Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither was Shopify.
Shopify is an ecommerce company that allows you to set up an online store to sell your products. It lets you organize your products, customize your storefront, accept credit card payments, and track and respond to orders.
Sounds cool, right? Yeah, we thought so too!
Here’s a timeline of how Shopify came to be.
2004 – Shopify was founded by Tobias Lütke, Daniel Weinand, and Scott Lake after attempting to open Snowdevil, an online store for snowboarding equipment.
2006 – Lütke used the open source web application framework Ruby on Rails to build Snowdevil’s online store, and launched it after two months of development. The Snowdevil founders launched the platform as Shopify in June.
2009 – In June 2009, Shopify launched an API platform and App Store. The API allows developers to create applications for Shopify online stores and then sell them on the Shopify App Store. Several companies have developed apps that integrate with the Shopify platform
2010 – Shopify launched a free mobile app on the Apple App Store. The app lets Shopify store owners view and manage their stores from iOS mobile devices.
Shopify started its Build-A-Business competition, in which participants create a business using its commerce platform.
Shopify was also named Ottawa’s Fastest Growing Company by the Ottawa Business Journal in 2010. The company received $7 million from an initial Series A funding round in December 2010. Its Series B funding round generated $15 million in October 2011
2013 – Shopify announced the launch of Shopify Payments, which allowed merchants to accept credit cards without requiring a third party payment gateway. The company also announced the launch of an iPad-centric POS system. It uses an iPad to accept payments from credit cards. The company received $100 million in Series C funding in December
2015 – Shopify filed for an IPO on the New York Stock Exchange and Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbols “SHOP” and “SH” respectively. During its debut on the New York Stock Exchange, Shopify started trading at $28, more than 60% higher than its USD$17 offering price, with its IPO raising more than $131 million. Shopify went public on May 21, 2015.
In September, Amazon.com announced it would be closing its Amazon Webstore service for merchants, and had selected Shopify as the preferred migration provider
Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shopify