4min chapter

#359: Tobi Lütke — From Snowboard Shop to Billion-Dollar Company

The Tim Ferriss Show

notes

CHAPTER

Why You Shouldn't Take Over SEO

The CEO of Shopify, Toby Smith, is leaving the company he co-founded. He had been in charge of search engine optimization for Snowboard Store and then turned it into a software company. It was an opportunity to become more involved with the business side of his new job. "I thought business was a programmer. We don't like business"

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Transcript

Episode notes

"Feedback is a gift." — Tobi Lütke

Tobi Lütke (@tobi) is the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Shopify. In 2004, Tobi began building software to launch an online snowboard store called Snowdevil. It quickly became obvious that the software was more valuable than the snowboards, so Tobi and his founding team launched the Shopify platform in 2006. He has served as CEO since 2008 at the company's headquarters in Ottawa, Canada.

Tobi is an active advocate for computer literacy and education, and serves as a board member of Canada Learning Code, an organization working to give all Canadians access to digital skills. In 2014, Tobi was named The Globe and Mail's CEO of the Year. He served as Chair of the Digital Industries Table, an advisory board commissioned by the federal government to provide recommendations on how to turn Canada into a digital leader.

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