One of the 20 richest Germans: the programmer Tobi Lütke found his fortune in Canada. As a person and as an entrepreneur
Photo: Lucas Jackson / REUTERSTobias Lütke, 40, now controls over 5000 employees, but his office looks as if he has just started an internship: steel-gray shelves, register cupboard, two workstations - that's it. Under his flat cap, the man with the ice-blue eyes smiles cautiously into the video conference camera. He apologizes for his "teenage German". "My mother has already complained." For years, Lütke, who everyone calls himself Tobi, has spoken almost exclusively in English.
The programmer and video game fan calls from Ottawa, where he started trading snowboards in a garage 16 years ago. Today, Lütke's company is called Shopify, sells software for operating online shops and has soared to more than 110 billion dollars on the New York Stock Exchange - an incredible threefold increase since March.
The corona crisis, which is forcing retailers to go online, is fueling the stock market hype surrounding Shopify even further. Financial analysts have been revising their price forecasts upwards for months. With the Royal Bank of Canada, Shopify recently took turns at the top of the country's most valuable corporations. And Tobi Lütke, who still owns 6.5 percent of Shopify, is now one of the 20 richest Germans.
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