Inside Shopify: From 2006 to Now Into a $122 million business
Founders: Tobias Lütke, Scott Lake, Daniel Weinand
Founded Year: 2006
Investors: Bessemer Venture Partners, FirstMark Capital, Insight Partners
Funding Raised: $122 million
What Is the business model of Shopify?
E-commerce platform that enables entrepreneurs and small businesses to create online stores; generates revenue from subscription fees and payment transaction fees
How Shopify got started?
Lütke built Shopify initially to sell snowboards online, then turned his custom online store software into a platform for others in 2006, focusing on easy-to-use tools for small merchants
what growth strategy has Shopify followed?
Grew by word-of-mouth in the entrepreneur community and an app ecosystem — it empowered small sellers with turnkey tools and tapped into the rise of DTC brands, scaling to over a million merchants globally
what are the top products/features of Shopify
Shopify e-commerce platform, Shopify Payments, Shopify POS, Shopify App Store for plugins
what was the biggest challenge faced by Shopify?
Intense competition from Amazon and other marketplace giants, and the challenge of continuously updating technology for hundreds of thousands of merchants while maintaining reliability