Hardware Podcasts

Shopify: Tobias Lütke

How I Built This · 5 Aug 2019 · 1h 04m

What this episode covers

Tobias Lütke, co-founder and CEO of Shopify, explains how his struggle with learning disabilities and a desire to sell snowboards led him to build the e-commerce platform. He details the pivot from his initial store, Snow Devil, to licensing the underlying Ruby on Rails software, which became Shopify. Lütke discusses the company's early bootstrapping, the critical decision to switch to a subscription model, and his initial reluctance to become CEO or pursue venture capital. The episode covers Shopify's growth from a small Ottawa team to a public company with over 800,000 merchants, highlighting the role of luck and the 2008 financial crisis in driving user growth.

Most relevant to

early-stage companies

Topics

Mentioned

Companies
Amazon, Siemens, Bessemer
Products
Shopify, Snow Devil, Kylie Cosmetics, Unbuckle Me
Tools
Ruby on Rails, Ruby
Also
Kylie Jenner

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