Businesses That Changed Their Original Model

1. Shopify Was Originally For Snowboards

Back in 2004, Tobias Lütke was a lowly web developer who had a passion for snowboarding. After recently moving to Canada, he and a few of his friends decided to start an online store selling snowboards.

After becoming increasingly frustrated with the poor service and user experience, Lütke put his programming knowledge to the test, and within two months, he built his e-commerce platform to sell snowboards.

The young German-born computer programmer realized that he had stumbled on a solution that was applicable not only to snowboarding but to all online businesses.

Within a few years, he changed the site to Shopify and built the necessary functionality to allow users to create their online stores instantly.

Lütke saw an opportunity and seized upon it, but it wouldn’t have come about unless he put his idea on the web as soon as possible.