Shopify

In 2006 Tobias Lutka, Daniel Winand and Scott Lake wanted to sell snowboards online. They built a website, every platform was broken, so they built their own. Friends wanted to use it, they opened it up. What started as frustration became the most powerful e-commerce engine ever created. They had no idea they were starting a company. Shopify charged merchants monthly, $39 for basic, $105 for standard, $399 for advanced, $2,300 for plus enterprise. On top of fees, Shopify charged transaction fees of 2.9% plus $0.30 per online transaction on its payments processor. If merchants used third-party processors, Shopify charged an additional 2% fee. Shopify also took revenue from the Shopify App Store, 20% of developer revenue up to $1 million than 15% after. Themes marketplace, shipping label markups and lending operations. The model was scalable. A merchant paid whether or not they sold anything.