Maybe? Baby. Go to see your TC baby. To see you TC baby.
Hi everyone, and welcome to CUTC Transform. I'm Edward, and I'm the chair of the conference for this year. We're glad you're here. Some quick background about CUTC: it's Canada's longest-running student tech hackathon. We've been around since 1999, but today is a really special day — it marks the end of our Transform section. And today is free, fully online, and open to every student across the world. Before we start, drop your school and where you're joining from, and when you're joining from — we want to see how far the stream reaches.
That's awesome! It seems like we have a lot of people from York University, from Toronto — Humber College. That's amazing. Even I saw someone from Brazil, so that's really nice that we have an international impact, it seems. So here's a few things to go through. First of all, let me introduce myself — I'm Rehan, running operations for CUTC. And today I have a few important resources and notes to share with you guys. So, number one: ask.cutc.ca. That's where you'll ask speakers questions and answer the polls throughout the conference. Second thing: discord.cutc.ca is where you can interact on a more personal level — you can ask for help, join social rooms, and even participate in giveaways, and the giveaway winners can go there. And then, lastly, you can follow us at CUTC 2026. And of course, cutc.ca has a full schedule, so for anyone who wants to refer to that, that's your place.
Now, a quick few house rules to go through. If you need any help, please refer to the Discord or just message any of us organizers — we're happy to help out with any concerns or questions that you guys have. The next thing: if you want your questions answered directly by our fabulous speakers, you can go to the ask.cutc.ca website. And then finally, we just ask you please be respectful, please be kind, please ask appropriate questions, and we'll have an excellent time today. One quick note: we are giving away prizes at random times throughout the day. So stick around, keep your eyes peeled, and you might just win something. I'm going to pass it off to Edward, who's going to go through the schedule.
Good. Thanks, Rehan. Going over the schedule: we're going to start off today with a fireside chat from Harley Finkelstein, moderated by Julia Fedorin. Then we'll have a live workshop, sponsored by Kiro, one of our first sponsors. And then we'll move on to having speakers from Google, to OpenText co-founders, a panel hosted by Startup Ecosystem Canada, and a lot more. We'll wrap up the day at around 4 p.m. Eastern.
And of course, none of this would have happened without our wonderful sponsors. So if you have the time, please check them out. And thank you to everyone on this slide for making today free for all the students internationally that are participating today. So, thanks so much. And just one more sponsor, particularly — that's one you'll hear about a giveaway for soon. If we go to the next, you'll see that we are actually giving away The Social Reckoning tickets, and that's thanks to Sony Pictures Canada. It's an Aaron Sorkin film about the Facebook whistleblower, and so what we'll do is draw winners during the day, and keep an eye out because you might just get free tickets to it. It debuts exclusively in movie theaters on October 9th, 2026, and it's going to be a fun time. I'm looking forward to seeing it. Right, are we ready to get started with that?
Before we got started, I wanted to hold the giveaway. So, yeah, we'll just do this to test everything — in order to test a giveaway out, I need all of you guys to go to ask.cutc.ca/giveaway. It's also on the YouTube live stream. See, I go there, enter the draw. I'll give you all like 60 seconds to join it, and we'll spin the wheel right here for a gift card worth $25.
Okay, and I'm going to end the draw. Let's see who the winner is.
Congratulations to Ray! Look out for your email. After the conference, you'll get an email with your gift card. And yeah, we'll get started.
Hi everyone! I'm Jeff, and I'm part of the outreach team at cutc.ca. I'm also a second year at York University. The first talk is something I'm going to be very excited about — it's going to be a fireside chat with Harley Finkelstein and Julia Fedorin. Harley Finkelstein is the president of Shopify. He started his first business as a teenager, and he's helped grow Shopify into the platform behind millions of businesses around the world. And today he's going to be chatting with you students.
Leading the conversation is Julia Fedorin. She just joined the call — that was Julia — who leads storytelling and content. She's interviewed tech founders all the time, like Sam Bagwell of Mastro, and the founders at Founders Inc in San Francisco. Fun fact: she is also Shopify's first marketing intern. We are still waiting for Harley, so stay tuned. Julia, would you like to introduce yourself? I know I just ran through a quick intro, but we'd like to hear more from you.
Happy to be here. It's 7:26 right now for me — I'm in San Francisco — and currently I'm working at a startup called Composio. I do a lot of storytelling, a lot of content, kind of the main media lead for the team. And yeah, super excited to be here. Actually, the final week of my internship at Shopify, I got to go on a call with Harley, just asked him a few questions, so that was a very special moment, and very thankful for Edward for bringing me on. I'll have a second conversation with Harley, so that's exciting. And we'll have a lot of time for Q&A as well, hopefully, and you can kind of get ready and think about some questions you want to ask as well.
I'm interested — Julia, you said you interned at Shopify? What was that experience like for you?
Yeah, the experience was so incredible. I got to work on the social team, and it was very fun because I was working with very, very smart people. And I also got to do this intern series that I pitched, and that was posted on the individual interns' accounts on LinkedIn. Sounds really cool — just working with them, interviewing them, getting their story. And I also got to go to Montreal for a — it was a team gathering, because the team's all across the world. And so I got to meet the whole social team in Montreal, and we got to do some content there together. And that was really cool. Yeah, I got to see the Montreal office, which is very nice — it was very beautiful, and I love Montreal too, so much. So...
I haven't been to the Montreal office, but I did the office in Toronto for it. I'm not sure what the difference would be, but I currently love Toronto just so much. It's so amazing, so it's great.
I'll probably have a time to visit Montreal — or New York, New York. Or, I know there's an office in New York as well.
So hopefully I get to visit as well. Yeah. I don't know.
One of the — since you're at a startup currently, and you previously were at Shopify, what's the difference between working at a startup versus like a big company like Shopify?
I think the big difference is — since it's a lot smaller, and there's a lot more opportunities to experiment, I guess. And I'm pretty much — a lot of people count on me. I'm like the only storytelling lead at the company, so everyone's counting on me. There's a lot more responsibility, which can be a good thing, especially since I'm still — you know, I just recently graduated, first full-time role. So for me, it's really important to be able to have all of the ownership to try new things. And there's so much room for new experiments. And, um, I get to just see what it's like to work a lot more closely with the CEO, for example, or the CTO, just because — yeah, there's pretty much I'm reporting to the CEO and asking him for approval for things and everything like that. So it's — um, whereas at Shopify, I had a supervisor and — yeah, a lot bigger. And here it's a lot smaller, so there's a little bit different like that.
Amazing! Thank you for sharing that.
For anyone watching who wants to ask any questions towards Julia, or towards Harley once he joins, drop your questions at ask.cutc.ca, and we'll be answering those questions after the whole chat. I know Harley should be on in quite a few seconds — I know he just said he might be one to two minutes late. So before then, I want to keep talking with you, Julia, because you're still amazing to talk to.
As someone like me, who's a second year at York and is entering this field, kind of going from a student to working at a company — what's like a piece of advice you can give me here to help me grow in my field?
I think the biggest thing is to make sure to always keep learning from people that you're inspired by. So if you have someone in your field that you really look up to, find ways to talk to them, find ways to help them. And always — you have so many ideas to share as well, so never be afraid to kind of pitch new ideas. Uh, pitch new — yeah, pitch new things. And I think you also just have to learn — you know, find kind of passions outside of work as well, because I feel like those can bring a lot of new ideas into your work. And if you can, like, maybe live in a different place for a little bit, because you'll be surrounded by different people, and, yeah, different experiences, trying new things.
Yeah, that's great. I've met so many amazing people through Shopify, and it was so throughout like York University. And so it's nice to hear about different experiences throughout their careers and how they developed those people. Oh no — I was like, if you think about the biggest piece of advice to give your younger self, just starting out your career, what would you give?
I would say — I would say, focus on — I think just being very patient and focusing on the passion. And I know it sounds so cheesy, but focusing on the — just because there's a bunch of goals that you kind of want to achieve, right? But they're all going to take time, and I wish that I was a little bit more patient in some scenarios. Yeah, I think that's one thing. And then something else would probably be doing a little bit more of the things that I can't do, because I don't know a lot of you guys — for me especially, I like to keep doing the things I'm really, really good at. Oh, Harley's here! Sweet — hello, Harley!
Hey there, how you doing?
So good. So nice to see you.
So, thank you so much for joining us. You're talking to a room full of students at Canada's longest-running student tech hackathon conference. So today's questions are going to be a mix — some from me, some crowdsourced from the team — and then hopefully we'll have some time for some Q&A. So let's get into it.
Anyone, I can see you, but I can't see the crowd at all. I hope that's...
Ooh, okay, do you guys want to—
I don't know how to do that. I see Jeffrey Zhang. That's about it. Hey, Jeff.
Currently, the crowd is being live streamed on YouTube, so they're not actually in the Google Meet.
Actually in the Google Meet.
Oh, nice, good, perfect. Sounds good to me.
Wait, nice. Okay, so Harley, you hire a lot of grads at Shopify. Everyone's telling students that AI is going to kill entry-level jobs, and the obvious answer is to learn AI tools. But what's the skill that actually can't really be replaced?
Oh, I think that is timeless. I think that has nothing to do with any new technology. I think that it has nothing to do with any particular era of technology companies. I think the same thing was true 100 years ago, 50 years ago, 30 years ago, 20 years ago, and even five years ago as it is today, which is ultimately what we're looking for at a company like Shopify: someone that is resourceful. And resourceful doesn't just mean they use the tools available to them. Resourceful often means they use the best tools for the right task. The tools that are available today are fundamentally not a little bit better than they were five years ago, or 10 years ago, or 20 years ago — they're like 10 times more valuable.
I mean, you know, right now the screen that I'm on has this Google Meet, but if I just go to my next screen right now, it is literally four different agents running. I have Grokbot, I have Muse, I have OpenAI GBT, and then I have Claude running in all four corners. And I use this really fun tool called — what is this even called? It's called Rectangle, that basically positions all my agents in a beautiful screen. I think Tobi is using a different one now — I think he's using Herder or something, or whatever tool you're using.
The key is, I think, how to use these tools. And so I think this narrative that AI is going to steal jobs — or that it's total b******* — guys, I'm sorry to say, like, please do not fall for that. What we are looking for, and what everybody's looking for, are incredible people joining our company who know how to use the right tool at the right time and in the right way. And part of what that means is a deep curiosity: a new tool comes out, you jump on it, you get curious about it, you figure out how to use it properly. And some of it is — when we give someone a task at Shopify, we don't tell them the how, we tell them the why, and we tell them the what. And ultimately, I think their job is to get as far, you know, as possible as quickly as possible.
If you look at the divisions of Shopify — the product divisions, Capital or Payments, um, or Financial Services, or Shipping, or Shop Pay, or the Shop app, or, you know, the admin, any area — and Julia, you worked at Shopify, so you'll remember all this — most of those, not all of them, are run by founders. So one of the things we look for, as a bit of a shortcut to finding resourceful people, is we hire founders. And for that reason — like, you know, I don't give a s*** where you went to school. Sorry, I don't mean to be swearing so much this morning. I don't know what it is, Saturday morning, so I feel like there's a lot of vulgarity coming out of me, but I'll be more — I'll use less curse words. We don't care where you went to school, we almost don't even care about your grades. We don't really care about your grades. If you've built something important, even if it failed, that to me is a far better indicator and a litmus test for whether or not you should come work at Shopify. And we look for founder types, because founder types are organically, naturally, authentically resourceful, and that's what it's all about, I think.
