7 ms·

Shopify grows Q3 revenue 93%

92 points by Oatseller 11y ago

dangrossman 11y ago
Developers that always wanted to have their own side business, take note. This is the kind of opportunity you should always be looking for: a rapidly growing platform, full of small businesses with money to spend if you can help them, and a developer-friendly interface for you to do so. Shopify has a highly trafficked app store that makes your additions to stores plug-and-play, and they'll even take care of billing for you.
- econner 11y ago
  You're saying help small businesses build presence on Shopify?
  - dangrossman 11y ago
    Thousands of people built very successful businesses selling services, plugins and themes for WordPress users. Shopify as a platform shares many of the same qualities -- it's developer-friendly, with lots of small business users, and the opportunity to sell everything from custom development to prepackaged apps and themes. The user base, your potential market, is growing rapidly, and it's still young enough that there are thousands of niches to fill.
- chrshawkes 11y ago
  you must work for shopify, si? Volusion is pretty good too.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - bdcravens 11y ago
    I'm sure it's just a good example of a potential app store. Bigcommerce has a similar one.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
  - damon_c 11y ago
    I take it you have not developed plugins for both. In my experience, Volusion is not in the same league as Shopify with respect to ease/flexibility/features of integration.
- throwaway956 11y ago
  Asides from the general warning against building a (long-term) business on someone else's platform, I'd caution against developing for Shopify in particular. Vague, inconsistent and non-obvious guidelines with regards to themes and apps and sudden (and unannounced) changes in policy have bitten my company in the past. I wouldn't go as far as to say that Shopify are hostile to developers, and some are clearly very successful, but I now approach the Shopify platform by being constantly ready to write off any time invested in building for it. To be fair, you can say precisely the same about building for Apple's App Store and the Google Play Store, and others. But Shopify is certainly equally capricious. (Throwaway, because I still have apps and themes in the ecosystem.)
  - reitanqild 11y ago
    Not a native speaker so I may have missed the nuances here but I don't see why parent comment was flagged to death.
  - drchiu 11y ago
    I'm curious to know as I'm not knowledgable about how Shopify has messed with developers in the past. What kind of tactics or things have Shopify done that has been developer unfriendly?
    - throwaway2999 11y ago
      I personally had shopify sit on the 'approval' process for my app for a month. The day before they rejected it, they added similar functionality to my own. I think they were waiting for their own update to drop. I don't believe they 'stole my idea' but its still kinda shitty.
      - drchiu 11y ago
        If you don't mind my asking (and for the benefit for other developers here), what kind of functionality was it?
  - xal 11y ago
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- gavinballard 11y ago
  As someone who has built a comfortably profitable business focused purely on Shopify-related products and services, I agree that it's a great market to be in. I understand and can relate to some of the hardships the sibling throwaway comment is referring to, but I feel you're going to face challenges whatever you do when building a business, and this is simply one that I'm comfortable with choosing.
- throwaway13337 11y ago
  Shopify's app platform is pretty crowded compared to other ecommerce platforms. This is good for shopify users and bad for shopify app developers. An ecommerce platform that has very little support by developers but a ton of uptake by users is Magento. They desperately need functionality that is given away as free apps for shopify users. Of course, Magento is a php platform so it's not nearly as sexy to developers (me included).
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - ceejayoz 11y ago
    As someone who's briefly worked on Magento themes and plugins, there's a reason it has little developer support.
cdnsteve 11y ago
Shopify is a great Canadian success story. However their stock is currently taking a beating. It has lost 21% on the TSX over the past month.
- rstupek 11y ago
  They aren't making any profits (loss of $4.7 million last quarter). Revenue does not equal profit.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - goodJobWalrus 11y ago
    Do you know, were they ever profitable?
    - pen2l 11y ago
      I don't understand how can they not be. I mean, compared to stuff like Snapchat or whatever which has dubious monetization schemes, Shopify is solidly built and offers a service that so many are willing to actually pay for. Maybe it's the costs of building things in the beginning? I really think they'll be fine... until at least Amazon or some other big player gets in their turf.
      - davefp 11y ago
        I think they're simply ploughing all their revenue back into growth through sales/marketing. If they wanted to they could turn down the customer acquisition spend and ride their recurring revenue to a tidy profit.
        jacquesm 11y ago
        That depends. In the case of shopify probably yes, but you'd have to look very closely at the life-time value of those customers. There is a small possibility that if they turned down the rate of acquisition that the retention would be just poor enough that they would not make it to profitability, or alternatively that they would be profitable only for a short while. This can be quite hard to establish, especially for companies that have raised significant capital (Shopify raised $120M+), they can keep that from happening for a long long time. For companies that have not raised significant capital, if they're able to finance their growth out of their income stream then yes, they can convert to profitable overnight.
PostThisTooFast 11y ago
You don't "grow" revenue. You don't exist a new service. You don't die germs. You use transitive verbs when you want to direct them at an object.
- mikesickler 11y ago
  "Grow" is both transitive and intransitive.
siscia 11y ago
The financial statement is way more interesting of the article... They are spending ~10M for developing the platform and ~18M for sales and marketing. If they had completely shut down the the marketing side they would have bring around ~14M of profit this quarter. They have around ~150M in the bank, so they can keep growing like this for other 3 years.
- guiomie 11y ago
  So you are saying the marketing resulted in no revenue?
  - siscia 11y ago
    Hummm... No... I am just exposing fact that weren't so obvious at first sight...
- tonyedgecombe 11y ago
  If they had shut down the marketing side they might be heading for bankruptcy. Customers don't just line up at your door because you created a product.

92 points by Oatseller 11y ago

Developers that always wanted to have their own side business, take note. This is the kind of opportunity you should always be looking for: a rapidly growing platform, full of small businesses with money to spend if you can help them, and a developer-friendly interface for you to do so. Shopify has a highly trafficked app store that makes your additions to stores plug-and-play, and they'll even take care of billing for you.

econner 11y ago
You're saying help small businesses build presence on Shopify?
- dangrossman 11y ago
  Thousands of people built very successful businesses selling services, plugins and themes for WordPress users. Shopify as a platform shares many of the same qualities -- it's developer-friendly, with lots of small business users, and the opportunity to sell everything from custom development to prepackaged apps and themes. The user base, your potential market, is growing rapidly, and it's still young enough that there are thousands of niches to fill.
chrshawkes 11y ago
you must work for shopify, si? Volusion is pretty good too.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- bdcravens 11y ago
  I'm sure it's just a good example of a potential app store. Bigcommerce has a similar one.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
- damon_c 11y ago
  I take it you have not developed plugins for both. In my experience, Volusion is not in the same league as Shopify with respect to ease/flexibility/features of integration.
throwaway956 11y ago
Asides from the general warning against building a (long-term) business on someone else's platform, I'd caution against developing for Shopify in particular. Vague, inconsistent and non-obvious guidelines with regards to themes and apps and sudden (and unannounced) changes in policy have bitten my company in the past. I wouldn't go as far as to say that Shopify are hostile to developers, and some are clearly very successful, but I now approach the Shopify platform by being constantly ready to write off any time invested in building for it. To be fair, you can say precisely the same about building for Apple's App Store and the Google Play Store, and others. But Shopify is certainly equally capricious. (Throwaway, because I still have apps and themes in the ecosystem.)
- reitanqild 11y ago
  Not a native speaker so I may have missed the nuances here but I don't see why parent comment was flagged to death.
- drchiu 11y ago
  I'm curious to know as I'm not knowledgable about how Shopify has messed with developers in the past. What kind of tactics or things have Shopify done that has been developer unfriendly?
  - throwaway2999 11y ago
    I personally had shopify sit on the 'approval' process for my app for a month. The day before they rejected it, they added similar functionality to my own. I think they were waiting for their own update to drop. I don't believe they 'stole my idea' but its still kinda shitty.
    - drchiu 11y ago
      If you don't mind my asking (and for the benefit for other developers here), what kind of functionality was it?
- xal 11y ago
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
gavinballard 11y ago
As someone who has built a comfortably profitable business focused purely on Shopify-related products and services, I agree that it's a great market to be in. I understand and can relate to some of the hardships the sibling throwaway comment is referring to, but I feel you're going to face challenges whatever you do when building a business, and this is simply one that I'm comfortable with choosing.
throwaway13337 11y ago
Shopify's app platform is pretty crowded compared to other ecommerce platforms. This is good for shopify users and bad for shopify app developers. An ecommerce platform that has very little support by developers but a ton of uptake by users is Magento. They desperately need functionality that is given away as free apps for shopify users. Of course, Magento is a php platform so it's not nearly as sexy to developers (me included).
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- ceejayoz 11y ago
  As someone who's briefly worked on Magento themes and plugins, there's a reason it has little developer support.

cdnsteve 11y ago

Shopify is a great Canadian success story. However their stock is currently taking a beating. It has lost 21% on the TSX over the past month.

rstupek 11y ago
They aren't making any profits (loss of $4.7 million last quarter). Revenue does not equal profit.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- goodJobWalrus 11y ago
  Do you know, were they ever profitable?
  - pen2l 11y ago
    I don't understand how can they not be. I mean, compared to stuff like Snapchat or whatever which has dubious monetization schemes, Shopify is solidly built and offers a service that so many are willing to actually pay for. Maybe it's the costs of building things in the beginning? I really think they'll be fine... until at least Amazon or some other big player gets in their turf.
    - davefp 11y ago
      I think they're simply ploughing all their revenue back into growth through sales/marketing. If they wanted to they could turn down the customer acquisition spend and ride their recurring revenue to a tidy profit.
      - jacquesm 11y ago
        That depends. In the case of shopify probably yes, but you'd have to look very closely at the life-time value of those customers. There is a small possibility that if they turned down the rate of acquisition that the retention would be just poor enough that they would not make it to profitability, or alternatively that they would be profitable only for a short while. This can be quite hard to establish, especially for companies that have raised significant capital (Shopify raised $120M+), they can keep that from happening for a long long time. For companies that have not raised significant capital, if they're able to finance their growth out of their income stream then yes, they can convert to profitable overnight.

PostThisTooFast 11y ago

You don't "grow" revenue. You don't exist a new service. You don't die germs. You use transitive verbs when you want to direct them at an object.

mikesickler 11y ago
"Grow" is both transitive and intransitive.

siscia 11y ago

The financial statement is way more interesting of the article... They are spending ~10M for developing the platform and ~18M for sales and marketing. If they had completely shut down the the marketing side they would have bring around ~14M of profit this quarter. They have around ~150M in the bank, so they can keep growing like this for other 3 years.

guiomie 11y ago
So you are saying the marketing resulted in no revenue?
- siscia 11y ago
  Hummm... No... I am just exposing fact that weren't so obvious at first sight...
tonyedgecombe 11y ago
If they had shut down the marketing side they might be heading for bankruptcy. Customers don't just line up at your door because you created a product.