{"id":70966,"date":"2016-08-09T15:59:06","date_gmt":"2016-08-09T19:59:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/techvibes.com\/?p=70966"},"modified":"2017-09-29T09:43:13","modified_gmt":"2017-09-29T13:43:13","slug":"how-shopify-cultivates-culture-at-scale","status":"publish","type":"magazine","link":"https:\/\/brainstation.io\/magazine\/how-shopify-cultivates-culture-at-scale","title":{"rendered":"Startup as a State of Mind: How Shopify Cultivates Culture at Scale"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you had to look at a technology company who has mastered the art and science of company culture at scale<\/a>, you’d be wise turn your eyes to Ottawa\u2019s Shopify. The company\u2019s storied path saw it retain a startup-like culture even as it reached the public market. Any entrepreneur will attest: that\u2019s impressive.<\/p>\n

Speaking to Canadian Business<\/a>, founder Tobias L\u00fctke said he believes startup “is a state of mind”\u2014suggesting that a company of any size can retain the working culture that fueled it as a lean, agile fledgling.<\/p>\n

“If you fail to keep it up for a long time, then it\u2019s gone,” he warns. “It\u2019s something that can get lost along the way.”<\/p>\n

Echoing this is Shopify’s Harley Finkelstein, who notes that “most people assume a great culture is having a cool office or really great perks [but] what really defines whether somebody is a fit for your company is how they act when nobody\u2019s watching.\u201d People, of course, are at the heart of any office culture.<\/p>\n

So in terms of hiring, Finkelstein says, \u201cI don\u2019t want the guy who played on the tennis team; I want the guy who created the tennis team.\u201d<\/p>\n

L\u00fctke adds that people need to feel their contributions make a tangible impact on the company, regardless of its size, which he affirms is possible.<\/p>\n

“When we start new interns in our R&D team, we make sure that within their first week they actually make a change to Shopify that impacts our customers. Minutes after they send the code over, it\u2019s going to be in front of a hundred million shoppers. And it just blows people\u2019s minds, because that\u2019s the kind of personal impact they want to have in the company,” he explains.<\/p>\n

Shopify went from two to 20 people in the first six year. Now it’s a billion-dollar public business with hundreds of workers.<\/p>\n

“It\u2019s hard to talk about what I would do differently, because I would very much not want to do anything differently; it was all important to where we are now,” L\u00fctke says.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you had to look at a technology company who has mastered the art and science of company culture at scale, you’d be wise turn your eyes to Ottawa\u2019s Shopify. The company\u2019s storied path saw it retain a startup-like culture even as it reached the public market. Any entrepreneur will attest: that\u2019s impressive. Speaking to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":54503,"featured_media":283,"menu_order":0,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[142],"magazine-region":[],"magazine-series":[],"magazine-topic":[],"class_list":["post-70966","magazine","type-magazine","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-News","tag-shopify"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brainstation.io\/wp\/api\/wp\/v2\/magazine\/70966","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brainstation.io\/wp\/api\/wp\/v2\/magazine"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brainstation.io\/wp\/api\/wp\/v2\/types\/magazine"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brainstation.io\/wp\/api\/wp\/v2\/users\/54503"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brainstation.io\/wp\/api\/wp\/v2\/magazine\/70966\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brainstation.io\/wp\/api\/wp\/v2\/media\/283"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brainstation.io\/wp\/api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brainstation.io\/wp\/api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brainstation.io\/wp\/api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70966"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-region","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brainstation.io\/wp\/api\/wp\/v2\/magazine-region?post=70966"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brainstation.io\/wp\/api\/wp\/v2\/magazine-series?post=70966"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brainstation.io\/wp\/api\/wp\/v2\/magazine-topic?post=70966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}