I'm a very proud Canadian Jewish entrepreneur, and I want to stay in Canada the rest of my life. They have to understand what it's like to be a Canadian Jewish entrepreneur.
Right. Now, is there anything tangible you can point to for Jews under Mark Carney versus under Trudeau?
Everyone wants to say they're a proud Jew, but this is actually the time where it is required of you.
Do you feel like something... Being Jewish has played a role in why these individuals have been successful?
What they are calling advocacy is unequivocally antisemitism, right? Do things, but just be quiet about it and just stay below the radar. And I think that worked for a long time. I don't think that works anymore.
What up? What up? And welcome to the show. I want to kick things off today with a little story. Imagine you're the grandchild of Holocaust survivors who then had to flee hungry during the brutal Soviet repression of the 1950s. Now imagine your family works hard to build a new life in North America, only to lose everything during the market crash after September 11th. Imagine then being unable to afford college. So you need to earn your tuition money by starting your own t-shirt company that grows from a few hundred items at one school to thousands of items across 50 schools. Imagine you go to law school, meet your future wife at Habad, and say to the rabbi who operates the Habad out of his house, 'Rabbi, if I make it big, I'm gonna come back here and build you a proper synagogue.' Imagine 18 years later coming back and doing it as the president of a multi-billion dollar e-commerce company that's a household name all over the world. He's a lifelong entrepreneur, a podcaster in his own right, and a true blue Jew unafraid to live loudly and proudly in the public eye. Drop that story in your cart and click checkout because it's go time. Please welcome Canada's top Jew, Shopify President, Mr. Harley Finkelstein.
Wow. Welcome. I mean, I got goosebumps.
Calling me a podcaster is way too... you're a podcaster. I'm a pretend podcaster. You guys have a lot of episodes.
We do. I mean, but like, it's just, you know, I don't watch sports, so I need something to do on Sundays, so I interview old Jewish men. I want to talk all about your show, but first I want to talk about your role as this public business Jewish leader. You are one of Canada's most visible Jewish leaders. Did you choose that role or did it choose you, to quote Spider-Man?
I think with great power comes great responsibility. That's it. Yeah. I think that anyone that has any privilege whatsoever, whether it's financial or fame or a platform, we are not fucking around anymore. It is like we are living in a post-October 7th world. And I think if you are Jewish and you care about your culture and you have a history like I do where I have Holocaust survivor grandparents and I'm a proud Jew, it is the time now. It isn't like, well, you know, if I ever need to, I... no, this is it. That's it. No, we didn't sign up to be like Canada's, you know, Jewish entrepreneur poster boy. But I have a big platform. People for some reason listen to me. And so I take that responsibility incredibly seriously.
It's awesome. I mean, I feel the same way in terms of you, the moment we're in, like, I'm always like, if you're not standing up now, you're never gonna do it.
Yeah. Well, it's easy, you know, it's... You know that clothing brand Carhartt? Yeah. You know there's a... they had this great ad a couple years ago, which is like everybody wants to wear Carhartt until it's time to do Carhartt shit. Right? Like everyone wants to wear like the workman's stuff, right? Cool mechanic jacket. But no one actually wants to go and actually like do the actual work. Right. It's a little bit like that. Everyone wants to say they're a proud Jew, but this is actually the time where it is required of you. And I think, actually, you know, one of the things Jonah, I'm so inspired about what you're doing is you are so loud, therefore, others see and say, actually, look how well he's doing. Being loud. You are not being ostracized. You're not being told, quiet down. And I think that gives a lot of other people the confidence that they can do it themselves.
I hope so. I hope that's true. Let's talk about social media first, like very openly. Proudly Jewish on your social media? Have you always been that way or is that something that's, you know, the last couple years, do you have felt like I need to do this more?
I did it a little bit. My wife and I, Lindsay and I have two daughters, Bailey and Zoe, seven years old. Zoe's seven, Bailey's nine, and we started doing a Shabbat Shalom message randomly a couple years ago every Friday. We hope you had a great week. We hope you have a great weekend. Wow. And then it sort of felt like something had changed post-October 7th, where people began to respond saying, thank you for saying that. And now we've done it, I think every weekend for like three and a half years or four years.
It's pretty cute. Cute. It's really cute. The girls are really adorable for them.
You know, I'm not religious, but I'm culturally, I really do connect with my culture, my religion. So I think what I did was I cranked up the proverbial volume on all of this stuff too. The other thing that started to happen that made me louder and a lot more, I think, aggressive about my Judaism, is that I had two incidents happen the last couple years that sort of changed my own understanding of Jews and our place in the world.
And this was the subject of the op-ed you wrote for the National Post.
That's right. Which honestly, I'm not an op-ed guy. Like I'm an entrepreneur. I'm a schmutz entrepreneur. I just happened to have, you know, met the right people and for the last 20 years have been building what is now one of Canada's largest companies. But ultimately, like, I'm an entrepreneur. First was, we were filming this podcast called Big Shot, which we can get into a little bit later. But I was doing it, it was the first time we were doing it live and actually we were doing it live at an entrepreneurship event. A conference. Startup Fest. Startup Fest. Exactly. We're there, we're interviewing this incredible entrepreneur who built one of the largest, basically the largest bookstore in Canada, Heather Eastman. And so we're interviewing her on stage at Startup Fest and it like again, the podcast Big Shot is really a celebration of Jewish entrepreneurship. It's sort of this way of reminding the world that, you know, even though you feel like, you know, Jews are everywhere, we're a very small percentage. We're 15 million Jews out of seven or 8 billion people. Yeah. So the podcast is a celebration of entrepreneurship and it's celebration of Jewish culture and chutzpah. So we're doing this podcast on stage, and all of a sudden a bunch of protestors storm the stage.
What does a bunch mean? Like three or like 30 or 10?
No, like two. Okay. It was small, but it was aggressive and they rushed the stage and immediately security kind of, you know, jumped on them and escorted them out. And it really bothered me. Not because they disturbed the podcast, but because the podcast was not, it wasn't about Israel, it wasn't a political statement, it was a celebration, a positive celebration of Jewish audacity and Jewish entrepreneurship and Jewish pride, I guess, to some extent. And so that really bothered me and that, you know, again, the thermostat got turned up a little bit at that moment. And then, you know, your intro is so kind. You talked about the Finkelstein Habad Center that Lindsay and I built. Yeah. Which was, you know, I grew up with not a lot. And for me to have a building stand in the nation's capital with our family's name on it, really matters to me. And so I'm there and my parents are there. My kids are there. The prime minister of the country is there. All the, you know, every Jewish politician is there. And the rabbi that I met when I was in law school as a poor student was standing there, standing next to me. And I began my speech that I had basically, I had imagined giving the speech for years in my head. Mm-hmm. And finally the building is there. It's a beautiful building. And in the middle of it, I started hearing chanting because the prime minister of Canada was there. They couldn't get close, but it was across the street and it was clearly that. It was clear they were there to drown out my speech and drown out the celebration. At that point, I was like, this has gone way too far because we are masking, we're what they are calling advocacy is unequivocally antisemitism.
This was, again, not about Israel, not about politics. This was a Jewish community center specifically for students. A promise I made 18 years earlier. And there was nothing controversial at all by any, like on an objective, you know, standard. Yeah. About this thing. Just Jews being Jews and just Jews being Jews, celebrating our Jewishness. Yeah. And yet at that moment, all they wanted to do is kind of ruin this thing for us. And that's after that happened, I wrote this sort of op-ed, which became, you know, made the rounds because it became obvious to me that like it's not just October 7th and it's not just the history of Jews over the last 2000 years. Like there is something that has changed in the last couple of years that has created this new paradigm for being Jewish in the world. And I think if I'm not going to be loud and I'm not gonna talk about these things, no one's going to do it.
What was the response to that op-ed from, you know, colleagues in the business world, from politicians at all? I know you said, you know, Canada has an issue here. I'm curious.
It was unanimously and unequivocally supportive. And it was especially supportive coming from people that were not Jewish. You know, Toby, who's my partner at Shopify, it was people that... it was random merchants, like in the business world that reached out and said, I had no idea how bad this got. Mm. I think part of the reason that this article had some virality behind it, was because I think if you were Jewish, you read and said, yeah, I've been feeling that too. Mm-hmm. And if you were not Jewish, you read and said, wow, this is way worse than I thought it was. Right. And you know, I grew up with, as I mentioned, my grandparents were Holocaust survivors and I always sort of felt they would recount these stories of growing up and how bad it was for them. And then one generation later, my father who immigrated from Hungary, as you mentioned to Canada after the revolution, I grew up hearing these stories of just people hating us, and I never in my life felt it. Remember I was born in Montreal. I grew up in Boca Raton. I went to McGill and back in Montreal like I was surrounded by the Jewish community. And so I always understood that it was there in the backdrop, but never in my life did I actually feel it. And for the first time, I dunno, did I feel it? I felt it almost on a daily basis. And actually, back to the question about like social media. Part of the reason that I continue to do this Shabbat Shalom message every Friday is if you look on, just look at the replies, the public ones on X for example, you will still see a ton of people saying some derogatory, you know, insult about me being Jewish. And rather than use that as a reason or a catalyst to do less of it, it's had the opposite effect on me. I'm doing way more of it.
That's awesome. I wish that was everybody's reaction. A lot of people hit that initial wall of, you know, internet blowback and get too rattled and say, well, I'm not opening my mouth again. Yeah. So it's, I wonder though, if also like, part of the reason you can do it at your stage and I say this as humbly as I possibly can and I can do my stage is because I'm at a level now, my company, my business at a level now where I think I'm not just going to be the Jewish guy, the Jewish kid anymore, that there, I have other elements of my life that have created some level of respect in the world that, you know, I think if I was a student doing it, I would come off like I'm just this Jewish advocate. Mm-hmm. First and foremost. Whereas I think I'm doing it as a business leader. Right. And I think because of that, it gives me more credibility. I dunno if credibility is necessarily the word, because you can be a very credible Jewish advocate, but what it does give you is it makes you feel more organic. Yes. More honest, more authentic. That's right. Right. And my job is not, I don't work for the ADL, I'm not Jonathan Greenblatt, you know, Jonathan at ADL, my job is running a large company. That's right. So because of that, I think it creates, there's more authenticity to it, that I'm only doing it with the purest motives possible. Right. And it almost means more because it's coming from somebody who is not, you know, their bread and butter. That's, it's a Jewish thing. That's exactly right. And I think that's why, you know, this show kind of has to be done by you rather than someone who spent their entire life advocating for Jewish rights.
Yeah, because then it would be, oh, this is obvious that you would be doing it, but there's almost like it's unobvious and correct for you to be doing the show. Mm. And that's what makes it special.
I appreciate that. Thank you. Have you had any sort of political engagement within Canada and within any of your leaders of trying to advocate for certain changes?
Canada is, you know, a G7 country, but you know, we're much smaller than the US. Yeah. And for the last 20 years or so, I was living in Ottawa, which is the capital. And so, you know, our relationship to politicians is a little bit more local. So I know the Prime Minister, our current Prime Minister, Mark Carney. I've known for a long time, the leader of the opposition I've known for a long time. The previous Prime Minister lived around the corner from me. I mean, it sounds a little bit small time, and maybe it is a little bit relative to the US but I've had conversations with all of them about, you know, what I think needs to get done and I push on these things when I see, you know, part of the reason why I wanted, not just the Prime Minister, but I wanted the opposition party at this Habad opening is I wanted to be clear that this is not some sort of party division or some sort of political thing. Yeah. That we can all agree that having a wonderful place for Jewish students to gather and feel safe and celebrate their Jewishness in the capital of Canada matters to everybody. And that visual, there's a photo of the Prime Minister sitting next to the deputy leader of the opposition party next to my father. Mm-hmm. In the front row. That photo matters to me. Yeah. Because it is very different than what my grandparents encountered during the Holocaust. Very different than what my parents, my father encountered when he came from Hungary. It showed unanimous support. Now, does it trickle down? No. I mean, I think, you know, Canada has issues with antisemitism. I think the US does as well, of course, but I've been able to, because of that position of whatever power I might have, I want them to understand that I'm a very proud Canadian Jewish entrepreneur and I want to stay in Canada the rest of my life. I think they have to understand what it's like to be a Canadian Jewish entrepreneur right now. And the reason the op-ed was important to me was not necessarily to advocate for, you know, some new legislation or to advocate for some change in government. It was, I wanted them to understand as empathetically as possible, what it's like to be a Jewish person in Canada. And I could have used an example where I was, you know, at some sort of Israel rally and I encountered some sort of antisemitism. I wanted to make it as nonpolitical, apolitical as possible. So the Big Shot podcast or the opening of a Jewish community center, again, these are things that across the board are non-controversial. Mm-hmm. And yet, in both those circumstances, I encountered hatred that was disguised as some sort of advocacy. Yeah. And it's completely, it's complete bullshit. Yeah. It's just, you're just veiling antisemitism and calling it something different.
Can you feel any shift? Is there anything tangible you can point to for Jews under Mark Carney versus under Trudeau?
I know Carney personally, and two of his closest friends are Jewish. Hmm. I mean, I've had Mark over to my home for Shabbat dinner. I never had that relationship with Trudeau. I think Mark is one of the greatest prime ministers we've ever had in Canada. And I think, you know, it's early, right? He hasn't been Prime Minister very long, but I am far more optimistic now than I ever was under the previous Prime Minister. That's great to hear. The other thing that I think is valuable is that Mark shows up for these Jewish events when I ask him to. Mm-hmm. Not because he is, you know, someone I'm friendly with, but because he knows it's important to the Jewish community of Canada, and if you actually look at the history of the Jewish community of Canada, like again, small country or small, you know, Jews generally, there's not a lot of us in the world. Yeah. What I learned researching this is that there's more Jews in LA than there are in the entire country of Canada. That's, and that's totally not surprising. Yeah. But there is a disproportionate community, like in terms of, if you look at business leaders in Canada, if you look at people that are funding some of the most incredible, even non-Jewish organizations, Jews play a real role in the Canadian sort of ecosystem. Mm-hmm. If you think about like, you know, I didn't have posters on the wall when I was a kid of like basketball players or musicians. It was entrepreneurs for me and it was people like Sam Bronfman who created Seagrams.
You had a poster of Sam Bronfman?
I did, but I would've like, yeah, there probably is old guys in suits. Yeah, I kind of would've had that, if you're right, if that would've existed in the world, that could be a Shopify merchant. That'd be a very cool merchant. Yeah. You have like, you know, all these amazing, you know, Bobby Kotick up there and you have like Izzy Sharp in the Four Seasons. But when you think about, when I think about politics, I'm not a political person. I don't want to be in politics ever, but I do believe that I am finding it easier to have hard conversations with the current administration that I had previously, and I understand that part of it is the fact that the macro has changed that like it is now unequivocal that antisemitism is on the rise. In the op-ed, I actually specifically cited data to show when you look at the numbers in terms of antisemitic incidents, it is on the rise by like an exponential degree. Right, right. So I think now we're past the point of is this real? Now we know it's real. Yeah. The next step is how do we fix this stuff?
Going back to your social media for a second. Yep. There was a fun boycott campaign thing against Shopify because of a from this Emirati Media company because of a tweet that you wrote, which I quote, 'Thanks for saying this.' That was the tweet. And thanks was THX, you know, you responding to somebody else calling out a news headline saying, this is a one-sided news headline. And because of your response to that, this random Emirati Media company was like, we should all boycott Shopify. Like, how aware are you of something like that happening? Does that bother you? Did you do anything? You were just like, this is stupid and this will go away.
There are, there have been a lot of those situations where, you know, if you want to, you see something like that, they click on my profile, they see that I'm the president of Shopify. They're like, great large public company. Let's create a boycott. Mm-hmm. I think, first of all, boycotting anything is ridiculous. I mean, that's not the way to affect change. Second of all, it has zero impact on our business ever. Right? And third, I'm just getting used to it. Shopify does not have an opinion about like political affairs. It is a company, right? It is an entity, is a legal entity. Harley is a human being that is a leader at Shopify. I have an opinion about things and I think that matters first, that matters to me. So as long as my team feels good about it, the people that I work with are okay with it, our merchants feel like we are delivering great value, I don't really care that some random organization, you know, 10,000 miles away from here is trying to boycott me or boycott the company. I don't think that has an impact, and I think people see right through that. Yeah. So I think I've had to develop really thick skin.
Have you ever had a situation where someone on your team or at Shopify has said, 'Hey, I need to talk to you about something you said or posted or did'?
Just the opposite. Awesome people, non-Jews message me on Slack all the time about the op-ed saying, I love what you said. Here I am, you know, Lebanese, or I am, you know, from Turkey, or I am from some country, and I felt that situation, but I didn't have the soapbox to stand on to write about it. You did. Thank you for saying it. Like they were able to effectively replace the word Jew with whatever they are and say, I felt what you felt there, and thank you for bringing light to the fact that like this is going on. It's not just antisemitism, it's anti all these other isms and it's prejudice. And so actually the opposite has been true, which is we don't want to work for automatons, we don't want to work for robots. We want to know that the people that are leading our company have a strong moral compass and have a high give-a-shit factor. And the give-a-shit factor should not just be for, you know, commerce and capitalism, but also for the things that matter to them. And I'm, you know, everything that I've posted, it wasn't that I am right, someone else is wrong. I'm not trying to like, I'm not invoking some sort of opinion, or again, back to the politics of saying this side is good and this side is bad. I'm just saying like, showing up at the opening of a community center and trying to drown out my speech and yelling, you know, like anti-Semitic slurs at me is not okay. Full stop. Yeah. And so I think actually in some ways, it's brought me closer to a lot of the people that I work with because they want to know that like, this guy cares about these things, this matters to him. And then once, I mean at this point, most people that work with me and most people that sort of know me, know my story. They know about my grandparents, they know about my father, they've seen what I've done. I'm very public on social media. And they've seen the Shabbat Shalom message. Actually, the people that actually love the Shabbat Shalom message more than anyone are the non-Jews are saying, it actually, it's a nice reminder of, you know, it's the weekend. Yeah. And like, let's spend time with friends and family. My initial one was spend time with friends and family, do cool shit, you know, have great experiences, go outside, touch grass, whatever. And it's, there's nothing controversial about it unless you are looking for a way to attack Jews. Right, right.
What about the rest of the business community, like your fellow business leaders? Do you see colleagues showing up in the same way you are? Are you disappointed at people who are maybe not showing up and you wish they were like, what's the landscape?
I think there are folks that have the leaders that have tried to like just stay out of it. Yeah. And I don't pass judgment, but I'm more inspired than those that do. I think there some people are scared, some Jewish leaders are scared of the backlash. Yeah. And my hope is that the more that I do it, the more that they see that they can do it also. And I've actually seen some, you know, after, especially after the op-ed, a few others have actually written me and said, you know, that was the final, like that was the straw that broke the camel's back for me. I believe I need to do this thing. I think when it comes to philanthropy in particular. Yeah. There is real value and I think maybe this is more of a modern way to do it, of actually being a lot more vocal and loud about your giving. And when I speak to, you know, when I'm interviewing someone for Big Shot and I ask them about their own philanthropy, some will say we give a lot. Like in some cases, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars. Yeah. But we give anonymously. It's just our style. I actually think now in a more, in the modern world, I think what that misses is leverage. Mm-hmm. That I think by doing things and telling people about those things. Yes. It does seem like there's some sort of narcissistic angle to it, or you know, you're trying to show off. There may be a part of that. I suppose, I think all of us have a little bit of that in us, but the other effect is when people watch you do things, they emulate that thing. Part of why I want to be very loud about this Jewish community center is I want, there are other places, important cities in the world that don't have that. Maybe someone sees it and says, you know what? I'm gonna do the same thing. Like I was inspired to do it because I watched Jerry Schwartz at one point and Izzy Sharp from the Four Seasons, and you know, these incredible people in Canada. These, you know, the Bronfman family put their names on things and I was like, one day, I really hope I can do that myself.
It's interesting, this exact conversation came up a couple of weeks ago with Howie Mandell when I was interviewing him, and he had the opposite sort of tack. And as I'm hearing you talk about it, I tend to agree with you, but it does seem it's somewhat generational. A little bit. Yes, it is. Where there must have something in the air where there were a lot of people doing vanity projects, I guess, you know, or the opposite.
I think what was in the air was there was the sense sort of post-World War II, post-Holocaust, that it was, we are now distributing, you know, especially Ashkenazi Jews all over the world. The diaspora, let's do things, but let's not be too loud about it. Well, there's that too. Let's be quiet. Let's, there's the quiet, and then I think then there's also, and this is what Howie was responding to, the I want my name on as many big, fancy things as possible and it's not a synagogue, it's I want it on an art museum. Yeah. And I want it on this and that. I will say that what I think the Howie strategy misses is that throughout my entire life, watching these incredible things get built with people's names on it, inspired the hell out of me to do the same thing. There you go. Yeah. It's living proof. And I get so many messages from people telling me that one day, like, especially Habad. 'Cause we can talk Habad if you want, but like Habad is this really kind of special thing to me, because like, they don't, like we were on the beach in Turks and Caicos and literally I was sitting there with my wife and like a Habad rabbi comes up and says, do you want a wrap to fill in? Right? And I'm like, sure. Right. Like, I was like, how do they even find us? Right. But they're unbelievable. They're everywhere. They're everywhere. And they're kind. And they're nonjudgmental. They don't care. You know, if you're religious or not, I want you in. If I'm not wearing a yarmulke, they're like, here's my yarmulkes. You can wear it while you're wrapping tefillin, and it is an amazing thing that they've done. But after I built it, I've heard from countless people, like no exaggeration, maybe 50 people have messaged me over the years to say, Hey. I'm a student at University of Virginia or Stanford or wherever when I finish, I would love to build something for my rabbi because, you know, our current Chabad house is in a strip mall. It's a rented storefront in a strip mall. That matters. That is the leverage. That is how we do it. So, back to what we were saying earlier, I think there was a generation, you and I have the same vintage, I think of our parents and grandparents where it was do things, but just be quiet about it and just stay below the radar. And I think that worked for a long time. I don't think that works anymore. I think at this point we can't be below the radar. It's not helping. Yeah, I agree. I'll be curious to see in like 15 years if a bunch of new Chabads spring up and I would love it. And I for point to them. Listen, I hope they call me and say like, I'd love to give to those Chabads as well. Yeah. I think it's an amazing, that would be amazing. But that is the flywheel, right? Right. What are these centers? These centers in my speech that got disrupted. What I basically said is, this center is not a symbol of my success or the fact that I've made a bunch of money. This is a symbol of survival that literally like two generations ago, we were in concentration camps and now we're building incredible facilities and beautiful community centers. On a personal level, like my family's name is on this thing. My grandfather's no longer around anymore. There is no way he ever would've thought in 1956 as a survivor coming to Canada on a boat to Halifax, that one day his grandson would put up a building like this and put our name on it. And if you look at it like a symbol of survival rather than a symbol of vanity. Vanity. Yeah. It becomes a lot more special. Totally. And it becomes a lot more interesting.
So let's talk about Habad for a second. You met your wife there?
Can you tell us that story?
Sure. Well, she's gonna hate this, but, you know, we met at speed dating. No way. Yeah. A success from a speed dating isn't crazy at Habad. Yeah. Which for all the entrepreneurs listening, it's like elevator pitch competition. Right, right. Like it's one hour. I was, you know, 10 men, 10 women. We had six minutes each. And the idea was if you wrote the girl's name, the girl wrote your name, they would introduce you. After the speed dating? After it was all done, like a day later, something like that. Okay. And so I was like, okay, well the obvious thing to do if you sort of game theory it is you write down every girl's name. This way you see who picked you. Nice. Lindsay, who's now my wife, was the one that I really wanted to, you know, to go out with. We didn't get matched. Didn't get matched? No. Okay. This is like 2008, like the primary tool for communication for, you know, early 20 something year old Jews or people was Facebook. Facebook. Yeah. So I could message her on Facebook. I'm like, Hey, like, what the fuck? Why don't we get matched? I thought we hit it off. And she wrote back, she said, actually, I picked you also, we didn't get matched. So the story now that the Jewish organization says is that they messed up. It was a mistake. We started dating and we got married probably four years later. Wow. Three, four years later. And it's been, she's incredible. It's, I am incredibly lucky to have a partner in life like Lindsay.
What did you recognize in those six minutes?
She's beautiful. She was, and she still is, but it wasn't really necessarily about looks, it was more about I was looking for a partner. Yeah. I was looking for someone that, like, together, we would like conquer the world. Mm-hmm. And I think more and more as I get older, we've been married now for 12 years or so, I think, you know, we have some friends that are starting to get divorced now. We're kind of at that age, you know, like I'm 42. Yeah. So we're starting to see that. And just about every relationship that I've observed where it's kind of falling apart is they were on kind of different journeys. They were on different tracks, and I think Lindsay's ride or die with me. Yeah. She was there when like I didn't have any money. She was there at the beginning of Shopify. She was there at the IPO. She was there during COVID when like I was losing my mind because I like being with people and we was like, I was working from home. She's been there for every up and every down and she's just sort of been this consistency in my life that has helped me to build. My role models are my maternal grandparents who are still alive. Oh, that's amazing. And they've been married for 75 years. Wow. And they're incredibly in love. And how old are they? 90, 91, 93. Yeah. They got married young. Yeah, they got married young. Cool. And but they have this amazing, really they've been married for 75 years. So they got married, I think at 18, 19 years old. Wow. And when I look at their relationship, they're like, they're head over heels in love with each other still today. But I look at the relationship, the key is that...
They love spending time with each other. They have these little moments like my grandfather, when he was like 80 years old, bought a convertible. And they take these drives across the border to the US because he likes the brie cheese better there than in Canada. And I'll call them and say, what are you doing? We're going for lunch. Where are you going? Well, there's this restaurant like an hour and a half away, but they make the greatest rotisserie chicken and we're just going. And I observe them, we take them to the Turks with us every year to the beach in December. And I observe them on the beach and often they're just sitting there not saying a word, but just holding hands. They're real partners with each other and they sort of help each other grow. And I know just because the folks are waiting for it weekly, shout out to Courtney, my life partner. She's amazing.
Go Courtney. Go Courtney, before we continue, I want to take a moment to share something incredible deep underground in Jerusalem. As rockets fly and sirens blare, doctors and nurses urgently treat patients. I'm talking operating rooms, ICUs, even maternity wards, moving below ground in a matter of minutes. Hard to wrap your head around, but this is what Hadassah hospitals do. Hadassah, the Women's Zionist Organization of America built these hospitals and now they're working feverishly to expand their underground capacity. There's an urgent need to equip a new emergency zone with additional beds and to build and outfit six advanced operating rooms so they can continue delivering life-saving care no matter the conditions. If you're able to help, please consider making a gift at hadassah.org. That's H-A-D-A-S-S-A-H dot org. Your support helps Hadassah continue its life-changing work for the people of Israel. Alright, so let's talk about Shopify a little bit more. Probably should have had you do this earlier, but for my audience that isn't totally clear, what is Shopify? What does it do?
It's a software company, and we make it easy for anyone that wants to sell a product, give them a way to do that. So if you want to build an online store, which is what we're best known for, easy to do that. But if you want to sell offline in a physical brick and mortar store, you can do that as well. If you want to sell on Instagram or TikTok, or Snap or in Roblox or more recently inside of one of your agentic tools, we make it really easy to do so. And for 39 bucks a month, you can get started. And you know, I think last in 2025, about $380 billion with a B were sold through Shopify.
Wow. So it's essentially to translate, it's a sales platform.
Yeah. It allows you to sell to any customer, on any surface area on the planet. And we are the brand behind the brand. So most of the brands you love, James Purse, which is my favorite stuff that I'm wearing today, you wouldn't see Shopify when you go to jamespurse.com, but we power that and we power most of the brands that consumers love. You kind of think about, like Amazon is, you go for the things you need and Shopify powers the stores, the things you want.
You went from being one of the platform's first merchants to now being its president. That's kind of unusual. How do you, how does that happen?
