Shopify’s Canadian boss on boosting entrepreneurs to ‘put the power in their hands’

Last year, a start-up founded by a 25-year-old programmer looking for a better way to sell snowboards online overtook Royal Bank as Canada's most valuable company. In 2020, Shopify Inc. reached a valuation only one other Canadian tech company - Nortel - ever attained. While its stock slumped earlier this year on expectations of slowing growth and the company has been beset by numerous executive departures, Shopify recently regained its position at the top of Canada's stock charts with a market capitalization of more than $180 billion. The pandemic has also reaffirmed the company's position as the No. 2 e-commerce platform in North America after Amazon. We asked Ian Black, who runs Shopify's Canadian operations, how the company plans to maintain that performance.