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Is Shopify a Public Company?

Last updated on October 1, 2022 @ 4:16 pm

Yes, Shopify is a public company. It is listed on the New York Stock Exchange and trade under the ticker symbol “SHOP”. As of June 2019, Shopify has a market capitalization of over $15 billion.

Shopify is a Canadian e-commerce company headquartered in Ottawa, Ontario. It is also the name of its proprietary e-commerce platform for online stores and retail point-of-sale systems. Shopify offers online retailers a suite of services “including payments, marketing, shipping and customer engagement tools to simplify the process of running an online store for small merchants.”

The company was founded in 2004 by Tobias Lütke, Daniel Weinand, and Scott Lake after attempting to open Snowdevil, an online store for snowboarding equipment. Lütke used the open source eCommerce software osCommerce to power Snowdevil’s online store, but he was frustrated by its lack of flexibility. As a result, Lütke decided to create his own solution.

Shopify was initially written in Ruby on Rails by its founders in 2004. In 2006 and 2007, Shopify raised a total of $7 million in financing from Bessemer Ventures and FirstMark Capital. In 2010, Shopify launched its own App Store.

PRO TIP: If you are considering investing in Shopify, be aware that it is not a public company. This means that it is not subject to the same disclosure and regulatory requirements as public companies. Additionally, there is a limited pool of potential investors, which could make it difficult to sell your investment in the future.

In 2013, Shopify went public on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) with an initial public offering (IPO) at $17 per share. On May 21, 2015, Shopify acquired Jet Cooper, a design agency based in Toronto. On June 3, 2015, Shopify acquired Select Start Studios Inc., a software development company based in Vancouver.

On March 1, 2016, Shopify acquired Kit CRM Inc., a “CRM-meets-messaging” startup based in Montreal. On April 28, 2016, Shopify acquired Peel Technologies Inc., makers of the “Internet of things” (IoT) connected devices for home shopping experiences.

In August 2016, Shopify announced that it would be opening up its platform to allow third-party developers to create applications for merchants using the new “Shopify App Store”.

As of 2019, Shopify has over 800 employees across offices in Ottawa (headquarters), Toronto, Montréal, San Francisco (engineering hub), Waterloo (development hub), New York City and Los Angeles (sales offices).

Dale Leydon

Dale Leydon

Sysadmin turned Javascript developer. Owner of 20+ apps graveyard, and a couple of successful ones.