Welcome to Edition #69 of Did You Know? (DYK), the weekly newsletter by Gorick Ng, Harvard career adviser and Wall Street Journal Bestselling Author of The Unspoken Rules, where we deconstruct the untold story of how someone (or something) became successful—and what you can do to follow in their footsteps.
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Did You Know? Your problems are opportunities
Your story this week
Did you know? The founders of Shopify initially wanted to sell snowboards online.
Sephora, Gymshark, Allbirds: If you’ve bought something online from one of these three major brands, or any of the estimated 4.61 million online stores out there, then you’ve used Shopify.
Shopify is an e-commerce platform that gives consumers like you and me the power to purchase something directly from a brand, rather than rely on Amazon or a physical storefront.
But did you know that Shopify was only created because its founders were trying to sell snowboards?
The year is 2004. Tobias Lütke, a computer programmer and avid snowboarder, had just quit his job to start a snowboarding company.
Lütke didn’t dislike programming. In fact, Lütke loved it—and he was good at it. By age 11, he was writing code for his own video games; by age 16, he’d left school to join a prestigious apprenticeship program to become a professional programmer. But, even though he was recruited to a startup shortly after his training, he found the work to be the “driest of the dry.”
So, Lütke tried selling snowboards. He and his co-founders, Scott Lake and Daniel Weinand, called the company “Snowdevil” and got to work.
Immediately, Lütke ran into roadblocks. Not a single e-commerce hosting platform he tried could handle the website he had in mind.
Then, inspiration struck: “Well, if I spend all weekend working really hard, I can probably create the software myself and then we won't have any of these problems anymore.”
Over two months, Lütke built custom software to house Snowdevil’s online store. Within the year, Lütke and his friends launched their snowboard line. But by that time, Lütke realized he had stumbled upon a bigger opportunity: “to fix the broken e-commerce industry.”
Fast forward to 2010, 6 years after Snowdevil launched on its custom online shopping site—and Shopify raised $7 million in funding from investors.
Fast forward 14 more years to today, and Shopify powers many of the e-commerce websites you buy from—and generated $7 billion in revenue in 2023.
What does this mean for you? The next time you find yourself thinking, “Ugh, this process makes no sense!”, remember Shopify—and how the founders solved a problem for themselves, turned around, and solved the same problem for everybody else.
Your strategy this week
Did you know? Your problems = opportunities!
When he confronted an inconvenience, Shopify’s Tobias Lütke didn’t just say “ugh” and move on. Instead, he asked, “Who else might be struggling with this exact same problem?” and turned the answer into something impactful.
This could be you!
The next time you find yourself thinking Ugh! try to…
(1) Uncover the root cause by saying, “It’s [impossible / inefficient / so hard] to _______ because _______.”
- E.g., “It’s so hard to figure out how to collect and remit taxes on products I sell in my online store to customers outside of my country because every country has its own tax laws.”
(2) Identify a solution by saying, “This would be so much easier if _______.”
- E.g., “This would be so much easier if there were a service that could calculate the exact amount of taxes I should collect based on where the customer is from and remit those taxes on my behalf.”
(3) Imagine your target audience by saying, “If I’m facing this issue, then surely everyone who is also _______ is too!”
- E.g., “If I’m facing this issue, then surely everyone who is also selling stuff online to customers outside of their home country is too!”
(4) Assess your market potential by saying, “If I could solve the issue of _______ for _______, I could [build / become] _______!”
- E.g., “If I could solve the issue of calculating, collecting, and remitting taxes for e-commerce businesses, I could build the tool that all online businesses use to sell internationally!”
(This is, by the way, a real pain point I encountered when I started shipping my HOW TO SAY IT flashcards to my Kickstarter backers, so if you find a solution, please let me know!)
I know it because I’ve experienced it: When I was looking for summer internships in college, I kept staring at the list of companies that recruited on campus and wondering, “It’s a big world out there! Are these really the only companies that are hiring??” It was this very frustration that led to me compiling this list of 1,000+ companies that hire interns and new grads!
Solve your own problem!
Gorick
Sources:
- 4.61 million online stores
- By age 11, he was writing code
- “driest of the dry.”
- “Well, if I spend all weekend working really hard, I can probably create the software myself and then we won't have any of these problems anymore.”
- “to fix the broken e-commerce industry.”
- generated $7 billion in revenue in 2023
