‘We’re the rebel army to Amazon’s web empire’: Shopify’s Tobias Lutke on the $83-billion company he built

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Lutke is happy to fly under the radar as his company works to help businesses weather the economic crisis

For Tobias “Tobi” Lutke, the road to e-commerce billionairedom was paved by a childhood gift from his parents. The Shopify founder was six when he received an Amstrad CPC computer. He played Pac-Man and Space Invaders obsessively, but video games were scarce, so he tinkered with them and set about building his own, aged 12.

You may not have heard of Shopify, but you have almost certainly shopped online from a brand powered by it. Services include new finance functions to help manage cash flow, but also in-store pick-up and delivery options. The latter sounds innocuous. Lutke plays it down. Shopify’s new-found logistics prowess is meant to be an equalizer. “The way we think about it is, Amazon is trying to build an empire, and we’re an army of rebels. This is a role we picked for ourselves. [Amazon] is a hard thing to chase — they are really big and very good — and you want the small businesses in the world to shore up ideally in the same way.

“I did not see that coming, I was not optimizing for money. I’m fairly cheap, I don’t need a lot. As soon as I have a reasonably good laptop, I’m actually happy. It’s a new thing for me.”

 

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