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theryanking's profile
Ryan Breslow
Ryan Breslow
Ryan Breslow
Verified account
@theryanking

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Ryan BreslowVerified account

@theryanking

Acknowledging the good, the bad, and the ugly is how society progresses. (my thoughts are most certainly my own)

ryantakesoff.com
Joined September 2011

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    Ryan Breslow‏Verified account @theryanking Feb 26

    Shopify is Eating their Ecosystem (thread):

    4:36 PM - 26 Feb 2022
    • 849 Retweets
    • 4,766 Likes
    • Themba Jay Martin Havlišta Guillaume Payan Aditya Rao Lomo Adrien Tsagliotis Ankur clementtang.eth|GTG ⚔️🛡 Min Lee
    160 replies 849 retweets 4,766 likes
      1. New conversation
      2. Ryan Breslow‏Verified account @theryanking Feb 26

        Of anyone in commerce, Shopify is the undeniable behemoth. They’ve made commerce accessible for independent merchants. All good, right? Not entirely…

        12 replies 10 retweets 231 likes
        Show this thread
      3. Ryan Breslow‏Verified account @theryanking Feb 26

        ~~ Background ~~ As some background, Shopify is an end-to-end commerce platform. This means that they have to provide a full suite of services out-of-the-box. With limited resources in the early days, they couldn’t build it all.

        1 reply 3 retweets 134 likes
        Show this thread
      4. Ryan Breslow‏Verified account @theryanking Feb 26

        Introducing… the Shopify App Store. Launched in 2009, the App Store allowed others to build new features for Shopify, make them accessible to Shopify merchants, and make money. Startups and developers went to work.

        1 reply 3 retweets 134 likes
        Show this thread
      5. Ryan Breslow‏Verified account @theryanking Feb 26

        The App Store blossomed 🌼🌼 Developers and startups flocked, many of which built entire businesses on top of it. It was a thriving community.

        1 reply 1 retweet 115 likes
        Show this thread
      6. Ryan Breslow‏Verified account @theryanking Feb 26

        Shopify benefited tremendously from this ecosystem. Developer partners provided critical functionality since the earliest days. With them, Shopify would not be what it is today. For context, Shopify is now worth $80B+.

        1 reply 0 retweets 125 likes
        Show this thread
      7. Ryan Breslow‏Verified account @theryanking Feb 26

        Anyone familiar with the history of Shopify knows this: It has been built by partners.

        1 reply 2 retweets 135 likes
        Show this thread
      8. Ryan Breslow‏Verified account @theryanking Feb 26

        But as Shopify grew, they had a decision to make: Prioritize openness and commit to empowering the community. -or- Replicate these apps as their own products, sell them, and drive direct revenue.

        1 reply 5 retweets 141 likes
        Show this thread
      9. Ryan Breslow‏Verified account @theryanking Feb 26

        What was their decision? Twofold: 1/ Publicly commit to being open: thus incentivizing more partners to build on them. See their post on “community over competition”https://www.shopify.com/partners/blog/business-competition …

        1 reply 6 retweets 161 likes
        Show this thread
      10. Ryan Breslow‏Verified account @theryanking Feb 26

        2/ Clone the most profitable apps: putting those partners either out of business or at a significant disadvantage.

        5 replies 1 retweet 160 likes
        Show this thread
      11. Ryan Breslow‏Verified account @theryanking Feb 26

        Effectively, Shopify uses app partners as their R&D engine. Anyone too successful gets cloned. *The problem: you don’t know until it’s too late.* Shopify has been telling you they are here to support you the entire time.

        6 replies 16 retweets 275 likes
        Show this thread
      12. Ryan Breslow‏Verified account @theryanking Feb 26

        ~~ Let’s take a look at some prominent examples ~~ In 2013, Shopify launches as Shopify Payments, their own payment processor amidst an ecosystem of 100s of other payment processors. Fun fact: Stripe powers this; accounting for a large % of Stripe’s total volume.

        3 replies 3 retweets 155 likes
        Show this thread
      13. Ryan Breslow‏Verified account @theryanking Feb 26

        Then comes: Shopify Shipping (2015) Shopify Capital (2016) Shopify Arrive, order tracking (2017) Shopify Fraud Protect (2018) Shopify Email Marketing (2019) ...

        2 replies 3 retweets 118 likes
        Show this thread
      14. Ryan Breslow‏Verified account @theryanking Feb 26

        Shopify Fulfillment (2020) Shopify Subscriptions (2020) Shopify POS (2020) Shopify Balance, cards & bank accounts (2020) Shopify Installments (2021) ... and much more.

        3 replies 2 retweets 119 likes
        Show this thread
      15. Ryan Breslow‏Verified account @theryanking Feb 26

        Few are safe from Shopify cloning their products. Marketing tools would surely be far enough outside their core focus, right? Not anymore. Shopify has an entire suite of marketing tools.

        1 reply 2 retweets 114 likes
        Show this thread
      16. Ryan Breslow‏Verified account @theryanking Feb 26

        Shopify will rarely “kick out” anyone directly due to the PR backlash. Instead, they put restrictions that drive superiority to their own product. Mailchimp received so many data limitations that it had to break up with Shopify (April 2019).

        3 replies 2 retweets 156 likes
        Show this thread
      17. Ryan Breslow‏Verified account @theryanking Feb 26

        That said, rebuilding Mailchimp is pretty darn hard. Shopify learned that lesson. After realizing this, they “made up” with Mailchimp and lifted the restrictions (Oct 2021). I can’t imagine how tough this was for Mailchimp and the thousands of Shopify merchants using them.

        1 reply 5 retweets 179 likes
        Show this thread
      18. Ryan Breslow‏Verified account @theryanking Feb 26

        ~~ The Bolt Story ~~ Bolt was founded in 2014 with a vision to build the world’s most delightful checkout. An early focus (2016) was Shopify, given their growth and traction. We built our product and signed up droves of merchants who loved it.

        1 reply 1 retweet 121 likes
        Show this thread
      19. Ryan Breslow‏Verified account @theryanking Feb 26

        Like many Shopify app startups, we were helping improve the Shopify ecosystem. Checkout was a sore spot of theirs for many years.

        1 reply 0 retweets 87 likes
        Show this thread
      20. Ryan Breslow‏Verified account @theryanking Feb 26

        Then something interesting happened. Shopify’s checkout got an uplift. It was just like Bolt.

        1 reply 0 retweets 86 likes
        Show this thread
      21. Ryan Breslow‏Verified account @theryanking Feb 26

        But that’s not all. Then Shop Pay launched (2017). It was Bolt’s seamless one-click authentication flow almost exactly.

        1 reply 0 retweets 96 likes
        Show this thread
      22. Ryan Breslow‏Verified account @theryanking Feb 26

        Shopify was copying Bolt. Even still, I held onto the hope that we would simply let the best product win. Their philosophy is “community over competition.” And any time we spoke with them, they reassured us of this.

        2 replies 1 retweet 102 likes
        Show this thread
      23. Ryan Breslow‏Verified account @theryanking Feb 26

        We kept building features, making checkout even better. … And then one day we got an interesting email:pic.twitter.com/TBIJHn62Jz

        1 reply 2 retweets 110 likes
        Show this thread
      24. Ryan Breslow‏Verified account @theryanking Feb 26

        Harley - Shopify’s COO - wanted to meet. We had our call a couple days later, and he told me he had some bad news and some good news.

        1 reply 0 retweets 87 likes
        Show this thread
      25. Ryan Breslow‏Verified account @theryanking Feb 26

        The bad: they were banning all external checkout providers on Shopify. The good: he believed in Bolt and wanted to make us the only exception to that rule 😇 I felt honored and hopeful.

        2 replies 0 retweets 95 likes
        Show this thread
      26. Ryan Breslow‏Verified account @theryanking Feb 26

        Harley’s ask: in order to be a good partner we should unwind our Shopify integrations. i.e. turn off Bolt on all our Shopify merchants. In turn, they’d work with Bolt on a formal partnership. We wanted to be a formal Shopify partner badly. So, we followed instructions.

        1 reply 0 retweets 95 likes
        Show this thread
      27. Ryan Breslow‏Verified account @theryanking Feb 26

        1 by 1, we turned off our customers on Shopify. I reassured our team, who had poured so much into our customers, that it was for the best. The COO had said explicitly that they wanted to partner. Quickly, nearly 100 customers that we had spent 4yrs cultivating were turned off.

        2 replies 3 retweets 96 likes
        Show this thread
      28. Ryan Breslow‏Verified account @theryanking Feb 26

        What happened next was a rude awakening to the world of business. We followed the instructions. And then… Harley never answered back.

        3 replies 4 retweets 176 likes
        Show this thread
      29. Ryan Breslow‏Verified account @theryanking Feb 26

        I sent countless emails with no replies. Here I send a reply explaining what we'd need to make Bolt's checkout work with Shopify. *Note: I say it's a subpar merchant experience due to the API restrictions we faced; I'm not saying Bolt is a subpar experience.pic.twitter.com/F0wWWNnkl1

        3 replies 5 retweets 140 likes
        Show this thread
      30. Ryan Breslow‏Verified account @theryanking Feb 26

        And several more, no reply…pic.twitter.com/ExSJ8a8fdc

        1 reply 1 retweet 89 likes
        Show this thread
      31. Ryan Breslow‏Verified account @theryanking Feb 26

        We were ghosted time and time again. For years, I kept up the optimism.

        2 replies 0 retweets 140 likes
        Show this thread
      32. Show replies

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