Harley Finkelstein on entrepreneurship
From Jay Rosenzweig & Harley Finkelstein, President of Shopify. · · Media House
“I went to law school to become a better entrepreneur. I did my MBA not to get some job McKinsey or some job in some big company. I went to demand to become a better entrepreneur.”
On , Harley Finkelstein, President at Shopify, spoke about entrepreneurship during Jay Rosenzweig & Harley Finkelstein, President of Shopify. on Media House.
About Harley Finkelstein
Harley Finkelstein, President of Shopify, has been discussing the company's financial performance and the role of artificial intelligence in commerce. In May 2026, Shopify reported Q1 results with $101 billion in gross merchandise volume (GMV), a 35% year-over-year increase, and $3.17 billion in revenue, up 34%. Finkelstein described this as "Shopify at its best" and noted that the company has posted four consecutive quarters of 30% or more revenue and GMV growth. He stated that AI-driven traffic to Shopify stores grew 8x year-over-year and orders from AI-powered searches increased nearly 13 times. Finkelstein said the company is "the only platform powering selling inside of ChatGPT, Copilot, and Google" and described agentic commerce as a new channel for entrepreneurs to find customers. In interviews, Finkelstein has spoken about his family background, including that his father was a Hungarian immigrant and Holocaust survivor grandchild who opened an egg stall in Montreal. He said that being Jewish has played a role in his success and that he has become more publicly Jewish in response to antisemitism. Finkelstein also discussed his personal experience with anxiety, stating that he has "had anxiety my entire life" and manages it through meditation, exercise, and cold plunges. He described the current era as a potential "golden age of entrepreneurship" driven by AI, saying that "the barrier to entry and the time to scale have completely collapsed."