Shopify featured on 37signals’ “Profitable and Proud” series

37signals recently began a great series on SVN called "Profitable and Proud" and today they posted a great interview with Tobi from Shopify. 

Here is a short excerpt:

How did you fund yourself at first? Did you ever consider taking on any investors?

We had a tiny bit of money from the profit of the Snowboard sales. Other than that we essentially funded it by ignoring money. My co-founder Scott and I didn’t take salaries until well after the launch. My wife and I moved in with her parents and kept costs down. I also had some savings from my job in Germany, and friends & family chipped in a bit in exchange for some equity.

We ended up taking an investment from an angel investor, who just called us up one day because he heard about our company. This is certainly an outlier, but taking this investment from John H. Phillips was probably the best decision we ever made. Apart from allowing us to meet payroll for the first year, he has spent countless hours teaching me all the things I needed to know about running a company. Without him, we simply could not have survived the years and would not be around today.

The post gives a great overview of Shopify’s history, culture and many underlying reasons for its success.

Way to go guys.

 

By Scott Lake