Tobias Lütke FAILED to Sell Snowboards, So He Built Shopify

He dropped out of school and tried to sell snowboards online. The snowboards barely sold at all.

Tobias Lütke had trained as a programmer in Germany, not as a businessman.

In 2004 he and a friend launched a small online shop for snowboards called Snowdevil.

But every piece of store software he could buy was clumsy, slow, and frustrating to use.

Instead of fighting it, he did the only thing he knew how. He built his own.

The store he wrote was far more interesting than the boards he was selling.

People kept asking if they could use his software to run their own shops too.

In 2006 he stopped selling snowboards and started selling the engine underneath them, calling it Shopify.

That engine grew to power millions of businesses and a huge slice of online shopping.

The dropout who couldn't move snowboards built the storefront for a generation of founders.

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