Ottawa sure is a long way from Silicon Valley. In the summer of 2010, Tobi Lütke met with venture capitalists at Bessemer Ventures. He was looking for a couple million bucks to fund his money-losing Canadian startup. Cash was so tight Lütke’s father-in-law had to write checks to pay the employees. Bessemer was skeptical at first. A tech startup in bitterly cold Ottawa? But they took the plunge with a $7 million cash injection, valuing the startup at $25 million. It’s Canada’s largest company, valued at $160 billion. Longtime RiskHedge readers know I called Shopify “the next great trillion-dollar stock.”