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Shopify to raise $100M in Toronto, New York IPO

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Re: Shopify to raise $100M in Toronto, New York IPO

#21

Post by anotherview »

freejack wrote: post #17
anotherview wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a different experience. I played with Shopify, and canceled my account. They kept charging me for years. I eventually noticed, and asked for a refund on the completely empty, completely unused account which was being charged to an expired and canceled card (something I didn't even know was possible until this incident). Support said no, and offered a discount if I wanted to use Shopify in the future. I said I'd…

I'm aware that they are going through an overhaul of their customer service systems, process and probably the people. Its tough to grow as fast as they are, especially in this area. It is exceptionally hard to find great people, maintain culture and values while still providing great support. I'm not making excuses for them, except to say that I am certain they are aware of the issues they have had had in this area a…

I'm simply sharing my experience, which involved their head of customer service yelling at me, and their vp of revenue flat out lying to me.

If I'm truly an outlier, I'd welcome outreach from them (in the form of the refund they promised me long ago). But I don't expect it.

Running a startup is crazy hard... but establishing cultural norms like 'don't yell at customers' and 'don't lie to customers' isn't hard. That's easy. And either I had a wicked outlier experience, or they failed to do that.

Re: Shopify to raise $100M in Toronto, New York IPO

#22

Post by [deleted] »

djloche wrote: post #13
ditonal wrote: post #6

I'm not a financial expert so I'm really not sure, but I'm extremely distrustful of this JOBS Act and "IPO-Lites." Not Shopify specifically, but it's going to open the door to a lot of smaller companies that have a lot less scrutiny on them to IPO and I worry that it will allow VCs to dump their weaker companies on the public, and turn a potential private equity bubble into something bigger. I worked for a startup th…

I think this comment was made on the wrong window. edit: to clarify: there was a thread about crowdfunding in colorado relatively near to this thread.

[deleted]

Re: Shopify to raise $100M in Toronto, New York IPO

#23

Post by ditonal »

ojbyrne wrote: post #9
ditonal wrote: post #6

I'm not a financial expert so I'm really not sure, but I'm extremely distrustful of this JOBS Act and "IPO-Lites." Not Shopify specifically, but it's going to open the door to a lot of smaller companies that have a lot less scrutiny on them to IPO and I worry that it will allow VCs to dump their weaker companies on the public, and turn a potential private equity bubble into something bigger. I worked for a startup th…

Pretty well every business story is "paid PR."

Sure, but for smaller companies you will ONLY see the paid PR , whereas big companies have a lot more critics since they are better known, have more employees, etc.

Re: Shopify to raise $100M in Toronto, New York IPO

#24

Post by eigenvector »

hentrep wrote: post #11
mmastrac wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting: OMERS Ventures is one of the bigger shareholders in Shopify, to the tune of 6%. They are run as part of massive pension fund in Canada. And the Canadian Gov't is also part of this round through a few levels of indirection: http://www.techvibes.com/blog/canadian-tech-sector-poised-fo...

I know nothing about the investment world, but find this government-driven investment interesting. Last week the Canadian Pension Plan Investment Board, in participation with Permira, agreed to take Informatica private [0]. Two large tech investments by Canadian pension funds, and likely many more to which I'm unaware. Is this a proactive move to mitigate future pension crises [1], or just the way most governments op…

CPPIB and OMERS are at arms-length from the government. They have a free hand to invest in anything that meets their objectives and at least for CPPIB, any implication that the government had meddled in investment decisions for political reasons would be a huge scandal. Until recently, the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan owned the Toronto Maple Leafs, one of the most profitable pro sports teams in the world.

In Canada, if it makes money, the pension plans are in on it. It's not political - just business.

Re: Shopify to raise $100M in Toronto, New York IPO

#25

Post by ditonal »

AYBABTME wrote: post #10
ditonal wrote: post #6

I'm not a financial expert so I'm really not sure, but I'm extremely distrustful of this JOBS Act and "IPO-Lites." Not Shopify specifically, but it's going to open the door to a lot of smaller companies that have a lot less scrutiny on them to IPO and I worry that it will allow VCs to dump their weaker companies on the public, and turn a potential private equity bubble into something bigger. I worked for a startup th…

Shopify is not a shaky company at all. It's a top notch company, top place to work, top product. It's like a recipe of everything done well. So I don't really understand why you say that.

I am not talking about Shopify specifically, the reason it's relevant is because they are IPOing using a new set of rules based on the JOBS act. This IPO would not have been possible even two months ago. Read the filing and read more about the JOBS act and "IPO-lites." Even if Shopify is not a bad investment, the point stands that smaller companies under less scrutiny being sold to the public opens up big avenues for fraud and pump-and-dumps.

Re: Shopify to raise $100M in Toronto, New York IPO

#26

Post by aikah »

freejack wrote: post #17
anotherview wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a different experience. I played with Shopify, and canceled my account. They kept charging me for years. I eventually noticed, and asked for a refund on the completely empty, completely unused account which was being charged to an expired and canceled card (something I didn't even know was possible until this incident). Support said no, and offered a discount if I wanted to use Shopify in the future. I said I'd…

I'm aware that they are going through an overhaul of their customer service systems, process and probably the people. Its tough to grow as fast as they are, especially in this area. It is exceptionally hard to find great people, maintain culture and values while still providing great support. I'm not making excuses for them, except to say that I am certain they are aware of the issues they have had had in this area a…

> I'm not making excuses for them

Yes you are. If the OP story is true, you just don't yell at your customer. It doesn't make me want to try Shopify if they really use these kind of practices. Only shady pornsites do that stuff.

Re: Shopify to raise $100M in Toronto, New York IPO

#27

Post by soldergenie »

ditonal wrote: post #6

I'm not a financial expert so I'm really not sure, but I'm extremely distrustful of this JOBS Act and "IPO-Lites." Not Shopify specifically, but it's going to open the door to a lot of smaller companies that have a lot less scrutiny on them to IPO and I worry that it will allow VCs to dump their weaker companies on the public, and turn a potential private equity bubble into something bigger. I worked for a startup th…

It is actually quite common in Canada for small companies to IPO with total market caps of just tens of millions of dollars. Canada doesn't have nearly as many private company investors as the USA, so companies (especially resource based companies) just go public when they are small in order to raise money.

All these small company IPOs are on a separate exchange (the TSX Venture exchange), and if the company gets big enough, they 'graduate' to the main exchange. This works because the regulatory overhead of being public is a lot less in Canada on the TSX Venture exchange - No Sarbanes Oxley!

London has something similar with the AIM.

I think it is a better system than the US model, because it allows anyone to invest in the small companies, not just venture capitalists or people who participate in specialist schemes to buy private company shares.

Re: Shopify to raise $100M in Toronto, New York IPO

#29

Post by walterbell »

ditonal wrote: post #25
AYBABTME wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shopify is not a shaky company at all. It's a top notch company, top place to work, top product. It's like a recipe of everything done well. So I don't really understand why you say that.

I am not talking about Shopify specifically, the reason it's relevant is because they are IPOing using a new set of rules based on the JOBS act. This IPO would not have been possible even two months ago. Read the filing and read more about the JOBS act and "IPO-lites." Even if Shopify is not a bad investment, the point stands that smaller companies under less scrutiny being sold to the public opens up big avenues for…

Could you provide a pointer to the section of their filing which identifies the new rules?

Re: Shopify to raise $100M in Toronto, New York IPO

#30

Post by walterbell »

CEO Profile, http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/rob-magazi...

"..luck brought the sudden, coincidental appearance of a new framework for using Ruby, called “Ruby on Rails,” devised by Danish programmer David Heinemeier Hansson. ..because Ruby on Rails was so new, Lütke’s work gained notice. He began sharing some of the software components he was creating with the Rails community (a way to process credit cards, for example), and quickly became one of a select group of core Rails developers.

..Lütke took the burden of this stress entirely on himself. He told no one at the company. “I was sitting in meetings,” he remembers, “talking with my peers about building things that would take us a year, when I knew we didn’t have four weeks of money left. And I could not let anyone know that.” He knew the minute he did, their focus would naturally shift to the short-term, to work on things for immediate benefit. For Shopify to succeed, he needed them to keep thinking long-term."

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