Lightspeed Commerce founder Dax Dasilva quit the University of British Columbia in 1999, but came back to get his degree over two decades later.Supplied
Dax Dasilva had two goals when he retired as chief executive officer of Lightspeed Commerce Inc. LSPD-T nearly two years ago. In the era of outspoken know-it-all, uber-bro tech CEOs, he didn’t want to build smart robots or colonize Mars, but to conserve this planet. And to finally earn his university degree.
While “school dropout” is a badge of honour among tech founders (others with that label include Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Shopify Inc.’s SHOP-T Tobi Lütke and Mr. Dasilva’s hero, Steve Jobs) it amounted to unfinished business for the founder of one of Canada’s largest software companies, who quit University of British Columbia in 1999, six credits short of a Bachelor of Arts.
“I wasn’t proud of being a dropout,” the 47-year-old Mr. Dasilva said in an interview. During his time as Lightspeed CEO, “I felt if I finished my degree, I would jinx myself, so I kind of prescribed to the dropout thing, too. But underneath I was like, ‘Six credits, come on Dax.’ When I transitioned to chair I said, ‘This degree deserves to be completed.’”
And it was. On Nov. 22, Mr. Dasilva lined up in cap and gown at UBC’s Chan Centre for the Performing Arts to receive his degree in interdisciplinary studies from friend and environmental activist Tzeporah Berman, an honorary doctorate holder from the university, and cheered on by his parents.
“Dax isn’t your average tech millionaire,” said Ms. Berman. “He’s humble, he’s inquisitive and he doesn’t like to have anything unfinished. And he didn’t just want to finish the degree, he wanted to do the course work.”
Mr. Dasilva moved to Montreal from Vancouver in 2001 and got a programming job. He founded Lightspeed in 2005 and took the retail and hospitality point-of-sale software company public in 2019. At the height of the market and the peak for the stock in 2021, he was a billionaire on paper (his Lightspeed stake is still worth more than $350-million), but was keen to start his next chapter. He handed the CEO reins to president Jean Paul Chauvet in February, 2022.
Dax Dasilva, centre, with his mother Anne Da Silva, left, and father Joe Da Silva, right.Supplied
Mr. Dasilva views his time at UBC as a transformative and deeply personal experience that made him who he is. By the time he entered university, Mr. Dasilva, the son of Ugandan refugees who grew up in Vancouver, had programmed Macintoshes and protested, along with Ms. Berman, against old growth logging in Clayoquot Sound.
At university, he studied computer science and environmental science, but after first year, he switched to liberal arts, studying economics, psychology, philosophy, religion and art history. “I picked those courses deliberately because they were different aspects of my passion and every one has been relevant. They nurtured my varied interests and let me sow seeds for the big themes in my life,” he said.
He credits his education for influencing his interest in building well-designed, user-friendly software, his conversion to Judaism and his founding of an LGBTQ art gallery in Montreal in 2015 (Mr. Dasilva was one of the few openly gay CEOs of a prominent Canadian company).
Mr. Dasilva’s non-profit Age of Union, named after his 2019 book outlining his conservationist vision and seeded with $40-million of his fortune, has taken centre stage of late. Age of Union has funded 10 projects. Those include conservation land purchases in Borneo, the Amazon and B.C., programs to protect sea turtles and gorillas, and efforts by Paul Watson’s Sea Shepherd to stop commercial trawlers from indiscriminately killing dolphins.
Mr. Dasilva also financed a satellite tool developed by Ms. Berman’s Stand.earth that monitors road building and logging in old growth B.C. forests. He’s visited most projects Age of Union has funded and rubbed shoulders with Jane Goodall and Leonardo DiCaprio. Mr. Dasilva is a budding movie mogul as well: Last September, he won an Emmy for Outstanding Nature Documentary as co-executive producer of Wildcat, which aired on Amazon Prime, and he’s produced films about his projects.
But his road to cap-and-gown credibility predates that. After moving to Montreal, Mr. Dasilva took several correspondence courses with the intention of finishing his degree, but never completed them. In the mid-2010s, he gave a speech at UBC and connected with a university development alumni engagement manager, who encouraged him to finish his degree. He took a UBC literature course remotely seven years ago about The Tale of Genji, a 1,000-year-old Japanese novel. That was good for three credits.
He needed one more course, but he was busy. That’s where Karl Moore came in. The McGill University business professor had brought in Mr. Dasilva to speak to his CEO Insights MBA class for several years. Mr. Moore also taught a course called Hot Cities of the World, which included a class trip to fast-growing centres in developing countries.
“I’d been wanting to take it for years,” Mr. Dasilva said. “I thought maybe this could be my final elective.” Mr. Moore encouraged him to follow through, he says. As the COVID-19 pandemic subsided and with his day job behind him (being Lightspeed chairman requires only a week per month of his time) “I had no excuse,” Mr. Dasilva said. “It was time to finish” the degree.
In February, Mr. Dasilva joined 30 undergraduates, several alumni and fellow tech executive Lester Fernandes for a trip to Accra, Ghana, and Ivory Coast and its largest city, Abidjan. They visited startups, multinational branch plants, a former slave castle and Bank of Ghana Governor Ernest Addison, a McGill graduate. Mr. Dasilva wrote a paper on a local fashion entrepreneur, who also attended McGill, and another that looked at the impact of colonial rule on West Africa, including the destruction of local flora and fauna, postindependence land disputes and the rise of local entrepreneurialism. Mr. Dasilva got an A in the course “and he absolutely earned it,” Mr. Moore said.
“I wanted to complete my degree and to be able to speak about it to young people and be proud of that education, and remove the dropout tag,” said Mr. Dasilva. “There’s a sense of pride in finishing your education.”