Tobias Lütke

Lütke was born in 1981.[8] He received a Schneider CPC (German brand of the Amstrad CPC distributed by the Schneider Rundfunkwerke AG) from his parents at the age of six.[9][10] By 11 or 12, he began rewriting the code of the games he played and modifying computer hardware as a hobby. Lütke dropped out of school and entered an apprenticeship program at the Koblenzer Carl-Benz-School to become a computer programmer after tenth grade.[11][12] He moved from Germany to Canada in 2002.[9][11]

Lütke cites John Carmack's .plan-files from the mid-1990's as "making a huge impression"[13] on him as a teenager and calls them a "a master class in systems design".[14]

In 2004, Lütke, along with his partners, Daniel Weinand and Scott Lake, launched Snowdevil, an online snowboard shop.[4][15][16] Lütke built a new e-commerce platform for the site, using Ruby on Rails.[17][12][18] Soon after, the Snowdevil founders shifted their focus from snowboards to e-commerce and launched Shopify in 2006.[19][20][21] He currently owns 7% of Shopify, which went public in 2015.[22]

The Globe and Mail named Lütke "CEO of the Year" in November 2014.[23][24] Lütke was presented with the Meritorious Service Cross on November 5, 2018 for his work in supporting the growth of the Canadian technology industry.[25] In 2019, Lütke donated 1,000,001 seedlings to Team Trees, the biggest donation as of November 28, 2021.[26] In 2021, Lütke donated $1,200,001 to Team Seas, the biggest donation as of December 12, 2021.[27]

On September 8, 2021 it was announced that Lütke, along with former and current Shopify top executives and Celtic House Venture Partners, invested $3 million in Creative Layer, "a global personalized print-on-demand platform for managing Shopify orders, proofs, fulfillment, and team members".[28]