Finkelstein: Early e-commerce forced a choice between million-dollar software and marketplaces
Harley Finkelstein · 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 · at 6:02
Harley Finkelstein, COO of Shopify, describes the market landscape and high barriers to entry for online retail before platforms like Shopify existed.
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“And at the time in 2004, 2005, there really were two ways to sell a product online. One way was you would pay some agency a million bucks to do some sort of IBM Webster integration or some sort of Magento or, you know, some sort of Hybris integration. These big enterprise software packages that required a ton of work and a lot of upfront costs. And that wasn't possible. That was simply too expensive. The other way, obviously, that you were able to sell a product online in those days was to use a marketplace like eBay or Etsy or Amazon. And although that was inexpensive, that really didn't provide you with your own brand, your own site. You were sort of renting customers from these marketplaces.”
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