Shopify

Making it easy for Shopify's millions of merchants to buy shipping labels.

Product Lead

Senior Product Manager

Golden Triangle Angel Network (GTAN)

GTAN is the #1 Seed Stage Private Investor in Canada. We are an organization of accredited investors seeking investment opportunities in promising early-stage technology businesses. GTAN helps accelerate companies into becoming market leaders in their industry by bringing together investment, experience, and knowledge.

Board Member

Angel Investor

MedTech: Kenota Health, VoxCell BioInnovation
CPG: ToroMatcha, Healthy Hippo, Little & Lively, KaleMart24

Grobo Inc.

Bjorn is founder and CEO of Grobo, a company dedicated to developing a personalized, app-controlled, in-home gardening system that lets anyone grow a successful garden at any time of the year, regardless of their experience level. 

Grobo is currently incubated in the Velocity Foundry and is in the product development stage. There are currently three co-founders and we have brought on our first employees to accelerate product development.

Founder and CEO

Entrepreneur, Product Manager, Advisor & Angel Investor with experience building strong products and companies.

Annual reminder to Canadian Entrepreneurs: 
Beware of BDC

Specifically, beware of their personal guarantees

Every few weeks I'm talking to a different Entrepreneur whose company is going bankrupt (or should go bankrupt) but who is worried about their personal guarantee with BDC. 

BDC's playbook is simple:
1. The account manager selling you the loan says "Don't worry about the personal guarantee, we don't come after them ever. We're the government."
2. Company is eventually in trouble and shuts down
3. BDC's lawyers immediately come after the personal guarantee

In my case, they ran a credit check, saw that I had a house, and required that I pay the full 6-figure amount which required us to take out a line of credit on our house. (Screenshot attached) 

I spent this next year literally working off the debt. (This hurts Canadian Entrepreneurship but that's another story)

In other cases, where the entrepreneurs don't have any assets, I've heard of some successful negotiations but I have yet to see anyone not pay back a portion of the guarantee.

In short, BDC is lying if they tell you they don't go after the guarantees. 

If you're going to accept a BDC loan, here are my tips:
1. Refuse to sign until the guarantee is gone
2. If that doesn't work, only guarantee the % of the company you own (this helped me tons)
3. If you do accept a personal guarantee I recommend paying yourself more to compensate for the risk

If anyone is in a sticky situation with BDC and I can help at all, please feel free to reach out. 

If you're in the Canadian tech ecosystem, please repost this so that others don't get caught. It's becoming really frustrating seeing how many people have been lied to with the exact same story.

(This icing on the cake? BDC paid out $250M in bonuses since 2019 and I bet little to none ended up back in our startup ecosystems)

Bjorn Dawson

Product Leader @ Shopify | Angel Investor | Board Member

What is the importance of personal guarantees in financial agreements?

What are the risks associated with personal guarantees in financial transactions?

"A startup is like a mosquito. A bear can absorb a hit and a crab is armored against one, but a mosquito is designed for one thing: 

to score. 

No energy is wasted on defense. The defense of mosquitos, as a species, is that there are a lot of them, but this is little consolation to the individual mosquito.

Startups, like mosquitos, tend to be an all-or-nothing proposition. And you don't generally know which of the two you're going to get till the last minute." -Paul Graham

This metaphor so clearly shows why:
1. Startups are unpredictable by nature
2. Investors need a portfolio (many mosquitos) to increase their changes of scoring

What makes startups unpredictable by nature?

Why do investors need a diverse portfolio for success?

Another awesome opportunity on our team! This product is game changing.

FinTech, and Shipping @ Shopify | Ex-Square

*Hiring a product manager with experience building complex data products*

I am hiring a PM for an exciting new product, Shop Promise. If this is you please get in touch:
1. based in US/Canada
2. experience solving complex data problems
3. has an engineering/technical mindset
4. experience with machine learning is a huge plus

This PM will work on building and scaling Shop Promise a new product that helps merchants communicate reliable and fast order delivery timelines, and increase buyer conversion and loyalty.

Come work at Shopify, and impact merchants across the world.

No agencies/external recruiters please. 

#hiring #productmanagement #remote

Open article: Shop Promise | shopify.com by shopify.com • 1 min read

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