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TORONTO – Ottawa-tech company Shopify has filed documents for an initial public offering of US$100 million in New York and Toronto.

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The cloud-based commerce company, founded in 2004 by Tobias Lütke, Daniel Weinand, and Scott Lake and released in 2006, has been in the media eye for its rapid growth.

Shopify hit the perfect sweet spot, allowing businesses to design, set up and manage stores across multiple platforms including web, mobile, social media and retail stores. There are now something like 900 apps on the Shopify app store.

“This is the perfect time for this [IPO] to come,” said Greg Taylor, vice-president and portfolio manager of equities at Aurion Capital. “A lot of investors have been waiting for one of the Canadian private companies to go public. There’s a lot of pent-up demand for this.”

The company is tightly held: as a group the executive officers and directors own 56.50%.

Taylor said that due to investment from private companies, tech start-ups have been able to get cash in the private space more readily.

“There’s been a lack of good IPOs in the tech space in Canada in the last few years, so hopefully this deal will go really well,” Taylor said.

He expects that if this deal is successful, it will be a trailblazer for other tech companies.