Shimona Mehta on scaling Shopify Plus to $1B & transitioning into the CEO role at F11

0:00Shimona Mehta:We truly would go back to our values and our priorities in every big and hard decision we made. We were there to build the best product, to deliver the best possible merchant experience, and build the best humans in their careers. From that, the quality, predictable revenue will follow, and that we'll never put that ahead of everything else.

0:24Welcome back to 40 Minute Mentor, the podcast on a mission to raise aspirations and inspire the next generation of category-defining founders, all in just 40 minutes. Today, we're joined by Shimona Mehta, CEO of F11, the drive-to-store platform for brick-and-mortar retailers and brands. Prior to joining F11 in April 2025, Shimona spent six years at Shopify, where she first joined to build the rocket ship offering Shopify Plus across the global commercial and revenue functions. She scaled that from zero to one billion revenue in a matter of years, and then was promoted to lead and build Shopify's international expansion as managing director of EMEA.

1:05And now she's back here building in Europe again, succeeding F11's founder as CEO to drive the company on to its next phase of growth and expansion. It doesn't take a lot of digging through Shimona's CV or many conversations with her to see that the underlying drive to the career she's built is her passion for building high-performing teams. And that's exactly why we wanted to get Shemona on the podcast and share her incredible journey and wisdom with you all.

1:35So you spent over six years at Shopify. Yeah. And I know one of the most incredible parts of that story was scaling Shopify Plus from zero to a billion dollars in revenue, which not many people could say they've done before being promoted to run the EMEA region. So I'd love to hear a bit more about that Shopify scaling journey, particularly the Shopify Plus experience, and maybe what you were most proud of, and what maybe some of those secrets to your success were during that period of time.

2:04Shimona Mehta:Yeah, you're right. It was a really special journey. And one that I know that is one of those like once in a career type moments. And the team of us that really got to do that build, we often reflect on what a wild ride that period really was. Because you're right, Very few people get to do that. Right. And in order to have success, many things have to conspire to come together. Right. You've got to have the right people. You've got to have the right use to write the right focus. You have to have the right set of egos or lack of ego in the room, the right ambition. But you've also got to have some tailwinds.

2:39Shimona Mehta:Right. There's got to be some luck on your side, too. So let's acknowledge it's never just because a whole lot of people are very, very brilliant. You've also got to have the right, you know, economic and like trends that are happening for you to be able to succeed. Honestly, I think the key to success in our journey was a couple of things. We were an incredibly smart group of people who were absolutely ruthless in ensuring that we had the right people on the team at all times. We were really ruthless about ensuring that folks that came into our door were hired for slope and not intercept. Okay.

3:23Shimona Mehta:Meaning not for any one given point in time that there were people who were on an upward trajectory in their careers. There were high growth mindset. There were great team learners. There were competitive because we needed people. If we were going to grow fast, we needed people who could personally scale along with that journey, too. And we're going to talk about my journey along that as well. We were incredibly clear on our mission and our values. And this was the first company where I actually felt like the values weren't just pictures on a wall. but when push came to shove, they weren't necessarily how a decision got made.

3:57Shimona Mehta:We truly would go back to our values and our priorities in every big and hard decision we made. We were there to build the best product, to deliver the best possible merchant experience and build the best humans in their careers. From that, the quality, predictable revenue will follow and that we'll never put that ahead of everything else. We knew and we believed that if we did these things well, the revenue would follow and I think there's a lot of companies where short-term revenue ends up getting prioritized. And we were a group of people that were really rallied around an overall mission, which means we were willing to put our egos to the side in order for the thing that we were trying to build.

4:35Shimona Mehta:We were so focused on building something special together that our own personal agendas maybe got pushed to the side, which was really great. You have described that so beautifully and eloquently that I made it sound so simple, but doing all of those things together at hyperscale is incredibly difficult um and i would imagine during that period of time there were a lot of difficulties a lot of challenges that you had to face so um on the podcast we we don't always like to talk about the the happy the brilliant we also want to talk about some of the the harder parts so what were your biggest challenges during that period of growth and what did you learn from those experiences um for me personally or for maybe for our team Maybe one of each.

5:18Shimona Mehta:Sure. I think for me personally, I saw this really, really quickly, and I think we'll get into a little bit about my progression. But if you're going to grow 60, 70, 80, 100 % a year, the problems that you're solving for today become obsolete six months from now. What you build today might have to get torn down six months from now. Who you are and how you operate has to change drastically six months from now. And so I think the greatest challenge was really quickly trying to see 12 months into the future. And for myself, it was, what are the problems my bosses are going to need to solve in 12 months?

6:01Shimona Mehta:And how do I make sure I'm ready to be the one to solve them? Otherwise, they're going to have to go ask someone else or they're going to have to go hire someone else. So how do I keep preparing myself for the next phase while building the current phase? Right. And so and so because if you're going to be really ambitious, who we are today, what we know today doesn't necessarily apply to a month ago. So that was probably the early great challenge. And we make mistakes along the way. We would pick roles and areas that we were solving for that didn't apply and we'd have to retract. I think from an organizational perspective, one of the greatest challenges was, you know, you can do anything, you can't do everything.

6:44Shimona Mehta:And I think the greatest challenge was often you can get caught up in, you know, building great product and selling great product. and what often gets left behind, I don't know if anyone else feels this, is sometimes the operational backbone stuff can get left behind, like enabling well and the systems and data and all of those things can sometimes get left behind. And we were really struggling at times to make sure the operational backbone of the organization kept up with how fast we were building and selling. Yeah, I mean, it's a perfect segue to my next question actually about how to achieve that sort of high growth.

7:23I'd imagine there are going to be loads of founders listening to this that have aspirations to create the next billion dollar company. But as you quite rightly said, you have to get a lot of things in order to make that happen. So what's your advice for anyone listening to this to do maybe some of the basics, the key things that will enable that rapid growth?

7:43Shimona Mehta:There's a bunch. But I think there's a few that are really important. And the first is you really need to know who you're building for because it can't be everybody. Right. So when we were first building Shopify Plus, as an example, we were started by Toby as he started to figure out what was Shopify going to be in the future? Who are they going to be when they grew up? The mission at Shopify was make commerce better for everyone. As the question mark became, who is everyone? Is it all regions? Is it all segments? Is it all verticals? Like, who is everyone? Shopify Plus was born of how far up market should we actually go?

8:24Shimona Mehta:Shopify to that point really served the smallest of merchants, solopreneurs, new entrepreneurs. And as they scaled, we're potentially moving off to enterprise platforms. And our goal was, can we be the place that merchants grow up and stay forever? Now, when you think of a solo entrepreneur versus moving up market, that up market can be everyone. Is it merchants who are 5 million? Is it 10? Is it 50? Is it billions? Right. Who are we building for? Right. Because our opportunity or that green space was everybody. It was the world. And we had to really quickly make decisions on, OK, who is it for now?

9:04Shimona Mehta:Can we test and build well for them? And then can we march up market? Can we further march up market? So number one is you've got to get really clear on who you're building for because you cannot build for everyone. Otherwise, you'll do a half-assed job for everybody versus a great job for who you're really actually building for. So refining our ICP was a constant struggle for us. The other was you can't define everything before you act. And so I think a great mental model for us was if you have 70 % of the information, go. because the other 30 % is what you will learn as you're doing and as you're testing, right?

9:42Shimona Mehta:You can't know 100 % and be absolutely sure of every path you're gonna take. When you're trying to move fast, when you're building as an entrepreneur, so much of it comes through discovery. So do the work, do the research, make sure you've thought it through. But when you have 70 % act and then gather the other 30 and then you have to pause to check in to make sure you're on the right track. You can't just run and keep running. Don't let yourself get pulled back by some cost fallacy. At what point would you be willing to revert out if something is the wrong decision? I think way too many organizations, the biggest challenge they end up going through is they take a path that's not going to work out, but they refuse to revert out of it.

10:27Shimona Mehta:and you know a ship just moving a couple of degrees off target ends up all the way on to another continent if you don't divert it back and so it's about always constantly checking in are you on the right track are you course correcting ship and iterate ship and iterate ship and iterate yeah very wise words and i'm sure that a lot of this will resonate and i'm sure you've all seen founders do both those things um and uh yeah they're really really good watch out for anyone that's kind of maybe doing this for the first time yeah um coming back to you personally you progressed incredibly quickly at shopify uh you know that trajectory is something that you know everyone can aspire to um what helped you personally in your progression and what advice do you have for anyone else that is you know maybe at the earlier parts of their career maybe in a kind of shopify s company now looking to how do i get to the top what would you say to them Yeah.

11:19Shimona Mehta:When I chose to join Shopify, I chose the people I wanted to work with. Love that. That was first and foremost, right? I was looking for at that point in time, what I was looking for most was, does it look like there are interesting problems to solve and big enough problems to solve? Because I was looking to solve big problems. And do I think these are the people that I could do this with? Can I trust them? Do they look like they approach problems the right way? Do I align with their values and character? Like that was what I was testing for when I was going through the interview process. And I really fell in love with the people.

11:57Shimona Mehta:I still remember my very first interview with my then boss, Mark Bergen, who was leading all of revenue for Shopify Plus. He had just started a few months before I was going to be one of his first management hires. And we got to the end of the interview and it was my turn to ask questions. This is, I think, September 2016. And so I asked him, at the end of this year, what is success for you? I was just trying to get a sense of what is he focusing on? Is it a revenue number? Is it a merchant number? Is it hiring or something? And I remember what he said to me in that interview solidified. He didn't know it yet, but it was my job and I was going to build with him.

12:37Shimona Mehta:But what he said was, Shimona, when people walk out of our door in the next two, three, four, five years, if we've set them up for success in their careers that will have been success not that I was that was it I was like this is the guy I'm building with because I know we're going to build well and for scale and for success and for the right story but also like we're going to build great people which is what I wanted for longevity of our business um so uh so first of all it was I picked the right people that I wanted to work with and then the other one that I mentioned before, which was, I saw very quickly the kind of the special opportunity that it was.

13:15Shimona Mehta:And I went to my bosses early, Mark Bergen, Lauren Paddleford. And I said to them, I was like, as long as I get to build with you guys, you can ask me to do anything. It's, you know, you've heard all heard that, um, uh, that anecdote before, right? Like when you get asked to join a rocket ship, you don't ask what seat you just get on. I really took that to heart. And I told them very early, if I get to work with you guys and I get to build and I get to help like build teams, ask me to do anything. And if it means sweeping the floors, I will do it. So whatever you ask me to do, I'm going to say yes, as long as I get to be part of this with you.

13:55So I think my key to

13:57Shimona Mehta:success was I was a learner. I picked the right people and I truly put to the side what I thought my personal career ambitions or next steps were supposed to be and I because I just knew that this opportunity would to build was going to open up so much for me um and I'll just just take me along with you I love that I will keep up just tell me what you want to do which is how I ended up in London they said would you go and build and help us figure out international expansion don't forget you said you'd say yes to anything um but careful what you wish for truly but that was how like and so we I in between like I had experimental roles I had roles with zero job description I've got uh pictures in my photo album of like whiteboard scraps like drawings and that was my job description for a year because over 20 minutes me and one of my bosses would have like scribbled it out and be like can you do this next year cool yeah and so I had to put aside any desire for like what will I say on LinkedIn how would I tell the story of this it's going to be I got to build Shopify plus yeah letting go of ego is a big it's a big thing yeah actually not easy no it's not and you can understand why individuals will chase a title or different things but we talk about it all the time in in our as headhunters that actually some of the best talent some of the fastest progressing people I've seen yeah have have made quite conscious decisions to go into a company and prove themselves and back themselves because they thought really carefully about where they're going who they're working with yeah and they are then just going to get on as you said get on get on the rocket ship and it tends to to work if you if you've done the right you know if you've done it strategically um what i did didn't have a title it was literally just shimona's here she's on this this team we're gonna we're gonna do stuff yeah and i couldn't describe to you at all today but it was probably seven different jobs at that I'm great.

15:51Love it. So it's really, really good advice. Well, let's come to the hero now. After six years at Shopify, you took some time out and you are now CEO of F11. So for anyone that doesn't know the business, tell us a bit about what the business does, why you joined. And yeah, let's dig into it.

16:11Shimona Mehta:Yeah. I'm so excited actually about the journey that we're on now because again, I got a great opportunity to build and scale and learn so many lessons at Shopify. And part of these last two years for me has been reflecting on who I want to be, what kind of impact I want to have, but also where I feel I'm strongest and I can add the most value. And it always comes back to I love building and scaling. And so first and foremost, F11 is a company that is building to be the drive to store platform for brick and mortar retailers and CPGs through those weekly product price promotions and tangibly helping drive footfall and revenue at the store level, which is a very hard problem to solve.

16:55Shimona Mehta:So I was looking for harsh problems to solve. I was looking for a company that, I always say this to the team today, has had enough success to make a mess, if that makes sense. Because I feel like I'm really good at walking in and helping make sense of the mess and then figure out how we take the next steps together. How do we think about making this repeatable and scalable? How do we tell our story well? How do we think about expansion? How do we build the right teams and leadership for the things that we want to do? So an F11 was really right at that point of having made just enough of a mess to be like, here, how do we do the how do we do the next part?

17:32Shimona Mehta:This is where I can help. And just like before, because I realized it was the true secret sauce. I needed to know that I was working with people who are smart, kind and humble. And I always said humility is the most important to me. Are we all in service of something greater together? And if we are, you know, no one's playing empire building, no one's super attached to every particular thing that they're doing. Like they really want to operate as a team. No one's precious about the things that were built in the past or really about what we're building towards in the future. Then we're on board.

18:06Shimona Mehta:And that was what I found when I started chatting with them last year. Super exciting. Well, we all know that transitioning into any role is a big thing. Yeah. But a CEO role is, you know, that's a whole challenge into itself, both for a founder that's transitioning out of a CEO, founder CEO role, but also for the incoming CEO. And I'm sure everyone listening to this, everyone in the room will have heard of examples where things have gone horribly wrong, but also where companies have got it right. So I'd love to hear because I know we've talked about how thoughtfully you and the founder of F11 have been approaching this.

18:41And I think there are some incredible lessons to learn. So do you mind talking to me about this sort of process and how it's all going?

18:48Shimona Mehta:Yeah. So the founder of F11 is Alex N. Huth. And truly the reason that I decided to join F11, even though I knew he'd be transitioning out, I could see from his character and his ambition and his drive and his values that he would have built something that I would love wrapping my arms around. Right. He built it with like a real quality and ambition in mind. And he's such a good person. And I just fell in love with him last year when I met him. So I knew that this could if it was going to go, if any kind of transition was going to go well, it was going to be with him. And so first and foremost, like I really Alex and I really connected.

19:29Shimona Mehta:We spent our whole first conversation actually talking about our life journeys and our families and our character and the things we believed in. We didn't get into value proposition and, you know, rule of 40 and all of these things that first call. We actually just took the time to get to know each other. Do we want to do this together? Could we believe in each other? Which I think was our first good step. You connected. Yeah, we really connected. Because if you're going to do hard things together, you better know you've got someone that you can really trust and be in the trenches with. Agreed.

19:58Shimona Mehta:Because this transition journey is absolutely not an easy one. This is probably one of the hardest things that he and I can both choose to do. And I know you and I have talked about this, but I think very often what happens in a transition like this, you've either got a board pushing a CEO out and they're the ones hiring the new CEO. So you've got like a hard transition or you've got a CEO that's really ready to step out and hand over over a couple of months. But what Alex and I have chosen to do actually is we're overlapping by about a year and a half together. and I don't think it's done often because it's hard but my motto is always if it's the hard thing to do it's probably the right thing to do and there's probably a reason just because it's hard is not a reason to shy away and so we decided to do a long transition for a couple of reasons a it allows some great learning time for me I really believe right when leaders come into a new business, you've got to take the time to learn the context and history of an organization to understand how they got to this point before you just start changing things, right?

21:06Shimona Mehta:I'm not a playbook leader, right? I'm not going to come in and apply a playbook. I have to learn and understand the context of the current state of the business and really be clear on where we're headed so that we can make the right decisions for us, right? Not what I did at Shopify. All Shopify shows is I know how to build great teams and I can make great decisions. But what I did there doesn't necessarily apply here. Right. And I think that's the true mark of a good leader is you're not trying to repeat everything just because it works somewhere else does not mean it works here. And for Alex, it was great continuity for our business because he could ensure that the day-to-day kept running while I spent a lot of time learning.

21:46Shimona Mehta:Right. I didn't have to get thrown right into execution, but also it provides, I feel, so much continuity and I think a sense of calm for our organization because they don't see a founder being thrown out and a new leader coming in, which I think provides a lot of anxiety. They've got this founder and this leader that they've known and trusted for years and they can see that he and I are coming together, that we're acting as a team to start with. That's provided, I think, an incredible sense of calm for our organization in order to do that though that you've got two strong leaders that are coming together who for a little while it could feel like a two-headed monster so he and i had to really commit we had to look each other in the eye and we really had to commit to building trust to communicating really well we had we have not just the barriers of context right um and experience we've even got a bit of a language barrier alex is german and is german first i'm north american and english first we have to get across those barriers we have different personality types and ways of working so we've sat down we've talked about our love languages what do we need most from each other alex is about words of affirmation for me it's quality time and acts of service and so we are learning how to communicate with each other and show each other appreciation how to communicate well how to talk about what's most important to us and we've had to really work on creating clarity in our roles he um this is so important where we agree is that neither of us have an ego and that we're everything that we do will be in service of f11 and our growth ambitions and that we'll put our personal egos to the side which is hard again when you've got two really strong egos him who's built something incredible to this point and me who's like eager to wrap my arms around something and continue to grow and scale it.

23:40Shimona Mehta:I've got all these ideas that I'm ready to run. But this moment in time that we've got, I think was really important. So we spent the first few months as co-CEO. I'm stepping in and taking over now as CEO, but Alex is going to stay on board and work on a few really important innovation and product projects for us and continue to be able to be an advisor to me, which is incredible while we do all of this. That's amazing. I love how deliberate you've been. I'd imagine it's been difficult. There's been some hard conversations. Very daunting, I'd imagine, for the organization, but also how incredibly reassuring and calming, as you said, for them to see such alignment and such clarity.

24:24And I often find it's the lack of clarity is where the issues crop up. um that said it is still a change and change is scary particularly for for people in the business so how have you gone about approaching not changing too much too quickly but also actually doing the job that you've come in to do which is take the business on to the next level that's a really difficult balancing act um so i don't believe in too much too quickly when it comes

24:52Shimona Mehta:to change if you've got big ambition and you've uh and you know the right thing to do then you should do it. How you do it makes all the difference though, right? It can feel like too much too quickly if you're not communicating with the org, if you're not spending time on context, if you're not ensuring that there's clarity for everyone, right? People join organizations like F11 because they want to build something special, right? They all want to be a part of building a great company. They didn't come just to do a job, right? You can go to Procter & Gamble and do a job. They come to startups and to scale-ups because they want to build something special, but they just want to know that they're part of that building, right?

25:29Shimona Mehta:And this is where sometimes that's where speed can feel like too much is if you don't take the time to ensure that people have clarity on where we're headed together, what their role is in it, and what good will look like if they want to know how they're contributing to where you're headed together, right? So when people have clarity around those things and why and how we as leaders are going to make decisions, then they feel like they're along for the ride versus being left out as a quote cog and just doing a job without understanding what they're a part of right so i think it's really it's speed is great but speed requires you as a leader to slow down enough to make sure you've brought your organization along for the ride with you awesome uh well they're very lucky to have you uh and i'd love to hear i'm sure i'm sure our audience are excited to hear what what your plans are what's the future hold for f11 with you at the helm.

26:22Shimona Mehta:Yeah. So we've gone through like two to three years of a first transition, actually. So F11 originally started building a product and offering that served media agencies. And Alex and the rest of the team had built it to that point till about two and a half years ago. And then were acquired by a PE, Armira, out of Germany. And as they all sat down together and started to think through like that value creation plan for the next several years realized, actually, this might not be scalable. And it looks like we need to make a pivot. So they've gone through an incredibly ambitious couple of years already in moving away from media agencies as the core ICP over to direct clients.