Mar 9, 2021
Philanthropy in Ottawa is supported by The Foundation (WCPD), an Ottawa-based philanthropic tax planning advisory firm that helps individuals and foundations increase the size and impact of their charitable donations.
Who: Fiona McKean and Tobi Lutke, Thistledown Foundation
The donation: $750,000
The recipients: United Way East Ontario, Ottawa Food Bank and Ottawa Community Foundation
The inspiration: “We’re not out of the woods yet but there is hope on the horizon. Let’s do this.” – Fiona McKean, founder and chairperson, Thistledown Foundation
A new generation of philanthropists is giving hope to the Ottawa community through their generosity to three local non-profits.
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Alia Youssef/The Globe and Mail
After the year Shopify Inc. has had, you might expect its co-founder and CEO Tobi Lutke to sound a little…cheerier.
Riding a global surge in pandemic-related e-commerce traffic, Shopify – which makes the software used by more than a million merchants to sell their products online – surpassed Royal Bank of Canada to become Canada’s most valuable company. It now has a market capitalization of US$177-billion, making it only the second Canadian tech company, after Nortel Networks, to reach such heights. It raised billions of dollars from stock sales last year and even posted a rare quarterly profit of US$191-million in October on third quarter on revenues of US$767.4-million –
On a Typical Day
Tobi Lütke Here’s the honest answer: obviously I have a schedule and people helping me manage my time, however, I think a lot about where to devote my attention. In this way, there is no typical day.
My attention is the most liquid and valuable resource that I have. Even back in the day when Shopify went public, I spent a good deal of time pre-selling the various investors. During meetings, I would say, “Hey, I m here, and we ve been doing this roadshow, but I actually spend a lot of my time on the product.” This was to set expectations because I