Today, I’m happy to announce that Shopify has raised $100 million in Series C funding. I am excited to welcome OMERS Ventures and Insight Venture Partners to our team, along with Bessemer Venture Partners, FirstMark Capital, Georgian Partners and Felicis Ventures. These are some of the most prestigious venture capital firms in the world, and I’m honoured to have them join us in our mission to make commerce better.
It’s hard to believe that Shopify has come this far. It feels like yesterday that my co-founders and I were working out of a coffee shop trying to find the best way to sell snowboards online. Our options were either wildly expensive or painfully complicated, so we built our own. It didn’t take long to realize we should stop selling snowboards and start selling the software we created to build the store. That was the best decision of my life.
Today, Shopify has over 300 employees and powers over 80,000 online stores in 100 different countries. By the end of the year, our merchants will have sold well over $1.5 billion in products in 2013 alone. And although we’re the fastest growingecommerce platformin the world, this is just the beginning.
Since 2006, we have been focused on making it easy for anybody to create a beautiful and powerful online store. This year’s launch ofShopify POShighlights our expanding focus to also include the physical retail world. Using Shopify and Shopify POS together reveals our true ambition: To be the first company in the world that fuses all the distinct parts that are needed to run a complete modern commerce business - all in one amazing product.
I work alongside the most talented team of employees and inspiring store owners. I am proud to be a part of a company that is a market leader in an industry that is growing at a lightning fast pace. If you are interested in the future of commerce, please consider joining us. There is a lot of hard work ahead to build the kind of future we are envisioning, and we need the best and brightest to come together to make it happen. I promise you that we would spend some of the most exciting years of our careers together. Please,join us.
Thank you so much for supporting Shopify,
Tobias Lütke
Founder, CEO, Shopify