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 36 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
Leteyski: Shopify banned app Checkout X for taking platform revenue
“Then we got banned by Shopify for stealing their revenue.”
Drury: More Shopify stores will close, affecting ecosystem apps
“And I think we're going to see a change in the merchant behavior on Shopify, which will of course have a trickle down effect into the apps. I think we're going to see a lot more stores closing, sadly.”
Kosarek: Crypto payments may become standard for Shopify transactions in 2022
“And then also we think this could be an interesting year where alternative forms of payments start to take off, right? The crypto wallets And other, you know, any cryptocurrency based payment out there may become more of a norm for a Shopify transaction than i…”
Pekibar: Web store app marketplaces have higher upside than general website ecosystems
“When you have a website, sometimes, you know, website is not as an important asset as in a web store, because online store is your main revenue generator. Website is in many cases for like local businesses is, you know, not the main thing.”
Gazdecki: Shopify SaaS apps are 'SaaS on training wheels'
“I call them like SaaS on training wheels. You know, the analytics are all built in the billing, the distribution.”
Shopify's Verifiable Dashboard Prevents Founders From Falsifying App Metrics
“In Shopify, it's even easier because you can't lie. You know, there are the numbers. There are the numbers. You cannot modify those numbers. It's by Shopify. So when the buyers see it, okay, everything is okay here.”
Gazdecki: Productizing client work is a top strategy for building startups
“I think that's like one of the best ways to build a business because you're seeing the problem”
Leteyski: Building and selling Shopify apps after one year is lucrative
“Especially for Shopify apps, where it's like my bread and butter, it's so liquid right now. It's a really good business model to just make Shopify apps and sell them after one year. I think you could make a lot of money bigger.”
Leteyski: Shopify apps were previously illiquid but are now crazy liquid
“Because when I was starting Shopify, absolutely were not liquid at all right now. And they're crazy liquid.”
Abousleiman: Conversion and bundling apps have durable ROI during downturns
“Fulfillment solutions or anything that'll like increase conversion rates. Maybe it's like a bundling app or something like that. Those tend to have pretty clear measurable ROIs. And so I would, I'd be hard pressed to find a merchant who's like, oh, you know, t…”
Drury: Macro environment and inflation may slightly lower acquisition multiples
“I think this less so Shopify's earnings, but more so like the macro economic environment, inflationary environment will change the acquisition space a little bit. It might take multiples down a hair. They've been crazy high. Maybe that'll happen for those sell…”
Drury: Software founders should state their desired post-acquisition role upfront
“Be really upfront about what you're looking for because there are no issues with that. If you want to sell and have nothing to do with it, that's totally your prerogative. If you want to sell to someone who's going to partner with you in some way to carry it t…”
Drury: StayTuned rejects high-MRR Shopify apps if merchant utility is weak
“Basically if we don't think the product is good, it's a total no-go. Like even if the revenue is off the charts, you know, one example would be if your app makes a red button on a site, That just says click me, and people click it, and you get a dollar every t…”
Kosarek: E-commerce merchants with under $10M revenue lack fast exit options
“A merchant maybe, you know, making in the one to ten million revenue range doesn't have as many options to pursue a fast and easy exit as you know, merchants that have achieved, you know, escape velocity above that ten million dollar mark.”
Patel: Ramp Ventures targets $1M–$5M ARR B2B SaaS, excluding e-commerce
“Ideally, in a perfect world, we're looking at one to two, one to five million dollar AR companies that are in B to B SaaS. Everything else, we'll kind of look at the details unless they sell to e-commerce. So no Shopify and no WordPress for the most part.”
Leteyski: Bootstrapped Shopify app Checkout X scaled to $600k MRR
“I built a Shopify app that became probably the biggest custom checkout on Shopify called Checkout X, which scaled to something around six 100,000 dollars MRR, something like that bootstrap.”
Fazio: Standardized SaaS platforms make e-commerce due diligence straightforward
“If you know about e-commerce, it's really about, you know, Google analytics, Shopify account, the Facebook account. And then it's very easy to see how well the business is running, right? So we can all write some things in the financials, have certain type of …”
Tabarnapp's first Shopify app gained 1,000 paying customers in four months
“And then, in 2016, we've built our first Shopify app. It was called Automatic Discount. We've noticed like in the forums everyone was complaining, like why is Shopify not able to do something very simple as automated a discount based on what's in the cart. So …”
Gazdecki chose all-cash over a higher seller-financed offer on Shopify app
“We bought a Shopify app as a group, me and some buddies, and we resold it on Microquire. We had a offer at a much higher price, but seller financing and all that stuff over 12 months. And I ended up taking the all cash offer just cause it's, you know, I don't …”
Gazdecki bought a Shopify SaaS for $60k and exited for all-cash
“I actually, I haven't announced this yet, but we bought Shopify SaaS for like, 60 K, like a year ago, and we had two offers. One was all cash, and one had seller financing. The all cash offer was a little lower, and I, without a doubt, I was like, let's go wit…”
Speiser doubled his investment flipping a Shopify app in six months
“We ended up holding that one for six months and doubling our money, which I didn't like the space. I don't like being reliant on one platform.”
Abousleiman: Shopify partner ecosystem generates 3-4x Shopify's platform revenue
“I think the partner ecosystem makes like three or four times more revenue than Shopify itself.”
Appregator: Shopify checkout functionality updates are our main acquisition focus
“There's a lot of like new and exciting things, especially with the updates that Shopify pushed to its checkout functionalities that, you know, are Right in the middle of our focus right now”
Abousleiman: Appregator targets an acquisition every one to two months
“I think our target is probably to be doing like an acquisition every month or every other month.”
Kosarek: OpenStore requires $500K+ revenue and 50% US customers for acquisitions
“We'd like to see at least 500 K in revenue from the last 12 months, trailing 12 months. We also like to see that Shopify makes up a sizable percentage of the overall business, so at least 70% of sales we need to see coming from Shopify. And then also we need t…”
Toledano: MicroAngel's first acquisition was Shopify app Reconcile in February 2021
“I bought a B to B SaaS Shopify app called Reconcile, which basically helps Shopify stores send all of their payout transactions and all of that accounting data over to zero automatically, which usually takes like, 20 to 25 hours to reconcile every single trans…”
Triciclo developed over 700 Shopify stores before building apps
“It's an agency that has developed over 700 Shopify stores, so we did have a pretty good customer base of, like, emails and just their contact”
Gazdecki: Acquiring a Shopify app is like 'SaaS with training wheels'
“I actually, I acquired one myself with some friends, and I call it, like, SaaS with, like, training wheels, because you can just log into the dashboard, you see all the metrics, everything's in there, you don't have to go polling places from, like, five differ…”
Miklas: Sold Shopify application for over 3x ARR on MicroAcquire
“At the end I sold for three something.”
Miklas: Isolated micro-SaaS infrastructure to simplify future acquisition handover
“From the beginning I had structured the entire infrastructure like that. So I had like separate AWS account, separate Shopify account separate hosting web hosting. So everything had a separate account. So I would just hand over the accounts to the person that …”
Abousleiman: Shopify Ecosystem Standardizes Due Diligence Data
“It's pretty straightforward because of the fact that we're only focused on the Shopify space. The things that you want to look for become pretty standardized, right? Like we'll get access to someone's Shopify partner dashboard and they do a great job just kind…”
Drury: StayTuned was founded to roll up Shopify apps for merchants
“Saraj, our CEO, and I've been friends for years, and he had been working on all sorts of things around the Shopify ecosystem, and in the summer, he started incubating this idea, which is a little more popular now, but the idea to roll up Shopify apps and provi…”
Calm Capital acquired four digital micro-businesses in two years
“And then since then, in the last two years, we've We funded a Shopify app business. We bought a WordPress theme business. We bought a content UI design business subscription business. And then last year we bought a SAS company that helps audio creators market …”
Gazdecki and Shaan Puri bought a Shopify SaaS with 50% deferred
“We bought a Shopify SaaS application, and we did 50%. I, it was with like a bunch of friends, like Sean Perry from My First Million. I don't know if you ever follow that story, but we had 50% in front, and then 50% after”
Tung: Existing Shopify apps lacked Slack UTM and coupon tracking
“There was no way for you to get UTM tracking specifically, and like coupon code redemption data in in your Slack channel from Shopify. There were a lot of apps out there that would do light Shopify to Slack integration, but not what I needed”