161–170 of 204 posts
An interesting take. The only bit I strongly disagree with is this: > One advice we got was to file an antitrust case against Shopify in a European Court. > Theoretically, we could’ve argued that Shopify uses anti-competitive practices to get rid of their checkout competition. Similar to what Spotify & Epic Games did against Apple. > While that might’ve been a viable option, honestly, I don’t have the balls to pick a…
You 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.
If Shopify "hijacked" it by making a better product it would be more okay. When they however outright just ban competition, that's anti-consumer behavior and should be stopped.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, the story isn't one of those "THIS IS SO UNFAAAAAAIR" things. It's just a description of what happened. Depending on the costs, 600,000 euros a month is pretty good even if it doesn't last forever. > If I sound bitter - I’m not. I like Shopify. I own Shopify stock. I believe they’re completely dominating the e-commerce platform space and none of their current competitors stand a chance of catching up. I know th…
I don’t understand how Shopify can maintain market dominance as just a middleman value extractor. Probably why they’re forcing their app. I deleted my account and haven’t used Shopify since they wouldn’t let me get my order tracking any way besides the app. As someone who worked adjacent to logistics it was just the hardest hard “no” of all time for me. Money moves to easily now days to build a monopoly on e-commerce…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
EXCLUDE Shopify. 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" So it would be + "e-commerce sales" - "Shopify" > But the former, where you're actually required to suppress the results, seems anti-competitive to the point of being actionable, and is certainly not an ethical business…
I mean I do totally understand why someone would choose not to try to battle a big tech company, for sure. But it strikes me at first glance as obviously anti-competitive, and reaching out or filing a complaint with the FTC and its international equivalents would be one starting point. The FTC has been paying attention these days, you might actually get something moving.
These things are next to impossible to win for the smaller party unless you have all the time in the world and extremely deep pockets.
I can relate to the feeling of everything working against you and having to do some insanely contrived stuff to get around all the hurdles though I never faced such constraints as the author.
Entrepreneurship in the tech sector these days feels like a full circus show; you need to clown around a bit in front of investors to raise funding, when that fails, you need to ride a unicycle over crocodile infested waters, then jump through some flaming hoops, then tame a few hungry lions... Then after all this, one of the lions goes nuts and you get devoured anyway.
When you expand on something core to another company's platform, that is sometimes referred to as "picking up pennies in front of a bulldozer."
What they were doing here is usually referred to as sharecropping, because you're building your business on someone else's land/platform. The real owner can kick you out at any time, and you have no recourse.
http://weblog.raganwald.com/2004/11/sharecropping-in-orchard...
It's remarkable when stories like this reach the top of Hacker News, but then people still do not understand why one might want to build an application on a "Can't Be Evil" platform like a crypto network. Scalability/costs/complexity aside — this is why Ethereum and similar decentralized computers are attractive.
I’m surprised at all the comments focusing on the negative here. I found the story inspiring: they bootstrapped a business, grew revenue, hired some people, and grew revenue further. The founder created value and captured some of that value. The fact that the business can no longer acquire new customers is sad, but it’s only a small part of the story. The founder’s 6 year journey is probably more interesting than wha…
Yeah, the story isn't one of those "THIS IS SO UNFAAAAAAIR" things. It's just a description of what happened. Depending on the costs, 600,000 euros a month is pretty good even if it doesn't last forever. > If I sound bitter - I’m not. I like Shopify. I own Shopify stock. I believe they’re completely dominating the e-commerce platform space and none of their current competitors stand a chance of catching up. I know th…