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Bootstrapping to €600k MRR and getting killed by Shopify: Checkout X

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Re: Bootstrapping to €600k MRR and getting killed by Shopify: Checkout X

#111

Post by HWR_14 »

spamizbad wrote: post #82
HWR_14 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel fairly confident your "insanely high amount" wasn't as high as you feel it was.

For a product built by 2 people it was enough for both of them to retire (albeit humbly) or seed a more ambitious company. Anyway, their best move was to take the money. They gambled that, even after noticing their work and our customer's feedback, we wouldn't turn around make our product better. They lost that bet.

That sounds about where I was thinking. You have to imagine that you're not paying as much for the product as a sign on bonus for the talent that has demonstrated the ability to improve the value of your product quite a bit over the four years of being locked in.

Re: Bootstrapping to €600k MRR and getting killed by Shopify: Checkout X

#112

Post by chiefalchemist »

jeroenhd wrote: post #14
nolok wrote: post #6

"I built my business on top of someone else's product without any gurantee whatsoever of being able to continue in the future, and when it became valuable for them to stop me they did". Doesn't matter if you're a twitter client, a facebook app, a shopify app, a reddit client or whatever, either what you offer is negligible, or you did their research for them and now they can take over.

Building apps for other platforms, be they Shoppify or the App Store, always comes with the risk of getting booted off or Sherlocked. You can pray that the platform's customers will be upset if your product gets killed ("Shoppify broke our checkout screen" is not exactly bringing in new users) but in the end you need an exit strategy as a company. In this case, I do think legal action would've succeeded, but it would…

> "but in the end you need an exit strategy as a company."

Simple. Reach out to the platform and ask to be acquired. You might not get top dollar, but it beats having the plug pulled. While he acknowledges he didn't expect the gravy to be pouring forever, he also didn't have an exit mapped. Exit is one of those things that is in the text book definition of what is an entrepreneur.

Re: Bootstrapping to €600k MRR and getting killed by Shopify: Checkout X

#113

Post by tsunamifury »

spamizbad wrote: post #3

I'm not a business expert or an entrepreneur, but I've been around this industry long enough to know: Unless your intention is to flip your startup into an acquisition, I would recommend against plays like this. Specifically, tying yourself up to a closed ecosystem by building what amounts to a (albeit very nice and powerful) super-feature. I am saying this because I work for a large-ish company where someone did thi…

What your describe is monopolistic behavior to a T

Re: Bootstrapping to €600k MRR and getting killed by Shopify: Checkout X

#114

Post by hadrien01 »

dgb23 wrote: post #35

Aside: Why isn't there a payment protocol standard that's implemented in browsers?

There's the Payment Request API[1] which in theory allows you to use a single JS interface to declare a payment intent and your providers (so far only Apple Pay, Samsung Pay, and Google Pay are compatible). Though it is a single way of declaring your payment for multiple providers, you still need to subscribe to each provider individually and implement each specific post-authorization logic.

[1] https://developer.mozilla.org/docs/Web/API/Payment_Request_A...

Re: Bootstrapping to €600k MRR and getting killed by Shopify: Checkout X

#115

Post by adamckay »

nolok wrote: post #9
spamizbad wrote: post #3

I'm not a business expert or an entrepreneur, but I've been around this industry long enough to know: Unless your intention is to flip your startup into an acquisition, I would recommend against plays like this. Specifically, tying yourself up to a closed ecosystem by building what amounts to a (albeit very nice and powerful) super-feature. I am saying this because I work for a large-ish company where someone did thi…

> Specifically, tying yourself up to a closed ecosystem by building what amounts to a (albeit very nice and powerful) super-feature. Couldn't agree more. It goes something like this : "What do you offer ?" "Feature X on top of Y" "What stops Y from doing it themselves ?" Either A "Well it's not worth it" (then why do you do it), or B "Well, they haven't so far ..." in which case you have an end date already, you just…

> otherwise your company has no real future

That's not necessarily as bad as it sounds, though.

If the future where your company can exist is long enough for you to learn some valuable things and make decent money, it's obviously worth it.

Re: Bootstrapping to €600k MRR and getting killed by Shopify: Checkout X

#116

Post by chiefalchemist »

lolinder wrote: post #47
nolok wrote: post #6

"I built my business on top of someone else's product without any gurantee whatsoever of being able to continue in the future, and when it became valuable for them to stop me they did". Doesn't matter if you're a twitter client, a facebook app, a shopify app, a reddit client or whatever, either what you offer is negligible, or you did their research for them and now they can take over.

It's worse than that—within 6 months of them starting to operate Shopify updated the ToS to make it clear that the app they already knew was a grey area was actually formally banned. They received an email that said they wouldn't be shut down right away, which the author took to mean "carry on!" Then Shopify's COO called them personally to tell them to knock it off, and they used a technicality in the phrasing of the…

Agreed. At that point, he should have turned around and offer to be bought out by Shopify. Instead, he was greedy and figured running it into the ground was the only way out. Maybe that was true. Maybe not.

Re: Bootstrapping to €600k MRR and getting killed by Shopify: Checkout X

#117

Post by withinboredom »

nolok wrote: post #9
spamizbad wrote: post #3

I'm not a business expert or an entrepreneur, but I've been around this industry long enough to know: Unless your intention is to flip your startup into an acquisition, I would recommend against plays like this. Specifically, tying yourself up to a closed ecosystem by building what amounts to a (albeit very nice and powerful) super-feature. I am saying this because I work for a large-ish company where someone did thi…

> Specifically, tying yourself up to a closed ecosystem by building what amounts to a (albeit very nice and powerful) super-feature. Couldn't agree more. It goes something like this : "What do you offer ?" "Feature X on top of Y" "What stops Y from doing it themselves ?" Either A "Well it's not worth it" (then why do you do it), or B "Well, they haven't so far ..." in which case you have an end date already, you just…

Usually it's "C. Because they don't care." It's when you start walking away with millions that they could have had, had they cared, that they will suddenly care.

Re: Bootstrapping to €600k MRR and getting killed by Shopify: Checkout X

#118

Post by deely3 »

lolinder wrote: post #42

The author set up a business in what they knew was a gray area. 6 months later the ToS were updated to explicitly ban what they were doing, and they got an email that pretty clearly implied that they would need to make major changes but wouldn't be shut down right away, but the author chose to interpret silence as authorization to keep scaling. About 8 months later Shopify's COO told them explicitly that Shopify didn…

I'm not sure why did you lost all the sympathy. If company decided to kill your business, thats ok, because company in its rights to do so. But why thats mean that you should not feel sympathy to killed business?

Google is in its rights to kill Google Reader or ad-blockers, Mozilla in its rights to kill complex 3rd party extensions, Nintendo in its rights to kill any emulation but does it mean that we should be happy to oblige?

Re: Bootstrapping to €600k MRR and getting killed by Shopify: Checkout X

#119

Post by brianwawok »

shopify_throw wrote: post #39
brianwawok wrote: post #19

Well, I can relate as I just got an email that Shopify changed their partner TOS today because of me. They had demanded that I add a negative keyword "Shopify" to all of my Google ads. I declined, because - it wasn't in our partnership agreement and I in fact DID want clients who used Shopify to find my business. (I am in the e-commerce space selling a product that works for many marketplaces including Shopify). Just…

This has been the case for years. You weren’t allowed to bid on any search terms related to Shopify on Google Ads. Lots of Partners did though.

You did not read my post.

I did not bid on Shopify. I bid on "e-commerce sales"

Shopify is insisting, and in the new terms mandating, I add a "Negative search term" of Shopify to my bid for "e-commerce sales"

Go look up negative search terms if you aren't familiar.

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