In the 21st century, people around the world cannot imagine their lives without the internet. The history of the internet began in the 1950s with the creation of the first computer. By the early 2000s, internet development had reached a global scale, becoming the primary platform for accessing all kinds of information. At the beginning of the 2000s, various websites, social media platforms, and online stores started to appear. One of these global e-commerce platforms was developed in Ottawa. Read more on ottawa1.one.
The Story of Internet Business Success
The rise of the internet business started with a group of young programmers and tech geniuses who met in Ottawa in the early 2000s. These young innovators were Daniel Weinand, Scott Lake, and Tobias Lütke, who moved to Ottawa in 2002.
The trio came up with the idea of creating an online snowboard store. However, in the early 2000s, there were no ready-made solutions available on the internet for this kind of business. Realizing that this was an untapped niche, they decided to develop their own e-commerce software.
Their software was based on Ruby on Rails, and within just two months, they successfully created the first version of their online snowboard store, called “SnowDevil.”
Why is Ottawa Considered the Second “Silicon Valley”?
By the early 2000s, Ottawa had a thriving community of young tech professionals who launched successful IT startups. As a result, the city became known as Canada’s “second Silicon Valley.” Shopify is one of the few companies that managed to achieve enormous success within a short period. This achievement would not have been possible without experts who identified the gap in the market for an online sales platform.
The Growth of Shopify
What started as an online snowboard shop in 2004 evolved into Shopify, a full-fledged e-commerce platform, by 2006. In 2009, developers added a “shopping cart” system to the platform, generating over $100 million in revenue. That same year, a mobile version of the Shopify platform was introduced on the App Store.
By 2011, more than 15,000 online stores from 80 different countries were operating on the Shopify platform. Every year, the number of businesses using Shopify continued to grow. What began as a small startup in the early 2000s turned into a globally recognized e-commerce platform, making it easier for entrepreneurs worldwide to sell their products online.
In 2014, the company launched Shopify Plus, a new service designed to further streamline e-commerce operations. Thanks to this new project, online stores could process up to four million transactions per second. Notable users of Shopify Plus included Tesla, Citizen, Wikipedia, Google, and Mozilla.
After Amazon Webstore shut down in 2015, Amazon recommended Shopify as the preferred tool for setting up e-commerce stores. That same year, Shopify also began integrating its services with Facebook, allowing users to sell products directly through the social media giant.
Shopify became a massive success story for a group of young entrepreneurs who initially wanted to sell snowboards. Today, it is the world’s second-largest e-commerce platform, hosting millions of online stores from across the globe. Shopify remains a leader in e-commerce, distinguished by the number of unique websites hosted on its platform.