It’s time to start a conversation about how we see our future

In light of the COVID-19 emergency, we’ve temporarily suspended our regularly scheduled series of conversations with Canadian CEOs. But we’re not going away. Instead, we’re going to pivot to the health emergency itself. We’re going to explore the impact on companies and workers across the country. And we’re going to find out how business leaders are responding to crisis.

On this COVID-19 Special Edition of Speaking of Business: Goldy speaks with Dax Dasilva – CEO of Lightspeed about what the company is doing to help their customers – 75,000 independent retailers and restaurants around the world – cope through the current crisis.

Transcript

Goldy Hyder:
Hi, I’m Goldy Hyder, President and CEO of The Business Council of Canada. If you’re a frequent listener to this podcast, you know that we’ve suspended our regular series of conversations with Canadian innovators, entrepreneurs, and business leaders. Instead, our focus over the coming weeks is on the COVID-19 emergency, how it’s impacting companies and workers across the country, and how Canadian business leaders are responding to the crisis. We kicked off this special series with Michael McCain, President and CEO of Maple Leaf Foods, and the new initiative he’s launched to support frontline health workers. We all owe a massive debt of gratitude to our healthcare professionals, so please make sure you give that episode a listen, and do what it is our public health officials want us to do. My guest today is one of Montreal’s best known tech CEOs, Dax Dasilva of Lightspeed. Dax, welcome to the podcast.

Dax Dasilva:
Thanks Goldy for having me.

Goldy Hyder:
Listen, I wish we were doing this under better circumstances, but I do want to thank you for making yourself available to talk about what you’re seeing, and what you’re hearing. So to start off, maybe you can take a minute to explain what Lightspeed does, and who your customers are.

Dax Dasilva:
So Lightspeed’s mission is to help independent businesses run and grow their business. So our customers are independent retailers and restaurants in Canada, the United States, Mexico, Europe, and Asia Pacific. So a really global presence. We believe that small businesses are a hugely important segment of the economy, but also an important part of the social fabric of our lives. And our mission is to bring city streets to life, communities to life by powering these businesses.

Goldy Hyder:
So if I understand correctly, Dax, you basically create business software for more than 50,000 independent retailers and restaurants around the world, which gives you a lot of line of sight. What are you hearing from them, and how are things different from what you hear in Canada versus outside of Canada?

Dax Dasilva:
We’re a cloud based system, 74,000 systems all over the world, and a lot of customers in Europe and in Asia Pacific. So we’ve seen the different reactions and different measures taken by governments. As COVID-19 spread, we saw governments reacting differently in all the markets we served, impacting some of our customers more than others on different timelines. Over the last two weeks, we made a decision as a company to pivot, to ensure that we’d be able to play our part, both in terms of the role we could play protecting our employees and families, communities that we live in. But I think that the overall thing that we’re seeing is of course to limit the spread of the virus.

Dax Dasilva:
So we want to be able to enable the businesses we serve to thrive as much as possible, as consumer behaviors are being forced to change pretty drastically, as governments updated their public positions. We’ve pivoted, of course, enabling our 14 global offices to work from home. That’s a pretty substantial change, considering the way we work together. We’re a tight knit family of a thousand people in 14 offices. But that was pretty seamless. Our employees really rallied to adapt, and make sure that our merchants were provided the extra support. And then we’ve also really pivoted immediately to being able to provide our customer base the information and resources that they need to adapt. And that includes a resource page that we update on a daily basis with links, as to how to adopt new revenue streams, and where they can find information about the government relief programs that are being announced frequently.

Goldy Hyder:
I wanted to ask you about that. You’ve got a number of different streams going here, so let’s focus in on one of the initiatives where you have launched support to local retailers and restaurants that have been affected by the pandemic. Tell us about them and that program.

Dax Dasilva:
Yeah, so we’ve done a few things. So we launched a resource site, where they can connect with best practices as well as government relief programs as a resource guide. We’ve also offered our retail and restaurant customers that have been affected by the pandemic three months of our delivery module, our eCommerce module, our loyalty module for those types of businesses. And there’s been an uptick from a lot of the businesses that are in the position to be able to leverage them. So giving them new revenue streams has been, I think a positive.

Dax Dasilva:
But we’ve also done another thing that’s really enabled our employees to engage, which is we’ve offered our Lightspeed employees across all of our offices, $500 in local currency, up to $500 to spend with our customers, whether that’s a delivery order, or an eCommerce order, a take out order. So we’ve seen hundreds and hundreds of posts of our employees engaging with our customers. So that’s been, I think, an initiative that’s really lifted spirits, not only for our people, but for the customers that feel that we’ve got their back, and that we’re patronizing them in a moment where they really need it.

Goldy Hyder:
Well, there’s no question it’s in times of crisis like this where people look for their leaders to be leaders, and to do so both intellectually, but also emotionally. And you’re clearly doing that. So thank you for that, Dax you did mention your Lightspeed employees, and how tight knit that you are. How has your communication and staying connected with your global employee base evolved, or changed at this time, or has it?

Dax Dasilva:
It has. Right before the crisis hit, we were scheduled to have a company meeting, which was to celebrate our 15 years of being in business. And so, that had to be rescheduled, postponed. And about a week and a half later, we instead did a company town hall, which had over a thousand people connected by a Zoom, which we’d never done before. And this was much more interactive. We still celebrated 15 years of Lightspeed, but we also talked about how we were helping customers through our Lightspeed local initiative, and other things that we were doing. And we had a Q&A that was very interactive.

Dax Dasilva:
And I think that for the international offices, we learned that this format was actually easier for them to follow, easier for them to hear. We love the big live events that we do out at headquarters, where there’s lots of applause, but that can be actually quite difficult for some of our international offices to get the same kind of value out of. So I think we’re learning from this experience. We’re learning about communication and collaboration across the teams. I know I’ve never been busier than through this period. And I think that right now we’re working on projects that are going to be great for the company in the long term. It’s a great opportunity for us to pause, reflect, and think about what are some things that we can improve about the company while we have this time? And that takes all sorts of collaboration. And I think that the focus and collaboration that we’ve had during this moment, even though we’ve all had to adjust to working from home, has been unique.

Goldy Hyder:
Well look, let me just ask you a final question, if I can. And as we’ve gotten to know each other, I see you as a leader with a lot of heart, and you’ve spoken quite publicly and written a book about finding purpose in your own life. How has this moment in time affected your outlook as a business leader?

Dax Dasilva:
Yeah, I wrote a book that I released last year called Age of Union: Igniting The Changemaker, and it brings together four pillars that we can think about as we want to become changemakers on this planet that needs our help, in a society that needs to evolve, and brings together themes of leadership cultures, spirituality, and nature.

Dax Dasilva:
This is a really unique moment we’re living in, and it is a time for us to pause, and reflect, and think about what kind of society we want to aspire to be coming out the other side of this. Now I’m going to be releasing the book in the next days as a free ebook, and free audio book. And so, I think it’s time to start a conversation about how we see our future. And is it the same as the one that we were on a trajectory towards? I think it’s going to be different. I think we’re going to come out of this, and this’ll be hopefully a step function for humanity to be a better version of itself.

Goldy Hyder:
Yeah, well said, Dax. I have shared socially something that my wife saw on the internet that has really stuck with me, and I found quite profound, and probably an appropriate place for us to conclude our podcast with you. And that is, are we in fact the virus, and is COVID-19 the cure? Is it the vaccine? So think about that, but thank you so much for joining us on this podcast today. I appreciate it.

Goldy Hyder:
Thank you and to all of you listening, thank you so much for joining us on this special podcast with Dax Dasilva of Lightspeed. I hope you’ve tuned into the one with Michael McCain, which kicked off the series on the crisis that we’re in, and what it is that our business leaders are doing, and what you can be doing. Join us soon. We will be having several other CEOs. The response has been terrific, and we’re going to try and do everything we can to inform you, and educate you, and have you think about some of the things we just talked about here with Dax. Thanks for joining me. Until next time, I’m Goldy Hyder of The Business Council of Canada. You’re listening to Speaking of Business.