 90% of employees, and ran 275,000 sessions and 15 million actions in five months.
“it lives in about 10,000 channels in the company. About 90% of employees have used it. It's run 275,000 sessions, and it's taken 15 million actions in five months”
Undated
Jess Hertz describes River as an AI agent that lives inside Shopify's Slack workspace.
“we have this amazing tool called River, and River is basically an agent that lives within our Slack.”
Undated
Jess Hertz says almost 90% of Shopify's quarterly revenue comes from merchants who have been on the platform for over a year.
“almost 90% of our quarterly revenue is from merchants who've been on the platform for over a year.”
Undated
Jess Hertz says the conversion rate is twice as high when an AI agent uses Shopify's catalog data as when it uses scraped data.
“when someone comes from an agentic channel, the conversion rate that when an agent is using our ca- catalog data is two X compared to if it's just using scraped data.”
Undated
Jess Hertz describes Sidekick as Shopify's AI-powered commerce agent that operates inside the Shopify platform.
“Sidekick is our AI-powered commerce agent that lives within Shopify.”
Undated
Jess Hertz says Shopify developed the Universal Commerce Protocol, an open commerce standard, together with Google.
“things like the Universal Commerce Protocol, which is the open commerce standard that we developed with Google, which is really the kind of transaction layer of commerce.”
Undated
Jess Hertz says Shopify's headcount has been flat for more than eight quarters while its revenue grows 34%.
“Headcount for Shopify has been flat for more than eight quarters, and while revenue is growing 34%.”
Undated
Jess Hertz says that over the last five years Shopify merchants reaching $1 million in GMV had 92% retention and those reaching $10 million had 97% retention.
“merchants that reached a million in GMV had 92% retention rate, and then merchants that reached 10 million had 97% retention rate.”
Undated
Jess Hertz says a large brand can run about a thousand campus stores, 1,200 storefronts and 6 million SKUs on one Shopify stack.
“It's how a large brand can run, you know, a thousand different campus stores, 1,200 storefronts, you know, 6 million SKUs on one stack.”
Undated
Jess Hertz says the 'drift' she flagged in her first message as COO concerned Shopify's incentive compensation system for its sales team.
“that drift was in the context of our incentive compensation system for our sales team.”
Undated
Jess Hertz says that when the first tariffs came into place, a Shopify team spent a weekend building a duties and taxes calculator.
“we've operated through lots of moments of uncertainty, even when the first kind of tariffs came into place where we had a team spending the weekend building a duties and taxes calculator.”
Undated
Bob Safian states that Shopify is headquartered in Ottawa and that most of its customers are in the US.
“headquartered in Ottawa. Most of its customers are in the US. You're based in DC.”
Undated
Bob Safian says Shopify had posted what he believes was its fifth consecutive quarter of growth above 30%.
“Shopify just posted its, I think, fifth consecutive quarter of growth above 30%.”
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