I own Shopify stock
Bootstrapping to €600k MRR and getting killed by Shopify: Checkout X
171–180 of 204 posts
Re: Bootstrapping to €600k MRR and getting killed by Shopify: Checkout X
#172The 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…
> The COO of the company you've built your product on told you that they don't want you to keep running your business. That doesn't sound like a reasonable request. It's not like the COO is paying them anything to stop running their business. Can you imagine if Microsoft shutdown, because IBM asked them nicely to stop their business back in the 80s?
When you've built your business on helping your customers use Shopify's product without your customer having to pay Shopify for it... it's a pretty reasonable request to knock it off.
Re: Bootstrapping to €600k MRR and getting killed by Shopify: Checkout X
#173Don't build your house in another man's land.
It's been said elsewhere, but they were scrappy, nimble and never lost sight of their position.
I'd say it's a _huge win.
Re: Bootstrapping to €600k MRR and getting killed by Shopify: Checkout X
#174I'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…
Sure, that's the conventional wisdom, but it seems sort of out of context here.
This guy gambled and won, bootstrapping a €600k MRR business which is still printing money to this day (Shopify killed the growth, not the business). This guys already made more money than the majority of European developers do in their entire career. I fail to see the downside.
Re: Bootstrapping to €600k MRR and getting killed by Shopify: Checkout X
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
He will get something moving alright: Shopify will nix his partner agreement in a heartbeat and it will never ever be re-instated. 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.
It seems unlikely to me that simply contacting a federal regulator (while not actually breaking the TOS) would result in that kind of retaliation.
Presumably Shopify has at least one person in their general counsel’s office that’s not a complete fucking moron.
Re: Bootstrapping to €600k MRR and getting killed by Shopify: Checkout X
#176The comments are generally impressed at the “600k monthly revenue” and while I am too, is that “our business was grossing 600k/month” or “the sites we supported were grossing 600k/month through our checkout”? These are … very different.
Re: Bootstrapping to €600k MRR and getting killed by Shopify: Checkout X
#177It'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.
How exactly would using a crypto network help with this story of the author creating a Shopify app?
Re: Bootstrapping to €600k MRR and getting killed by Shopify: Checkout X
#178This is a very expected outcome if you are creating your business around improving a larger business' product. You are effectively doing the product/market fit for them, for free. Once they see that your solution works, they will just knock it off, or ban you altogether. It used to be seen by companies as bad PR/karma a couple of decades ago, but not anymore.
> You are effectively doing the product/market fit for them, for free If $600k/mo is what you consider free, I'd absolutely love to do some free work for you!
On HN, it is either your product is crap or a room-temperature-superconductor-like.
There is nothing in between. 600k per month? Is that enough to live in SF?
Edit: I forgot the moat. Without moat, it doesn't matter if you make a trillion dollar a month, your product would still be crap.
Re: Bootstrapping to €600k MRR and getting killed by Shopify: Checkout X
#179It'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.
How would a crypto network help here?
Crypto almost always could have solved anything.
Re: Bootstrapping to €600k MRR and getting killed by Shopify: Checkout X
#180Earlier 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…
Always wonder why Shopify is needed. In my case a lot of banks provide consistent APIs or buttons for payments. Numerous providers that aggregate those APIs, but no one forcing You. No need to pay middleman