Warren Dunlop

A week before Christmas in 2009. I'm sitting in a cafe in Kemptville, tapping away on a laptop. Funnily, I don't drink coffee — caffeine has never sat well with me. That particular snowy day, my parents' internet connection had dropped, and so had the one at my mom's office. But as a fresh graduate, I was on a mission to find an exciting role in my field that I was going to be passionate about, and I wasn't ready to stop looking that day. I headed to the only other local place I knew that would have a good connection, the cafe, and bought a decoy latte.

In a butterfly effect type moment, in rolls an old friend from high school and midget hockey. He had stopped in because his wife loved the cookies from the cafe. We catch up a bit and he asks what I'm working on. I let him know I'm trying to make stand-out cases for hire on some exciting roles. He tells me about this great new startup he's working on, says he's already seen my portfolio and thinks I'd be a great fit and that I should apply.

A couple weeks later, I become employee #21 at Shopify — their second full-time design hire. The ride that ensued over the next five-and-a-half years was nothing short of any aspiring product designer's dream. I had a hand in much of what merchants and partners still touch today: the core Admin, the Theme Store, Partners, Shopify.com, first-party apps, reporting — and capped it off as design lead for the IPO roadshow.

Ringing the opening bell at the TSX is a moment I'll cherish forever. As we rang that bell, I reminisced about a couple of early-days moments — twenty of us, all in a row on the sidewalk, carrying our monitors around the ByWard Market to our new offices. Around the same time, I was asked if I could cover half the cost of my new work laptop. Both laughable, unimaginable moments considering the company we all know it as today. When I left, I was given the laptop I had — it was a wild bookend to a fairytale tech-unicorn story.

Those years cemented my love for the startup ride, but it was time to go out and explore the world beyond an LCD tan. Beers in Prague, diving in Phuket, wines in Portugal, motorcycling around Taiwan. Steak in Argentina, hiking in New Zealand, civil unrest in Chile, and sharing an unforgettable kiss with my now wife at the top of Machu Picchu. Wanderlust, full of sonder. A victory lap, if you will.

Since then I've been the first design hire and Design Lead at Fullscript, headed products at AffinityClick, designed instant payments at Cheddar, and freelanced as pxlslyr for the likes of Lollapalooza, Austin City Limits, General Electric, Government of Canada, and several exciting startups.

These days you'll find me being a good dad, building side projects, and volunteering my design chops for non-profits like Lyrics4Life in support of the CHEO Foundation.