The only logical move would've been to setup a Shopify competitor and making a new platform
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
#12When you expand on something core to another company's platform, that is sometimes referred to as "picking up pennies in front of a bulldozer."
Yes, but some times you have time to pick up enough pennies to buy the huge mansion that you see on their photos.
Sure. $600k/month sounds like some fantastic pennies.
Re: Bootstrapping to €600k MRR and getting killed by Shopify: Checkout X
#13"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.
Absolutely this. If you’ve built something profitable on someone else’s land, get big and cash out as fast as you can. It’s unsustainable, you’re just doing an arbitrage play while it lasts. Do well fast so you optimize for more dice rolls in the future.
Re: Bootstrapping to €600k MRR and getting killed by Shopify: Checkout X
#14"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 probably be a long, expensive, painful lawsuit, that's probably too much for this company to bear. You're also not guaranteed that the judge will make the losing party pay for your defence even if you do win, so it could easily be quite a Pyrrhic victory.
With the new DMA coming into effect soon, I think businesses like these will stand a much better chance. The restrictions put onto gatekeepers by the EU can introduce significant risks to platforms being scummy to smaller developers.
Re: Bootstrapping to €600k MRR and getting killed by Shopify: Checkout X
#15Theyre lucky they let this last as long as they did. Lots of other teams and products built on top of someone elses ecosystem havent been as lucky.
I think the term we use for this is being “Sherlocked” back from when Apple copied Sherlock and turned it into spotlight. Anyway theyre joining the ranks of famously successful short lived products. Glad they made bank in the meantime.
Re: Bootstrapping to €600k MRR and getting killed by Shopify: Checkout X
#16I'm impressed a single individual got to 600K MRR by himself. Only a few people can say that they've done that. Who knows when shopify would've taken their checkout experience seriously were it not for this guy. you can have interesting experience, build temporary things, be proud of it, and move on to the next thing.
Re: Bootstrapping to €600k MRR and getting killed by Shopify: Checkout X
#17I was contacted by a non-technical team with a concept about a new shopify based startup. I thought I can just build it in a couple of months then let them operate it.
I spent a month on it just researching through the mess that is the Shopify API. It was a pain. I got the mockup working but it looked like this is risky. Tried all channels and got nothing. Eventually someone answered and it seems that everything I built won't work. We would need to jump through hoops to be Shopify compatible and I decided it would strip the startup of its value.
Decided to declare the month of work I did as a loss and bail. Still traumatized from the whole mobile development pain of Apple and Google...
Re: Bootstrapping to €600k MRR and getting killed by Shopify: Checkout X
#18You had a great run, but I think it is unfair to say that Shopify “saw what you were doing” and “hijacked” your business. Obviously a small team can move faster and Shopify could easily have internal development plans for the same solution for a long time. Kudos for the €600k MRR and your execution.
Re: Bootstrapping to €600k MRR and getting killed by Shopify: Checkout X
#19Well, 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 got an email today about a partnership TOS change. Now I need to put a negative keyword in any Google ad campaign they deem it necessary, despite like I said, Shopify users being great product fits for me.
I am just a little dude. What power do I have? Not really anything, the biggies get to tell me what to do. I either follow the rules of the game or get banned from the platform. Rather frustrating to say the least.
Re: Bootstrapping to €600k MRR and getting killed by Shopify: Checkout X
#20"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.
You're even understating the case for this particular issue. I own a Shopify store, and one thing that I found out early on is that Shopify does not want you to mess with checkout. It is far and away the most limited piece of their application in terms of customization, and their help articles made it clear that it could not be changed. This app is built on top of a platform and doing something that the platform did not intend for you to be able to do.
I don't begrudge OP making some money on this product, but I'm definitely not sympathetic to this outcome.