The Shopify IPO

Ben and David head north of the border to Ottawa, Canada to cover
perhaps one of the greatest IPO success stories of the past 5
years, Shopify. From humble beginnings as a “lifestyle business”
hawking hipster snowboard gear online to now routinely mentioned
in the same breath as Amazon, the tale of Shopify and its
incredible CEO Tobi Lütke’s ascent is not one to miss!


Editor's note: Shopify actually powered $41b of sales, not $14b,
in 2018, as discussed toward the end of the episode. $14b was the
fourth-quarter number. While this changes the analysis of value
captured at the end of the episode (Shopify only captures 2.5% of
merchant sales as their own revenue, not 7%, which is admittedly
very different), it doesn’t change overall sentiment on the
company discussed in the episode.


Sponsors:


WorkOS: https://bit.ly/workos25

Sierra: https://bit.ly/acquiredsierra

Sentry: https://bit.ly/acquiredsentry

Anthropic: https://bit.ly/acquiredclaude25



Links:


https://www.snowdevil.ca

https://www.jadedpixel.com

Citron’s “research” report:
 https://citronresearch.com/citron-exposes-the-dark-side-of-shopify/



Carve Outs:


Ben: Moment smartphone camera lenses:
https://www.shopmoment.com

David: Quoteapro engineering and head of product roles, Bill
Gurley on Invest like the Best:
http://investorfieldguide.com/gurley/







More Acquired!


Get email updates with hints on next episode and follow-ups
from recent episodes

Join the Slack

Subscribe to ACQ2

Merch Store!



Copyright 2015-2025 ACQ, LLC