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[Photo Credit : Benjamin Forrest, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons, background changed]
He never fit in.
School felt like a cage. Teachers called him lazy. Classrooms called him a failure. But what the system saw as weakness, Tobi turned into fuel. He found his freedom not in textbooks, but in codeālines of logic that made sense when nothing else did.
By 16, he had dropped out. Most saw an ending. Tobi saw a beginning. An apprenticeship as a computer programmer gave him the tools he needed. He wasnāt chasing grades anymoreāhe was chasing possibility.
āļø Across an Ocean
In 2002, love brought him from Germany to Canada. He landed in Ottawa with little more than a laptop and determination. Life wasnāt comfortable. The future wasnāt certain. But Tobi had never been afraid of starting at zero.
š Building From Frustration
He tried to start an online snowboard shop. The tools were terrible. The software was broken. Most people would have quit. Tobi didnāt. He built his own solutionābecause when the world doesnāt give you what you need, you create it.
That solution became Shopify.
š From Struggle to Scale
In 2006, Shopify was born. What started as a way to sell snowboards grew into one of the worldās largest e-commerce platformsāpowering millions of businesses in over 175 countries.
š Grounded in Canada
Even as Shopify became Canadaās most valuable company, Tobi stayed the craftsman. He biked to work. He kept coding. Success didnāt change himāit sharpened him.
š” The Lesson
Tobiās life says this:
Dropping out doesnāt mean giving up.
Struggle can spark creation.
The mold is meant to be broken.
From a boy who didnāt belong in classrooms to a man who gave the world a platform to dreamāTobi LĆ¼tke proves that success is not about fitting in. Itās about building your own way out.
Interested in his leadership lessons? Take a look at his interview on Lennyās Podcast.
