Tech’s Captain Canada: Shopify co-founder Tobi Lütke thinks all of us should have ‘permission to go for it!’

How did Tobias (Tobi) Lütke turn an online snowboard shop he cofounded 20 years ago into today’s Shopify Inc., a $9.5 billion (2023 revenues) company that sells its e-commerce products in more than 170 countries?
“A lot of our success,” Lütke said recently, “has been due to just me and my co-founder basically allowing everyone to go for world class.
“Everyone’s like, ‘Oh well, if we are allowed to do this, then let’s go,’” Lütke said of granting permission to his engineers to be great.
“Ratcheting up ambition for a project is something that one has to do in a company in Canada.”
In other words, ambition doesn’t come naturally to Canadians. At least, not compared with countries Lütke didn’t name, but he could have mentioned the U.S., Britain, Israel and Singapore.
The paucity of tech giants in Europe, as well, including Germany.
But if true, stunted ambition in Canadian business and elsewhere in the economy is a troubling deficiency in the larger project of Canada itself, Lütke suggested in a recent appearance on “Conversations with Tyler,” a smart podcast hosted by the U.S. economist Tyler Cowen.
Lütke is a Canadian patriot. In 20 years of building Shopify, Canada’s flagship tech company, Lütke has broken with the Canadian business tradition of cashing in with the sale of his enterprise, probably to a deep-pocketed foreign interest given Shopify’s immense stock market valuation of $138 billion.
And Lütke has kept his firm in Ottawa, helping to maintain the city’s status as a tech hub after the demise of Nortel Networks, which had a large R&D presence there. Ottawa also has the small-town feel of Lütke’s native Koblenz, Germany.
“Canada is a pretty good country,” Lütke said, which sounds like damning with faint praise. But then he said, “A stronger Canada is better for absolutely everyone.”
“Canada’s problem, often culturally, is a go-for-bronze mentality,” Lütke said. “Which apparently is not uncommon for smaller countries attached to more cultural or just bigger countries.”
The optimism that drives ambition is subdued in Canada, Lütke believes, as he says it is in Germany, where he spent his first 20 years.
Germany created the industrial powerhouses Siemens, Bosch and Volkswagen, but is hesitant to proclaim its successes.
In contrast with Americans, “Canadians more often think about what’s the next step after this step,” Lütke said. That caution has its virtues, but often is “just low ambition.”
“The worst thing,” Lütke said, “is that Canada seems to be OK just exporting the raw materials for everything.
“Canada wants to invent. Canada loves to have a eureka moment. But it’s seen as a low-status thing to build a business around it. We are not metabolizing any kind of innovation.
“We just don’t create the final product,” Lütke said. “If I could change one thing, I would do that.”
And Lütke’s definition of raw materials includes the Silicon Valley-bound graduates of the University of Waterloo — “one of the greatest schools on Planet Earth,” Lütke said.
The artificial intelligence that will revolutionize the world traces in large degree to pioneering research in Canada.
Yet the tech firms like OpenAI, Microsoft, Apple and Amazon that are ramping up AI applications are mostly located abroad, although to be sure Shopify is rushing to embed AI in its products. 
Lütke’s thesis requires that some contrary evidence be set aside.
It includes the Canadian entrepreneurial drive that created multinationals such as Magna International, Constellation Software, Lululemon Athletica, WSP Global and, of course, Shopify.
Shopify’s millions of clients include Heinz, Netflix, Staples, Mattel, Luxottica, and British football club Newcastle United. In June, the total volume of commerce on Shopify’s platform since it was launched crossed the $1 trillion (U.S.) mark.
Canada’s score of 53.8 on the latest ranking of the Global Innovation Index compares favourably with China (55.3) and Japan (54.6). The U.S. score is 63.5.
But Lutke’s point stands that Canada too seldom commercializes its inventions and gets them out into the world. The lack of confidence Lütke sees in the country is a familiar theme for him.
In a 2018 newspaper op-ed, Lütke wrote that “The Maple Leaf stands for quality, thoughtfulness and innovation, so let’s brand it proudly on the things that we’ve invented, created and figured out.”
If he could, Lütke would “systemize” across the economy the Own the Podium national program to go for gold at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, where Canadian athletes broke the record for most gold medals won at any Winter Games.
“Changing a culture is very, very difficult,” Lütke acknowledged in the Cowen podcast. “But instances of just giving everyone permission to go for it have also been super successful.”
More such instances might have to wait until successful Canadian firms that begin as promising but risky startups are regarded as nation-building exercises the way Medicare is.