Shopify

Shopify provides software for building online stores and selling in person. Tobi Lutke, Daniel Weinand and Scott Lake started it in Ottawa, Canada, in 2006. They had first tried to sell snowboards online and built their own store software when existing options fell short.

Merchants pay a monthly fee to use Shopify. They pick a theme, add products and take orders through checkout. The Shopify App Store has thousands of add-ons for marketing, shipping and accounting. Shopify Payments handles card processing for many sellers.

Shopify POS supports shops with physical locations. The company also offers Shop Pay for faster checkout, and it sells to large brands through Shopify Plus. Businesses of all sizes, from one-person shops to major retailers, use the platform. The company remains headquartered in Ottawa. Harley Finkelstein is president, and Tobi Lutke is chief executive. Shopify is listed on the Nasdaq and the Toronto Stock Exchange. It became a remote-first company in 2020, and it has said it will not return to a central office.