#359: Tobi Lütke — From Snowboard Shop to Billion-Dollar Company
The Tim Ferriss Show
The Headless Conversation
"Shopify was completely running on fumes. It's like my, we were completely, it just, all sorts of things didn't work," he says. "We're like, how can we overcome this built-in fear of failure that everyone's running around with everyone? And I think our book and theory was we just need to test this by really incentivizing people."
"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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