In a memo to employees that he posted on X on Monday, Lütke wrote: "In a company growing 20-40% year over year, you must improve by at least that every year just to re-qualify."
"This sounds daunting, but given the nature of the tools, this doesn't even sound terribly ambitious to me anymore," Lütke wrote, referring to artificial intelligence.
Lütke said using the technology is "now a fundamental expectation of everyone at Shopify" and that AI usage would be gauged in performance and peer review questionnaires. He added that the expectations apply to himself and all executives as well.
The CEO appears to be reversing his reputation as a founder who values work-life balance.
Last month, in response to an X post that touted him as an example of balancing work and family, Lütke wrote: "I'm at home for dinner but I work at least 10 or so hours a day and a lot of the weekend. I don't want people to get misguided by this meme."
Lütke has since deleted most of his 2019 tweets, including one that said: "I've never worked through a night. The only times I worked more than 40 hours in a week was when I had the burning desire to do so. I need 8ish hours of sleep a night. Same with everybody else, whether we admit it or not."
The company did not respond to Business Insider's request for comment.
'Scrappiness and frugality'
The Shopify CEO's remarks reflecta broader cultural crackdown on Big Tech workers, who have enjoyed a work culture known for office perks, top-line pay, and job security, sometimes without grueling hours.
At tech giants like Amazon and TikTok, pandemic-era work-from-home luxuries have been replaced by strict return-to-office mandates. At nearly every company, layoffs have taken a wrecking ball to the industry and AI adoption has cut hiring, making job security a thing of the past.
"We want to operate like the world's largest startup," Amazon CEO Andy Jassy wrote in his RTO memo in September. "That means having a passion for constantly inventing for customers, strong urgency (for most big opportunities, it's a race!), high ownership, fast decision-making, scrappiness and frugality, deeply-connected collaboration."
Workers who spoke to Business Insider said they are feeling the pressure to work longer hours, go beyond what is asked of them, be highly visible, and evaluate other options beyond full-time work.
Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke shared in an internal memo that he expects his employees to "demonstrate why they cannot get what they want done using AI" before hiring new staff.
David Fitzgerald/Sportsfile via Getty Images
Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke shared an internal memo laying out an aggressive AI plan for the company.
In it, he says before managers hire anyone new, they must prove that AI couldn't do the job better.
Shopify's attrition rate and its embrace of AI have coincided in recent years.
The CEO of Shopify is asking managers to prove that AI couldn't do a better job before requesting to hire someone new.
In an internal memo titled "AI usage is now a baseline expectation," Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke said that "using AI well is a skill that needs to be carefully learned" by "using it a lot," and that AI usage is "now a fundamental expectation of everyone at Shopify."
"Before asking for more Headcount and resources, teams must demonstrate why they cannot get what they want done using AI," Lütke wrote in the memo that he posted on X after it was leaked. "What would this area look like if autonomous AI agents were already part of the team? This question can lead to really fun discussions and projects."
Lütke added that AI usage questions will also be added to Shopify's "performance and peer review questionnaire" and that employees will "have access to as much cutting edge AI tools as possible."
"This applies to all of us, including me and the executive team," Lütke wrote.
Shopify did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
In early 2023, the company began improving customer service levels by embracing generative AI to handle some tasks that support employees had previously done.
Later that year, it laid off 20% of its workforce, rescinded job offers for former interns, and sold its logistics business Deliverr, which it acquired in 2022 for $2.1 billion.
In 2024, the Shopify leadership announced a re-organization to fix the "unhealthy" ratio of managers to "crafters," the company's term for individual contributors.
In January 2025, the company quietly laid off employees in its support division, which troubleshoots issues for millions of merchants who use the platform to sell products.
On top of the six startups that Shopify acquired in 2024, in March, the company also bought Vantage Discovery, a startup that builds AI-powered search functions for retailers. The intelligent search platform is said to be able to bring a "Pinterest-like capability to any retailer" using generative AI.
"What we need to succeed is our collective sum total skill and ambition at applying our craft, multiplied by AI, for the benefit of our merchants," Lutke said in the memo. "If you're not climbing, you're sliding."
In a recent memo to employees, Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke made a bold policy change: teams must demonstrate why AI can’t perform a job before they’re permitted to ask for more headcount and resources. “Before asking for more headcount and resources, teams must demonstrate why they cannot get what they want done using AI,” Lütke […]
Nearly 10 years after filing to go public on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and Toronto Stock Exchange, Canadian e-commerce platform Shopify has announced that it’s transitioning its U.S. listing to the Nasdaq. In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Wednesday, Shopify said it is removing its Class A shares […]
Harish Abbott is the CEO and cofounder of Augment.
Augment
Former Shopify VP Harish Abbott launched a new startup building an AI assistant for logistics.
Abbott cofounded Deliverr and sold it to Shopify for $2.1 billion in 2022.
Augment has raised $25 million in seed funding led by 8VC.
Harish Abbott, Deliverr cofounder and former Shopify vice president, launched a new startup called Augment out of stealth on Tuesday.
Augment is building an AI assistant for the logistics industry. It has raised $25 million in seed funding, led by 8VC.
The AI assistant, called Augie, can respond to emails and Slack messages, make and receive phone calls, manage workflows, and perform other routine tasks.
"You can text them, you can email them, you can message them on Slack. You can assign work to them, and they go about doing their work," Abbott told Business Insider in an exclusive interview.
Abbott said the idea for Augment came from a desire to use AI to make an impact on an industry he knows well. He cofounded Deliverr, a startup that built software to enable quick shipping, and sold it to Shopify for $2.1 billion in 2022. A year later, Shopify sold Deliverr (and the rest of its logistics business) to Flexport. Abbott spent just under a year at Flexport before starting to build Augment in the summer of 2024.
Augment will start in trucking, targeting shippers, brokers, and trucking companies before expanding to the larger logistics industry. Abbott said that Augie has been used in businesses that collectively have $20 billion of freight under management. Its early customers include Austin-based brokerage Arrive Logistics and third-party logistics provider NFI.
Trucking is a nearly trillion-dollar industry in the US, and trucking companies serve as the connective tissue for commerce, transporting shipments between warehouses, ports, and retail stores. The last three years have been difficult for this industry as it's endured one of the longest recessions in its history. This means transportation companies are looking for ways to alleviate pressure on their margins, Abbott said.
It's also a very fragmented industry. There are hundreds of thousands of trucking companies in the US, and no one standard system they all use to conduct business, besides email. Abbott said that when shadowing people working in this space, he saw that employees receive as many as 500 to 600 emails a day.
"When a shipper has to book a truck, they email maybe four or five brokers," Abbott said. "The broker responds, then they go back and forth and negotiate on a bid. Then the broker takes that and emails 10 or 15 trucking companies, then they respond."
Augie can chat with employees in Slack and make phone calls on their behalf.
Augment
'Logistics is not solved'
Abbott said his time at Shopify gave him an "even stronger feel of the problems" faced by the millions of merchants using the e-commerce platform. Getting their products to customers remains one of merchants' biggest challenges and costs.
His time at Flexport, meanwhile, showed how "messy" global trade can be.
"It reinforced for me that one, logistics is not solved. Two, it's crucially important. And three, I think AI is the answer to these problems," he said.
Augie runs on different large language models depending on the scenario, including Anthropic's Claude, OpenAI's GPT-4, Meta's Llama, and DeepSeek. It learns from employees' emails, phone calls, and documents about how workers typically do their jobs. Abbott said that while Augie learns quickly, it still needs the help of employees to make decisions as it can't understand the nuance of human relationships.
"That's why the model for Augie is: I'm gonna superpower you, my human boss. I'm gonna bring you the knowledge. I'm gonna work 24/7 to take all the tedious parts away," Abbott said. "Now you can make a better judgment call than you would otherwise because you were so busy before."
Augment's founding team also includes CTO Artur Rivilis, who ran engineering for Deliverr, served as vice president of engineering at Shopify, and then spent some time at Flexport after its acquisition of Shopify Logistics. Cofounder Justin Hall, who will lead growth for Augment, had stints as CEO of logistics company Primo and as chief customer officer at YRC Worldwide. Hall was also previously an executive in residence at 8VC.
"Augment's an even bigger idea — one that parallels Palantir's approach of understanding the workflow and knowledge ontology, to apply AI and solve critical problems," Lonsdale said. "Harish is poised to build a generational company that brings productivity and intelligence to one of the largest industries in the world."
Augment has a team of about 50 people, mostly working in engineering. It plans to build a customer success team in Chicago. It has offices in Chicago, San Francisco, and Toronto.
Shopify has acquired another AI-focused shopping startup.
Bennett Raglin/Getty Images
Shopify has acquired Vantage Discovery, a startup building AI search for retailers.
Vantage Discovery was founded by two former Pinterest engineering leaders.
Shopify has been acquiring startups in an effort to bring on more AI talent.
Shopify has acquired Vantage Discovery, a startup that builds AI-powered search functions for retailers.
Cofounders Lance Riedel and Nigel Daley both previously worked in engineering at Pinterest. Riedel built out Pinterest Shopping, while Daley worked in engineering infrastructure.
They started Vantage Discovery in early 2023 to bring a "Pinterest-like capability to any retailer" using generative AI, Daley said in an interview with Business Insider in February.
Vantage Discovery uses LLMs to enhance retailers' search functions, allowing shoppers to see more personalized, relevant results when searching through a store's product catalog.
"In the past, machine learning and AI had been held by some of the much bigger companies," he said. "Now with Gen AI and technology like Vantage Discovery, we can bring that same power to any retailer, from the smallest mom-and-pop shop to massive enterprises."
Riedel said in a LinkedIn post that Vantage Discovery would integrate its "revolutionary technology with Shopify's commerce platform." Daley confirmed the news in an email but declined to comment further on the deal.
"Vantage Discovery's search platform and mission-aligned team will play a key role in supercharging our work for both merchants and buyers," a Shopify spokesperson said to BI.
"These have been very tactical, thoughtful AI hires and we want to continually be thoughtful, proactive, and judicious on thinking about the cash," CFO Jeff Hoffmeister said during the company's earnings call in February.
An attention-grabbing Kickstarter campaign attempting to reinvent the measuring spoon has turned into a mad, mad, mad, mad world for backers after years of broken promises and thousands of missing spoons.
The mind-boggling design for the measuring spoon first wowed the Internet in 2016 after a video promoting the Kickstarter campaign went viral and spawned widespread media coverage fawning over the unique design.
Known as Polygons, the three-in-one origami measuring spoons have a flat design that can be easily folded into common teaspoon and tablespoon measurements. "Regular spoons are so 3000 BC," a tagline on the project's website joked.
Shopify's divestment from employee resource groups began in 2023, long before the diversity, equity, and inclusion pullback of 2025.
REUTERS/Chris Wattie
The Canadian e-commerce company Shopify has eight employee resource groups.
In 2023, it stopped funding these ERGs, which serve employees from underrepresented groups.
While the ERGs are still operational, sources say they have become limited.
Shopify froze funding to its employee resource groups at the end of 2023, two people familiar with the matter said.
Shopify has eight ERGs, each serving different underrepresented communities, including Black, Latino, and LGBTQ+ employees. The groups provide support to employees, while raising awareness around the additional obstacles entrepreneurs in these communities might face.
The ERGs also sometimes planned events for Shopify's merchant community and paid for speakers to come and share their stories with employees.
"They were spaces for employees to be their true selves," one person told Business Insider.
But two people said that funding for the groups became increasingly limited over time, until they could no longer pursue initiatives that would require additional monetary support from the company. As of partway through 2024, funding for ERG events had not resumed.
Representatives for Shopify did not respond to requests for comment on the status of ERG funding.
Shopify has been stepping back from other diversity- and inclusion-focused initiatives. In January, the company laid off employees working on its Build Black and Build Native programs. Those provided resources, networking events, and financing opportunities for Black and Indigenous merchants using Shopify. It also shut down Slack channels it hosted for merchants participating in those programs, BetaKit reported.
The team responsible for these programs — also known as the equitable commerce team — had built an online directory highlighting Shopify stores run by Black and Indigenous entrepreneurs. The directory, called emPowered by Shopify, is no longer online.
Shopify also partnered with Operation Hope to launch a project called One Million Black Businesses, with the goal of creating 1 million new Black-owned businesses in the US and Canada by 2030. Shopify pledged $130 million to the initiative. Lance Triggs, who chairs 1MBB at Operation Hope, told BetaKit that the Shopify partnership was ongoing, though the Shopify page that previously provided information about it now redirects to the e-commerce platform's homepage.Shopify's president, Harley Finkelstein, sits on the board of Operation Hope.
An open letter against 'Canada's most valuable public tech company'
Shopify's moves have been opposed by some in the Canadian tech industry. Last week, a group of Canadian tech founders published an open letter criticizing Shopify and other companies, saying they were "rolling back protections and support for women, 2SLGBTQIA+ people, Black and Indigenous communities, immigrants, and other marginalized groups."
"Powerful forces in our tech sector want to reshape Canada in the image of those who see inclusion as an obstacle, not an advantage. They lobby politicians, control media platforms, and influence policies that move us closer to the divisive politics of our southern neighbour," the open letter says.
It adds: "Thousands of us — entrepreneurs, marketers, engineers, and support staff— have built Canada into the global tech leader it is today. We did this not by shutting people out, but by welcoming talent from every background. We must protect the Canadian values of equity, inclusion, and collective responsibility in our tech ecosystem."
The open letter also criticized "Canada's most valuable public tech company" — Shopify has a market capitalization of more than $140 billion — for hosting Kanye West's Yeezy store while it sold a single item: a T-shirt with a swastika on it. Shopify removed the storefront about 36 hours after it was posted because it "did not engage in authentic commerce practices," a spokesperson told BI last month.
Laura Gabor, one of the authors of the open letter, said she and her coauthors wanted to emphasize that Canadian tech circles value diversity. Gabor is a cofounder of the connected-air-purifier brand Ecologicca, and she created the Canadian tech community What in the Tech, the site where the letter was published.
"There has been a lot of conversation in group chats and underground about how do we stop these seemingly anti-DEI policies," Gabor told BI. "But there has been very little said out loud or publicly."
She said the letter had nearly 1,000 signatures, including those of a former Shopify employee and a person describing themselves as a Shopify customer.
Though they did not sign the open letter, several former Shopify executives — including Craig Miller, its former chief product officer, and Katie Keita, its former senior director of investor relations — spoke out publicly against the company's hosting of the Yeezy store before it was taken down.
"Even if @Shopify views it as 'morally ambiguous' to empower the exponential buildup of hate toward a religion/ethnicity, it is, at the very least, a grave public disservice," Keita said in a post on X.
The boom in e-commerce post-pandemic meant shops moved online. However, some merchants ended up with dozens of separate app providers to accommodate everything from supply chains, to inventory, to marketing. The founders of Shop Circle realized this and either built or bought many such apps. The company has now raised $60 million in a Series […]
Nicolas Grasset was CEO of Peel Insights and is now a director of product at Shopify.
Peel
Shopify increased its acquihiring amid a hot market for AI talent.
The company completed six small acquisitions last year to bolster its technical AI leadership.
It also brought on an AI and machine learning veteran as its new chief technology officer.
Shopify has stepped up its acquihiring as the race for AI talent heats up.
CFO Jeff Hoffmeister said during the company's fourth-quarter earnings call earlier this month that Shopify had done six "tuck-in" acquisitions in the previous year.
He said that while the deals were small from a financial perspective, they've been an important source of talent and a tactic the company plans to continue.
"These have been very tactical, thoughtful AI hires and we want to continually be thoughtful, proactive, and judicious on thinking about the cash," he said.
Many of the founders that Shopify has hired now hold leadership positions in the company's product org. That includes Nicolas Grasset, the former CEO of AI-driven analytics startup Peel Insights. Shopify brought on the Peel team in May, and Grasset is now a director of product. Relay Commerce acquired the business itself.
Ray Reddy, cofounder and CEO of mobile ordering app Ritual, became a VP of product for retail at Shopify this January as part of an acquihire deal that also included his cofounder, Larry Stinson, and some engineering staff.
"I'm inspired by the opportunity to help local businesses adapt and thrive as generative AI reshapes customer expectations—a moment that reminds me of launching Ritual over a decade ago during the rise of mobile internet," Reddy wrote in a LinkedIn post about his joining Shopify. "I'm excited to join a team poised to help businesses of all sizes succeed as technology rapidly evolves."
Ritual CEO Ray Reddy is now a VP of product for retail at Shopify.
Ritual
Keeping up in a 'white-hot' market
Gil Luria, head of technology research at D.A. Davidson, said Shopify's increased acquihire activity is likely a product of the "white-hot" market for engineers with AI credibility.
"Hiring individuals is sometimes too slow or too expensive," Luria said. "Sometimes it's easier to just buy a small company that has AI engineers just for the talent."
Rousseau Kazi, former CEO of workplace communications platform Threads, joined Shopify's product org when Shopify acquihired the startup's team in June. Michael Averto, cofounder and former CEO of inventory operations platform ChannelApe, began working on inventory management as a product leader at Shopify as part of a deal in July.
Shopify also hired the team behind Stellate, a startup that made developer tools. Cofounder and former CEO Max Stoiber is now a director of engineering leading teams working on Liquid, Shopify's template language for storefronts. In September open-source developer group The Guild acquired Stellate's product and customer base.
Shopify also acquired Checkout Blocks, a checkout customization app, in June and hired Gil Greenberg as a product lead working on checkout extensibility. The Checkout Blocks app is still available for download in the Shopify App Store.
Luria said that Shopify's growth over the years has largely been organic and not from acquisitions. Shopify did invest billions into building its fulfillment network, acquiring Deliverr for more than $2 billion before selling it and the rest of its logistics business to Flexport. Shopify has since described its fulfillment work as a "side quest."
The past year is not the first time Shopify has used acquihires to bring on valuable talent. In 2018 it acquired the team behind Swedish shopping startup Tictail, and many of those leaders were key to the growth of its Shop app. It also acquired the B2B commerce marketplace Handshake in 2019, and those founders have gone on to hold product leadership roles at Shopify.
Shopify is also doubling down on AI talent in other ways. In August, the company hired Mikhail Parakhin as its new CTO. Parakhin led AI advancements like Copilot at Microsoft and also developed search engines and cloud services for more than four years as Yandex's CTO.
Hoffmeister also said during the earnings call that Shopify would continue to make strategic investments in startups building tech that its merchants would find valuable. Its 2024 investments included participation in a pre-seed round for Convergence, which is building an AI agent called Proxy.
Kanye West, legally known as Ye, had his online store shut down by Shopify.
Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images for The Recording Academy
Kanye West's Super Bowl ad pointed people to YEEZY.com, which was later updated to feature only a swastika T-shirt.
After the listing received backlash, Shopify removed the website on Tuesday.
Shopify has faced criticism before for hosting controversial stores, leading to policy changes.
Four days of Kanye West controversy came to a head on Tuesday when the artist's website was taken offline after facing backlash.
The websitewas removed by the vendor powering it, Shopify, less than 48 hours after West's Super Bowl ad directed viewers to a storefront selling a single item: a swastika T-shirt labeled "HH-01."
A Shopify spokesperson confirmed to BI on Tuesday morning the company had removed the store.
"All merchants are responsible for following the rules of our platform. This merchant did not engage in authentic commerce practices and violated our terms so we removed them from Shopify," the spokesperson said.
On Friday, West, whose legal name is Ye, posted a slew of social media posts on X praising Adolf Hitler, describing himself as a Nazi, and defending music mogul Sean "Diddy" Combs, who was arrested in September and charged with racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking, and transportation to engage in prostitution. Combs has pleaded not guilty to the charges.
Ye also purchased a 30-second ad that aired during Super Bowl LIX. Unlike the national Super Bowl ads that reached a cost of north of $8 million for 30 seconds of airtime this year, the Yeezy team instead purchased ad slots on local stations — which would have come at a lower price.
The ads ran on local Fox stations in Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and Atlanta, and some other affiliate stations, according to USIM, the media agency that brokered the buy.
Doug Livingston, president and chief operating officer of USIM, said the agency immediately ceased working with Yeezy LLC after seeing the "disparaging and vile comments" Ye had posted on X on Friday.
Livingston said Fox had said the media buy was "non-cancelable."
"We informed Fox that they should cease airing any remnant spots immediately upon learning that Yeezy, LLC was promoting vile content," he said.
A Fox insider told BI they received no communication from the agency about requesting to drop the ad until Monday morning after the Super Bowl spot had aired.
The Yeezy Super Bowl spot, which purported to be shot on an iPhone and featured the rapper sitting in a dentist's chair showing off his new teeth, was unlikely to have caused alarm when it was submitted and subsequently approved for broadcast because it didn't contain any obscenities.
"So whassup guys, I spent like all the money for the commercial on these new teeth. So, once again I had to shoot it on the iPhone. Um, um, um, go to Yeezy.com," Ye said in the sparse ad. (Yeezy.com also ran a local spot during last year's Super Bowl, starring Ye.)
At the time of the ad's approval and airing, the Yeezy store displayed a number of items for sale. It was only after the ad was shown that the website was updated to display the swastika T-shirt for sale, according to screenshots of the site captured by the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine.
USIM's Livingston said the agency was unaware that Ye had intended to change the nature of the store's offerings.
"The commercial was to promote general athletic apparel listed on the website," Livingston said.
Along with his website, Ye's X account appears to also be deactivated on the platform as of Tuesday morning.
"Ye is an intergenerational artist and icon who continues to redefine the limits of creativity and free expression. He has deactivated his X account for the time being," spokesperson Milo Yiannopoulos said in a statement to NBC News. Representatives for Ye did not immediately respond to a request for further comment from Business Insider.
Ye was previously banned from X, then known as Twitter, in 2022 after he tweeted an image containing a swastika and the Star of David. His account was later reinstated.
In the hours following the Super Bowl ad airing, many called for the Yeezy site to be taken down.
This week, the Anti-Defamation League, which called the T-shirt listing "further proof of Kanye's antisemitism," encouraged people to sign an open letter calling on Fox Sports to condemn Ye's ad. At the time of writing, the letter had more than 9,000 signatories.
"The swastika is the symbol adopted by Hitler as the primary emblem of the Nazis," the ADL said in a statement posted to X on Monday. "It galvanized his followers in the 20th century and continues to threaten and instill fear in those targeted by antisemitism and white supremacy."
"If that wasn't enough, the t-shirt is labeled on Kanye's website as 'HH-01,' which is code for 'Heil Hitler,'" the statement said.
On Tuesday, talent agent Daniel McCartney of 33 & West announced on Instagram that he would no longer represent Ye "due to his recent harmful and hateful remarks."
Shopify under pressure
Several former Shopify executives, including former chief product officer Craig Miller and former senior director of investor relations Katie Keita, spoke out against the company's hosting of the Yeezy store before it was taken down.
"Even if @Shopify views it as 'morally ambiguous' to empower the exponential buildup of hate toward a religion/ethnicity, it is, at the very least, a grave public disservice," Keita said in a post on X.
It wasn't the first time Shopify has faced criticism for its hosting of an online store. Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke frequently defends free speech and has said he doesn't view it as Shopify's role to police points of view.
In 2020, a legal defense fund was set up for Kyle Rittenhouse via Shopify. After several weeks of criticism, Shopify shut the store down. It also removed sites affiliated with President Donald Trump after a group of pro-Trump rioters stormed the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.
In 2022, critics called for Shopify to remove the store for Libs of TikTok, saying it violated Shopify's acceptable use policy. At the time, that policy said Shopify's platform could not be used to "promote or condone hate or violence against people based on race, ethnicity, color, national origin, religion, age, gender, sexual orientation, disability, medical condition, veteran status or other forms of discriminatory intolerance."
Shopify did not remove the Libs of TikTok store as it did not find it to be in violation of the policy, a spokesperson told Business Insider in 2022. That decision frustrated some employees, including some in customer support who fielded complaints from angry customers.
Shopify adjusted its acceptable use policy last year, removing some of the more specific language.
"There are activities we don't allow on the platform because they breach the social contract of commerce," it now reads, in part. "This means you can't call for, or threaten, violence against specific people or groups. And you can't sell products that facilitate intentional self-harm."
Shopify continues to conduct quiet layoffs, the latest targeting its customer support workers.
Denis Poroy/AP
Shopify has laid off employees in its customer support organization, BI has learned.
This division of the company has undergone multiple rounds of smaller, quiet layoffs since 2022.
The e-commerce platform company continues to hire third-party customer support staff.
Shopify quietly laid off employees in its support division this week, five people familiar with the matter told Business Insider. It was not immediately clear how many employees lost their jobs, but one person estimated that it was at least a dozen.
Shopify's support teams troubleshoot issues for the millions of merchants who use the platform to sell products.
Employees who were affected by the job cuts lost access to company systems during or immediately after a brief meeting with HR, making it difficult for them to ascertain how many of their coworkers had also lost their jobs.
Shopify representatives did not immediately return a request for comment on the layoffs.
Shopify's support division has undergone many changes in recent years.
In early 2023, the company began "Code Yellow," a project aimed at improving customer service levels that leaders said had "deteriorated beyond acceptable ranges." As part of that project, it embraced using generative AI to handle some tasks that support employees had previously done, saying the technology had helped to "minimize toil, help us be more efficient and improve merchant experience." In 2024, company leaders told employees a reorganization of the division would be necessary to fix its ratio of managers to "crafters," which is Shopify's term for individual contributors.
Shopify has also continued to hire third-party vendors — some in other countries including the Philippines and some in Canada — to assist with customer-service tickets, which employees said has contributed to a decline in overall quality in response.
The support division has also seen a lot of turnover in its management ranks, with former leaders Glen Worthington, Clovis Cuqui, and Jen Bebb all departing Shopify in 2024.
Shopify conducted two rounds of mass layoffs in the years after a pandemic-era boom. In July 2022, it laid off 10% of its workforce, or roughly 1,000 employees, and in May 2023, it cut an additional 20% of staff while also selling off its logistics business.
Three people told BI that the company has quietly laid off workers several times since then, in a manner similar to this week's layoffs.
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Friday, December 27, was supposed to be the start of a relaxing holiday weekend. But it was chaos for thousands of small business owners who use Bench, an accounting and tax startup based in Canada that raised $113 million from investors like Bain Capital Ventures and Shopify. That morning, they found themselves unable to log […]
Launching a successful e-commerce company involves making a product — and then figuring out a way to sell it. One expert advised a hybrid Shopify-Amazon model.
Katie Monds
I'm midway through my 'e-comm experiment' and have 500 pickleball paddles in production.
I spoke to an expert about how to most effectively sell my product.
He suggested a hybrid Shopify-Amazon model and said ads are essential.
Years of writing about individuals who make money selling products online sparked my curiosity: Is this something I can do? What would startup costs look like? Is it time-consuming? Difficult?
To answer those questions, I teamed up with a friend to develop a product (pickleball paddles) to sell online.
Product selection and development — phase one, if you may — has been time-consuming, challenging, and expensive. But we made a paddle we're proud of, the Peak Pro, and 500 of them are headed from a factory in Asia to my studio apartment in Los Angeles.
Phase two — actually selling the product — is officially underway, and my first observation is that it's going to present more challenges than phase one. Luckily, I've interviewed smart people who have done it before, and I have no problem asking for advice.
I reached out to Tyler Walter, cofounder of the product-sourcing company 330 Trading, which I'm also working with to manufacture my paddles. He's based in Taiwan and works closely with US e-commerce businesses, advising them on everything from initial product development to creating diverse supply chains.
I asked him selling-specific questions: How can I get consumers to buy from Peak Pickleball when they have endless options? He told me he'd tailor his answers specifically to my company, as every brand is a bit different.
Two pieces of advice stood out.
1. Build a Shopify and Amazon store
Walter advised me to start with a hybrid Shopify-Amazon model. In general, I'll get better margins with Shopify, as there are fewer costs associated with selling on that platform, but I need Amazon for traffic, especially when I'm first establishing the brand.
"Amazon is guaranteed traffic. There's a guaranteed flow of people who are going to see your product every single day," he said. And, using tools like Helium 10, I can estimate what that traffic is going to look like. "You can see exactly how many people are searching for pickleball paddles on Amazon every day, or pickleball-related items or even racket-related sports, so you can drill down into those details before you ever go live."
With Shopify, on the other hand, I'd have to generate my own traffic through things like social media campaigns, ads, and word of mouth.
Walter told me it's smart to start with the hybrid model since I haven't yet nailed down my typical customer.
Amazon will work well for the customer who is newer to pickleball and not yet intertwined in the community. They may come across my product while searching for a medium- to high-grade paddle online. "Amazon is amazing for that, the best in the world," he explained, especially if I can optimize my listing page, rack up good reviews, and rank well on the marketplace. "If there's enough traffic on Amazon every day for pickleball paddles, which we've already determined there is, then you're going to get people that you would never otherwise get who are just searching for pickleball in general."
Shopify, on the other hand, may serve a different customer: Someone who is more engaged in the pickleball community or cares more about the brand of paddle they're playing with. The customer who buys into our image, feel, and the technical aspects of our product will likely go directly to our website.
A Shopify sale is going to mean more profit, "but you have to be able to do the work to tell that brand story," Walter said.
That raises the question: What customer am I after?
If I can't definitively answer that yet, Walter told me a hybrid approach allowing me to test both types of customers is a smart strategy.
"You can test out the first 500 paddles and see where you get more traction and where you have better profit margins, and then invest more resources into that channel moving forward," he said. "But there's a good chance that you guys run this for the next five years and you might always be a hybrid model. It might always be both."
2. The key to standing out on Amazon: SEO, reviews, and ads
Walter sold me on setting up an Amazon store in addition to the Shopify one, but I had a follow-up question: Sure, millions of people log into Amazon every day, and hundreds of thousands may be searching for pickleball paddles, but how are they going to find mine? How do I avoid getting lost in the Amazon beast?
A variety of factors contribute to a product's rank on Amazon, but Walter pointed to two: search engine optimization, also known as SEO, and reviews.
SEO is essentially what you do to rank higher and generate more traffic — and a lot goes into it. For me, creating a listing page with relevant keywords and quality images is going to be important, especially the keywords.
Walter told me to use Helium 10 to know what keywords I should be using, whether it's paddle sports, pickleball, pickleball paddle, or carbon fiber paddle — and, if I have the resources, pay an SEO expert to optimize my listing page.
Reviews are also key to ranking well on Amazon, and he said I should always encourage customers to leave reviews. One idea is to include a blurb in the thank you email customers receive after placing an order reminding them to share their feedback.
Additionally, he told me that paid ads are essentially necessary.
"Ads are going to give you the best fighting chance of selling through all of your inventory profitably," he said. "If you're doing it right, a dollar into advertising should come back as $2 to $3 of revenue."
He acknowledged that it may feel nervewracking at first to pay for ads without knowing exactly what's going to come from them but assured me I could test ads on a budget of a couple of hundred dollars. Amazon ads are affordable compared to Google or Meta or TikTok ads since Amazon already has so much traffic, he explained, "so you can test it out with a very small budget."
He told me to keep in mind that because reviews are so important, even if we initially just break even from ads, it's worth it if they drive sales that lead to product reviews.
I shouldn't tackle ads on my own, though. He said it's worth it to hire a professional. There are two main fee structures: a flat fee or a percentage of sales. As a new business, the second option probably makes more sense so that I'm not spending too much cash up front. However, if I start selling a lot of paddles, the percentage of sales model might become more expensive, at which point I might want to consider switching to the flat-rate model.
I have no problem with outsourcing and have already done quite a bit of it. It's saving me time, and headaches — and, ultimately, helping me create a better product.
