When Ottawa snowboarder Tobias Lütke decided to sell boards and gear online, he couldn’t find a decent software platform for small retailers – so he built his own. Twenty years later his business, now called Shopify, is Canada’s second-biggest public company, empowering online sales of more than US$300 billion a year.
As CEO, Lütke positions Shopify as a positive force in society, enabling individuals and small businesses to trade globally. But success breeds challenges – and tough choices. In 2017, Shopify was criticized for hosting an online store for Breitbart, the right-wing news channel that has promulgated racist and sexist tropes. Lütke defended his client’s free speech rights, calling commerce “a powerful form of expression.”
As social tensions rose over the years, Lütke seemingly grew less tolerant. In 2021, a noose emoji that had been uploaded to the company’s internal Slack channel sparked a heated debate among staff – until Lütke cut off the conversation, arguing that such talk represents “victimhood thinking” and “threatens” the effective workplace.
Donald Trump’s election win in November marked a turning point for businesses that have struggled with diversity and freedom of speech, which now felt free to follow Trump’s lead. Shopify, which powers 12% of U.S. e-commerce, met the moment in mid-January by closing its four-year-old support program for Indigenous entrepreneurs. At the same time, members of Shopify’s equitable commerce team left the company, without explanation. Days later, Shopify shuttered a similar program, its ambitious One Million Black Businesses initiative, intended to help a million Black-owned businesses in Canada and the United States launch, grow and scale up by 2030. On February 1, Shopify abruptly shut down the Slack channel that enabled program participants to stay in touch with each other. (Shopify did not comment on the closures, and its former head of equitable commerce did not respond to queries from Corporate Knights.)
Lütke’s X account documents his shift toward right-wing politics, with standard promotional content about Shopify, artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency increasingly giving way to endorsing Trump’s tariff threats, conservative culture-war talking points, and DOGE’s chainsaw approach to slashing the size of government.
But opposition is mounting. In late February, nearly 400 Canadian tech leaders signed an open letter condemning Shopify’s cutbacks. The signees urged other tech companies to continue to protect equity and inclusion: “The future of our industry – and our country – depends on defending what makes us different.”
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