The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 19 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Evans: Dozens of massive tech companies do not compete with Google or Amazon
“There's an awful lot of fifty, hundred, two hundred billion dollar tech companies out there. You know, how does that model account for everything from Coinbase to Stripe to Shopify to Spotify to you know, Okta to Databricks to UiPath to, you know, there's doze…”
Evans: Shopify proves claims you cannot compete with Amazon are false
“Number one is it shows how dumb it is to say you can, can't compete with Amazon. And this is absolutely competing with Amazon because it, and it's competing with Amazon by offering a completely different way to sell to customers.”
Evans: Commodity DTC sellers cannot profit because Instagram ad spend replaces rent
“Instead of spending all of your money on rent, you spend all your money on Instagram, unless you have some other way of getting, unless you have some other way of getting to people. But if you're just selling a commodity product, you know, in a commodity Chann…”
Evans: Non-tech businesses care about Shopify, not NFTs
“There's such a separation between the stuff that tech is obsessed with building and the tech that people outside of tech are obsessed by, which is Shopify. Like, what's the company that everyone outside tech is obsessed by? Shopify, not Naked Ape or Bored Ape …”
Evans: Users will eventually abandon Shopify for simpler alternatives
“Paradoxically, you know, all services grow, you know, so it's a problem that eventually Shopify, people will look at Shopify and say, that's too hard, I want something simpler, which is exactly why Shopify did. They looked at WordPress and said, that's too har…”
Evans: Shopify must build a consumer network to provide organic discovery
“Right now Shopify is, is they're at the tool level. And they're moving, they have a network in the apps, but they have to move up to have a network on the customer side so that, you know, there's a, that creates that much more reason why as a vendor you would …”
Evans: Artisanal products cannot sell effectively on Amazon
“If you're like a Japanese ceramic, selling Japanese ceramics, you're on Instagram, or you're on Shopify, but you can't sell that on Amazon. You would never sell that on Amazon. It doesn't work. You can't communicate, or, you know, it doesn't work in any way.”
Shopify's decentralized merchant model proves Amazon will not capture all digital commerce
“Shopify is like the standing rebuke to the idea that Amazon swallows everything. It's a completely different model.”
Kevins: Startups will unbundle Shopify by simplifying niche vertical workflows
“And then 10 people will do that to Shopify. Like, theoretically, I could sell a subscription newsletter in Shopify, except no, it's a lot easier to do it the way that I, in Substack or Memberful, depending on what you wanted to do. And I'm, there's a lot of pe…”
Evans: Shopify CEO mandated employees report their AI usage
“I remember a while ago, the CEO of Shopify said, you know, it was like an HR requirement that everyone had to report how much AI they were using.”
WPP launches Every Mile to compete directly against Shopify
“WPP, which is one of the world's biggest advertising networks, has just launched basically a managed Shopify competitor. Which they call Every Mile, and which has a bunch of people with tech industry backgrounds involved.”
Evans: Shopify lets enterprises drop modern software atop legacy ERP backbones
“Shopify is basically doing that on top of your existing e-commerce system for a lot of these companies, or on top of your existing ERP, your existing database systems. It's a way of coming in and allowing you to drop a modern software experience on top of all …”
Evans: Shopify reached $120B GMV in 2020, over 40% of Amazon Marketplace
“2019, Shopify did sixty billion dollars of GMV. GMV is gross merchandise value. That means people spent sixty billion dollars on Shopify sites. And in 2020, it was one hundred and twenty billion dollars, which makes it about 40%, a bit over 40% of Amazon Marke…”
Kevins: Shopify succeeded by unbundling complex workflows from WordPress
“Shopify is a hundred billion dollar WordPress plugin. And just to be really clear, I'm not saying literally, like, a hundred, you know, Shopify does what you ought to be able to do with a plugin to WordPress, except it's too difficult, and it's too verticalize…”
Evans: Shopify wants to become a network but remains just a tool
“Shopify, in a sense, is a tool for many people to create their own stores. It would like to be a network as well. But isn't yet.”
Evans: Shopify reached $165B GMV in the twelve months to Q3
“Then you have Shopify whose numbers, Q four numbers aren't out yet, but in the 12 months to Q three, they did a hundred and sixty five billion dollars of GMV, which is about 40, 45% of the size of Amazon marketplace.”
Cowan-Brown: Shopify powers approximately 1.7M storefronts
“Shopify, more or less without people noticing, but it's now the software that's being used for about 1.7 million storefronts. And I don't, I haven't checked that number, but I saw, I think it was in either a political article or another tech article, but I tho…”