When Adversity Becomes Opportunity
Will the next economic crisis break your startup, or make it stronger?
In 2008, Tobias Lütke thought Shopify might not survive.
The Ottawa-based founder had built a promising e-commerce platform, but the financial crisis changed everything. Consumer spending collapsed. Major retailers shuttered stores. Lütke watched the news and wondered why anyone would start an online store when people had stopped buying.
Inside Shopify, things were grim. Lütke later described this period as one where the company was struggling badly, when keeping the business alive felt like a daily battle. His team was tiny. Capital was scarce. The downturn created the kind of funding drought and demand shock that kills most young startups. Every decision carried existential weight. They cut costs to the bone and narrowed their focus to the core product, stripping away anything that wasn’t essential.
Lütke braced for the worst.
Instead, Shopify’s growth accelerated dramatically.
The 2008 recession triggered two shifts Lütke hadn’t anticipated. First, mass layoffs pushed unemployed workers to seek alternative income. Traditional employment suddenly felt precarious. Starting an online business became not just attractive but necessary. Second, existing businesses faced intense pressure to cut costs. Companies paying tens of thousands for custom e-commerce solutions couldn’t justify those expenses anymore. Shopify’s modest monthly fees became vastly more appealing.
What made Shopify’s response effective wasn’t luck. It was their ability to recognize what was happening and adapt quickly.
The team watched signup numbers and noticed patterns. New users included laid-off professionals launching consulting businesses, retail workers starting side hustles, and established brands migrating from expensive platforms. Rather than retreating into defensive mode, Shopify leaned into growth.
They focused on making the platform accessible to beginners while keeping it robust enough for established brands. This wasn’t about adding complex features. It was about removing friction. Every barrier to getting a store online represented a potential customer who might give up.
Between 2008 and 2009, Shopify saw measurable increases in both users and paid subscribers. While competitors struggled, Shopify scaled up. By 2010, just four years after launch, they were profitable. The surge in merchants needing immediate solutions allowed the company to grow and generate positive cash flow simultaneously.
Why This Matters
Traditional business planning assumes you can predict the future. You set goals, create milestones, and execute your plan. This works well for established businesses in stable environments. For startups navigating uncertainty, it becomes a trap.
Entrepreneurs who thrive in chaos don’t predict the future. They prepare for multiple futures and build the capacity to respond when conditions change.
Professor Saras Sarasvathy calls this “effectual thinking”. Where traditional planning asks “How do we achieve this specific goal?”, effectual thinking asks “Given what we have and know, what outcomes can we create?”
Shopify’s response in 2008 followed this pattern. Rather than rigidly pursuing pre-recession goals, they observed changing signup patterns, recognized emerging opportunities, and adapted to serve newly urgent customer needs. They worked with what they had to create outcomes they hadn’t planned.
Three factors proved critical. First, their business model aligned with the new economic reality: low upfront costs made sense when everyone faced cash constraints. Second, the platform was genuinely easy to use, even for new users with no technical background. And third, they could scale infrastructure to handle rapid growth without degrading service.
Getting Stronger Under Stress
Most startup advice focuses on building robust businesses that can withstand stress without breaking. But robustness has a dangerous limitation. While you may survive a market shift, you don’t necessarily benefit from it.
Shopify demonstrated something more valuable. They used the crisis to accelerate growth, achieve profitability ahead of schedule, and establish market leadership. The stress made them stronger. Nassim Taleb calls this quality “anti-fragility”: systems that improve because of volatility rather than despite it.
When COVID-19 disrupted commerce in 2020, that organizational muscle served them again. By then, responding to sudden market shifts was part of how they operated. The company that feared extinction in 2008 had learned to treat uncertainty as an opportunity.
The Better Question
When a crisis hits, most founders ask, “How do we survive this?” The better question is “What does this make possible?”
Lütke initially worried about the recession. But he didn’t let fear paralyze the team. He watched what was happening rather than what he feared might happen. When data showed an increase in signups, the team acted on evidence rather than assumptions.
The 2008 crisis didn’t create Shopify’s opportunity. The platform had already solved real problems. But the crisis accelerated market shifts that might have taken years. A relatively small economic disruption cascaded into transformative growth for a company positioned to capture it.
By the time the economy recovered, Shopify had established itself as the leading platform for independent online merchants. Not despite the recession. Because of it.
Founders who build anti-fragile companies aren’t luckier than everyone else. They’re simply paying closer attention.
This post is adapted from an extract of my book, “Momentum Scaling: How To Successfully Grow Your Tech Startup In An Unpredictable World”, specifically from Chapter 6 - Agility: Overcome Your Fragility. I plan to launch this book in the spring of 2026.
Your feedback and comments are welcome.
Davender’s passion is to guide innovative entrepreneurs in developing the clarity, commitment, confidence and courage to enter, engage and lead their markets in an unpredictable world by thinking strategically and acting tactically. Find out more at https://www.davender.com and https://linkedin.com/in/coachdavender .
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