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

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.

“I got so fascinated with my computer; it was more interesting than anything else and it was certainly more interesting than school,” says German-born Lutke over video chat from his home near the Canadian city of Ottawa. He is wearing a grey hoodie and his trademark flat cap.

“Then I had this experience; even as a very young kid, I could see how the world was slowly rearranging itself and computers were more and more valuable, and the internet came to town.”

The 39-year-old now runs Shopify, the US$83-billion company he built after the dotcom crash and the only employer he has ever had. Lutke set it up in 2006 with help from friends Scott Lake and Daniel Weinand after they realized the software he had built to sell snowboards online was more valuable than the store itself.

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