The Shopify Paradox
When What You Sell Isn’t What You Operate
Last week’s piece, The Verb Problem, made the case that Shopify describes itself in verbs (enable, simplify, arm the rebels) while its customers describe it with a noun they never name: becoming. The company talks about what it does. The customers talk about who they have become. The gap between those two descriptions is the most useful thing I found in several weeks of studying the company.
This week, I want to go one level deeper, from the linguistic gap into the operational one. Because the verb/noun gap doesn’t just live in the marketing — it’s architected into how the company is actually run. And once you can see it inside Shopify, you can see it inside your own company too.
Here’s where that gets uncomfortable.
A week ago, an e-commerce operator named Faruk Ilkhan posted on X that his Shopify store, a multi-million-dollar business, had been shut down overnight. No warning. No explanation. Customer service ran him in circles for days. So he did the only thing left: he posted publicly, tagged Tobi Lütke, and waited.
The post went viral. Tobi noticed. Faruk got his store back.
Most of the commentary that followed focused on the wrong thing. People argued about Tobi’s emoji reply. About whether the escalation was fair to the internal team. About whether CEOs of $130 billion companies should or shouldn’t respond to tweets.
Subscribe to continue reading
Become a paid subscriber to get access to the rest of this post and other exclusive content.
