Dax Dasilva

Dasilva was born and raised in Vancouver, British Columbia to parents who had fled the regime of Idi Amin in Uganda as refugees in 1972. 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. At age thirteen, Dasilva began apprenticing for a software developer.

He attended the University of British Columbia, where he studied computer science before changing to art history and religion.

In 2005, Dasilva founded Lightspeed, a Montreal-based e-commerce company. Dasilva conceived of Lightspeed to assist small independent businesses competing against larger companies.

In 2015, when the company had 500 employees, Dasilva moved its headquarters from a warehouse in Montreal’s Mile-Ex neighborhood, to Place Viger.

Dasilva took Lightspeed public on the Toronto Stock Exchange in March 2019, described by the Financial Post as the “most successful initial public offering by a Canadian technology company in almost a decade”. He was one of few openly gay leaders of a major Canadian company.

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. He returned to the position of CEO at Lightspeed in February 2024.

Dasilva won an Emmy Award as an executive producer on the 2022 documentary Wildcat.

Dasilva was an executive producer of a 2025 documentary about Juma Xipaia, an Indigenous Brazilian environmental activist; titled Yanuni, the film was directed by Richard Ladkani, produced by Leonardo DiCaprio, and won best documentary at the Environmental Media Awards.

Dasilva came out as gay at age fourteen, and has credited the assistance he received at the time from LGBTQ support centers in Vancouver for helping to frame his philanthropic aims. He was an ambassador for Montreal Pride in 2015.

Dasilva converted to Judaism in the same timeframe as founding Lightspeed.