You may be surprised to learn that e-commerce platform Shopify would never exist if founder Tobi Lütke didn't have an obsession with snowboarding.

In 2004, he was working as a programmer, but he wanted to make some extra cash. He decided to team up with a friend and start his own business: an online snowboard store called Snowdevil. They thought the process would be simple: Create an online store and start selling snowboards.

But it was way harder than they imagined.

“I tried to find the right software to use for this business, and I was stunned that I couldn't find anything," Lutke says. "It's not that there wasn't e-commerce software, but it was just all basically user-hostile database editors, at best. It was so clear that no one who's ever run a retail business had had any part in building these pieces of software."

As a programmer, the natural solution to this problem was to build his own software from scratch. He used a programming language called Ruby on Rails and successfully launched his store. He was working out of a coffee shop in Canada called Bridgehead when he received an email with his first order.

"I came in, I got my coffee, I sat down, and I was scanning through my emails," he says. "While I was doing that, another email came in. It said, ‘new order.’ It was an insane moment."

Lütke says this was one of the most important moments in his life because it made him realize something: He suddenly went from programmer to entrepreneur.

"I remember it, I remember exactly where I was sitting, what I was eating that day," he says. "It was something that I just fell in love with, and I wanted to share that."

Snowdevil took off, but then something unexpected happened: People were less interested in buying snowboarding gear and more interested in the backend infrastructure for their own online stores.

Lütke listened to the feedback — he decided to pivot Snowdevil into the company that would ultimately become Shopify. He became obsessed with the idea that his company would empower small business owners to have the same experience he had in that coffee shop that day when he made his first sale.

"There’s a huge global demand for people reaching for their own independence," he says.

Today, Shopify powers more than a million online shops, and Lütke is obsessed with using systems to automate repetitive tasks and incrementally improve the customer experience.

"I’m always trying to think of ways to make something more efficient," he says. "If I have to do something once, that’s fine. If I have to do it twice, I’m kind of annoyed. And if I have to do it three times, I’m going to try to automate it."

Here's what we can learn from Lütke about efficiency, optimization, and leadership...