Shopify Masters Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke Shares His Secrets to Entrepreneurial Success
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Dec 5, 2024 
Tobi Lütke, the founder and CEO of Shopify, started his entrepreneurial journey over 20 years ago with a dream to sell snowboards online. He shares the challenges he faced, from coding struggles to navigating payment systems. Lütke discusses the passion needed for entrepreneurship and the crucial role of small businesses in local economies. He explores how incremental innovation and emerging tools, especially AI, are reshaping entrepreneurship and education, making success more accessible for new founders.
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Faxing Passports to Utah
- Tobi Lütke had to fax notarized copies of his passport to Utah to accept credit card payments on his first online store, Snowdevil.
- This process took two months and highlighted the friction involved in early e-commerce.
Shifting E-commerce Landscape
- Early e-commerce had low competition, with Tobi Lütke being the only advertiser for specific ski resort keywords.
- Today, online advertising is highly competitive, requiring sophisticated strategies and tools like Facebook and Google Ads.
Load-Bearing Entrepreneurship
- Entrepreneurship is "load-bearing" for society, as small businesses create most jobs and drive local economies.
- Money cycles through local businesses, and entrepreneurship is crucial for bringing new money into these ecosystems.