Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Shopify and the Power of Platforms

stratechery.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 176 posts

Re: Shopify and the Power of Platforms

#121

Post by odorousrex »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #99
odorousrex wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish I had 100 upvotes to give you. I'm currently converting a homegrown multi-million dollar eccommerce platform to Shopify and it's been a dream. Most of the significant lifting was done in less than 2 weeks. Their graphql api has just been amazing, not to mention all the other developer services they provide. OFC, I do feel like I'm coding myself out of a job, as I've spent the last 7 years building and maintain…

Can you talk more about the home grown multimillion part?

Well I'm not in marketing, and I attribute tons of our growth to good marketing - but I was responsible for the development and deployment of our tech stack. Basically rewrote a legacy platform I inherited (.NET 1.0 WebForms yall on a single Windows server with SQL 2003) from scratch. (2 devs and me as lead). Added a headless CMS (they were literally FTPing .ASPX pages up every night to update the home page). Deployed the whole thing with containers on azure and increase site speed and reliability by a few orders of magnitude.

And now I'm switching it all to shopify plus with no regrets. I learned a hell of a lot coding my own ecommerce platform, and would love to work for a company like Shopify.

Re: Shopify and the Power of Platforms

#122

Post by larrywright »

bluGill wrote: post #113
organsnyder wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. I've taken some MBA classes, and one (in retrospect obvious) thing I latched onto is the idea of opportunity cost: you can never do everything you are capable of doing, and each thing you do comes at the expense of something else. So, focus on doing the things that (depending on your goal) are most fulfilling and/or most profitable. Amusingly, grasping that concept was a big factor in my decision to put my MBA d…

There is one other reason to do things: you cannot trust anyone else to do it. Fullfilling and/or profitable are hopefully the only ones that apply, but sometimes you have to do something because the risk is too high...

I’m not sure that applies to the Shopify argument here, but maybe you didn’t intend it to.

Re: Shopify and the Power of Platforms

#123

Post by pmart123 »

delecti wrote: post #23
omouse wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've set up ecommerce sites quite a few times and it was honestly 1 to 2 days of "work", install + configure and then the rest was customization which clients pay for and are patient for. We were ready to sell product within a day basically and then iterate from there based on client needs. I guess I wasn't clear enough in making my point: Wordpress + Woocommerce can be setup very quickly and with minimal fuss and th…

Someone who knows how to do all of those things, already knows that they know how to do all of those things. Nobody who uses a one-stop-shop like Shopify is duped into thinking it's something revolutionary. Either it's not something they know how to do on their own, not something they think is worth the trouble to do on their own, or not something they could afford to pay someone like you to do.

It's not revolutionary, but even with the stated two days of work in the original comment, you probably are spending a couple years worth of dollars compared to just using Shopify ignoring the time to find said developer, maintain the relationship if something goes wrong, etc. if you are just trying to get an idea off the ground.

Re: Shopify and the Power of Platforms

#124

Post by 18pfsmt »

superhuzza wrote: post #44
omouse wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've set up ecommerce sites quite a few times and it was honestly 1 to 2 days of "work", install + configure and then the rest was customization which clients pay for and are patient for. We were ready to sell product within a day basically and then iterate from there based on client needs. I guess I wasn't clear enough in making my point: Wordpress + Woocommerce can be setup very quickly and with minimal fuss and th…

So someone could avoid paying you for setup and maintenance by paying an extra $15 bucks a month to Shopify? Seems like a pretty obvious choice for a small business.

There's also a %tage of sales where the 'build vs buy' argument makes sense in the other direction. Obviously, most sellers of physical goods have better reason to focus on growing revenue and promotional activity, not cutting costs. That break-even point (I think) is some where around $250K/yr revenue, but that calculation depends on margins and the relevant industry matters (from a future planning perspective).

Re: Shopify and the Power of Platforms

#125

Post by somethoughts »

j4_hnews wrote: post #3

As Amazon gobbles up more product categories, there may be less viable categories that potential e-commerce startups might venture into on their own. This could mean over time, more Shopify merchants would be selling overlapping product categories (the ones Amazon has not yet gobbled up yet). Which would mean that as a Shopify merchant, you would competing with other Shopify merchants (not Amazon). How do you differe…

I think the ideal use case for Shopify is if you are an existing physical store (i.e. a popular restaurant or tourist attraction) and want to sell branded merchandise (i.e. T-shirts or keychains for Harry's Hotdog Shop) or an existing organization with existing awareness (popular open source software) and want to dabble in merchandising (i.e. sell some branded T-shirts and other schwag).

Re: Shopify and the Power of Platforms

#126

Post by enobrev »

r00fus wrote: post #102
pxue wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's my hot take (with 2 years of running a #1 trending shopify app + multiple attempt in starting a store) Shopify DOES NOT help you sell. Period. Amazon will win in the long run because at the end of the day it's all about if the "platform" can move merchandize or not. Amazon captures top of the funnel all the way down to personalized targeting. Shopify will never do that. they are just the tool to help you figur…

Is there a good example of someone being successful doing both? Seems like if Shopify is a way to create your own venue, and Amazon is a venue in-and-of itself, there might be a case for doing both.

At varying degrees of "success", I know a couple sellers who make a great living by combining multiple platforms; Selling on Amazon, eBay, Etsy and their own custom site (on Shopify and other customizable platforms).

Re: Shopify and the Power of Platforms

#127

Post by [deleted] »

kumarm wrote: post #104
melenaos wrote: post #103

I am Shopify app developer and I earn my living from 3 published apps in the Shopify marketplace. I can answer any question you may have.

Thank You. 1. Do you see the Market for shopify apps growing? Any indications would be helpful from your experience. 2. Best way to get started on Shopify apps for developers?

[deleted]

Re: Shopify and the Power of Platforms

#129

Post by yhoiseth »

hackermailman wrote: post #61
CriticalCathed wrote: post #6

It's an interesting article, but the most interesting part to me was the Bill Gates Line article the author also wrote. [0] The distinction between a platform and an aggregator was not one that I ever considered. I'm convinced by this article that it's a useful one. Does anyone know why it is that Shopify's stock has risen by 100% over the last year? I looked it over and couldn't figure out why -- is it the 3PL Fulfi…

Shopify reported 50% yearly revenue growth which helped the stock price, and gov of Canada/provinces used shopify exclusively for their online marijuana ordering starting last year too. That said their lack of net income is a problem https://www.fool.ca/2019/05/07/where-will-shopify-tsxshop-st... and their hiring process is ridiculous even by modern meme hiring standards meaning it's going to get harder to hire peopl…

Can you elaborate on the ridiculous hiring process?

Re: Shopify and the Power of Platforms

#130

Post by joking »

rhizome wrote: post #70
RickS wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did almost mention those. Negotiating POS rates is in the realm of much bigger shops than I've run. At the 100k/mo mark, that's $2k/mo, which... I'd honestly still take shopify, but yeah, it starts to be worth asking about. Shopify is a hair more expensive than some competing processors, but when I last dealt with it, they were in league of paypal, stripe, square, etc, so it wasn't a differentiating factor for us,…

Of course it's not perfect and would eventually be re-engineered, but I'd happily pay $3K/mo to make $100K/mo.

if you take in account that when selling physical items the selling margins are between 15% and 25%, you are paying 3k to make 15K profits, thats a 20% of your benefits. In much cases those 3k could be the difference between a profitable business and one that isn't profitable.
Post reply on HN