Shopify is a platform that enables both businesses and individuals to create their own online stores. A year ago, this company was looking to improve their mobile offerings, opting to look externally, thus beginning its search for a company that can boost its capabilities after acquisition. Finally this search came to an end when this e-commerce platform found a perfect match by way of Select Start Studios that eventually led the two companies to officially announce the acquisition on February 2 of this year.
Although, in this announcement Shopify did not disclosed any financial terms between them and Select Start, it was surely one of the biggest deals of 2012, as it involved two of the most sparkling startups in Canada. Months after this acquisition, the co-founders of both the companies, Tariq Zaid of Select Start Studios’ and Tobi Lütke of Shopify revealed how this acquisition took place:
Lütke told, “We talked (to Select Start) for the first time on Black Friday last year. It became apparent that we weren’t doing a good job of transitioning from a web application company to doing the same high-quality work for mobile phones.”
Select Start founder Zaid shared that, “When Shopify made the offer, my first reaction was to go home and think about it for a while. It was a discussion that (co-founders) Josh (Tessier), Adam (McNamara) and I had – whether or not we were ready to let go of Select Start. Once we decided to go for it, the acquisition happened relatively quickly.”
Even though the process of acquisition of two companies remained quite trouble-free, the merger proved a big challenge for them, says Zaid because Select Start had to deal with fair amount of prior commitments. Therefore, to confront this challenge “Some employees got to transition right away and got to start doing really cool product development for Shopify, but others were still working on the agency side of the business. That was the hardest part,” said Zaid.
Nonetheless, during all this hustle and bustle of deal, Select Start did not forget its employees, who had really worked hard to make this merger possible. For this reason the co-founders of Select Start took their staff members to a great pleasure trip during which their rented two holiday homes in Mont-Tremblant just as they got free from signing the deal with Shopify.
Apart from celebrating with their team executives of both Shopify and Select Start also celebrated this deal together by having a dinner at Play. Then, a “block party” also took place sometime after the two companies came together.
This hard partying proves that both Shopify and Select Start realises that they had added value with this agreement.
Source: OBJ
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