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Shopify to raise $100M in Toronto, New York IPO

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Re: Shopify to raise $100M in Toronto, New York IPO

#41

Post by jasonbarone »

oisino wrote: post #7

Not the sexiest stock but as someone who has built their company off Shopify I cant say I have worked with a better product/ company in my life. The way they handle third party developers, designers, and stores is exceptional. They really get what it takes to build a platform. I have no doubt thats Tobi vision of building the platform for all commerce will come true. As a developer building off Shopify excited to see…

I've used Shopify for my clients a bunch of times, and now I primarily and almost exclusively use Squarespace, which I would say is the largest Shopify competitor that no one ever mentions. I'm a Squarespace power user and one of the biggest designer/developer advocates outside the company. I can say without a doubt that Shopify has one of the most amazing developer communities and initiatives that I've ever seen. I could only wish that other products/services, including Squarespace, would do something similar.

So I agree wholeheartedly that Shopify simply gets it. The way they promote designer and developer usage is off the charts. I could go on and on. They nail it on all levels.

Congratulations to Shopify.

Re: Shopify to raise $100M in Toronto, New York IPO

#44

Post by grandalf »

myth_drannon wrote: post #37
grandalf wrote: post #16

Does this make Shopify the largest Ruby IPO to date?

I don't know about an IPO but I was talking to a Shopify employee at Pycon and he said it's the largest Rails app in the world.

not sure if that is a good thing :) Impressive nonetheless.

Re: Shopify to raise $100M in Toronto, New York IPO

#45

Post by alex_anglin »

AYBABTME wrote: post #10
ditonal wrote: post #6

I'm not a financial expert so I'm really not sure, but I'm extremely distrustful of this JOBS Act and "IPO-Lites." Not Shopify specifically, but it's going to open the door to a lot of smaller companies that have a lot less scrutiny on them to IPO and I worry that it will allow VCs to dump their weaker companies on the public, and turn a potential private equity bubble into something bigger. I worked for a startup th…

Shopify is not a shaky company at all. It's a top notch company, top place to work, top product. It's like a recipe of everything done well. So I don't really understand why you say that.

As a techie in Ottawa, I'd add that they've also contributed significantly to the local entrepreneurship ecosystem in a variety of ways. Good on them for that!

Re: Shopify to raise $100M in Toronto, New York IPO

#46

Post by pbreit »

ditonal wrote: post #20
pbreit wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that its a Canadian company, its a regular IPO. $100m in software revs reasonably supports a $1b valuation. The company has been working hard for nearly 10 years with relatively limited VC involvement. I don't really understand your post in this context.

First of all, limited VC involvement? They raised $122 million from VCs: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/shopify These investors include VC firms like First Mark Capital, which are NYC based - and oh yeah, the exact same VC firm that was the biggest investor in the startup I worked at that I said is in freefall but now getting positive financial press. It's not about whether the VCs are running operations, it…

Yeah, but they bootstrapped for 5 years and the same 3 funds anchored each round. They were fairly successful before taking any money.

My bad. You gave the impression (to me, at least) that this was some sort of shaky, small situation when it was anything, but. If anything, there are way too few IPOs these days. The only people making money on new company creation are venture investors.

Also, something like 85% of the IPOs in the last 2 years have used the new JOBS rules, so it's not really "one of the first". The threshold is $1b in revenues, after all, quite a rarity at the IPO stage.

Re: Shopify to raise $100M in Toronto, New York IPO

#47

Post by pushrax »

myth_drannon wrote: post #37
grandalf wrote: post #16

Does this make Shopify the largest Ruby IPO to date?

I don't know about an IPO but I was talking to a Shopify employee at Pycon and he said it's the largest Rails app in the world.

Definitely one of the oldest - Shopify is on Rails 4 now, initial commit was on the release day of Rails 0.5!

Re: Shopify to raise $100M in Toronto, New York IPO

#48

Post by alanfalcon »

oimaz wrote: post #35

As a developer, does it make sense to build shopify apps? Curious to hear about shopify apps and its ecosystem

As a one-time Shopify user, I'd think so. The default model is recurring billing and Shopify's features are super bare bones with the "there's an app for that" fallback that keeps the platform viable. The apps on offer are very hit or miss and many are simply poorly designed or thought out, and there seems to be room (in conjunction with some marketing) to carve out a good space there for quality interoperable apps.

Re: Shopify to raise $100M in Toronto, New York IPO

#50

Post by cperciva »

pbreit wrote: post #8
ditonal wrote: post #6

I'm not a financial expert so I'm really not sure, but I'm extremely distrustful of this JOBS Act and "IPO-Lites." Not Shopify specifically, but it's going to open the door to a lot of smaller companies that have a lot less scrutiny on them to IPO and I worry that it will allow VCs to dump their weaker companies on the public, and turn a potential private equity bubble into something bigger. I worked for a startup th…

Except that its a Canadian company, its a regular IPO. $100m in software revs reasonably supports a $1b valuation. The company has been working hard for nearly 10 years with relatively limited VC involvement. I don't really understand your post in this context.

Does $100M/year in revenue and $-25M/year in profits really make a company worth $1B these days?
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