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:

• Sentry: https://bit.ly/acquiredsentry
• WorkOS: https://bit.ly/workos25
• Anthropic: https://bit.ly/acquiredclaude25
• Statsig: https://bit.ly/acquiredstatsig26

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 2015-2026 ACQ, LLC