{"id":72166,"date":"2016-09-09T16:00:50","date_gmt":"2016-09-09T20:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/techvibes.com\/?p=72166"},"modified":"2017-10-18T13:15:22","modified_gmt":"2017-10-18T17:15:22","slug":"shopify-waterloo-office-historic-distillery","status":"publish","type":"magazine","link":"https:\/\/brainstation.io\/magazine\/shopify-waterloo-office-historic-distillery","title":{"rendered":"Shopify Waterloo&#8217;s Office is an Epic Historical Distillery"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Seagram&#8217;s 19th century whiskey distillery has found a new tenant in Canadian tech wunderkind Shopify. Located in the thriving technology community of Waterloo, Canada, Shopify&#8217;s newest office is meant to inspire its people\u00a0to think way, way outside the box.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_72169\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-72169\" style=\"width: 1500px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-72169 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/borndigital.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/Shopify_Waterloo_Executive_Team-1.jpg\" width=\"1500\" height=\"927\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-72169\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Shopify Plus General Manager Loren Padelford, CEO &amp; Founder Tobias L\u00fctke, and COO Harley Finkelstein stand in Shopify Waterloo&#8217;s atrium in front of the historic Seagram&#8217;s distillery.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>&#8220;I think one of the most important things we are doing is creating environments to work in which are simply surprising,&#8221; explained Tobias L\u00fctke, Shopify&#8217;s CEO and cofounder.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;You want to do your environment justice\u2013it&#8217;s very hard to be in this space, looking around, seeing all this and having a small discussion about unnecessary things. It&#8217;s kind of too inspiring, so there is power in this environment. You would feel disappointed in yourself if you would spend 45 minutes talking about something that doesn&#8217;t matter.&#8221;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;Creativity is important and thinking big is something that ought to be done&#8221; &#8211; Shopify Co-Founder and CEO\u00a0Tobias L\u00fctke<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Shopify&#8217;s recently minted team in Waterloo, branded as &#8216;Shopify Plus&#8217;, is primarily a sales team for the e-commerce platform&#8217;s enterprise services, something that until now has been a missing piece of the tech landscape in the area.<\/p>\n<p class=\"printable-text\">&#8220;We have this untapped giant pool of people who aren&#8217;t being recruited because they don&#8217;t code,&#8221; said Shopify Plus general manager Loren Padelford, &#8220;We&#8217;re shifting this community to become a hotbed of sales talent.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/borndigital.com\/2016\/06\/16\/killer-spaces-shopify-torontos-brick-and-beam-masterpiece<\/p>\n<p class=\"printable-text\">The Waterloo team currently consists of about 160 people, though in little over a year there will be 300 developers, designers and sales teams working out of the historic space. Much like\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/borndigital.com\/2016\/06\/16\/killer-spaces-shopify-torontos-brick-and-beam-masterpiece\" target=\"_blank\">Shopify&#8217;s brick and beam masterpiece in Toronto<\/a>, staff are treated to a wealth of perks designed to both keep people happy, but also keep them focused.<\/p>\n<p class=\"printable-text\">The new spaces offers catered breakfast and lunch, yoga room, 5 separate well-stocked\u00a0kitchens\u00a0plus its\u00a0own bar suspended within the distillery warehouse and pouring local brews from the built-in taps. The walls are adorned with COO Harley Finkelstein&#8217;s famous &#8216;Hustle&#8217; mantra along with other company slogans such as &#8220;Get Shit Done&#8221; and &#8220;Act Like An Owner&#8221;, all important sentiments that Shopify seeks\u00a0and fosters in its teams.<\/p>\n<p class=\"printable-text\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-72167\" src=\"https:\/\/borndigital.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/Shopify_Waterloo_Executive_Team-1-2.jpg\" alt=\"Shopify_Waterloo_Executive_Team-1-2\" width=\"1500\" height=\"1000\" \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"printable-text\">&#8220;We try to create environments which surprise people enough so they are constantly reminded that\u00a0creativity is important and thinking big is something that ought to be done. We&#8217;ve managed to pull this off in office towers, but there is no way to do it as well as in a distillery. This is completely next-level stuff.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"printable-text\">\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Seagram&#8217;s 19th century whiskey distillery has found a new tenant in Canadian tech wunderkind Shopify. Located in the thriving technology community of Waterloo, Canada, Shopify&#8217;s newest office is meant to inspire its people\u00a0to think way, way outside the box. &#8220;I think one of the most important things we are doing is creating environments to work [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":76166,"featured_media":72168,"menu_order":0,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[142],"magazine-region":[],"magazine-series":[],"magazine-topic":[],"class_list":["post-72166","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\/72166","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\/76166"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brainstation.io\/wp\/api\/wp\/v2\/magazine\/72166\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brainstation.io\/wp\/api\/wp\/v2\/media\/72168"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brainstation.io\/wp\/api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brainstation.io\/wp\/api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brainstation.io\/wp\/api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72166"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-region","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brainstation.io\/wp\/api\/wp\/v2\/magazine-region?post=72166"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brainstation.io\/wp\/api\/wp\/v2\/magazine-series?post=72166"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brainstation.io\/wp\/api\/wp\/v2\/magazine-topic?post=72166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}