Dear Entrepreneurs: We Build for You

Shopify’s mission is to make commerce better for everyone—you’ve likely heard us say it a million times. But what does that really mean? Shopify President Harley Finkelstein shares why Shopify exists.

Shopify’s mission is to make commerce better for everyone—you’ve likely heard us say it a million times. But what does that really mean?

Shopify President Harley Finkelstein spent some time memorializing Shopify’s Purpose: the mandate behind our mission. Our strategies and tactics will always evolve, but our purpose and mission are here for good.

Here it is, for you, and forever.

Transcript:

Every 28 seconds, an entrepreneur on Shopify makes their first sale.

That transformative moment, that first “cha-ching” sound from their Shopify app, is the reason we do what we do. We want more people to experience this. More entrepreneurs, more rebels, more of the ones taking the road less traveled.

Opportunity is not evenly distributed, and Shopify works to change this. Our objective is to offer anyone with a dream the chance to start a business. To make opportunities available to people who thought they didn’t have any. To enable the Davids of the retail world to succeed alongside the Goliaths. To take a million small stars and light up the world. Everything we ever build is in pursuit of making commerce better for everyone.

Our vision of the future includes more voices rather than fewer. More choices instead of one option. Shopify thrives on the collective success of every single independent business we power. That means we only succeed when our merchants do—so we will always create more value for you than we capture for ourselves.

To the entrepreneurs reaching for independence: we build for you. To the trailblazers behind enterprises doing business differently: we build for you. To the renegades, the innovators, the dreamers: we build for all of you.

Shopify is the entrepreneurship company. And we will never lose sight of this, or you.

—Harley & the Shopify Team