In 2004, German programmer Tobias Lütke was living in Ottawa with his girlfriend.

An avid snowboarder, he wanted to launch an online snowboard shop, but found the e-commerce software available at the time to be clunky and expensive.

So he decided to write his own e-commerce software.

After he launched his online snowboard business, called Snowdevil, other online merchants were so impressed with what he built that they started asking to license Tobi's software to run their own stores.

Tobi and his co-founder realized that software had more potential than snowboards, so they launched the e-commerce platform Shopify in 2006.

Since then, it has grown into a publicly-traded company with over 7,000 employees and $11 billion in revenue.

Timestamps:

• 04:55 - Tobi discovers snowboarding–and meets his future wife–on vacation in Canada
• 09:00 - Building a new kind of snowboarding company
• 24:55 - Pivot point: skateboards or software?
• 29:45 - The night before Tobi’s wedding, Shopify switches business models
• 39:15 - The 2008 financial crisis hits… revealing a huge opportunity
• 52:45 - After a decade, Shopify goes public

This episode was produced by Casey Herman with music composed by Ramtin Arablouei. It was edited by Neva Grant. This archive episode was produced by Katherine Sypher.

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