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Shopify

includes Shopify Checkout, Shopify Logistics, Shopify POS, Shopify Functions, Shopify Audiences, Shopify Capital, Shopify Core, Shopify Mobile, Shopify Polaris

198 statements across 56 episodes · 87 bullish · 33 bearish · 37 people on the record · first statement Apr 11, 2016 by Aydin Senkut · said 883 times in 195 episodes since 2016 · across every show →

Mentions by year, the whole family

brought up most by Harry Stebbings (336), Jason Lemkin (110), Kaz Nejatian (86), Harley Finkelstein (60), Glen Coates (27), Carl Rivera (22), Jean-Michel Lemieux (21), Tobi Lütke (17)

tap a year for its mentions
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0204020162017201820192020202120222023202420252026episodes it came up in
007.520154020162017201820192020202120222023202420252026episodesmentions per episode
2026 122 mentions in 25 episodes 5 per episode
2025 173 mentions in 40 episodes 4 per episode
2024 209 mentions in 33 episodes 6 per episode
2023 143 mentions in 30 episodes 5 per episode
2022 86 mentions in 16 episodes 5 per episode
2021 24 mentions in 12 episodes 2 per episode
2020 6 mentions in 6 episodes 1 per episode
2019 48 mentions in 24 episodes 2 per episode
2018 4 mentions in 3 episodes 1 per episode
2017 57 mentions in 4 episodes 14 per episode
2016 11 mentions in 2 episodes 6 per episode

every mention, scene by scene, with the transcript →

Everything said about Shopify, oldest first

Apr 11, 2016
Assertion Supported
Rovio became Shopify's top store out of 10,000 within a week
“In seven days, the Rovio store was up and running on Shopify. Instantly, it became the top store in Shopify among 10,000 stores. They sold out their whole inventory in a week”
Aydin Senkut Apr 11, 2016 ▶ 20:04 20VC: Felicis' Aydin Senkut on Scaling Felicis From $4m to $120m, Doing Venture Differently and Why Being A VC Is Like A Jamaican Bobsled Team!
May 12, 2017 negative
Insight
Finkelstein: Bundling point solutions for retail creates an inefficient 'Frankenstein' system
“If you don't use Shopify and you don't want to use our platform to sell in all these different places, you can bundle up a bunch of different single point solutions. You can do just e-commerce plus just point of sale plus, you know, maybe a card reader from li…”
Harley Finkelstein May 12, 2017 ▶ 13:21 20VC: Building Shopify From $5m To IPO, Why The Future Of Retail Is Not Online vs Offline & Why Law School Is Like Finishing School For Entrepreneurs with Harley Finkelstein, COO @ Shopify
May 12, 2017
Assertion Supported
Neither Shopify's founders nor CFO had public company leadership experience
“Myself and Toby, we've never ran a publicly traded company before. Even our CFO, who has a lot of experience as a CFO, he's never really ran a public company either.”
Harley Finkelstein May 12, 2017 ▶ 21:45 20VC: Building Shopify From $5m To IPO, Why The Future Of Retail Is Not Online vs Offline & Why Law School Is Like Finishing School For Entrepreneurs with Harley Finkelstein, COO @ Shopify
May 12, 2017 bullish
Prediction Open · timeframe May 2117
Shopify aims to build an independent 100-year company
“We want to stay a large, independent business for a very long time. We want to build a hundred-year company, and at some point, being a publicly traded business, it makes it easier to be a long-term company, and so it just made sense for us.”
Harley Finkelstein May 12, 2017 ▶ 20:29 20VC: Building Shopify From $5m To IPO, Why The Future Of Retail Is Not Online vs Offline & Why Law School Is Like Finishing School For Entrepreneurs with Harley Finkelstein, COO @ Shopify
May 12, 2017
Disclosure
Finkelstein was store number 137 on Shopify before becoming COO
“I ended up signing up for Shopify as one of their first customers. I think I was store number 137 or something like that.”
Harley Finkelstein May 12, 2017 ▶ 6:59 20VC: Building Shopify From $5m To IPO, Why The Future Of Retail Is Not Online vs Offline & Why Law School Is Like Finishing School For Entrepreneurs with Harley Finkelstein, COO @ Shopify
May 12, 2017
Insight
Harley Finkelstein: Physical retail stores must add value beyond location
“These physical retailers fundamentally need to understand that they have to add value and just being there, just having a store on its own is not enough.”
Harley Finkelstein May 12, 2017 ▶ 17:21 20VC: Building Shopify From $5m To IPO, Why The Future Of Retail Is Not Online vs Offline & Why Law School Is Like Finishing School For Entrepreneurs with Harley Finkelstein, COO @ Shopify
May 12, 2017
Assertion Partly supported
Finkelstein: Shopify warned IPO investors against expecting short-term revenue chasing
“In fact, if you read our Toby's letter to shareholders when we filed our IPO, we made it very clear that if you're looking for sort of quick wins, and you're looking for a company that is going to chase revenue, we're probably not the right company. To invest …”
Harley Finkelstein May 12, 2017 ▶ 9:02 20VC: Building Shopify From $5m To IPO, Why The Future Of Retail Is Not Online vs Offline & Why Law School Is Like Finishing School For Entrepreneurs with Harley Finkelstein, COO @ Shopify
May 12, 2017
Insight
Harley Finkelstein: The internet has commoditized retail distribution
“Because distribution is no longer, it's commoditized now, and the internet did that.”
Harley Finkelstein May 12, 2017 ▶ 17:31 20VC: Building Shopify From $5m To IPO, Why The Future Of Retail Is Not Online vs Offline & Why Law School Is Like Finishing School For Entrepreneurs with Harley Finkelstein, COO @ Shopify
May 12, 2017 bullish
Assertion Supported
Shopify targeted over $600M revenue with 400,000 merchants in 2017
“Today, the company has targeted this year for over six hundred million dollars, with over 400,000 merchants on the platform.”
Harry Stebbings May 12, 2017 ▶ 0:36 20VC: Building Shopify From $5m To IPO, Why The Future Of Retail Is Not Online vs Offline & Why Law School Is Like Finishing School For Entrepreneurs with Harley Finkelstein, COO @ Shopify
May 12, 2017 positive
Insight
Harley Finkelstein: The future of retail is omnicommerce, not online vs offline
“But around 2013, 2014, it became increasingly clear to us that the future of retail is not binary. It's not online versus offline. Despite what you may hear from the CEOs of major malls and major retailers, the best spies and the, excuse me, the JCPenney's of …”
Harley Finkelstein May 12, 2017 ▶ 11:43 20VC: Building Shopify From $5m To IPO, Why The Future Of Retail Is Not Online vs Offline & Why Law School Is Like Finishing School For Entrepreneurs with Harley Finkelstein, COO @ Shopify
May 12, 2017 positive
Insight
Finkelstein: Modern tech companies are geographically agnostic
“I think business today, in particular technology companies, are geographically agnostic. I don't think it matters where you're based.”
Harley Finkelstein May 12, 2017 ▶ 23:49 20VC: Building Shopify From $5m To IPO, Why The Future Of Retail Is Not Online vs Offline & Why Law School Is Like Finishing School For Entrepreneurs with Harley Finkelstein, COO @ Shopify
Oct 4, 2017
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Shopify's M&A approval process mirrors VC investment committees
“Having come from the VC background, so it's structured in a very similar way. We have an individual who I work with who would sort of be the partner on the transaction, really pushing and championing what we call a champion of the deal, pushing it through the …”
Bram Sugarman Oct 4, 2017 ▶ 8:23 20VC: Key Questions Entrepreneurs Must Ask in M&A's, Why Acquihires Come In 2 Different Categories & Why M&A Is Lumpy with Bram Sugarman, Director of Corporate Development @ Shopify
Oct 4, 2017 positive
Insight
Acquired employees should have a better job on day one post-acquisition
“We want the individuals on the company joining Shopify to have a better job day one than they did at their last day as an independent company”
Bram Sugarman Oct 4, 2017 ▶ 13:39 20VC: Key Questions Entrepreneurs Must Ask in M&A's, Why Acquihires Come In 2 Different Categories & Why M&A Is Lumpy with Bram Sugarman, Director of Corporate Development @ Shopify
Oct 4, 2017 positive
Insight
Acquired startup founders make the best long-term leaders post-acquisition
“We find that founders make the best long-term leaders within the company, and what we want to have is, is all founders who have opportunities and distinct paths to go down, an opportunity to join Shopify to become incredible leaders.”
Bram Sugarman Oct 4, 2017 ▶ 10:15 20VC: Key Questions Entrepreneurs Must Ask in M&A's, Why Acquihires Come In 2 Different Categories & Why M&A Is Lumpy with Bram Sugarman, Director of Corporate Development @ Shopify
Oct 4, 2017 positive
Disclosure
Shopify acquired Oberlo based on merchant product-sourcing data and cultural fit
“The most recent acquisition is a company called Oberlo that does product sourcing, and so the reasons we said yes were, number one, data. We're a heavily data-driven company, and we understand that one of the biggest challenges for our merchants and their path…”
Bram Sugarman Oct 4, 2017 ▶ 22:18 20VC: Key Questions Entrepreneurs Must Ask in M&A's, Why Acquihires Come In 2 Different Categories & Why M&A Is Lumpy with Bram Sugarman, Director of Corporate Development @ Shopify
Oct 4, 2017
Disclosure
Shopify acquired Kit CRM to establish its San Francisco office
“Actually, the team in San Francisco was a product acquisition. It was an incredible team out in San Francisco called Kit CRM, which was building a text-based interface to simplify a merchant experience. Their core initial offering was around simple marketing s…”
Bram Sugarman Oct 4, 2017 ▶ 11:20 20VC: Key Questions Entrepreneurs Must Ask in M&A's, Why Acquihires Come In 2 Different Categories & Why M&A Is Lumpy with Bram Sugarman, Director of Corporate Development @ Shopify
Oct 4, 2017
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Shopify uses M&A primarily to accelerate its product roadmap
“I spend the majority of my time working with our product team and understanding what that roadmap looks like for the next one, two, three, five, 10 years, and we have an opportunity to look at each area and find out which of those specifically can be great can…”
Bram Sugarman Oct 4, 2017 ▶ 6:01 20VC: Key Questions Entrepreneurs Must Ask in M&A's, Why Acquihires Come In 2 Different Categories & Why M&A Is Lumpy with Bram Sugarman, Director of Corporate Development @ Shopify
Oct 4, 2017 positive
Disclosure
Shopify maps out 12-month post-acquisition integration plans before closing deals
“As you're on the phase between the terms of the deal and closing the deal, we spend a lot of time to plan out what that first three, six, and 12 months will look like.”
Bram Sugarman Oct 4, 2017 ▶ 15:33 20VC: Key Questions Entrepreneurs Must Ask in M&A's, Why Acquihires Come In 2 Different Categories & Why M&A Is Lumpy with Bram Sugarman, Director of Corporate Development @ Shopify
May 4, 2018 positive
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Accessible manufacturing will drive a surge of challenger brands across all categories
“If you democratize access to the best manufacturing and make supply chain easier to manage, what that leads to is it becomes easier, kind of in the same way Shopify made it so much easier for us all to launch our ideas on a whim. It becomes easier for fantasti…”
Jesse Genet May 4, 2018 ▶ 26:41 20VC: Why VCs Are Wrong About Bootstrapped Founders, How Content Can Be Used As A Key Customer Acquisition Tool & How To Use Humour When "S*** Hits The Fan" with Jesse Genet, Founder & CEO @ Lumi
Mar 11, 2019 positive
Assertion Partly supported
Felicis Ventures backs an average of two unicorns per year
“Backing, and I cannot believe I'm saying this, Dad, but an incredible two unicorns per year since founding, including Shopify, Opendoor, Flexport, Adyen, Twitch, Fitbit, and many more incredible companies.”
Harry Stebbings Mar 11, 2019 ▶ 0:28 20VC: What It Takes To Be The Most Effective Coach To Startup Founders, The Biggest Surprises and Challenges About Transitioning To Venture From Operations & 3 Trends Shaking The World of Consumer Today with Victoria Treyger, General Partner @ Felicis Ven
Mar 15, 2019 bearish
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Traditional banks lack capability to underwrite individual DTC transactions
“With marketplaces like Amazon, social platforms like Instagram, and e-com platforms like Shopify, the buyer is now individuals, not stores. And factors and banks don't know how to underwrite that scenario, and we do.”
Adam Pritzker Mar 15, 2019 ▶ 9:21 20VC: Why The Current VC Financing Mechanism For Consumer Brands Is Broken, Why The Infrastructure To Power Emerging Brands Is Broken and What The Re-Platforming of Retail Means For The Next Decade in Consumer with Adam Pritzker, Chairman & CEO @ Assemble
Jun 22, 2020 positive
Assertion Supported
Wilkinson: MetaLab designed Slack and worked with Shopify, Coinbase, and Pinterest
“Also worked with a lot of startups really early on, Shopify, Tumblr, Coinbase, Pinterest. We designed Slack.”
Andrew Wilkinson Jun 22, 2020 ▶ 5:33 20VC: Andrew Wilkinson on Building The Berkshire Hathway of Tech, Sustainable vs Unsustainable Growth and The Relationship Between Money and Freedom
May 4, 2021 bullish
Assertion Partly supported
Tisch: VCs selling Shopify at IPO missed 100x post-public upside
“If you had sold Shopify when they went public, you left like a hundred X on the table. So don't sell Shopify. If you own Shopify as a VC, when they go public that you missed the actual bigger set of upside in that company.”
David Tisch May 4, 2021 ▶ 29:56 20VC: David Tisch on Why Ownership in Venture Does Not Matter, His Biggest Investing Misses and Hits and How His Investing Style Changed as a Result & 3 Core Reasons VCs Pass That Do Not Make Sense
May 27, 2021 positive
Assertion Supported
Shopify Remains One of Stripe's Largest Customers Instead of Building In-House
“They're certainly one of Stripe's largest customers, if not the largest, and yet it's a great relationship. And at any point, of course, Shopify could have brought that in house.”
Byron Deeter May 27, 2021 ▶ 13:37 20VC: The Twilio Memo: Bessemer's Byron Deeter on How a $125K Initial Check Became Bessemer's Largest Position, What The Influx of Late-Stage Capital Means For Venture Today & Why The Incumbent Advantage Is Now An Incumbent Disadvantage
Mar 11, 2022 bullish
Assertion Supported
A new entrepreneur makes their first Shopify sale every 28 seconds
“Every 28 seconds, a new entrepreneur gets there for sale on Shopify.”
Harley Finkelstein Mar 11, 2022 ▶ 20:51 Shopify President, Harley Finkelstein on What is Being a Good Husband | Full Interview · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 11, 2022 positive
Assertion Partly supported
Tobi Lütke launched Shopify when his software outgrew his snowboard business
“By 2005, it became clear to him that the software behind the snowboard business was more valuable Than the snowboard business itself. And so he launched Shopify.”
Harley Finkelstein Mar 11, 2022 ▶ 4:13 Shopify President, Harley Finkelstein on What is Being a Good Husband | Full Interview · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 11, 2022 positive
Opinion
Finkelstein: Tobi Lütke is the greatest product mind on Earth
“I mean, Toby, I think is probably the greatest product mind on the planet.”
Harley Finkelstein Mar 11, 2022 ▶ 30:40 Shopify President, Harley Finkelstein on What is Being a Good Husband | Full Interview · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 11, 2022 neutral
Assertion Supported
Shopify starts all new employees with a 50% trust battery rating
“Everyone that comes to Shopify starts at a 50% trust battery.”
Harley Finkelstein Mar 11, 2022 ▶ 33:57 Shopify President, Harley Finkelstein on What is Being a Good Husband | Full Interview · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 11, 2022 neutral
Disclosure
Finkelstein was one of Shopify's earliest e-commerce merchants
“And so I became one of the first merchants to use Shopify.”
Harley Finkelstein Mar 11, 2022 ▶ 4:33 Shopify President, Harley Finkelstein on What is Being a Good Husband | Full Interview · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 11, 2022 neutral
Assertion Partly supported
Shopify raised its 2010 Series A at a $25M post-money valuation
“He was in our Series A, first market in our Series A back in, in 20, 20, 10. It was actually, it was a seven million Series A, I think on a twenty-five million dollar post valuation.”
Harley Finkelstein Mar 11, 2022 ▶ 9:54 Shopify President, Harley Finkelstein on What is Being a Good Husband | Full Interview · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 11, 2022
Insight
Finkelstein: Great founding teams have non-overlapping skill sets
“I think that a lot of people start businesses with people that are just like them. People that they would be friends in high school with. But if you look at some of the best teams out there that have built incredible companies they are really different. I mean…”
Harley Finkelstein Mar 11, 2022 ▶ 32:20 Shopify President, Harley Finkelstein on What is Being a Good Husband | Full Interview · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 11, 2022 bullish
Assertion Supported
Shopify's platform powers two million merchant stores
“It's great that Shopify has two million stores.”
Harley Finkelstein Mar 11, 2022 ▶ 53:18 Shopify President, Harley Finkelstein on What is Being a Good Husband | Full Interview · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 11, 2022 bullish
Assertion Supported
Shopify processes 10% of all e-commerce in the United States
“10% of all e-commerce in the United States is done via Shopify.”
Harley Finkelstein Mar 11, 2022 ▶ 20:47 Shopify President, Harley Finkelstein on What is Being a Good Husband | Full Interview · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
May 27, 2022 bullish
Disclosure
Senkut: Shopify and Canva grew 10 to 20 times larger than expected
“But what I have seen with all the great companies we had, whether it be like Shopify or Canva or Adyen, it ended up being like 20 to 10 to 20 times bigger than what we expected.”
Aydin Senkut May 27, 2022 ▶ 9:51 Aydin Senkut: How I Scaled from a $4M Angel Fund to $900M AUM | 20VC #890 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
May 27, 2022
Assertion Partly supported
Senkut: Felicis's $41M debut fund backed Rovio, Shopify, and Fitbit
“The very first fund we had was only forty one million, and we invested in Rovio in Finland from that. The whole round was bigger than our whole firm. Shopify's A round and Fitbit's B round”
Aydin Senkut May 27, 2022 ▶ 5:14 Aydin Senkut: How I Scaled from a $4M Angel Fund to $900M AUM | 20VC #890 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
May 30, 2022 negative
Insight
Rabois: Compressed benchmark comps break mid-stage venture valuation math
“I think you do need to think through the market comps. So I think one of the mistakes people have been making over the last shoot, three years is let's say if Shopify is trading at one hundred sixty billion, let's say, then the upside case for things that coul…”
Keith Rabois May 30, 2022 ▶ 6:36 Keith Rabois: The End of Woke Capitalism; Time Allocation Tips; Silicon Valley vs Miami | 20VC #891 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jul 13, 2022
Insight
Levesque: Six months is the right timeframe to evaluate growth projects
“So projects when you run out of like six months is a good chunk of time. If you're not exiting six months with a sense of, okay, we have some levers. We see line of sight into some levers that could move the needle for an individual product or project. If you …”
Luc Levesque Jul 13, 2022 ▶ 29:21 Luc Levesque: The Biggest Mistakes Founders Make When Hiring for Growth | 20VC #906 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jul 13, 2022
Insight
Levesque: Ideal growth teams directly own all key product surfaces
“I think ideally you want the growth team to own all of the services. That matter the most to growth. That's the ideal state. Senior leader, multi disciplined. They know how to do engineering. They know how to do growth. They know how to do product, and they ha…”
Luc Levesque Jul 13, 2022 ▶ 23:59 Luc Levesque: The Biggest Mistakes Founders Make When Hiring for Growth | 20VC #906 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jul 13, 2022
Insight
Levesque: Elite growth hires deliver 10x to 100x performance increases
“Spaces growth is one of those things where if you make the right hire, it's not a, you know.5% increase. It's literally a 10 or a hundred X increase.”
Luc Levesque Jul 13, 2022 ▶ 32:38 Luc Levesque: The Biggest Mistakes Founders Make When Hiring for Growth | 20VC #906 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jul 13, 2022 negative
Insight
Levesque: Relational breakdown is more fatal to growth teams than slow speed
“You know, speed and velocity can be improved. A relationship falling apart can be completely dysfunctional and just cause the whole thing to fall apart.”
Luc Levesque Jul 13, 2022 ▶ 32:05 Luc Levesque: The Biggest Mistakes Founders Make When Hiring for Growth | 20VC #906 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jul 13, 2022
Insight
Levesque: Rapid promotion in growth roles can be a counter-signal
“In most professions, if somebody's at a company and they're promoted very quickly, that would be a good sign that this person is you know, exceptional. And in growth, because there's so few people in the space, It could suggest that they're exceptional, but it…”
Luc Levesque Jul 13, 2022 ▶ 20:18 Luc Levesque: The Biggest Mistakes Founders Make When Hiring for Growth | 20VC #906 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jul 13, 2022
Insight
Levesque: Root Knowledge of Growth Experiments Is More Transportable Than Results
“So if an experiment worked, that's just knowing that experiment worked is interesting, but may not be repeatable. The most important thing is understanding the why behind it. Why did it actually work? It goes back to some of my interview questions. It'd be, I …”
Luc Levesque Jul 13, 2022 ▶ 37:49 Luc Levesque: The Biggest Mistakes Founders Make When Hiring for Growth | 20VC #906 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jul 13, 2022 positive
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Levesque: Merchant recommendations are a top driver of Shopify's growth
“So we're always iterating on making it easier for merchants to do that, but it's because we have such a great product and one of the highest cited reasons for joining Shopify is that somebody had recommended them in that it's, again, it's kind of part of the c…”
Luc Levesque Jul 13, 2022 ▶ 5:00 Luc Levesque: The Biggest Mistakes Founders Make When Hiring for Growth | 20VC #906 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jul 13, 2022
Insight
Levesque: A new hire's success should be obvious within 30 to 60 days
“We like to say that, you know, the best people come in and leave an impact greater when they land. So they get hired. So everything around them gets better. So within frankly, 30 to 60 days, you should have a sense of whether you made a good hire and they've e…”
Luc Levesque Jul 13, 2022 ▶ 30:16 Luc Levesque: The Biggest Mistakes Founders Make When Hiring for Growth | 20VC #906 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jul 13, 2022
Insight
Levesque: Public speaking and social media presence do not correlate with growth ability
“The social media halo or public speaking halo does not correlate with ability. So I've seen people make hires for people that are, you know, on the stage often and great speakers and great evangelists that doesn't always translate to somebody who's, who's grea…”
Luc Levesque Jul 13, 2022 ▶ 21:14 Luc Levesque: The Biggest Mistakes Founders Make When Hiring for Growth | 20VC #906 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jul 13, 2022 neutral
Insight
Levesque: Requiring interview tests risks losing top-tier growth candidates
“So I'd say in a smaller percentage of times I get somebody to do a test, but also growth people are in a very high demand. So You know, many times candidates, if they're not really interested in the role may just choose not to do the test.”
Luc Levesque Jul 13, 2022 ▶ 19:01 Luc Levesque: The Biggest Mistakes Founders Make When Hiring for Growth | 20VC #906 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jul 13, 2022 neutral
Assertion Supported
Levesque: Shopify embeds dedicated product and engineering teams inside its growth org
“We have a product org and an engineering org inside the Shopify growth org”
Luc Levesque Jul 13, 2022 ▶ 33:01 Luc Levesque: The Biggest Mistakes Founders Make When Hiring for Growth | 20VC #906 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jan 13, 2023 positive
Assertion Supported
Lemkin: Shopify ended 2022 with stronger numbers than it started
“Shopify at the end of 2022 was not the rocket ship. It was at peak COVID, but Shopify has stronger numbers at the end of 20 22 than it did at the start.”
Jason Lemkin Jan 13, 2023 ▶ 9:20 Jason Lemkin: WTF is Going On in VC? Are LPs Investing in New Funds? | 20VC #965 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jan 13, 2023 negative
Opinion
Lemkin: VCs tweeting about buying public Shopify shares are "losers"
“And so when I see VCs on Twitter talking about how they're looking at buying some shares of Shopify, honestly, I think they're losers.”
Jason Lemkin Jan 13, 2023 ▶ 26:21 Jason Lemkin: WTF is Going On in VC? Are LPs Investing in New Funds? | 20VC #965 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 8, 2023 bullish
Prediction Open · timeframe Mar 2028
Coates: Shopify competes directly with Amazon today
“Well, I mean, Shafak meets with Amazon today. Oh, absolutely. Hundred percent. Hundred percent.”
Glen Coates Mar 8, 2023 ▶ 45:04 Glen Coates: Why Shopify Will Dominate Amazon; How Microsoft Made Smartest Move of 2023 | E986 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 8, 2023
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Shopify's previous org structure required product escalations to go directly to CEO Tobi Lütke
“In the old org structure, the first point in the org chart where all those 14 teams actually, like, joined at the top was Tobii. So anytime someone has an escalation, the first point in the escalation tree was Toby”
Glen Coates Mar 8, 2023 ▶ 25:53 Glen Coates: Why Shopify Will Dominate Amazon; How Microsoft Made Smartest Move of 2023 | E986 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 8, 2023 negative
Insight
Coates: Bottom-up management destroys product cohesion across multi-product software suites
“The problem with power to the edges and bottoms up decision making Is that the value of a product like Shopify, or the value of, not even a product, like a product suite, like, because Shopify has many products, right? And look at Apple, right? Like Apple is l…”
Glen Coates Mar 8, 2023 ▶ 28:48 Glen Coates: Why Shopify Will Dominate Amazon; How Microsoft Made Smartest Move of 2023 | E986 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 8, 2023 positive
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Coates: Tobi Lütke is and will always be Shopify's head of product
“Toby, like all great CEO founders, is actually the head of product at Shopify, and will always be. I think the day that Toby's not running a product at Shopify is the day that he's not at Shopify.”
Glen Coates Mar 8, 2023 ▶ 42:43 Glen Coates: Why Shopify Will Dominate Amazon; How Microsoft Made Smartest Move of 2023 | E986 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 8, 2023 neutral
Disclosure
Coates: Core products represent about half of Shopify's total R&D headcount
“Core is now about half of R&D in Shopify, right? And core is what the outside world would think of as like the built-in bits when you first, when you sign up for Shopify. So like the stuff you get in the box, it's like the online store, the checkout, all of th…”
Glen Coates Mar 8, 2023 ▶ 8:05 Glen Coates: Why Shopify Will Dominate Amazon; How Microsoft Made Smartest Move of 2023 | E986 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 8, 2023
Insight
Coates: Only progressive disclosure and app ecosystems let software scale from SMBs to enterprise
“The only two pieces of leverage you really have to allow that stretch is one is extremely good execution of progressive disclosure in the core product. So like features that appear at the right time only when you need them. A good example of this is something …”
Glen Coates Mar 8, 2023 ▶ 19:44 Glen Coates: Why Shopify Will Dominate Amazon; How Microsoft Made Smartest Move of 2023 | E986 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 8, 2023
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Coates Executed a 'Code Red' Fix on Shopify's Checkout in 2020
“So that was a year in which there was some really fundamental things in the checkout that needed to be fixed, like rather promptly. And so Toby asked me to move over and basically like run a, what's called a code red on checkout.”
Glen Coates Mar 8, 2023 ▶ 4:43 Glen Coates: Why Shopify Will Dominate Amazon; How Microsoft Made Smartest Move of 2023 | E986 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 8, 2023 negative
Insight
Coates: Product founders who hire a Head of Product are quitting
“The minute that person says this other person is the head of product, they've done one of two things. They've either quit their job, or they have given that other person a title that everyone knows is bullshit, and they've basically given that person a death s…”
Glen Coates Mar 8, 2023 ▶ 50:15 Glen Coates: Why Shopify Will Dominate Amazon; How Microsoft Made Smartest Move of 2023 | E986 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 8, 2023 negative
Disclosure
Coates: Shopify's key strategic weakness is lacking top-of-funnel control
“I think one of Shopify's challenges today is that we fundamentally do not control the top of the funnel, right? Like the top of the funnel for shopping on is something else, right? It's a social media site. It's a news site. It's an ad on Google. It's somewher…”
Glen Coates Mar 8, 2023 ▶ 51:56 Glen Coates: Why Shopify Will Dominate Amazon; How Microsoft Made Smartest Move of 2023 | E986 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 8, 2023 bullish
Opinion
Coates: Competing with Shopify in e-commerce is terrifying due to its buyer aggregator engine
“These days I'm like, I'd be fucking terrified to be competing with Shopify in commerce. Not, we have a great platform, but like, we've got it joined at the hip to an incredible buyer aggregation engine, which is just hard to, it's hard to overcome how powerful…”
Glen Coates Mar 8, 2023 ▶ 44:38 Glen Coates: Why Shopify Will Dominate Amazon; How Microsoft Made Smartest Move of 2023 | E986 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 8, 2023
Insight
Glen Coates: Product principles must resolve close 51-49 decisions
“Principles are probably the most difficult and counterintuitive, but principles are basically how are we going to make the very hard decisions, the 51 49 decisions, that reasonable people could take either side of in this project.”
Glen Coates Mar 8, 2023 ▶ 10:29 Glen Coates: Why Shopify Will Dominate Amazon; How Microsoft Made Smartest Move of 2023 | E986 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 8, 2023 positive
Assertion Supported
Coates: Shopify was first major SaaS platform to run secure third-party code
“And I, as far as I'm aware of Shopify was the first at scale SaaS platform to do that.”
Glen Coates Mar 8, 2023 ▶ 23:59 Glen Coates: Why Shopify Will Dominate Amazon; How Microsoft Made Smartest Move of 2023 | E986 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Apr 3, 2023
Insight
Tobi Lütke: Sunk cost fallacy is irrelevant if you continuously re-evaluate decisions
“And if you are interested in truth, it doesn't exist for a sunk cost fallacy because it's irrelevant. It's like, it's an input into your decision making process that you have been doing a certain thing, but you already knew this because you were doing whatever…”
Tobi L–tke Apr 3, 2023 ▶ 30:50 Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke: Remote Work vs In-Person; The Benefit of Setting Constraints | E997 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Apr 3, 2023
Insight
Tobi Lütke: Most SaaS company value is impossible to capture under GAAP
“Most of the value of, like, of a SaaS company is, like, extraordinarily hard to value from a GAAP perspective. Like, Shopify's ability to hire the best engineers in the world. Like, what is that worth? Like, it's, I think it's tens of billions as a competitive…”
Tobi L–tke Apr 3, 2023 ▶ 44:59 Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke: Remote Work vs In-Person; The Benefit of Setting Constraints | E997 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Apr 3, 2023 positive
Insight
Tobi Lütke: The best teams are 'greedy for constraints'
“This is, I think what the best teams do everywhere. They are greedy for constraints. They want to understand what is, like, how can we restrict our space so that we get to get started, develop something”
Tobi L–tke Apr 3, 2023 ▶ 16:00 Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke: Remote Work vs In-Person; The Benefit of Setting Constraints | E997 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Apr 3, 2023
Insight
Tobi Lütke: Life's work is minimizing the gap between actual and potential self
“I know it sounds like super fortune cookie, but like I describe it like I you know, it's as if at the end of life you meet the person you could have become and the work of life is really try to minimize the diff between that person and the one that actually sh…”
Tobi Lütke Apr 3, 2023 ▶ 6:20 Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke: Remote Work vs In-Person; The Benefit of Setting Constraints | E997 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Apr 3, 2023 positive
What-if
Tobi Lütke: Shopify would have gone fully remote even without COVID-19
“I think within a year or two, I would have transferred Shopify to remote entirely.”
Tobi L–tke Apr 3, 2023 ▶ 37:54 Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke: Remote Work vs In-Person; The Benefit of Setting Constraints | E997 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Apr 3, 2023
Insight
Tobi Lütke: The optimal team size for fast execution is six people
“The best team in the world, the fastest moving team in the world is one person that has all the skills needed. The second best is a team of six people that are very, like intellectually diverse and can bring a lot of new different information together, but, li…”
Tobi L–tke Apr 3, 2023 ▶ 35:32 Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke: Remote Work vs In-Person; The Benefit of Setting Constraints | E997 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Apr 3, 2023
Disclosure
Tobi Lütke tests new ideas in a single afternoon before committing
“So this is usually when I'm, when my objective is to find out if something is of value, I try to figure out with everything I already got, and an afternoon of time, how can I get basically a scorecard for this before, before, before you go deeper into this.”
Tobi L–tke Apr 3, 2023 ▶ 11:24 Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke: Remote Work vs In-Person; The Benefit of Setting Constraints | E997 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Apr 3, 2023 positive
Assertion Supported
Tobi Lütke: Shopify caps prototype projects at three people and six weeks
“In Shopify, like every project goes to multiple phases. There's a prototype phase, there's like there's a proposal phase before that. If proposal is accepted, you go to prototype phase, build, and then releasing. The prototype phase Is ideally time constraints…”
Tobi L–tke Apr 3, 2023 ▶ 16:42 Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke: Remote Work vs In-Person; The Benefit of Setting Constraints | E997 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Apr 5, 2023 bullish
Prediction Held up
Salguero: ButcherBox is migrating its e-commerce platform to Shopify in 2023
“We're actually moving this year, we're moving to Shopify”
Mike Salguero Apr 5, 2023 ▶ 14:42 Mike Salguero: How I Grew ButcherBox to $600M/year in Revenue; Tips for Influencer Marketing | E998 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Apr 12, 2023 positive
Assertion Partly supported
De Valk: WordPress powers over 40% of websites versus Shopify's 2-3%
“More than 40% of websites on the web are WordPress sites. And companies like Shopify, and I heard your podcast with Toby, which was awesome, but Shopify has like two, three percent of the market, if that.”
Joost de Valk Apr 12, 2023 ▶ 9:26 Joost de Valk: How I Founded Yoast; The Ultimate Guide to SEO; The Threat of AI | E1000 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 16, 2023 bullish
Opinion
Balfour: Shopify has the highest growth talent density in tech
“Shopify probably has the best talent density at the moment. Luke Levesque is basically, like, Probably one of the most amazing recruiters I know, and he's built the talent density there that I would easily say is probably the highest talent density team like a…”
Brian Balfour Aug 16, 2023 ▶ 1:09:32 Brian Balfour: Startup Growth Secrets from HubSpot; Distribution Stratagies; Impact of AI | E1049 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Sep 18, 2023 positive
Assertion Supported
Grimshaw: Tobi Lütke divested a Shopify acquisition within 18 months
“For Toby at Shopify to make an acquisition and then divest it With, I don't, I think within a year, maybe it was a year and a half, like not very long for an organization to say, to make a big move and say, nope, we made the wrong decision that fast and not ge…”
Miles Grimshaw Sep 18, 2023 ▶ 1:36:44 Miles Grimshaw: The 5 Pillars of Venture Capital & Why Co-Pilot is an Incumbent Strategy | E1061 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Oct 16, 2023 negative
Insight
Matthew Prince: Broad platforms rarely originate from narrow product niches
“I think it's very rare to find someone who said, I started out just trying to build, you know, the platform for, you know, People to sell snowboards, and I, and, you know, and I ended up building, building Shopify, or I started out, you know, building that sma…”
Matthew Prince Oct 16, 2023 ▶ 46:42 Matthew Prince: The Two Biggest Mistakes Every Founder Makes | E1072 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Oct 24, 2023 negative
Insight
Prince: Expanding a tiny niche product into Shopify is extremely rare
“I think it's very rare to find someone who said, I started out just trying to build, you know, the platform for, you know, People to sell snowboards, and I, and, you know, and I ended up building, building Shopify, or I started out, you know, building that sma…”
Matthew Prince Oct 24, 2023 ▶ 17:29 Harry debates Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince: "Should startups target niche markets?" · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Nov 29, 2023 negative
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Series A and B startups cannot hire top-tier growth leaders full-time
“They're, like, of the one 20, a third is, like, semi-retired in VC and other things. A third is in, like, great walls, like Luke, and you're not gonna poach Luke from, like, Shopify, right? And there's a third, like me, who's, like, doing, like consultancy and…”
Guillaume Cabane Nov 29, 2023 ▶ 1:08:19 Guillaume Cabane: Why Your First Growth Hire Should Be a Former Founder | E1088 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Dec 6, 2023 negative
Opinion
Founders Do Not Need to Remain Head of Product
“I listened to that and I love that. I don't agree. And again, this is the Shopify, you know, obviously, you know, Toby's like very involved in the product surface area at ramp. I think we have Slightly different approach. I think that the, our founder Eric is …”
Geoff Charles Dec 6, 2023 ▶ 49:10 Geoff Charles: How To Hire Product Teams & Increase Product Velocity | E1091 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jan 4, 2024 neutral
Assertion Partly supported
Lemkin: Box, HubSpot, and Shopify IPO'd under $1B valuations
“Box IPO did eight hundred million. HubSpot IPO did eight hundred million valuation. Shopify IPO did a seven hundred and fifty million dollar valuation.”
Jason Lemkin Jan 4, 2024 ▶ 52:23 Jason Lemkin: Predictions for 2024 - What Does a Trump Administration do for Startups? | E1099 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 20, 2024
Insight
Lemieux: Tech leaders must hire 'full-stack debuggers' across all company layers
“That you need someone who, you know, has the, has like the ability to like see and address things that every layer Of your company, right? From the code to the emotions, and seeing that, like, you're basically hiring people who are full stack debuggers of thin…”
Jean-Michel Lemieux Mar 20, 2024 ▶ 42:47 Jean-Michel Lemieux: Three Product Decisions Every Team Needs to Make | E1129 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 20, 2024 positive
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Lemieux: Tobi Lütke is actively cutting process overhead at Shopify
“If you look at, I believe Toby at Shopify is implementing this exact same thing. I think we're doing it in parallel universes and we will have beer every summer and compare notes. But I just trying to believe that some of the shift at Toby and Harley have been…”
Jean-Michel Lemieux Mar 20, 2024 ▶ 21:09 Jean-Michel Lemieux: Three Product Decisions Every Team Needs to Make | E1129 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 20, 2024 positive
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Lemieux: Small and high-volume merchants share 80% platform requirements at Shopify
“We found some commonalities in the platform regarding these small merchants and large merchants have an 80% overlap.”
Jean-Michel Lemieux Mar 20, 2024 ▶ 1:09:16 Jean-Michel Lemieux: Three Product Decisions Every Team Needs to Make | E1129 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 20, 2024
Insight
Lemieux: Dream job questions reveal how candidates act when unsupervised
“I've got so many jobs open. You could do anything here. What's your dream job at Atlassian, at Shopify? What is it? And could you know, could you talk to me about why that is for 10 minutes, right? So, so that question for me is like the ultimate snowboard tes…”
Jean-Michel Lemieux Mar 20, 2024 ▶ 36:21 Jean-Michel Lemieux: Three Product Decisions Every Team Needs to Make | E1129 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 20, 2024 positive
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Lemieux: Shopify intentionally positioned itself as a movement, not a product
“Shopify wasn't about the product. It was about a movement of like, let's build this thing around entrepreneurship. And it's not like that was accidental. We had meetings about, you know, I think, you know, we have to create a movement around entrepreneurship a…”
Jean-Michel Lemieux Mar 20, 2024 ▶ 5:40 Jean-Michel Lemieux: Three Product Decisions Every Team Needs to Make | E1129 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 20, 2024 positive
Disclosure
Lemieux: Software team relies on only one weekly meeting
“And we have one, a one hour meeting a week on Who's stuck? That's it. That's literally all we do, and we ship, and you write code, like, you just, you write your product, we ship it, we run builds”
Jean-Michel Lemieux Mar 20, 2024 ▶ 20:34 Jean-Michel Lemieux: Three Product Decisions Every Team Needs to Make | E1129 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 20, 2024 neutral
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Lemieux: Shopify prioritizes shipping on quality, while Atlassian prioritizes speed
“And I think the non-overlapping I saw the most from the inside was Shopify will ship on quality. Atlassian will ship on speed.”
Jean-Michel Lemieux Mar 20, 2024 ▶ 7:32 Jean-Michel Lemieux: Three Product Decisions Every Team Needs to Make | E1129 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 20, 2024 positive
Insight
Lemieux: New hires should start their first month in customer support
“I turned out to be an expert user of Shopify and I would recommend that everyone starting a new jobs would literally start on the phones.”
Jean-Michel Lemieux Mar 20, 2024 ▶ 1:05:42 Jean-Michel Lemieux: Three Product Decisions Every Team Needs to Make | E1129 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 20, 2024 positive
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Lemieux: Shopify measured engineering progress strictly by pull requests and shipped code
“And I literally just look at the PRs and the code that we ship and how, how, You know, how much time we spend on that. And that's literally all the progress. And that's the exact same measure I had at Shopify, by the way.”
Jean-Michel Lemieux Mar 20, 2024 ▶ 15:31 Jean-Michel Lemieux: Three Product Decisions Every Team Needs to Make | E1129 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 20, 2024
Disclosure
Lemieux: As Shopify CTO, I managed the 800-person sales team
“I took over sales at Shopify for a year. To remove. So I had 800 people at Shopify that were in sales and they reported to the CTO for one year because we had a lot of tension and we had to realign.”
Jean-Michel Lemieux Mar 20, 2024 ▶ 1:06:29 Jean-Michel Lemieux: Three Product Decisions Every Team Needs to Make | E1129 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 20, 2024 positive
Insight
Lemieux: Shipping software reduces risk far more than planning
“We've all been, I think, indoctrinated into planning reduces risk, and I think shipping reduces risk. So as a company, your job is to reduce the most risk possible. And I just really believe shipping does that.”
Jean-Michel Lemieux Mar 20, 2024 ▶ 20:51 Jean-Michel Lemieux: Three Product Decisions Every Team Needs to Make | E1129 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
May 17, 2024 negative
Opinion
Stebbings: Webflow and Shopify are extremely hard for non-technical users
“Webflow is a bit like Shopify. They're like fucking hard. Like, I'm really sorry. I know I'm seeing your part, but Jesus, it's like not that easy.”
Harry Stebbings May 17, 2024 ▶ 48:48 Jiaona Zhang: Why All Product Teams Should Have a Scorecard & How to Use It | E1154 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
May 22, 2024 positive
Insight
Aaron Levie: AI agents will lower startup barriers like AWS and Stripe
“If Shopify caused businesses to get started because it lowered the barrier to being able to sell online, if AWS caused applications to get started because I was like, oh, I could just build an app and run it in the cloud. I don't have to think about servers an…”
Aaron Levie May 22, 2024 ▶ 43:51 Aaron Levie: How the Business Model of SaaS Changes Forever & Startups vs Incumbents:Who Wins?|E1155 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
May 27, 2024 bullish
Prediction Didn’t hold up
Lemkin predicts Klaviyo will surpass Shopify in SaaS revenue in years
“They will cross, they will be doing more SaaS revenue than Shopify in a couple years.”
Jason Lemkin May 27, 2024 ▶ 1:13:59 Jason Lemkin: Why Pricing is Worse Than Ever and There is More Funding Than Ever | E1157 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jun 3, 2024 positive
Opinion
Lemkin: Shopify's Tobi Lütke is the ideal board member over founder-friendly VCs
“I think I'd pick Toby from Shopify. Cause I think he'd frigging kick my ass. We have too many founder friendly Yahoo. Great job. Harry's on boards. I I'm just so sick of it. Toby just seems like he just doesn't suffer fools. And maybe you don't want to work. M…”
Jason Lemkin Jun 3, 2024 ▶ 1:16:55 Jason Lemkin: PluralSight S*** the Bed & The Next IPO Candidates | E1160 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jun 26, 2024 neutral
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Bialecki: Mailchimp's Exit From Shopify Was Not a Step-Change for Klaviyo
“I think that event, you know, we ran some analytics on this, I think, you know, a while, while ago, and there was definitely there was a bump, but I think people were surprised at how much there was kind of already these big, huge tailwinds and that, you know,…”
Andrew Bialecki Jun 26, 2024 ▶ 30:05 Andrew Bialecki: Is Klaviyo the Most Under-Priced Public Company? | E1170 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jun 26, 2024 positive
Disclosure
Klaviyo expands its Shopify partnership template into new industry verticals
“And we've actually started to take that to, you know, other verticals and other industries and use a little bit of the template.”
Andrew Bialecki Jun 26, 2024 ▶ 35:37 Andrew Bialecki: Is Klaviyo the Most Under-Priced Public Company? | E1170 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jul 24, 2024 neutral
Assertion Supported
Lemkin: 70% of Shopify's revenue comes from payments, not SaaS
“I mean, 70% of Spotify, Shopify's revenue is from payments and merchant services, not from SaaS, 70%.”
Jason Lemkin Jul 24, 2024 ▶ 37:07 Jason Lemkin: Crowdstrike, WTF Happens From Here? Wiz Rejects Google’s $23BN Acquisition Offer|E1181 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 9, 2024 positive
Opinion
Dasilva: Simpler merchants are better served by Clover, Square, or Shopify
“You know, you may be better served by a Clover or a Square or a Shopify.”
Dax Dasilva Aug 9, 2024 ▶ 20:06 Dax Dasilva: $900M ARR at $2.6BN Market Cap?! Lightspeed, The Most Undervalued Public Company |E1188 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 14, 2024 positive
Assertion Partly supported
Nejatian: Shopify calculates and displays the cost of every meeting
“We have this thing in Shopify where we calculate the cost of every meeting and put it in the meeting invite.”
Kaz Nejatian Aug 14, 2024 ▶ 28:44 Kaz Nejatian: How Shopify Built a $90BN Business to Last 100 Years | E1189 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 14, 2024 positive
Insight
Nejatian: Written company decisions provide superior LLM training data over meetings
“I'm very sure that the outcome will be more favorable to us. Like if you think about how LLMs work, you need something to train the machine on. And the fact that we are, we had this discussion in paper, we wrote our thoughts down and they made an outcome. It's…”
Kaz Nejatian Aug 14, 2024 ▶ 29:54 Kaz Nejatian: How Shopify Built a $90BN Business to Last 100 Years | E1189 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 14, 2024 negative
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Nejatian: Shopify's remote work transition failed for its first six to twelve months
“Going remote was incredibly difficult for Shopify. It took us a very long time to get right. I can honestly tell you for the first six to 12 months, it just straight up wasn't working.”
Kaz Nejatian Aug 14, 2024 ▶ 34:14 Kaz Nejatian: How Shopify Built a $90BN Business to Last 100 Years | E1189 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 14, 2024
Insight
Kaz Nejatian: Companies should default to sharing all internal information publicly
“The default should be that all information should be shared publicly such that people in the company never think, oh, these people are just bullshitting me when things are going well.”
Kaz Nejatian Aug 14, 2024 ▶ 51:55 Kaz Nejatian: How Shopify Built a $90BN Business to Last 100 Years | E1189 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 14, 2024
Insight
Nejatian: Corporate values are only valid if someone can take the opposite side
“Values need to be things that a reasonable person can take both the other side of.”
Kaz Nejatian Aug 14, 2024 ▶ 52:46 Kaz Nejatian: How Shopify Built a $90BN Business to Last 100 Years | E1189 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 14, 2024 negative
Opinion
Nejatian: Most growth tech companies only pretend to value learning
“But let's be honest, most even growth companies just cosplay as learners. They have a whole bunch of things you're not allowed to say. A whole bunch of companies have like these religious things they believe that you're not allowed to question.”
Kaz Nejatian Aug 14, 2024 ▶ 17:35 Kaz Nejatian: How Shopify Built a $90BN Business to Last 100 Years | E1189 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 14, 2024 neutral
Insight
Nejatian: Software development is closer to woodwork than tech appreciates
“Software is a much more similar to woodwork than people appreciate. Like, it's much more about building something complete that someone can enjoy.”
Kaz Nejatian Aug 14, 2024 ▶ 4:32 Kaz Nejatian: How Shopify Built a $90BN Business to Last 100 Years | E1189 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 14, 2024 negative
Insight
Kaz Nejatian: Making key business decisions in spreadsheets is a bad approach
“So everyone's decisions, regardless of how big you are as a company, ends up being made in an Excel sheet. And like, we're incredibly opinionated about this. We think this is a bad way to run a company.”
Kaz Nejatian Aug 14, 2024 ▶ 12:02 Kaz Nejatian: How Shopify Built a $90BN Business to Last 100 Years | E1189 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 14, 2024 bullish
Insight
Nejatian: V1 products must be constrained visions, not visionless experiments
“It is totally okay to ship a V one of something which is constrained version of your final vision, right? That's totally okay. In fact, everyone should do that. But what a lot of people do is have zero vision. They just ship something to see what happens next.…”
Kaz Nejatian Aug 14, 2024 ▶ 4:12 Kaz Nejatian: How Shopify Built a $90BN Business to Last 100 Years | E1189 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 14, 2024 positive
Assertion Supported
Nejatian: Shopify contains no custom 'if enterprise' code for large clients
“We don't build bespoke software. There's no if enterprise line anywhere in Shopify's code base.”
Kaz Nejatian Aug 14, 2024 ▶ 40:32 Kaz Nejatian: How Shopify Built a $90BN Business to Last 100 Years | E1189 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 14, 2024 neutral
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Nejatian: My most frequent Slack phrase to Tobi Lütke was 'I disagree'
“I actually once looked at my Slack history with Toby. And the most common phrase I had told him was, I disagree.”
Kaz Nejatian Aug 14, 2024 ▶ 13:38 Kaz Nejatian: How Shopify Built a $90BN Business to Last 100 Years | E1189 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 14, 2024 positive
Insight
Nejatian: Overbuilding software is effective only on a 100-year horizon
“If you're thinking about a year, hell no. It's a really bad idea if you're optimizing for one year to spend so much of your time overbuilding. If you're thinking the thing you're building will be around for a hundred years, then for sure it was effective use o…”
Kaz Nejatian Aug 14, 2024 ▶ 8:06 Kaz Nejatian: How Shopify Built a $90BN Business to Last 100 Years | E1189 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 14, 2024 bullish
Opinion
Nejatian: Stripe-Shopify relationship is the most value-creating in software history
“And this Stripe-Shopify relationship Is likely the most value creating relationship in the history of software. It would have been Intel, Microsoft before Intel and Microsoft had had divorce is too hard a word, but had like the thing they did.”
Kaz Nejatian Aug 14, 2024 ▶ 43:45 Kaz Nejatian: How Shopify Built a $90BN Business to Last 100 Years | E1189 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 14, 2024 positive
What-if
Nejatian: Internet commerce is weirder than if Yahoo Stores had won
“Commerce on the internet is slightly more weird than it would be if Yahoo had won. Yahoo Stores had won, which is like the Paul Graham product. I like Paul Graham a lot, but I'm very glad that his software at Yahoo did not win.”
Kaz Nejatian Aug 14, 2024 ▶ 46:30 Kaz Nejatian: How Shopify Built a $90BN Business to Last 100 Years | E1189 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 14, 2024 neutral
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Nejatian: Shopify will reconsider Stripe partnership if strategic worldviews diverge
“If Stripe and Shopify ever get to a point where, like, we don't think about the world the same way, then we'll have a conversation.”
Kaz Nejatian Aug 14, 2024 ▶ 43:21 Kaz Nejatian: How Shopify Built a $90BN Business to Last 100 Years | E1189 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 14, 2024 negative
Insight
Kaz Nejatian: Growth software companies fail if they value experience over learning
“Now, I think if you're a growth company and a software company, that's your death. I think it is totally your death if you go that way.”
Kaz Nejatian Aug 14, 2024 ▶ 17:29 Kaz Nejatian: How Shopify Built a $90BN Business to Last 100 Years | E1189 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 14, 2024 negative
Opinion
Nejatian: Most software shipped today is unusable because it is incomplete
“Much of what software is being shipped today cannot be used or enjoyed because it is so incomplete.”
Kaz Nejatian Aug 14, 2024 ▶ 3:50 Kaz Nejatian: How Shopify Built a $90BN Business to Last 100 Years | E1189 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 14, 2024 positive
Disclosure
Nejatian: Shopify built continuous internal planning software to replace Excel
“At Shopify, we've built software that imagines a company and runs continuously. Based on our prioritization stack, based on what we're working on, based on the APIs we have built ourselves into our data systems. So we don't have to have people building these l…”
Kaz Nejatian Aug 14, 2024 ▶ 10:59 Kaz Nejatian: How Shopify Built a $90BN Business to Last 100 Years | E1189 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 14, 2024 positive
Assertion Supported
Nejatian: Shopify requires marketers to use GitHub and salespeople to write SQL
“We don't have that at Shopify. At Shopify, if a marketer wants to create a new landing page, they have to go into GitHub. They have to know how to write some code. They have, like, this is a real thing, and our, so our marketers learn how to write some code. L…”
Kaz Nejatian Aug 14, 2024 ▶ 19:55 Kaz Nejatian: How Shopify Built a $90BN Business to Last 100 Years | E1189 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 14, 2024 positive
Disclosure
Nejatian: Shopify's three priorities are products, money, and more products
“We say at Shopify we only have three priorities. Build great products, make money, Use money to build more great products and never reverse one and two, right? Priority one is build products. Priority two is make money. Priority three is never reverse one and …”
Kaz Nejatian Aug 14, 2024 ▶ 7:04 Kaz Nejatian: How Shopify Built a $90BN Business to Last 100 Years | E1189 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 14, 2024
Disclosure
Nejatian: Shopify previously turned away a top-10 global retailer
“Like, one of the top 10 retailers in the world asked us to use Shopify. A few years ago, and I said, no, you may not.”
Kaz Nejatian Aug 14, 2024 ▶ 39:20 Kaz Nejatian: How Shopify Built a $90BN Business to Last 100 Years | E1189 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 14, 2024 positive
Insight
Nejatian: Shopify functions like a venture capital firm backing merchant cohorts
“Cause what Shopify is essentially is like, we invest in cohorts of startups.”
Kaz Nejatian Aug 14, 2024 ▶ 38:21 Kaz Nejatian: How Shopify Built a $90BN Business to Last 100 Years | E1189 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 14, 2024 negative
Insight
Nejatian: Requiring ten years of experience argues against a learner mindset
“Every job posting that says you require 10 years of experience Is arguing against a learner's mindset”
Kaz Nejatian Aug 14, 2024 ▶ 14:35 Kaz Nejatian: How Shopify Built a $90BN Business to Last 100 Years | E1189 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 14, 2024 positive
Opinion
Nejatian: Shopify holds a higher product release quality bar than rivals
“Shopify has a quality bar that is higher than most other software companies. So the, we hold things back that almost everyone else would have shipped.”
Kaz Nejatian Aug 14, 2024 ▶ 7:36 Kaz Nejatian: How Shopify Built a $90BN Business to Last 100 Years | E1189 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 14, 2024
What-if
Nejatian: Shopify might not have gone remote if leadership foresaw the difficulty
“So if, I think if we knew how painful it would be, I don't know if we would have done it.”
Kaz Nejatian Aug 14, 2024 ▶ 36:24 Kaz Nejatian: How Shopify Built a $90BN Business to Last 100 Years | E1189 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 14, 2024 positive
Insight
Nejatian: Shopify is built to perform better during periods of dramatic change
“Most companies are built such that they do incredibly well in times where there are no change, right? That's what most companies are. Like, if there's change, most companies Are not handled, not built to handle it. Shopify is built, so it does better when ther…”
Kaz Nejatian Aug 14, 2024 ▶ 32:21 Kaz Nejatian: How Shopify Built a $90BN Business to Last 100 Years | E1189 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 14, 2024 positive
Disclosure
Nejatian: Tobi Lütke overruled my opposition to remote culture software
“We were starting to build internal software. Shopify is a remote company. We're starting to build software to manage our culture remotely. I thought this was just the nuttiest thing to do. Like, this is just, like, total waste of code. Like, this is a bad idea…”
Kaz Nejatian Aug 14, 2024 ▶ 12:44 Kaz Nejatian: How Shopify Built a $90BN Business to Last 100 Years | E1189 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 14, 2024
Opinion
Nejatian: Most companies only care about building the right thing
“If the user is not better off, it's because we say the job of PM at Shopify is to build the right thing the right way at the right time. Most companies don't actually care about the right way part, or the right time part, they care about the right thing part, …”
Kaz Nejatian Aug 14, 2024 ▶ 26:33 Kaz Nejatian: How Shopify Built a $90BN Business to Last 100 Years | E1189 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Oct 9, 2024 bullish
Disclosure
Wang: Shopify is one of SCGE's biggest winning investments
“So Shopify is has been one of our biggest winners. It is also one of my bigger regrets in terms of post COVID.”
Jeff Wang Oct 9, 2024 ▶ 8:47 Jeff Wang: Sequoia Capital's $9BN Global Equities Fund on The Future for NVIDIA, Google & Meta|E1212 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Oct 9, 2024
Disclosure
Wang: Sequoia missed Shopify in private markets and first invested post-IPO
“Shopify was not a Sequoia portfolio company. It's a company that we admired in the private markets, but we did not invest in the private markets. And our first chance to invest is when they go public, right?”
Jeff Wang Oct 9, 2024 ▶ 15:22 Jeff Wang: Sequoia Capital's $9BN Global Equities Fund on The Future for NVIDIA, Google & Meta|E1212 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jun 12, 2025 bearish
Assertion Partly supported
Lemkin: Gorgias AI replaces 50% of agents, but ACV rises only 50%
“When I look at Gorgias, which is, which dominates Shopify for the contact center, right? They're, they have, their average customers replaced 40 to 50% of their humans with AI, and their ACV is only up 50%.”
Jason Lemkin Jun 12, 2025 ▶ 56:06 Elon’s Empire: SpaceX, Tesla, Neuralink After the Storm & Anduril’s $2.6BN Power Move · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jul 10, 2025 neutral
Assertion Open
Lemkin: Only 25% of Shopify's revenue is enterprise
“Even today, Shopify is very enterprise. Only 25% of their revenue is, is an enterprise.”
Jason Lemkin Jul 10, 2025 ▶ 34:21 Daniel Gross and Nat Friedman: Acquired by Meta | Microsoft Layoff 9000 People | OpenAI's Bombshell · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 7, 2025 positive
Insight
Halligan: Silicon Valley has a wrongheaded bias against building for SMBs
“There's a big echo chamber in Silicon Valley and big negative bias towards SMB, but you can make it work in SMB. HubSpot and Shopify have shown it. Block has shown it.”
Brian Halligan Aug 7, 2025 ▶ 48:41 Figma's 250% Pop - The Greatest IPO Mispricing Ever? Meta & Microsoft Blowout Quarters: Broken Down · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 7, 2025 bullish
Assertion Supported
Halligan: Shopify is the only SaaS stock outperforming Oracle and SAP
“If you go from that date and you look at you look at Oracle and you look at SAP, they're both growing, like, 230%. The only SaaS company since August 22 It's growing faster. Shopify. They're growing 300%. So they're outpacing HubSpot, Salesforce, Adobe Box, At…”
Brian Halligan Aug 7, 2025 ▶ 1:00:57 Figma's 250% Pop - The Greatest IPO Mispricing Ever? Meta & Microsoft Blowout Quarters: Broken Down · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 14, 2025 positive
Assertion Supported
Lemkin: Shopify Cut Staff to 8,100 While Revenue Rose 91%
“From peak employee was 20, 22, 11,600 employees at Shopify. Since then, revenue has grown 91%. Pretty impressive for a company at eleven billion in revenue. And employees have gone down from 11,600 to 8100. Gone down while revenue's up 91%.”
Jason Lemkin Aug 14, 2025 ▶ 0:12 Sam Altman's Masterplan or a Gift to Anthropic? Palantir & Shopify Crush Earnings · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 14, 2025 bullish
Assertion Partly supported
Jason Lemkin: Shopify handles 13% of commerce and 90% platform share
“13% of all commerce already goes through Shopify, right? And it has essentially 90% of the platform market share.”
Jason Lemkin Aug 14, 2025 ▶ 1:09:38 Sam Altman's Masterplan or a Gift to Anthropic? Palantir & Shopify Crush Earnings · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 14, 2025 bullish
Prediction Open · timeframe Aug 2028
Lemkin: Shopify will shrink to 7,000 employees while growing 200%
“Shopify is gonna be at 7000 to 200% bigger.”
Jason Lemkin Aug 14, 2025 ▶ 1:04:00 Sam Altman's Masterplan or a Gift to Anthropic? Palantir & Shopify Crush Earnings · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 14, 2025 positive
Assertion Supported
Lemkin: Shopify Generates $1.3 Million in Revenue Per Employee
“Shopify is at 1.3 million in revenue per employee now.”
Jason Lemkin Aug 14, 2025 ▶ 55:17 Sam Altman's Masterplan or a Gift to Anthropic? Palantir & Shopify Crush Earnings · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 14, 2025 negative
Insight
Lemkin: Tech Companies Do Not Need Half Their Workforce
“You don't need half your company, and Palantir and Shopify are proving it. You don't need half your company. You literally don't need half the people working at your company. You don't need them today.”
Jason Lemkin Aug 14, 2025 ▶ 55:38 Sam Altman's Masterplan or a Gift to Anthropic? Palantir & Shopify Crush Earnings · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 25, 2025
Disclosure
Deeter: Bessemer owned 28% of Shopify and Twilio at IPO
“We own 28% of Shopify and Twilio at IPO and we owned, you know, well less than that of Procore and Service Titan just because we, you know, included a lot of other investors downstream.”
Byron Deeter Aug 25, 2025 ▶ 51:22 BVP Partner, Byron Deeter: The Future of Venture - Why Chanel vs Walmart is BS · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 25, 2025
Disclosure
Bessemer distributed Shopify stock to LPs rather than selling directly
“So importantly, we distributed early. We didn't necessarily sell. So what we did is we gave people the choice.”
Byron Deeter Aug 25, 2025 ▶ 56:28 BVP Partner, Byron Deeter: The Future of Venture - Why Chanel vs Walmart is BS · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 25, 2025 positive
Assertion Supported
Deeter: Adding Payments Doubled TAM and Market Caps for Vertical SaaS
“And as I think back on our vertical SaaS investments, you know, like a Shopify or a Service Titan or a Toast, when they added payments, it became that big Next Horizon unlock for them and really doubled the TAM and the market caps for these businesses.”
Byron Deeter Aug 25, 2025 ▶ 10:51 BVP Partner, Byron Deeter: The Future of Venture - Why Chanel vs Walmart is BS · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Sep 18, 2025 negative
Assertion Contradicted
Kaz Nejatian: Citron claimed Shopify wouldn't last two years when he joined
“Citron wrote in a short report the day I joined Shopify about how terrible business it was and how it wouldn't last two years.”
Kaz Nejatian Sep 18, 2025 ▶ 2:24 Opendoor CEO, Kaz Nejatian: OpenAI and Oracle, How Can Either Afford to Do This · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Sep 18, 2025 neutral
Assertion Supported
Lemkin: Shopify generates only 25% of its revenue from software
“Shopify is only 25% of its revenue from software and going down, right?”
Jason Lemkin Sep 18, 2025 ▶ 16:03 Opendoor CEO, Kaz Nejatian: OpenAI and Oracle, How Can Either Afford to Do This · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Sep 18, 2025 positive
Assertion Supported
Lemkin: Kaz Nejatian left over $270M behind at Shopify to join Opendoor
“You know, leaving two hundred million behind at Shopify and another 70 something million in grants and what he might still get, you could only do that if you're post-economic, right?”
Jason Lemkin Sep 18, 2025 ▶ 53:13 Opendoor CEO, Kaz Nejatian: OpenAI and Oracle, How Can Either Afford to Do This · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Oct 31, 2025
Disclosure
Ferriss: Selling Shopify shares immediately after IPO lockup cost him $150 million
“Shopify could have been just as big, but I sold a lot of my Shopify as soon as lockup expired because I had no experience with public markets. Yeah, you're holding your face. I mean, that would have been, that was a hundred and fifty million dollar mistake or …”
Tim Ferriss Oct 31, 2025 ▶ 48:28 20VC: Tim Ferriss: Why I Walked Away From Angel Investing After Uber | How I Accidentally Lost $150 Million | Money Fixed My Problems—Then Made Me Miserable
Oct 31, 2025 positive
Disclosure
Ferriss became an advisor to Shopify when it had roughly 12 employees
“I talked to a couple of people who were doing advising, and I figured out how to begin stepping into advising, and ultimately, with Shopify becoming an advisor when they had whatever it was, 10 or 12 employees, and then becoming an advisor at Uber.”
Tim Ferriss Oct 31, 2025 ▶ 46:12 20VC: Tim Ferriss: Why I Walked Away From Angel Investing After Uber | How I Accidentally Lost $150 Million | Money Fixed My Problems—Then Made Me Miserable
Nov 14, 2025 negative
Disclosure
Rivera: Shopify over-focused on GMV when developing the Shop app
“For a long time, we were very, very focused on GMV being the primary metric. That's total amount of sales being the primary metric that we were driving the experience to. And of course, it's an important metric. We want to create a service that is ultimately l…”
Carl Rivera Nov 14, 2025 ▶ 11:24 20Product: How AI Changes Product Design | Does the Design Phase Become Irrelevant in a World of Vibe Coding | The Five Pillars of Truly Great Product Design with Carl Rivera, Chief Design Officer at Shopify
Nov 14, 2025
Insight
Rivera: Design-forward companies should maximize execution quality over novelty
“The goal of a design forward company is to think of each of the things that you want to achieve as an app, as an experience, and dial it up to a 10.”
Carl Rivera Nov 14, 2025 ▶ 20:03 20Product: How AI Changes Product Design | Does the Design Phase Become Irrelevant in a World of Vibe Coding | The Five Pillars of Truly Great Product Design with Carl Rivera, Chief Design Officer at Shopify
Nov 14, 2025 bearish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Rivera: Mid-level specialist tech roles will disappear in favor of generalists
“I think the general shape of the job market will move people towards being more generalists than specialists. You basically have like specialization. If you become like the best in the world, you'll always have a job market, but specialization Any point toward…”
Carl Rivera Nov 14, 2025 ▶ 56:03 20Product: How AI Changes Product Design | Does the Design Phase Become Irrelevant in a World of Vibe Coding | The Five Pillars of Truly Great Product Design with Carl Rivera, Chief Design Officer at Shopify
Nov 14, 2025 neutral
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Rivera: Tobi Lütke will be the reason I eventually leave Shopify
“This I probably shouldn't say on a podcast, but he's the reason I'm here, and he's the reason that I one day leave. And I say that in a very loving way in that I also appreciate that at some point there might be a rift where we think so differently about the f…”
Carl Rivera Nov 14, 2025 ▶ 29:51 20Product: How AI Changes Product Design | Does the Design Phase Become Irrelevant in a World of Vibe Coding | The Five Pillars of Truly Great Product Design with Carl Rivera, Chief Design Officer at Shopify
Nov 14, 2025 negative
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Rivera: Industry average for software interface design quality is 6/10
“Even inside of the existing form factors and what companies understand to be good interface today, we're basically like batting an average six out of 10.”
Carl Rivera Nov 14, 2025 ▶ 19:32 20Product: How AI Changes Product Design | Does the Design Phase Become Irrelevant in a World of Vibe Coding | The Five Pillars of Truly Great Product Design with Carl Rivera, Chief Design Officer at Shopify
Nov 14, 2025 neutral
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Carl Rivera: Shopify operates as an unapologetically top-down company
“And so there is that sort of like organizational structure, but Shopify is An unapologetically top-down company.”
Carl Rivera Nov 14, 2025 ▶ 15:13 20Product: How AI Changes Product Design | Does the Design Phase Become Irrelevant in a World of Vibe Coding | The Five Pillars of Truly Great Product Design with Carl Rivera, Chief Design Officer at Shopify
Nov 14, 2025 positive
Insight
Rivera: The Shop app operates as a digital mall, not a marketplace
“We think of ourselves much more like a mall. You know, when you go into a mall there's a certain kind of managed experience. The mall Smells a certain way. The temperature is dialed in. It's like they're catered a little bit of like what you see. But when you …”
Carl Rivera Nov 14, 2025 ▶ 13:47 20Product: How AI Changes Product Design | Does the Design Phase Become Irrelevant in a World of Vibe Coding | The Five Pillars of Truly Great Product Design with Carl Rivera, Chief Design Officer at Shopify
Nov 14, 2025
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Rivera: Over half of Shopify design reviews feature vibe-coded prototypes
“And we're seeing at Shopify more than half of all of the design reviews I'm in are now vibe coded prototypes. They've been entirely constructed and built using our Polaris components to build it into a real prototype using real data and all of that.”
Carl Rivera Nov 14, 2025 ▶ 35:41 20Product: How AI Changes Product Design | Does the Design Phase Become Irrelevant in a World of Vibe Coding | The Five Pillars of Truly Great Product Design with Carl Rivera, Chief Design Officer at Shopify
Nov 14, 2025 neutral
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Shopify's design depth increased 5x with AI, while pace remained flat
“On the design side, I would say that we're probably moving at the same pace still as before, but the conversations and level of detail that we're able to get into is far higher, five X the difference.”
Carl Rivera Nov 14, 2025 ▶ 37:47 20Product: How AI Changes Product Design | Does the Design Phase Become Irrelevant in a World of Vibe Coding | The Five Pillars of Truly Great Product Design with Carl Rivera, Chief Design Officer at Shopify
Nov 14, 2025
Insight
Rivera: Complex systems can never be made simple
“A simple system can scale into a complex system, but a complex system can never be simple, right?”
Carl Rivera Nov 14, 2025 ▶ 52:45 20Product: How AI Changes Product Design | Does the Design Phase Become Irrelevant in a World of Vibe Coding | The Five Pillars of Truly Great Product Design with Carl Rivera, Chief Design Officer at Shopify
Nov 14, 2025
Insight
Carl Rivera: Building an open platform requires sacrificing strict design control
“Absolutely you do, right? And you just have to find a way to be comfortable with that. And you can nudge it in the right direction by having good design systems and guidelines and so forth, but you have to give up control or else you're withholding creativity.”
Carl Rivera Nov 14, 2025 ▶ 17:44 20Product: How AI Changes Product Design | Does the Design Phase Become Irrelevant in a World of Vibe Coding | The Five Pillars of Truly Great Product Design with Carl Rivera, Chief Design Officer at Shopify
Nov 14, 2025 positive
Disclosure
Cursor is the most widely used AI tool among Shopify designers
“Inside of Shopify, the cursor is by far the most used tool in the design group.”
Carl Rivera Nov 14, 2025 ▶ 37:12 20Product: How AI Changes Product Design | Does the Design Phase Become Irrelevant in a World of Vibe Coding | The Five Pillars of Truly Great Product Design with Carl Rivera, Chief Design Officer at Shopify
Nov 14, 2025 neutral
Assertion Partly supported
Rivera: Shopify employs 10,000 people operating as semi-autonomous sub-companies
“Shopify is 10,000 people, and so we are actually not a company, we're many different companies that are kind of combined into one, that are driving towards different objectives, that have different maturity levels, and need different things.”
Carl Rivera Nov 14, 2025 ▶ 10:16 20Product: How AI Changes Product Design | Does the Design Phase Become Irrelevant in a World of Vibe Coding | The Five Pillars of Truly Great Product Design with Carl Rivera, Chief Design Officer at Shopify
Nov 14, 2025 positive
Insight
Rivera: Deliberate design friction is valuable for high-intent user actions
“Sometimes I think deliberate friction can be a good thing. It slows things down. It allows you to actually experience what's going on, understand that this is like a high intent action, or this is part of the experience that you're meant to pay extra attention…”
Carl Rivera Nov 14, 2025 ▶ 20:43 20Product: How AI Changes Product Design | Does the Design Phase Become Irrelevant in a World of Vibe Coding | The Five Pillars of Truly Great Product Design with Carl Rivera, Chief Design Officer at Shopify
Nov 14, 2025 positive
Disclosure
Rivera: Shopify does not promote competing brands within merchant storefronts
“So, for example, if you browse Gymshark and you browse a Gymshark store inside a shop, we're pretty hardcore about not promoting other competing brands, any other brands on that surface.”
Carl Rivera Nov 14, 2025 ▶ 12:41 20Product: How AI Changes Product Design | Does the Design Phase Become Irrelevant in a World of Vibe Coding | The Five Pillars of Truly Great Product Design with Carl Rivera, Chief Design Officer at Shopify
Nov 14, 2025 neutral
Assertion Supported
Tobi Lütke reviews every Shopify project on a two-month cadence
“Shopify has a product review cadence that's very special and different in that Toby reviews actually all of the projects every month, or so every month he reviews half of them, and then the next month he reviews the other half, such that on a two-month rolling…”
Carl Rivera Nov 14, 2025 ▶ 48:22 20Product: How AI Changes Product Design | Does the Design Phase Become Irrelevant in a World of Vibe Coding | The Five Pillars of Truly Great Product Design with Carl Rivera, Chief Design Officer at Shopify
Nov 14, 2025 neutral
Assertion Supported
Shopify dropped 'UX' from designer titles under Chief Design Officer Rivera
“I announced when I took on the chief design officer role in Shopify that we're dropping UX from the designer title, and we're only going to be designers working at Shopify.”
Carl Rivera Nov 14, 2025 ▶ 56:26 20Product: How AI Changes Product Design | Does the Design Phase Become Irrelevant in a World of Vibe Coding | The Five Pillars of Truly Great Product Design with Carl Rivera, Chief Design Officer at Shopify
Nov 14, 2025
Insight
Rivera: All product execution problems are people problems
“I believe very strongly that all problems are people problems. It's actually very seldom it's about like, oh, the brief wasn't right, or the feedback came at the wrong time. It's mostly about like a configuration of people,”
Carl Rivera Nov 14, 2025 ▶ 55:06 20Product: How AI Changes Product Design | Does the Design Phase Become Irrelevant in a World of Vibe Coding | The Five Pillars of Truly Great Product Design with Carl Rivera, Chief Design Officer at Shopify
Nov 14, 2025 negative
Assertion Supported
Shopify CDO Carl Rivera bans slideshows and pre-reads in design reviews
“And so what I enforce with Teams is that I never want to see a presentation, a slideshow in any of the meetings. I never want to receive a pre-read. I don't want any of the storytelling at the start. I'm basically of the view that every abstraction, every inse…”
Carl Rivera Nov 14, 2025 ▶ 49:20 20Product: How AI Changes Product Design | Does the Design Phase Become Irrelevant in a World of Vibe Coding | The Five Pillars of Truly Great Product Design with Carl Rivera, Chief Design Officer at Shopify
Nov 14, 2025 positive
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Rivera: Tobi Lütke effectively acts as Chief Product Officer at Shopify
“It's not even a question of whether we agree with it or not. This is as close to a fact as we can possibly get on anything.”
Carl Rivera Nov 14, 2025 ▶ 28:39 20Product: How AI Changes Product Design | Does the Design Phase Become Irrelevant in a World of Vibe Coding | The Five Pillars of Truly Great Product Design with Carl Rivera, Chief Design Officer at Shopify
Nov 14, 2025
Insight
Rivera: Shortening E-Commerce Funnels Can Destroy Product Value and Differentiation
“And I think a conventional truth in e-commerce is that whenever you can cut the funnel. Like whenever you can remove a step, remove it. And so we did that, then we kind of go from like, you know, you have discovery, show the right thing. So you click in on the…”
Carl Rivera Nov 14, 2025 ▶ 22:55 20Product: How AI Changes Product Design | Does the Design Phase Become Irrelevant in a World of Vibe Coding | The Five Pillars of Truly Great Product Design with Carl Rivera, Chief Design Officer at Shopify
Nov 14, 2025
Disclosure
Shopify mandates only one internal tool company-wide, named GSD
“The only tool that we mandate is the internal tooling of Shopify, which is called GSD, which is how we account for time, projects, tie them into missions, make sure that everyone's moving in the same direction. That's the only mandated tool of the company.”
Carl Rivera Nov 14, 2025 ▶ 36:48 20Product: How AI Changes Product Design | Does the Design Phase Become Irrelevant in a World of Vibe Coding | The Five Pillars of Truly Great Product Design with Carl Rivera, Chief Design Officer at Shopify
Nov 14, 2025 negative
Insight
Shopify's Carl Rivera: Hybrid work is the worst organizational model
“And ultimately I believe hybrid is the worst. The worst thing is the thing where like you have half of the team in person. They have an enormous information advantage. They figure out their own rituals and ways of communicating and collaborating. The other hal…”
Carl Rivera Nov 14, 2025 ▶ 41:45 20Product: How AI Changes Product Design | Does the Design Phase Become Irrelevant in a World of Vibe Coding | The Five Pillars of Truly Great Product Design with Carl Rivera, Chief Design Officer at Shopify
Nov 14, 2025 bullish
Opinion
Rivera: Founder-led incumbents like Shopify and Stripe are not sleeping
“I think we've like for years have been trained to know an incumbent as a shit company that's large. That's basically like the definition. And I just don't know that that's the case right now because you have a bunch of companies that came up in an era of moder…”
Carl Rivera Nov 14, 2025 ▶ 27:21 20Product: How AI Changes Product Design | Does the Design Phase Become Irrelevant in a World of Vibe Coding | The Five Pillars of Truly Great Product Design with Carl Rivera, Chief Design Officer at Shopify
Dec 22, 2025 bullish
Prediction Open · timeframe Dec 2026
Lemkin: Three of today's top six B2B stocks will retain 2026 leadership
“My Pekumumusukus, Pekumumusukus, Palantir, Cloudflare, Mongo, Shopify, CrowdStrike, Snowflake, I'll bet you 10 grand, three of them are in the top six of this cohort at the end of next year.”
Jason Lemkin Dec 22, 2025 ▶ 40:01 Predictions for 2026: Top Buy & Biggest Short | Why Salesforce Could Win & NVIDIA’s Challenges · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jan 29, 2026 bullish
Assertion Partly supported
Lemkin: Shopify grew over 40% while keeping headcount flat for 3 years
“Shopify has held headcount flat for three years and grown 40 something percent in that time.”
Jason Lemkin Jan 29, 2026 ▶ 1:15:22 Anthropic Inference Costs Skyrocket |TikTok Deal Closes |The IPO Market:Wealthfront & EquipmentShare · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Feb 5, 2026 neutral
Assertion Supported
Lemkin: 80% of Klaviyo's revenue is generated through the Shopify ecosystem
“80% of Klaviyo's revenue is off Shopify”
Jason Lemkin Feb 5, 2026 ▶ 41:00 The SaaS Massacre: Public Market Collapse |Microsoft Lost $360B & NVIDIA’s $100B Dispute with OpenAI
Feb 12, 2026
Disclosure
Cannon-Brookes: Only four public CEOs remain from 2020 SaaS peer group
“In COVID in 2020, we formed a group of SaaS CEOs. I think there were 16 of us that got together, we'd meet on Zoom every single week, right? At one stage, 10, 11 of us were public, maybe more, we all had earnings calls, and you know, it was a really good thera…”
Mike Cannon-Brookes Feb 12, 2026 ▶ 24:28 Anthropic's Super Bowl Ad: Who Won & Lost? | Sierra Hits $150M ARR: Is Customer Support Too Crowded? · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Feb 19, 2026 bearish
Opinion
Jason Lemkin Sees No Valuation Floor for Shopify Stock
“And I love Shopify. It's because I just, I don't see the floor.”
Jason Lemkin Feb 19, 2026 ▶ 1:34:13 Thrive Raises New $10B Fund | OpenAI Buys OpenClaw | Stripe at $140B: Is Adyen Wildly Undervalued? · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Feb 19, 2026 bearish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Lemkin: Shopify's storefront software interface may become obsolete within two years
“That software in two years may be obsolete.”
Jason Lemkin Feb 19, 2026 ▶ 22:58 Thrive Raises New $10B Fund | OpenAI Buys OpenClaw | Stripe at $140B: Is Adyen Wildly Undervalued? · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Feb 19, 2026 bullish
Opinion
O'Driscoll: Shopify's Core Infrastructure Safe From Near-Term AI Displacement
“I don't think there is a credible near-end story that replaces a shopping, a website for shopping, and a payments mechanism, which is, you know, 60, 70% of their business, with some kind of AI arm wave in a way that there is for many of the workflow automation…”
Rory O'Driscoll Feb 19, 2026 ▶ 21:43 Thrive Raises New $10B Fund | OpenAI Buys OpenClaw | Stripe at $140B: Is Adyen Wildly Undervalued? · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Feb 26, 2026 bearish
Prediction Open · timeframe Feb 2029
Lemkin: Shopify and Monday will be killed by vertical AI startups
“So they're going to get killed by the startup that does it. They're going to get killed. Killed.”
Jason Lemkin Feb 26, 2026 ▶ 16:39 Citrini Research Breakdown: Agents, "Ghost GDP", Consumer Spend | Figma Earnings Beat · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Feb 26, 2026 positive
Assertion Partly supported
Lemkin: Shopify grew revenue 50% to $12B with zero net hiring
“And I think Shopify is on top of these things. It has the same number of employees it did three years ago. It has not added a single net headcount in three years and has grown 50% at twelve billion in revenue.”
Jason Lemkin Feb 26, 2026 ▶ 47:54 Citrini Research Breakdown: Agents, "Ghost GDP", Consumer Spend | Figma Earnings Beat · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 7, 2026
What-if
Green: Holding Shopify IPO Allocation Would Have Returned Fund 2X
“We also got two million dollars in the Shopify IPO, because we knew the founders. And that would have returned our second fund, like, two X, had we just not sold stock. Like, didn't have to do anything.”
Mitchell Green Mar 7, 2026 ▶ 1:02:32 Mitchell Green: Why 50% of VCs Should Not Exist · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 12, 2026 bullish
Opinion
Lemkin: Growth momentum is software's only defense in the AI age
“I'm betting on momentum is the only thing that's going to save us. Save us in the age of AI. So I'm betting on overpriced Palantir, Cloudflare, which is re-accelerating and benefiting from AI, and Shopify which is gaining market share.”
Jason Lemkin Mar 12, 2026 ▶ 1:07:30 Anthropic vs The Pentagon: Who Wins? | The Data Center Arms Race | The Ultimate Stock Picks · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 16, 2026 neutral
Prediction Open · timeframe Mar 2029
Rajaram: Shopify will not build a competing product to Klaviyo
“I don't think Shopify will build it. Shopify is an investor, and Shopify, I think, has decided, at least in my opinion, that this is, Shopify has these things called missions, and I think they've decided this is not part of their mission to build this product.…”
Gokul Rajaram Mar 16, 2026 ▶ 14:00 Gokul Rajaram: How to Analyse for Durability and Defensibility in a World of AI · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 16, 2026 neutral
Disclosure
Rajaram: Underestimating Shopify was his biggest market-size misread
“I remember seeing Shopify at a billion and I was like, how many, E-commerce merchants out there really. And that, or maybe even before, but in one of the early rounds, Tam felt really concerned. I think what I missed was that Shopify was not just selling e-com…”
Gokul Rajaram Mar 16, 2026 ▶ 44:59 Gokul Rajaram: How to Analyse for Durability and Defensibility in a World of AI · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
May 4, 2026
Insight
Tobi Lütke: Great leaders must be exothermic heat sources for innovation
“It's very hard to forge anything new at room temperature. So like, I think great leaders must be exothermic and must be a heat source for the company. It's very different opinion than the custodial idea of leadership, which is also a valid position to take.”
Tobi Lütke May 4, 2026 ▶ 52:53 Shopify CEO on How AI is a Scapegoat for Mass Layoffs & Trump Derangement Syndrome in Canada · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
May 4, 2026 positive
Insight
Tobi Lütke: Being an untrusted public company is worse than private
“There's nothing better in the world than being a trusted public company. I mean, the second best thing is being a trusted private company. It's much worse to be an untrusted public company than an untrusted private company.”
Tobi Lütke May 4, 2026 ▶ 11:10 Shopify CEO on How AI is a Scapegoat for Mass Layoffs & Trump Derangement Syndrome in Canada · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
May 4, 2026 bullish
Assertion Supported
Tobi Lütke: Shopify IPO'd at $1.67B valuation and grew 100x
“The point was we went out at, I believe, 1.67 billion dollar valuation. And I think, yeah, I mean, at various times, not right now, I think, but like, I don't know. I don't check. It's like a hundred times higher now.”
Tobi Lütke May 4, 2026 ▶ 15:48 Shopify CEO on How AI is a Scapegoat for Mass Layoffs & Trump Derangement Syndrome in Canada · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
May 4, 2026 positive
Assertion Supported
Tobi Lütke: Shopify's internal AI 'River' performs a ludicrous amount of engineering
“If you're building a large scale AI system like we have one, which they think what river, which lives in Slack and does some Ludicrous amount of Shopify's engineering now.”
Tobi Lütke May 4, 2026 ▶ 1:01:16 Shopify CEO on How AI is a Scapegoat for Mass Layoffs & Trump Derangement Syndrome in Canada · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
May 4, 2026 positive
Assertion Partly supported
Tobi Lütke: Over 50% of Shopify's code is AI-generated
“It's a fair deal over 50%.”
Tobi Lütke May 4, 2026 ▶ 1:02:05 Shopify CEO on How AI is a Scapegoat for Mass Layoffs & Trump Derangement Syndrome in Canada · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
May 4, 2026
Insight
Tobi Lütke: Stock tickers reflect external market trades, not company building
“The ticker has nothing to do with the company I'm building. The ticker is a is guessing at the fair market value of a company. I work on a fair market value of a company. I like the ticker is just other people's game to make trades based on their assumptions o…”
Tobi Lütke May 4, 2026 ▶ 55:20 Shopify CEO on How AI is a Scapegoat for Mass Layoffs & Trump Derangement Syndrome in Canada · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
May 4, 2026 neutral
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Tobi Lütke: Top Shopify engineers haven't written raw code since December
“Many of our best engineers have not written code this year ever since December.”
Tobi Lütke May 4, 2026 ▶ 1:02:09 Shopify CEO on How AI is a Scapegoat for Mass Layoffs & Trump Derangement Syndrome in Canada · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
May 4, 2026
Disclosure
Tobi Lütke claims he hasn't checked Shopify's stock price in 23 days
“I have not looked at the ticker in April. Like, I can, I know this for a fact. So it's probably much longer than that, but I definitely know I haven't looked in the last 23 days when we record this.”
Tobi Lütke May 4, 2026 ▶ 56:10 Shopify CEO on How AI is a Scapegoat for Mass Layoffs & Trump Derangement Syndrome in Canada · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
May 4, 2026 neutral
Prediction Open · timeframe May 2031
Tobi Lütke aims to keep Shopify headcount flat with 100x AI productivity
“My real hope is seven and a half to 8000, right? Like at a hundred x productivity level, right?”
Tobi Lütke May 4, 2026 ▶ 16:43 Shopify CEO on How AI is a Scapegoat for Mass Layoffs & Trump Derangement Syndrome in Canada · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
May 4, 2026 positive
Assertion Contradicted
Tobi Lütke: 10 million people work daily on Shopify
“There's probably ten million people working day to day on Shopify.”
Tobi Lütke May 4, 2026 ▶ 1:12:15 Shopify CEO on How AI is a Scapegoat for Mass Layoffs & Trump Derangement Syndrome in Canada · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
May 4, 2026 positive
Disclosure
Tobi Lütke actively seeks out Enneagram Type Eight executives at Shopify
“Shopify is remarkably high on aids because I really seek them. I fundamentally like this kind of discussion.”
Tobi Lütke May 4, 2026 ▶ 7:16 Shopify CEO on How AI is a Scapegoat for Mass Layoffs & Trump Derangement Syndrome in Canada · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
May 4, 2026 negative
Insight
Tobi Lütke: Fear-based motivation creates a limiting short-term focus
“People who fear of losing and people who fear of winning clearly going to look at things much more short term. It's like, it's the next iteration matters the most. And I find that this a kind of, I think that's a limiting thing in a lot of cases, especially wi…”
Tobi Lütke May 4, 2026 ▶ 2:25 Shopify CEO on How AI is a Scapegoat for Mass Layoffs & Trump Derangement Syndrome in Canada · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
May 4, 2026 neutral
Assertion Supported
Tobi Lütke: The investment banker who led Shopify's IPO is now CFO
“In fact, the banker who took me in public as my CFO right now, so like 10 years later, which is really funny.”
Tobi Lütke May 4, 2026 ▶ 14:22 Shopify CEO on How AI is a Scapegoat for Mass Layoffs & Trump Derangement Syndrome in Canada · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
May 4, 2026 negative
Disclosure
Tobi Lütke: Shopify's logistics fulfillment pivot was my most public mistake
“I think my most public mistake was going into Full on logistics and physical warehouse building just before AI got really good and not like, and we didn't have the ability to you know, do both of those things at the same time. So we actually had to like abando…”
Tobi Lütke May 4, 2026 ▶ 51:05 Shopify CEO on How AI is a Scapegoat for Mass Layoffs & Trump Derangement Syndrome in Canada · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
May 21, 2026 bullish
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Lemkin: Shopify destroyed low-end e-commerce competitors like Wix and BigCommerce
“Shopify destroyed them all. There's no reason to use. This is another category where the low end was destroyed by Shopify, who amazingly went up market and down market successfully at the same time. And there's just, it's not worth it. You can't save enough mo…”
Jason Lemkin May 21, 2026 ▶ 29:19 Anthropic Raises $30BN at $900BN Price | SpaceX Files S1: How Does it Trade | Cerebras Smashes Day 1 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jun 8, 2026 bullish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Chernin: Enterprise AI adoption will explode once evaluation cold-start issues resolve
“And I think we'll see a lot of explosive growth in enterprises, in the digital, including like in the cloud companies, in the cloud native companies like Revolut, Shopify, Prosus. Booking.com. When they solve this cold start problem, they build the system, how…”
Roman Chernin Jun 8, 2026 ▶ 45:19 Nebius Co-Founder on AI Infrastructure Bubbles | How Price Elastic is Demand for Compute · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jul 13, 2026 bearish
Opinion
Abrahami: Developers will never vibe-code platforms as complex as Shopify
“You're not going to vibe code Shopify, no matter how good you are. The business stack is too hard.”
Avishai Abrahami Jul 13, 2026 ▶ 20:16 Wix Founder: Will Base44 Win the Vibe-Coding Wars? | The Truth About the Economics of Vibe-Coding · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
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