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Dax Dasilva
Dax Dasilva is a Canadian tech entrepreneur, author and philanthropist.[1][2] Dasilva founded the e-commerce company Lightspeed in 2005,[3] which went public in 2019 at a valuation of $1.7 billion.[4] He was CEO of Lightspeed for 16 years, until stepping down in February 2022.[5][6] Dasilva was reappointed CEO in 2024. Dasilva is the author of the 2019 book Age of Union about leadership, culture, spirituality, and nature.[7] He is also the founder of two nonprofit organizations; the arts and culture organization Never Apart,[2] and Age of Union Alliance, which funds conservation projects around the world.[7][8][9] Early life and educationDasilva was born and raised in Vancouver, British Columbia[9] to parents who had fled the regime of Idi Amin in Uganda as refugees in 1972.[4] Dasilva became interested in computer programming at age twelve, and learned to build program interfaces on an Apple Macintosh given to him by his father.[10] At age thirteen, Dasilva began apprenticing for a software developer.[11] He attended the University of British Columbia,[12] where he studied computer science before changing to art history and religion.[9] CareerIn 2005, Dasilva founded Lightspeed,[3] a Montreal-based e-commerce company.[13] Dasilva conceived of Lightspeed to assist small independent businesses competing against larger companies.[10][14] In 2015, when the company had 500 employees, Dasilva moved its headquarters from a warehouse in Montreal’s Mile-Ex neighborhood,[2] to Place Viger.[10] Dasilva took Lightspeed public on the Toronto Stock Exchange[4] in March 2019,[1] described by the Financial Post as the “most successful initial public offering by a Canadian technology company in almost a decade”.[4] He was one of few openly gay leaders of a major Canadian company.[6] In February 2022, Dasilva moved to the role of executive chairman of the board from CEO in order to concentrate on environmental and equality projects for the company.[5] He returned to the position of CEO at Lightspeed[15] in February 2024.[16] Dasilva won an Emmy Award[17] as an executive producer on the 2022 documentary Wildcat.[18] AuthorDasilva authored a book titled Age of Union: Igniting the changemaker that was published in 2019.[1][19] The book, which is partly a memoir,[4] deals with change, leadership, culture, spirituality, and nature.[7] Community involvementIn 1993, Dasilva participated in the Clayoquot “War in the Woods” protests in Vancouver[8] to oppose old growth forest[7][8] logging[9] and clearcutting.[4] Following the movement of Lightspeed’s company headquarters in 2015, Dasilva converted the Mile-Ex warehouse that had previously been its headquarters into a nonprofit cultural and arts space[7] called “Never Apart.”[2] In 2021, Dasilva donated $40 million[8] to found the non-profit “Age of Union”,[7] an organization that focuses on global conservation and climate change efforts,[20] with projects in Canada,[7][21] Peru, Indonesia, and Congo.[7] Dasilva’s Age of Union also funds efforts to protect international marine biodiversity.[9] In 2023, Dasilva partnered with Jane Goodall and indigenous Amazonian leaders to start a chapter of Goodall’s youth conservationist program Roots & Shoots in Brazil.[22] Personal lifeDasilva came out as gay at age fourteen,[2] and has credited the assistance he received at the time from LGBTQ support centers in Vancouver for helping to frame his philanthropic aims.[23] He was an ambassador for Montreal Pride in 2015.[3] References
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