January 5, 2012

Ottawa's Shopify Continues To Load Up With Star Talent

By Rob Lewis

Last September Ottawa's Shopify hired Craig Miller away from Kijiji to become their VP of Marketing. Miller had joined Kijiji in 2006 when it was a 3 person startup team and over the course of next five years helped make it one of the top ten most visited sites in Canada.

While Shopify hasn't hit Top 10 status in Canada yet, they have been #1 on our Ottawa Startup Index for some time. And they're still hiring.

With another new office and over 80 employees, this past week they hired rock star web designer Jonathan Snook as a Senior Designer.

Snook was most recently with Yahoo! on the team that was responsible for the Yahoo! mail interface. According to Snook.ca, Jonathan is a self-proclaimed "creator of striking designs, impeccable markup and code, and forward-thinking ideas and applications". Based on his coauthored books, speaking gigs and sidebar projects, he's right.

Tobias Lütke, Shopify’s CEO and co-founder, launched the company in 2006 after he discovered how difficult it was to create a professional online store. Today, over 17,000 active online stores in 80 countries are powered by Shopify.

In October 2011 Shopify closed a $15 million Series B round from Bessemer Venture Partners, FirstMark Capital, Felicis Ventures, and Georgian Partners. This was 10 months after closing a $7 million Series A round in 2010.

This month Shopify is a finalist in the Best Overall Canadian Startup category of the First Annual Canadian Startup Awards presented by KMPG.

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