Tobi Lütke

It was like terrible stuff.

Anyway, I'm a programmer.

I just started programming.

I built this online store just for myself.

Loved the experience of making all my own decisions.

I'm the kind of person who probably can't truly work for other people anyway, so maybe not having a work permit wasn't all that bad.

So I just love this, like, independence that I was getting.

Certainly my parents have.

And probably my teachers, too.

So, yes, I think so.

I think there is a pretty large, probably larger than we generally admit, percentage of people who...

Shoot.

be not working for other people and should be doing their own thing and they're creating their own music and so on.

It's probably, I think everyone can acclimatize to other situations, but on balance, it's a fairly common streak, I think.

And most people, this is, you know, partly why I love those consequences of Shopify is that more of these people can try, but I don't want to get ahead of the story.

I...

Yeah, so I decided to build the software, use really esoteric programming languages, which spoke to me and whatnot.

And then I launched it in August 2004.

And we had made this first sale, which was this life-changing experience for me.

And Snowdevil worked, and we sold snowboards.