A founder who said he would never sell his startup reveals why he changed his mind for Canada's 'quiet, sleepy, $18 billion company'

Michael Perry Shopify Kit

Michael Perry, a serial entrepreneur, had no intention of selling his company.
That is, until Shopify, a multibillion-dollar e-commerce giant, made an acquisition offer in 2016. Perry sold his startup Kit for an undisclosed amount.
Perry said his reasons for selling the company came down to three main criteria: alignment, company culture, and his belief in his new boss.

After spending nearly a decade as an entrepreneur, Michael Perry never imagined working for someone else.

His last company, Kit, made a popular digital assistant for small-business owners selling goods on platforms like Etsy and Amazon. It let them email their customers, run ads on Facebook, generate marketing reports, and more, all through text messages.

In 2016, Kit had over 2,000 subscribers globally and was raking in $30,000 a month in revenue — revenue that was growing 20% to 30% month over month, according to Forbes' "30 Under 30" list, which named Perry among the best and boldest young leaders.

"I never envisioned getting acquired," Perry told Business Insider. "I was on a pipe dream of building a publicly traded company myself, as all naïve founders are."

That same year, Kit sold for an undisclosed amount to the e-commerce software company Shopify.

Perry decided to double back on his commitment never to sell the startup, and his reasons for doing so could offer some insight for founders who are considering the same.

Reasons to sell

Founded in 2004, Shopify makes software that helps small-business owners run their shops across a variety of platforms, including web, social media, and brick-and-mortar. Three years after going public, the lesser-known tech giant has a market cap of $16 billion.

Overall, Perry felt a sense of alignment between his mission and Shopify's goals.

"It came down to this realization that we were really trying to accomplish the same thing," said Perry, who is now the director of product and marketing technology at Shopify, where he continues to run Kit as a part of the platform. "We just really felt like we could potentially do more together in a formal way than how we were positioned."

shopify office 3.JPG

Perry said Shopify approached him about buying the startup in 2016. Early in the process, Perry sat down with Shopify's founder and CEO, Tobi Lütke.

"I kind of just left there being like, this person is significantly smarter than I am," Perry said.

"He's like a really, really hyper-intelligent guy, and he has these eyes — they're like the bluest eyes in the entire world — and when he talks, you're kind of transfixed," he added.

Piercing blue eyes aside, Lütke was building a company that not only shared Perry's goal of helping entrepreneurs be successful, but treated employees exceptionally well, according to Perry. Shopify, based in Ottawa, Ontario, provides perks like catered lunches, unlimited vacation time, and remote work — plus, the company has an in-house executive coaching team for fostering personal and professional development.

Shopify employees receive a spending budget each year to build the skills they want to level up. In the past, workers have taken improv classes to improve their presentation skills, learned a language, and traveled to Art Basel art festivals to find inspiration.

The culture is why "even though we're a quiet, sleepy, $18 billion company," Perry said, referring to the company's market cap at the time of the interview, "people want to work here."

For these reasons and more, Perry's decision to sell to Shopify was a no-brainer.

"It just dawned on me that if I wanted my mission statement to become true, there was only actually one company that it would ever make sense to go to," he said.

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