{"id":5853,"date":"2023-06-07T11:37:40","date_gmt":"2023-06-07T18:37:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/etec522\/?p=5853"},"modified":"2023-06-07T12:15:19","modified_gmt":"2023-06-07T19:15:19","slug":"founders-parade-shopify-tobias-lutke","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/etec522\/2023\/06\/07\/founders-parade-shopify-tobias-lutke\/","title":{"rendered":"Founders Parade: Shopify – Tobias L\u00fctke"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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https:\/\/investors.shopify.com\/home\/default.aspx<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shopify was founded in 2004 by Tobias L\u00fctke. Daniel Weinand, and Scott Lake were part of the initial start up of Shopify, however Tobias L\u00fctke is responsible for it\u2019s impressive growth as a company and is generally referred to as the founder. L\u00fctke 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tobias L\u00fctke 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tobias L\u00fctke 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Company info<\/em>. Shopify press room. (n.d.). https:\/\/news.shopify.com\/company-info<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jermyn, D. (2012, October 5). Fluke and luck: Shopify\u2019s co-founder profited from both<\/em>. 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<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wikimedia Foundation. (2023, June 4). Shopify<\/em>. Wikipedia. https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Shopify<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wikimedia Foundation. (2023, June 6). Tobias L\u00fctke<\/em>. Wikipedia. https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Tobias_L%C3%BCtke<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

https:\/\/investors.shopify.com\/home\/default.aspx Shopify was founded in 2004 by Tobias L\u00fctke. Daniel Weinand, and Scott Lake were part of the initial start up of Shopify, however Tobias…<\/p>\n

Read moreFounders Parade: Shopify – Tobias L\u00fctke<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":91412,"featured_media":5854,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[35],"class_list":["post-5853","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-founders-parade","tag-founders-parade","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/etec522\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5853","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/etec522\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/etec522\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/etec522\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/91412"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/etec522\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5853"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/etec522\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5853\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5857,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/etec522\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5853\/revisions\/5857"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/etec522\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/etec522\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/etec522\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/etec522\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}