Bootstrapping to €600k MRR and getting killed by Shopify: Checkout X • Hacker News Board

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

#41

Post by chefandy » Thu, Jul 27, 2023, 5:38 PM UTC

selectodude wrote: post #27

idopmstuff wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Didn’t really seem like OP was asking for sympathy. Didn’t take outside money, fully bootstrapped, took his money and went home. Good for him.

If everyone involved can pivot easily enough, I'm sure it was probably a useful exercise in figuring out how to alleviate subpar product design, and getting a software project off the ground.

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

#42

Post by lolinder » Thu, Jul 27, 2023, 5:38 PM UTC

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't want them to keep operating, and the author used a technical detail of the way they phrased the ToS to justify continuing to scale.

At that point I lost all sympathy for the author. The COO of the company you've built your product on told you that they don't want you to keep running your business. At that point they shouldn't have to keep playing whack-a-mole with loopholes in the ToS, and the fact that they did does not speak well of the author or their company.

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

#43

Post by rahimnathwani » Thu, Jul 27, 2023, 5:38 PM UTC

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 what most people did at work over the past 6 years.

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

#44

Post by philipkglass » Thu, Jul 27, 2023, 5:40 PM UTC

caycep wrote: post #36

jeroenhd wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

One question in my mind is - how does TSMC structure their "platform" such that not-sherlocking-customers is incentivized into their business model?

I don't think that TSMC is really in a position to Sherlock their customers:

- Buyers of leading edge fab services have patented features in their chip designs which TSMC would violate by simple cloning.

- If TSMC wanted to profitably manufacture something like "a modern GPU, but avoiding existing patents" they'd have to expand massively beyond their current core competency of fabrication. They'd need experienced chip designers, software engineers for developing drivers and APIs, retail partners... it's a much different business.

The key thing that makes "Sherlocking" easy is that it's just imitating third party software with first party software, from a first party that is already good at making software.

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

#45

Post by locallost » Thu, Jul 27, 2023, 5:40 PM UTC

But still: congrats! Seems like a fun ride, a lot accomplished, money earned, and if I understood correctly they still have their current customers, just no new customers. So they are still getting that MRR. Maybe raise prices since the customers have no other options :-).

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

#46

Post by wongarsu » Thu, Jul 27, 2023, 5:41 PM UTC

chefandy wrote: post #26

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 not even like they were making some cool thing that just happened to only run on AWS or something. It's more like: "We improved an important but comparatively small core feature of a huge, complex service built, owned, run, maintained, and constantly improved by one company. They probably had our whole business on a Trello card in their long-term project board from the moment we started. Then, out of nowhere, th…

It can still be a great business strategy, as long as you're aware of exactly the points you outlined. You just can't run a normal startup strategy of subsidized growth, instead you have to rush through the product lifecycle towards cash cow status and make hay while the sun is shining. Once $bigcorp kills your business by implementing their backlog you pivot to something else, with the advantage of already having a huge database of people willing to pay extra for such features.

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

#47

Post by lolinder » Thu, Jul 27, 2023, 5:44 PM UTC

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 ToS to keep operating.

Shopify shouldn't have to play whack-a-mole with these guys—they made their stance very very clear and the author willfully ignored it. This isn't just a case of platform dependence, it's a case of deliberately ignoring the platform's repeated warnings that you aren't authorized to be running your business.

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

#48

Post by PUSH_AX » Thu, Jul 27, 2023, 5:46 PM UTC

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.

They’re still millions of dollars richer. It’s hard to be entitled about it because of the reasons outlined, but this was a great if ephemeral business.

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

#49

Post by politician » Thu, Jul 27, 2023, 5:46 PM UTC

caycep wrote: post #36

jeroenhd wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

One question in my mind is - how does TSMC structure their "platform" such that not-sherlocking-customers is incentivized into their business model?

As I understand it from my time at AMD, TSMC provides what is essentially an SDK for specifying how to use their process for a given node. Clients translate (compile) their higher level specifications into this framework for fabrication, and own responsibility for characterizing (testing) the resulting silicon.

This separation of responsibilities presents TSMC with a difficult reverse engineering challenge if they were interested in violating their NDA.

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

#50

Post by dtech » Thu, Jul 27, 2023, 5:46 PM UTC

caycep wrote: post #36

jeroenhd wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

One question in my mind is - how does TSMC structure their "platform" such that not-sherlocking-customers is incentivized into their business model?

They don't have to. Building a semiconductor fab is such an enormous investment and requires so much specific knowledge that it's not an attractive option, orders of magnitude harder than copying some software.

A similar question would be how Airbus prevents airlines from building their own airplanes.