Shopify president Harley Finkelstein says we can all be entrepreneurs

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Harley Finkelstein couldn’t be more bullish about his hometown.

Finkelstein is the president of Shopify, one of North America’s leading e-commerce businesses, and he could live and work wherever he wants to. Yet he chose Montreal, where he was born and raised.

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In an interview at the Shopify offices on de la Gauchetière St., he explained why he decided to move back eight months ago.

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There are two reasons, said Finkelstein, who spent the first 13 years of his life here, then moved with his family to Florida, returning to study at McGill, and later moving to Ottawa to work at Shopify.

“One was culture,” Finkelstein said. “The culture, the joie de vivre, the lifestyle here is unlike anywhere else. It’s unbelievable and I think that’s very important. Montreal has always been my favourite city. It’s partially the culture. I know there’s a lot of debate around language laws and around politics. I don’t feel that in any way. J’apprends le français maintenant.”

So how’s your French coming, I ask.

“Pas trop bon, mais je pratique et je parle plus. Quand je vais au café ou au restaurant, je commence ma conversation en français out of respect. And I think that’s what it’s about … we moved here, one because we wanted the culture but the second is for the community. There’s no place where I’ve found a community like this. (My wife) Lindsay and I have been so embraced. By the Jewish community certainly but also by the entrepreneurship community. People consider Shopify and Lightspeed to be competitors. Well, where you’re sitting, (Lightspeed CEO) Dax (Dasilva) was sitting there on Friday and Dax and I were trying to figure out how to unite the Montreal tech community together because it’s a bit scattered. There’s this sense of community here that’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen. The people who’re in Montreal want to be here.”

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Entrepreneurship is near and dear to Finkelstein’s heart, which is one reason he’s just written a children’s book, We Can Be Entrepreneurs. It was launched Tuesday at the Shopify offices in Montreal, with Finkelstein on stage with Evan Sharma, who did the illustrations. The book’s editor, Courtney Symons, read from the book for an audience of kids and their parents.

Finkelstein’s two daughters — Bayley, 7, and Zoe, 5 — were also both there. The inspiration for the book was Bayley’s coming home from school one day about a year and a half ago and telling her dad the teacher had asked the kids what they wanted to be when they grew up. The teacher provided a list of multiple choice answers. Finkelstein was disappointed to see “entrepreneur” was not one of the options.

“Two things really bothered me,” Finkelstein said. “One is, why the heck wasn’t entrepreneurship listed there as a real thing? And two, why are they suggesting kids wait until they’re older to pursue the thing they care about? That felt so strange to me. Because at 13, I wanted to become a DJ and I became a DJ. At 17, I wanted to start a T-shirt business and I started a T-shirt business. I don’t come from money. I come from a line of small-business owners. My grandfather, to this day … you know the Jean-Talon market? He still has an egg stall at the Jean-Talon market. He’s not around any more, my uncle now runs it. It’s called Le Capitaine. My family has always been entrepreneurial.”

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The book recounts the story of three children, Harley, based on him, and two others inspired by two Shopify clients, Kheris Roger, the youngest designer ever to showcase her clothing line at New York Fashion Week, and Sharma, who, at 12, became the youngest artist ever to exhibit at the Canadian art fair The Artist Project. In the book, Harley, Evan and Kheris all want to pursue their dreams even though they’re still kids — Harley wants to be a DJ, Evan an artist and Kheris a clothing designer. And they’re initially rebuffed by the adults around them.

The book’s message is simple: follow your dreams, kids, and don’t wait to grow up to do that.

Finkelstein started DJing bar mitzvahs at 13, founded his T-shirt company while an economics student at McGill and that drive eventually took him to the upper echelons of Shopify, which now accounts for 10 per cent of all e-commerce in the U.S., according to Finkelstein.

A lot of the entrepreneurs that inspired Finkelstein are Montrealers.

“I think Montreal is one of the most entrepreneurial places I’ve ever experienced, and I’ve lived in a bunch of different places,” Finkelstein said. “Montreal is an immigrant city and immigrants don’t have a lot of choices. My father was an immigrant. He came in 1956, from Hungary, during the Hungarian Revolution. His parents were Holocaust survivors. My grandfather set up that stall at the Jean-Talon Market. My grandfather was not passionate about eggs. He was not passionate about farmer’s markets. He was passionate about survival.”

For immigrants, “including my family, entrepreneurship is the only thing they can do. No one wants to hire them. They don’t speak the language. They don’t have money. They don’t have experience,” he said.

“When I think of people who are the iconic Montrealers — it’s Sam Bronfman, it’s Aldo Bensadoun, it’s Jonathan Wener, it’s Mitch Garber, it’s Guy Laliberté. These are all entrepreneurs. These are all people who started businesses from scratch and have built empires.”

We Can Be Entrepreneurs will be in stores in the coming months.

bkelly@postmedia.com

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