(originally posted 8/6/17 on Slack)

THE MOTLEY FOOL INTERVIEWS SHOPIFY CO-FOUNDER AND CEO TOBI LUTKE

Pour yourself a cup of coffee, and enjoy this must-read article...

Here's an excerpt from Tobi, that describes how dedicated he is to his customers - US, the store owners:

"In a way, I'm pretty old fashioned in this thing. I'm just building a 21st century version of something which I would have probably been trying to do if I would have been born 400 years ago, which is, I found out something about myself, luckily very early in life, which is this experience that I had when I realized at some point that there's an option to build my own business, and what a tool that I used to build this immature snowboard store. And then, along the way, I had this experience of my first sale. And I remember what day it was, I remember exactly what I was wearing, what I was eating. It was 2004, November in Ottawa at a coffee shop. I got an email that said, "Hey, this guy from Pennsylvania bought a snowboard from you." And that was the first time it happened. I fell in love with that experience. I fell in love with that, and felt that, hey, I can do more of that. I can't get back that exact feeling. I had lots and lots of sales afterwards that never felt like this. But I can help other people have that. I can help other people have this experience. And that's how I can use my advantages -- the fact that I know how to get computers to do anything, and the fact that, for whatever reason, which I never want to say about myself, I'm interesting enough that people want to work with me on the kinds of crazy things that I think of. And we did Shopify together.

So now, every 90 seconds, someone has their first sale. And so, that is ... it's such a beautiful story, in a way, because I do exactly the thing that I love doing. I help people do something that maybe otherwise they wouldn't have done. And it's not small things. Again, I'm not helping people find exactly the right book to read. Starting a business is an identity-changing experience. If you start a business, your children will refer to you as an entrepreneur. You are going to be potentially known for having started this business. It's as much of an identity-changing experience as you can probably go through in your adult life, because most people at this point are fairly set on religion on political affiliation. So helping with that is great.

And lastly, very personal, I describe myself as a permanent learner. The concept of personal growth is very important to me. And Shopify is an incredible gift that keeps on giving. There's something new to learn every day. There's new challenges all the time. In all these kinds of ways, it's almost like this perfect environment for myself to explore the intersection of technology, the user interfaces and the way people behave, helping them accomplish things that they didn't themselves understand that they could actually potentially do by themselves, and carving out a little space on the internet for something that I think is worth protecting, and I feel would go away if there wasn't somehow, someone who figures out a way to channel capitalism to provide value to people who might not be the world's best customers, if you think about it. Entrepreneurs have no time, they have minimal experience, they have no money, they have tons of questions, they are fearful, very fearful of failure. So I would not have won a businessman competition pitching what Shopify is. It sounds kind of insane to go after this particular group of people as the primary goal of your business. But we have now 12 years almost, and we've figured out how to build a business model around it."

Link - https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/08/04/the-motley-fool-interviews-shopify-co-founder-and.aspx