Shares in Shopify Inc. surged on debut at the New York Stock Exchange Thursday, with the online storefront provider finding favor among investors.

Shares in the company surged to as much as $28.74, up 65 percent on its float price of $17 a share, before closing the day at $25.68, up 51.06 percent.

Shopify was originally looking to raise $100 million according to its initial public offering (IPO) filing back in April, but instead raised a higher than expected $131 million.

According to reports, Shopify closed the day with a market cap of $1.9 billion, way up on its initial IPO filing valuation of $713 million based on a share price of $10.72.

Founded in 2006, Shopify helps small and medium sized retailers set up their online stores for a monthly subscription fee.

The company reported revenue for the year ending December 31st, 2014 of $105 million, double the $50.3 million figure for 2013, and $23.7 million in 2012, however, it is yet to make a profit, reporting a loss $22.3 million in 2014, up from $4.8 million in 2013 and $1.2 million in 2012.

Shopify isn’t short on traffic or customers however, with 162,000 storefronts transacting $3.8 billion through the service in 2014. Merchants see around 300 million unique monthly visitors, with roughly half of those visits coming via mobile.

Blowing bubbles

The steep premium on Shopify’s debut on the NYSE shouldn’t be a great surprise given the buoyancy in the market around tech, and even within that broader market, e-commerce related companies going public.

Etsy Inc., while a different sort of e-commerce provider, but an e-commerce provider none the less, debuted on the NASDAQ in April with an opening day premium of 86 percent.

Investors are clamoring for IPO’s, just as they were in the final few years of the first dot-com boom.

Prior to its IPO, Shopify had raised $122 million. The venture capital firms smiling like the Cheshire Cat of Alice in Wonderland fame today include Felicis Ventures, Georgian Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners, FirstMark Capital, Insight Venture Partners and OMERS Ventures.

Image credit: Shopify/Flickr/CC by 2.0