More C-suite changes have come to Canada’s biggest tech company.
Shopify has promoted its general counsel, Jess Hertz, to chief operating officer, while the company’s chief revenue officer announced his departure after three years.
Jess Hertz, Shopify
“My operating system as COO: make the work visible, shorten feedback loops, deliver in smaller increments, own outcomes end-to-end.”
CRO Bobby Morrison wrote in a LinkedIn post that his time at Shopify was “some of the most impactful and fulfilling of my career.” According to his profile, Morrison previously held the same role at FinTech company Intuit and spent nearly 20 years at telecommunications firm Verizon in various roles.
“I didn’t know what I was missing until I had the chance to work with a mission-obsessed, founder-led company,” Morrison said. He said he helped Shopify turn a negative cash flow in 2022 into eight straight quarters of free cash flow above 15 percent, in addition to quintupling its market capitalization.
Morrison thanked his colleagues and praised CEO Tobi Lütke’s leadership, writing that he would “take those lessons forward into what’s next.”
Shopify told BetaKit it had restructured its commercial organization, which had impacts on leadership, but did not comment on individual employees.
The shake-up follows the departure of COO Kaz Nejatian last month, after he left Shopify to lead San Francisco-based real estate tech firm Opendoor. Nejatian had led product and merchant services, among other roles, and was promoted to COO in 2022.
Nejatian called his move to the company, which offers a digital home buying and selling platform, a “once-in-a-lifetime” opportunity to “redefine what’s possible in real estate.” The associated regulatory filing said that Shopify’s remaining executive team would assume his responsibilities going forward and was “ready to ensure a seamless transition.”
Shopify confirmed that it had called up Hertz to replace Nejatian following posts on social media from Hertz and other company executives.
RELATED: Shopify COO Kaz Nejatian leaves to lead Opendoor
“Jess has spent four years deeply understanding our business and rewiring how we operate, building systems in legal, talent, and across the company at scale,” a Shopify spokesperson said in a statement to BetaKit. “She thinks from first principles, ships smart fixes, and combines public sector and technology experience with proven execution.”
In a LinkedIn post, Hertz said she was “thrilled” at the appointment and described her approach to the new role.
Image courtesy LinkedIn
“My operating system as COO: make the work visible, shorten feedback loops, deliver in smaller increments, own outcomes end-to-end,” Hertz wrote. “When the work is visible, ownership is clean, and defaults are sharp, winning is the side effect.”
Lütke and Shopify president Harley Finkelstein congratulated Hertz on the promotion on social media. Lütke wrote in a post on X that Hertz has “played a key role in building most of the best systems at Shopify.” In his own post, Finkelstein said Hertz was one of “the best operators” as she designed scalable systems, removed complexity, and empowered teams.
An attorney and Harvard University graduate, Hertz clerked for eventual United States Supreme Court judge Sonia Sotomayor, then worked as a counsellor for a federal agency and the US deputy attorney general. She was former US President Joe Biden’s principal deputy counsel when he was vice-president under the Obama administration.
Hertz then made a foray into the tech sector, joining Facebook (now Meta) in 2018 as associate general counsel, where she focused on regulatory and government affairs. In 2020, Biden appointed Hertz to his transition team, which drew criticism from some within the Democratic Party due to her former job at the tech giant. Hertz served as White House staff secretary until October 2021, when she joined Shopify.
Founded in 2006 in Ottawa, Shopify is an e-commerce platform that sells services to small merchants as well as large enterprises. It’s currently Canada’s largest company by market capitalization, worth just under $300 billion CAD. The company’s share price dropped by just over one percent today.
Coming off of strong second-quarter earnings, Shopify recently announced a partnership with OpenAI to bring its merchants’ products into ChatGPT through an in-app shopping feature.
Disclosure: BetaKit majority owner Good Future is the family office of two former Shopify leaders, Arati Sharma and Satish Kanwar.
Feature image courtesy Open Grid Scheduler / Grid Engine on Flickr (CC0 1.0).