Canada is increasingly being viewed as a “brilliant place” to build technology companies, and the idea that entrepreneurs don’t have Canadian companies to look up to is a “false narrative,” according to Shopify’s founder and CEO.

Tobi Lütke said in an interview with BNN Bloomberg’s Amanda Lang that while he had opportunities to move the Ottawa-headquartered ecommerce company elsewhere, he has been very “pro-Canada.”   

“One gauntlet that everyone has to run when building a company in Canada is that it’s lacking a little bit in role models of companies to be like. That’s a false narrative,” Lütke said. “There are really good reasons why this happened, wonderful books written on various failures that people tend to point to. But they all happened because of internal failures and not for systemic, Canadian reasons.”

Lütke, a German immigrant, said that global technology companies already have an advantage in Canada because the country’s cultural norms and values are “significantly more progressive” than in other countries.

“You’re seeing a lot of interest in building companies in Canada for these reasons or relocating to Canada for these reasons,” Lütke said. “It’s a brilliant place to build companies, and I think that’s generally better understood now and I think you’ll see a lot more of that.”

Lütke’s comments come as Canadian business leaders and experts warn that the country’s global competitiveness is eroding in the face of aggressive U.S. tax cuts and trade uncertainty. 

Indeed, Jim Balsillie, co-founder of BlackBerry (formerly known as Research In Motion), recently told BNN Bloomberg some Canadian tech firms are considering moving operations to the U.S. 

“I think people starting a business in Canada already have a leg up, because the world is global, internet is global,” Lütke said.

Lütke is in Toronto this week for Shopify’s annual developers’ conference, Unite, which is making the city its permanent home after being held in San Francisco for the past two years.

“We have a community where people travel from all over the world, and it is better to hitch our wagon to a city that puts multiculturalism on its banner, than technology,” Lütke said.

‘THINGS ARE PRETTY GOOD’

Lütke also said he isn’t worried about investors’ reaction to Shopify’s latest quarterly results, reiterating that the company’s growth was always bound to slow.

Shopify’s gross merchant volume, a closely-watched figure for the ecommerce industry, rose 64 per cent in the first quarter, down from 81 per cent in the same period last year.

“It’s worth pointing out that there never has been a software services company that has grown at a faster rate – hit $500 million worth of revenue – than Shopify. … So, I think things are pretty good,” Lütke said. 

“Some people had to look at our results and say, ‘Okay, physics is still a thing.’ We have not actually managed to completely invent something that no one’s ever seen before.”

Shopify has also been in the spotlight recently as short-seller Andrew Left of Citron Research attacked the company’s business model and marketing practices in October 2017, and again in March in the wake of Facebook’s data scandal.

Lütke has vehemently defended his company, going as far as calling Left a “short-selling troll.” 

Lütke told BNN Bloomberg that while short-sellers can have a “positive” effect on Wall Street’s overall valuation of different stocks, some aren’t so helpful.

“This sort of ideal of what Wall Street is supposed to do  – which is, over time, average the value of a stock to know the real market value of a company – is really hard to do without the short-selling side,” Lütke said. 

“There are some specific instances of short-sellers that I wouldn’t necessarily include in this very productive piece of the short-selling world.”