https://investors.shopify.com/home/default.aspx
Shopify was founded in 2004 by Tobias Lütke. Daniel Weinand, and Scott Lake were part of the initial start up of Shopify, however Tobias Lütke is responsible for it’s impressive growth as a company and is generally referred to as the founder. Lütke is originally from Koblenz Germany, and began coding at the age of 12 when he was rewriting the code for his computer games. He later went on to complete a computer programming apprenticeship after tenth grade in Germany. Originally the three founders of Shopify were trying to open an online store in 2004 for snowboarding equipment out of his garage, called Snowdevil. At the time the existing online platforms for e-commerce did not meet their needs, so he set out to create his own infrastructure.
Tobias Lütke is the current CEO of Shopify, and has served as the CEO since 2008. He is based out of Ottawa, Canada, the original headquarters of Shopify prior to the company transitioning to work remotely. He serves as a board member of Canada Learning Code, as an advocate for computer literacy and education. He has also served as Chair of the Digital Industries Table, commissioned by the federal government on how to turn Canada into a digital leader.
Tobias Lütke is a computer programmer by trade and has taken an active role in developing the code of Shopify since it launched, using primarily Ruby on Rails. He claims to have done most of the initial coding himself while working out of coffee shops, not taking a salary and after moving in with his parents in law. An angel investor in Toronto put money in to help them with funds spent on designers during their initial start up period. For the first three months it was free for users, while Tobias finished the code, then they began charging for their service.
Shopify is software that provides store owners with a platform to process online orders and payments. Initially they specialized in providing small business with payment infrastructure and are more recently growing to include larger companies such as Staples and Steve Madden as merchants. In 2013, they launched a Shopify Payments partnership with Stripe, which allowed merchants to accept payments without the use of a third party payment gateway. Then in 2016, Shopify launched Shopify Capital which allows merchants to take a cash advance on future products to develop and grow their business. Since Shopify Capital has launched Shopify has provided $2 billion in funding for their merchants. Another huge milestone for this company was the launching of Shop Pay in 2017, allowing merchants the exclusive feature of processing payments through Shopify.
Shopify has 11, 600 employees around the world, and has transitioned to be an entirely remote company to capitalize on finding talent globally. In 2022, they reported $5.6 billion in revenue and is now considered among the top 20 largest publicly traded Canadian companies.
Company info. Shopify press room. (n.d.). https://news.shopify.com/company-info
Jermyn, D. (2012, October 5). Fluke and luck: Shopify’s co-founder profited from both. The Globe and Mail. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/small-business/sb-growth/fluke-and-luck-shopifys-co-founder-profited-from-both/article4575360/?page=all
Wikimedia Foundation. (2023, June 4). Shopify. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shopify
Wikimedia Foundation. (2023, June 6). Tobias Lütke. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobias_L%C3%BCtke
In viewing of the fact Shopify was founded in 2004, and went public in 2015 in both Canada and U.S. stock market.
I really Tobias’ leadership, vision, and his power of execution. Starting out his career as a programmer, and later developed a strong sense of entrepreneurship. My takeaway is the new era needs risk-takers and people with strong vision. Being a entrepreneur, I am certain Tobias had his struggles but surely he did not gave up. Entrepreneur are those who persistently pursuing positive changes, and bring values to others.
I remember listening to a ‘How I built This’ Podcast featuring Tobias. He is quite personable for, as he says, “a computer guy”. I appreciated that he will continually give credit to others and is able to recognize how many people helped him along his journey. After taking a massive fall on the market in 2022, it’s nice to see that Shopify seems to be bouncing back as the stock continues to crawl back up. He speaks a lot about when the sellers on his platform profit, as does shopify.
Personally, I’ve never used the service but I’ve invested in them before and maybe this is the time to check it out again.
Thanks for posting Kelby.