Harley Finkelstein

Everyone is scared of Amazon—but who is Amazon scared of? Shopify is one of the few tech companies seen as capable of challenging the e-commerce giant’s hegemony with services that enable retailers large and small to build their own online businesses and bypass the behemoth. Harley Finkelstein, a 10-year veteran of Ottawa-based Shopify, whose $150 billion market cap is bigger than Target’s and comparable to Costco’s despite being much smaller by revenue, has been instrumental in commercializing the company’s e-commerce tools and shaping its strategy. More recently that has included guiding its foray into newer areas such as order fulfillment and payments, key moves allowing Shopify to stay ahead of the pack. The 37-year-old Finkelstein, a lawyer by training, was named company president last year, putting him in charge of growth initiatives and making him Shopify’s second-in-command as it forges ahead in the e-commerce wars.