Over the past five years, e-commerce platform Shopify's (SHOP 3.24%) market cap has grown from less than $4 billion to about $170 billion today. Despite this astoundingly strong growth, could Shopify still have runway ahead of it? In this Fool Live video clip, recorded on Sept. 30, hear what Fool.com contributors Brian Withers and Matt Frankel, CFP, have to say about it.
Brian Withers: Shopify is in the news, but for a different reason than you might expect. They're sponsoring a computer science degree but with a twist, it's totally free and you can earn a salary while working on Shopify projects with some real-world experience as part of your degree. This is really interesting. Shopify is partnering with MakeSchool.org for the United States first dev degree program, the first fully remote available for students in North America.
It's a three-year program, and at the end of it, you get an accredited computer science degree and with the hands-on experience you have for working on real-world problems at Shopify. It accelerates your learning and you get some resume building skills along the way.
I love this because it reminds me of Co-Founder Tobi Lütke's experience he had when he dropped out of high school. The CEO is a high school dropout and he went to be part of this work learn apprenticeship program at Siemens and really got the school of hard knocks programming and interfacing with customers as his experience there, which I would argue way better for Shopify than him finishing out his high school diploma. I'm really excited that Shopify is doing this, just trying to increase the number of people that have access to a degree like a computer science degree.
Matt Frankel: Shopify has arguably been one of the best growth stories in the stock market in the past few years. I remember going up to their booth at a conference in 2014, and saying what do you do? Now, look at them. E-commerce is growing fastest, it's obviously going to keep growing. There's only like 15% of retail sales or e-commerce right now. What is the biggest risk factor going forward? How are they going to be able to maintain their market share? Are they worried about competition or anything like that?
Withers: Yeah, I don't know that competition really plays a role in limiting Shopify's growth but having more entrepreneurs broaden online businesses, that could be a limiting factor. At one point, the world thought Amazon (AMZN 3.89%) was going to be the only online retailer, but that has turned out to be totally wrong. Shopify needs to have new businesses come onto the platform, whether it's a brand-new e-commerce business or an existing business that's developing an e-commerce presence.
There was one example through the coronavirus. A local farmer reached out to Shopify and quickly put together an online store in a couple of days and during the coronavirus was able to sell their goods locally through this online platform and getting ready and have a contactless exchange for their farm goods and they were incredibly appreciative of Shopify and the capabilities that it had. So you need to see more businesses like that coming onto the Shopify platform over time. It's a great way to start small and grow if things become successful.
