Shopify To Open Sales Lab in Kitchener

Shopify will be opening a Sales Lab next month in Kitchener’s Tannery building. The company is recruiting five “Sales Hackers”, what it refers to as the First Five, to staff the Lab and “be part of something amazing”.

“We are looking for sales hackers. We are looking for sales-operations ninjas, people who are a little more technical,” chief platform officer Harley Finkelstein told the Waterloo Record. “That doesn’t mean they have to be engineers, but they have a sort of interest and passion for technology.”

Kitchener-Waterloo has become a hub for Canada’s most cutting-edge technology companies, as well as a place where legacy companies such as Canadian Tire go to rediscover their edge.

Not many companies in Canada are better positioned than Shopify to innovate in the retail sector. They’ve catered mostly to small and medium businesses since 2004, and now count more than 100,000 retail customers from 150 countries, from small boutique retailers to Fortune 500 companies like IBM and General Electric.

To demonstrate their commitment to levelling the playing field, co-founder Tobias Lütke refers to their client base as the “Fortune Five Million, as opposed to the Fortune 500.”

Shopify claims to have processed over $5 billion worth of transactions last year, using its easily deployed sales processing platform.

“This is going to be a very different type of sales organization where there is going to be constant experimentation happening to figure out what sales mean for Shopify,” said Finkelstein. “We actually think there is a huge opportunity to hire an incredible sales team with a particular interest in, and a particular penchant for, technology.”

Last December, Shopify closed a $100 million Series C investment, led by OMERS Ventures and Insight Venture Partners.

Based in Ottawa, Shopify has offices in Montreal and Toronto with a staff of over 500.