Shopify will give away three months free office space at WeWork locations around the world as it seeks to connect creative web professionals with Shopify merchants.

The Shopify Partner Accelerator will offer office space in four cities - Montreal, London, England, NYC and Austin, Texas- for three month terms from October to the end of December. In Montreal, the location will be at WeWork’s space at 3 Place Ville Marie.

According to the company’s partner marketing manager, Courtney Symons, the program is meant to both help freelancers who wish to work close to the Shopify community, Shopify merchants and Shopify itself.

“We’re making it really easy to make money from the Shopify ecosystem,” Symons told MTLinTECH. “One of the biggest problems that these [freelancers] face is they have design and development skills but sometimes they don’t know how to get their businesses off the ground. We thought maybe we’d start by helping them from the ground up. What if we offered them free coworking space, mentorship and behind-the-scenes access to Shopify? That’s where the idea came about.”

The program is designed for creative professionals from the ecommerce industry to “come together, work on Shopify projects, and grow their technical and entrepreneurial skills faster than they would be able to anywhere else.”

Shopify previously wrote about the success of its New York City Partner Studio.

The successful applicants will also receive mentorship, attend hands-on workshops and meet with Shopify leadership and long-time “Shopify Experts”.

“We have more than 300,000 Shopify merchants who are actively looking for help on their stores, whether it’s building them a custom site, a custom app, even just providing marketing services, if that’s what people have a background in,” added Symons. “It’s a massive business opportunity that we see from both sides.”

The Ottawa-based ecommerce website software company said the program is right for those who want or need a coworking space and want to work closely with Shopify. The winning applicants will be expected to work out of the space a minimum three days per week.

According to Symons, applicants don’t actually have to be associated with Shopify before they apply, but once they do Shopify will asks that they sign up for the free Partner Program. They’ll also have to submit one Shopify project that they’d want to work on.

According to the company, those selected will “need to work on something Shopify specific while you’re in the program… We are looking for projects, whether virtual or in real life, that relate to Shopify and show off your skills and progress. A few examples include: a series of Shopify-specific blog posts; a new demo store that shows off a specific skillset; a UI kit to be used by other Shopify Partners; organizing and hosting a Shopify Meetup.

“At the end of your three months, you’ll present what you’ve been working on to members of the Shopify team, for a chance at earning Shopify Expert status — where we will actively send you leads so that your days of searching for clients are over.”

Montreal is WeWork’s only Canadian locations. Shopify will select four partners/applicants for the space.

Symons said Shopify also chose Montreal because “Montreal is such a rich, innovative place and we’ve seen the success of places like FounderFuel. We’ve always watched Montreal and we know its a place where we want to be focusing our efforts.”

Those interested in applying can do so here.

MTLinTECH is proud to call Shopify a founding sponsor