However, suggesting that Shopify take responsibility for directly acquiring customers (as opposed to building tools to help merchants do so) is not only out of step with Shopify’s position in the value chain, but there is also no particularly good reason to believe that Shopify will be any better at this than their merchants. What Facebook is capab... See more

[The Shopify app Store is] just not a great place to do distribution anymore. If you go on today, you’ll see Facebook and Google at the top, which doesn’t make sense if you want to improve app discoverability.

As I’ve previously discussed, the importance of individual brands diminish on aggregator e-commerce platforms. It’s challenging to build a strong brand on Amazon because Amazon itself is the brand that consumers trust, and brands become secondary to signals like reviews and sort order. The antidote for brands is to leverage platforms that allow for... See more

The point is context — by abstracting a core function and delivering it in situ, value is created. That is achieved by removing friction or utilizing unique data. Shopify is the canonical example. In recent years, the e-commerce platform has moved beyond integrating Stripe to offer a range of embedded products, including merchant lending that uses ... See more