Thank you very much to Scott Lake yesterday for his words of wisdom at our “Been there done that” lunch and learn session. Thank you as well to Cameron from Lang Michner who were kind enough to sponsor the session.

While there were certainly many lessons learned from Scott, what I found most interesting was the origin of Shopify. This bit of Ottawa Startup folk lore was fascinating and akin to Mike and Terry’s Lawnmowers. Instead we have Scott and Tobi’s snowboards, the story of two young entrepreneurs and their first adventure.

Scott and Tobi started SnowDevil.ca because it was in line with their passion for snowboarding. The site went live and the two of them would work on it part time; dropping off product at the post office in the morning, processing orders in the evening and talking with suppliers and distributors during lunch. Anyway out of the snowdevil experience came the realization that that had to be a better way to do online stores and ecommerce. Thus the genesis of Shopify. was born.

Very cool indeed.

Ian Graham

Filed under: Entrepreneurship, Start-up by Ian
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