#261 Tobi Lütke - CEO of Shopify: How Shopify Became a Cheat Code for Entrepreneurs

**Tobi Lütke** (0:01)
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**Shawn Ryan** (0:30)
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**Shawn Ryan** (1:05)
Tobi Lütke, welcome to the show.

**Tobi Lütke** (1:07)
I'm so excited to be here.

**Shawn Ryan** (1:09)
Man, I've been excited about this for a long time. But I wanna start this off. I feel like I owe you a thank you. I don't feel like I owe you a thank you.

**Tobi Lütke** (1:18)
How so?

**Shawn Ryan** (1:20)
Because what you've done with Shopify is just, it is what brought success to my business and so many others. And so I'll just give you a story. I started this in around 2015, actually in December 2015, so almost exactly 10 years ago. And this kind of started as a tactical training company. And I had just left CIA contracting for the CIA, didn't really know what I was gonna do, and I've always wanted to get into entrepreneurship. So I started this company, but I had no money.
And to create a website back then was, I mean, for me it was a lot of money. I mean, if I remember right, it was about $20,000, $25,000 to get a website made. And I was like, man, I don't have $25,000. But I did it, I did it, and I got a shitty website from a developer who I needed to call and have meetings with about every day, every time I wanted a new product out there. And I was just selling courses. And, you know, of course, every time I wanted to add another product, that was several thousand more dollars. And then I think it was TV. I was watching TV and I saw a Shopify ad pop up. And, you know, it was talking about the do-it-yourself stuff. And I was like, man, maybe, maybe I should try this. And so I did. I got the free trial. I tried it. And I was like, holy shit, I just built an entire website in like four hours.

**Tobi Lütke** (3:02)
That's amazing.

**Shawn Ryan** (3:03)
And, and, you know, and that was 10 years ago. And we still, we're still on the platform to this day. So if I have a story like that, and we started, so I started selling my courses on there. And then the really, the big win for me on Shopify was Gummy Bears. So, which we still sell today. That's a bag for you, made here in the USA, sold on Shopify.

**Tobi Lütke** (3:29)
Love it.

**Shawn Ryan** (3:30)
But, It's such a good product. But it just, I mean, it's just, it, it, it like unleashed a cheat code to entrepreneurship by being able to sell, sell our stuff because web developers would hold us hostage. And, and so thank you for doing that.

**Tobi Lütke** (3:47)
I mean, that's so meaningful to me, to me because like again, this is my, I mean, this is my favorite story, right? Because it's like, I think entrepreneurship is incredible and incredibly important. Like it's so important for society that people can, you know, reach for independence, that people can, like, instead of complaining about something not existing, they can actually do something about it, they can build something and this wonderful market, that you participate in it and if the market deems it to be of value, then, you know, it funnels coin back to you, so you can do more of this thing and it all kind of virtually kind of grows in a virtuous cycle. And it's just so honest. It's like it's such a form of self-expression. It's such a way to not just like gain, but also give back and it's perfectly positive sum. And so from a just fully philosophical perspective, it's one of the greatest journeys people can go on, most people, and it does require a good deal of courage to put yourself out there. But like I've started like early my teenage years like with small businesses and just selling products and these kind of things, and I've discovered this for myself. And then later, surely, we're going to get into some of these things with my snowboard shop and so on.