{"id":279176,"date":"2022-03-06T10:18:41","date_gmt":"2022-03-06T10:18:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/luxurylaunches.com\/?p=279176"},"modified":"2022-03-05T10:14:35","modified_gmt":"2022-03-05T10:14:35","slug":"meet-tobi-lutke","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/luxurylaunches.com\/celebrities\/meet-tobi-lutke.php","title":{"rendered":"Known as the ‘anti-Jeff Bezos’ – Meet Tobi L\u00fctke the 41 year old CEO of Amazon rival Shopify – The German billionaire is a school dropout and even admired by Elon Musk"},"content":{"rendered":"


\nTobias \u201cTobi\u201d L\u00fctke is not your average CEO. Not met yet? He\u2019s the guy who co-founded the Canadian<\/a> start-up Shopify, then built it into an e-commerce giant that helps companies set up and run online stores in over 175 countries.
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Who is Canadian billionaire Tobi L\u00fctke, Shopify\u2019s CEO, dubbed the \u2018anti-Bezos\u2019? Photo: @tobi\/Instagram<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\nIn 2014, Canada\u2019s The Globe and Mail newspaper recognised him as their \u201cCEO of the year\u201d, while he has been branded the \u201canti-Bezos\u201d for the ways in which L\u00fctke sets himself apart from other tech billionaires. When Amazon founder Jeff Bezos<\/a> \u2013 North America, and the world\u2019s, second-richest person \u2013 was still CEO, he even considered Shopify a competitor.<\/p>\n

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L\u00fctke also got to meet the prime minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau. Photo: @tobi\/Instagram<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\nLet\u2019s get to know this 41-year-old programmer-turned-entrepreneur, whose net worth is now estimated to be over US$6 billion.<\/p>\n

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Shopify co-founder and CEO Tobi L\u00fctke. Photo: @nmdcomunicacion\/Instagram<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\nHe learned to code by age 12<\/strong>
\nBorn in Koblenz, Germany, in 1981, L\u00fctke received his first computer at age six and says he started rewriting the code of the games he played when he was around 11 or 12 years old.<\/p>\n

\u201cI got so fascinated with my computer; it was more interesting than anything else and it was certainly more interesting than school,\u201d L\u00fctke told the Financial Post.<\/p>\n

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Canadian entrepreneur Tobi L\u00fctke. Photo: @todayscrypto.news\/Instagram<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\nLike several other billionaires, the Shopify CEO never went to university. He dropped out of school at 16 to enter a computer programming apprenticeship with Siemens.<\/p>\n

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Entrepreneur Tobi L\u00fctke with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Photo: @tobi\/Instagram<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\nHe co-founded Shopify almost by accident<\/strong>
\nShopify may have grown into an e-commerce behemoth and Canada\u2019s largest listed company, but it started as an online snowboard retailer called Snowdevil in 2004. L\u00fctke told Signal v. Noise that he wanted to start a retail store in Ottawa because of programming burnout.<\/p>\n

However, when L\u00fctke and his partners couldn\u2019t find decent software for Snowdevil, they shifted their focus to building e-commerce software that would help merchants sell products online instead.<\/p>\n

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Chairwoman and co-founder of Thistledown Foundation, Fiona McKean, with her husband and Shopify CEO, Tobi L\u00fctke. McKean\u2019s organisation works to advance tech solutions for decarbonisation. Photo: @FionaMcK\/Twitter<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\nHe moved to Canada for his wife<\/strong>
\nL\u00fctke was only 22 when he moved to Canada. He didn\u2019t migrate for his programming career but to be with his future wife Fiona McKean, a former Canadian diplomat. The young German met her on a snowboarding trip to British Columbia in 2002. They now have three kids together.<\/p>\n
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plant 1 million trees for 1 million merchants?https:\/\/t.co\/Ae3r7UUIrX<\/a>#TeamTrees<\/a> @MarkRober<\/a> @MrBeastYT<\/p>\n

— Chris Lu (@chris__lu) October 30, 2019<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n