Everyone,
Let me begin by congratulating all of you on an amazing year. Your shops have generated over $100 million in sales and many of you are considered to be among the leading online stores in the world. I especially wanted to point out the great work being done by our not-for-profit users who have raised millions for their charities from shop sales.
The success stories from our platform proliferate. We now see many multi-million dollar businesses that didn’t exist a year ago, and sometimes not even a month ago. Shopify is increasingly becoming the place for the world’s best entrepreneurs to build the great ecommerce companies of tomorrow.
We are truly humbled to be a part of this online surge. We also feel obliged to hold up our side of the bargain and continue to make Shopify the best possible online store system on the web. We love what we have created, and we are excited about where we are going.
Part of that excitement stems from our announcement: today that we have raised a Series A financing round by a syndicate of amazing firms with deep understanding of what we are trying to accomplish. Bessemer ventures lead the round followed by Firstmark and Felicis.
This move may come as a surprise to many. We have been a profitable company for several years and have been called one of the great internet bootstrapping successes. The short answer is that the time is finally right: When we started Shopify, building online stores was considered to be boring and ‘done’. Four Years later, ecommerce is exciting again. There is a lot of innovation happening and we want to make sure that we play the leading role.
What does this mean for current Shopify customers? Not much, at first. We only took a minority investment. The same people are in control as before. However, the investment allows us to add a force-multiplier in the form of the vast networks and resources of our new partners. The investment will also allow us to increase our team, expand the Apps and Theme store ecosystems, attract more third parties to build on Shopify, and expand internationally.
On that note, building Shopify is the journey of a lifetime and we are loving every second of it. If you are interested in throwing in with us, please have a look at the latest job openings over on our careers page. We would love to have you!
From our family to yours, happy holidays from me and the entire Shopify team.
- Tobias Lütke CEO Shopify