Georgiana Laudi

Acquisition offers often start by having initial conversations.   But what happens when those initial conversations evolve into something much bigger? Here's how Étienne Mérineau and the Heyday team’s journey unfolded: Etienne was approached by a product manager from Hootsuite interested in a demo of his platform. At the time, it seemed like a straightforward request, with no hint of M&A on the horizon. But shortly after, Hootsuite went silent. During this period of silence, Etienne received inbound interest from other players in the market. Some discussions even progressed to term sheets and offers, though none were compelling enough to move forward. While Hootsuite remained quiet, it turned out they were busy finalizing an acquisition of a company adjacent to Etienne's. When the news broke, he assumed they were out of the picture.   But Hootsuite had a different strategy in mind—they saw Etienne’s company as a perfect fit to build upon their recent acquisition and bolster their story ahead of a potential IPO. It wasn't until Etienne directly confronted them, clarifying that he was already in talks with other serious investors and potential buyers, that Hootsuite made their intentions clear. The takeaway from Etienne’s experience?   In M&A, timing, patience, and strategic insight are key. It's essential to remain open to all opportunities while also being direct about your expectations and goals.   It's not just about the demo—it's about understanding the bigger picture and navigating the complexities with clarity and purpose.

32

5 Comments

A bit late on this one, but I couldn’t help sharing! 🙌 I absolutely love it when our work not only improves our clients' operations but solves real problems for their customers. As a parent of two, I know firsthand how time-consuming it can be to shop for school supplies—whether in-store or online. 🛒 The fact that Magasin Le Compte’s customers can now buy their kids' entire school supplies in just 2 minutes is a total game-changer! 🎒 This is what commerce should be about: creating thoughtful solutions that address complex needs and make life easier. A big thank you to Éric Lecompte and Annabelle Lecompte for sharing their vision and collaborating with to bring it to life. Together, we created a solution that simplifies the back-to-school rush and makes a difference for parents. Shoutout to our partners for their contribution: Gorgias, Klaviyo, Rewind, Fast Simon! Here’s to building solutions that truly make a difference! #Ecommerce #Shopify #CustomerExperience #BackToSchool #CommerceInnovation

21

3 Comments

Small Shopify history: The story of Shopify began in 2004 when three friends from Canada—Tobias Lütke, Daniel Weinand, and Scott Lake—decided to open an online snowboard shop. Tobias, a programmer by training, took on the task of developing the website but soon encountered that the e-commerce platforms available at the time did not meet their needs. They were either too limited in functionality or too complicated to set up and manage. Dissatisfied with the available solutions, Tobias decided to create his own platform that would be both powerful and easy to use. This decision led to the development of proprietary software that would allow easy launching and managing of online stores. The project took two months to complete, and ultimately, the new system not only satisfied their own needs but also showed potential for other entrepreneurs. In 2006, after successfully launching their online store, they founded Shopify—a platform that made creating and managing online stores accessible to anyone who wanted to sell products online. Initially, Shopify primarily attracted small businesses, but over time it became popular among large companies due to its scalability and flexibility. Over the years, Shopify has grown from a startup to a leading global e-commerce platform, serving hundreds of thousands of clients worldwide and having a significant impact on the global economy. If you want your own Shopify store, just DM me 😉 #shopify #history #ecommerce #splitdev

2

Toronto, get ready for us! Five years ago, Paul Veen and I visited Shopify Unite in this amazing city. This June, we're thrilled to be back to share our agency's journey with the community: "From Struggle to Strength: Surviving the Challenges of Scaling at Ask Phill". During this talk, we'll give you a sneak peek behind the scenes and share our entrepreneurial learnings, challenges, and strategies to prepare for them. Since our return from China in 2016, building Ask Phill has been a rollercoaster with ups and downs. Now, eight years later, we are leading the European Shopify ecosystem with a team of over 60 specialists who live and breathe Shopify and commerce. We've witnessed seismic shifts in the ecosystem, from Native to Headless and back again, and from pre-COVID to post-COVID. Shopify has grown from being the new kid on the block for smaller brands to becoming a global market leader, targeting the largest enterprises worldwide. We've been all-in on Shopify for good reason—while brands are increasingly moving toward Shopify, I believe the wave is still only building. However, the future is uncertain and always evolving. It's crucial to be prepared with your agency or brand to navigate these changes successfully. Get ready for some real talk about the highs and lows of growth, including a nail-biting moment when we faced a big setback. But fear not, we emerged stronger, streamlining our operations into a robust entity. Furthermore, we'll share insights into transitioning from a founder-led venture to a management-led enterprise, granting the co-founders the bandwidth to guide our team toward new horizons. In our concise 20-minute session, expect a blend of real-world anecdotes and actionable advice covering sales strategies, community cultivation, and organizational refinement. It's a pragmatic playbook tailored for partners at every stage, ready to propel their growth aspirations forward. Shopify Edisions.dev Date: 25th June, 2024 Location: Enercare Centre, Toronto Link: https://www.editions.dev/ If you're planning to visit as well, hit me up so we can have a catch up!

228

22 Comments

Amandine Servain, VP Marketing at Wunderkind is more strategic and thoughtful than most when it comes to evaluating, implementing, and measuring AI tools for Marketing. I had the opportunity to speak with her in a recent AMA and here are some of the key takeaways: 1. AI tools are best adopted when solving specific pain points, not just for the sake of using AI. Start by identifying challenges, then find tools that address them. 2. The "pod" structure for sales and marketing alignment is highly effective. Bringing together an SDR, account executive, and ABM marketer creates transparency and improves collaboration. 3. Quarterly surveys are a great way to uncover pain points and potential AI solutions from your team. It gives space for people to voice opinions they may not share in regular meetings. 4. Brand authenticity is crucial when adopting AI tools for content creation. Ensure the platform can ingest your brand voice and tone. 5. Measure AI tool impact through improved engagement metrics like open rates and click-through rates. Always start small, test, and then scale. 6. AI is currently in the "co-pilot" phase but may evolve into autonomous marketing agents. Human oversight will remain critical for strategy, authenticity, and analytics interpretation. Check out more here - https://lnkd.in/gDDjrMNq #MarketingInsights #AIinMarketing #B2BMarketing

7

The best part of Revenue Kick Offs (besides connecting with the team) is hearing from individuals with high-growth company experience. Big thank you to Emmanuelle Skala for hanging out with us at our RKO to talk about her time scaling Toast from $20M > +$1B (and her other roles at Sophos, Influitive, DigitalOcean and Endeca). Some takeaways from her chat with Philip Braden: It's everyone's responsibility to surface inefficiencies in a business. It's not solely leadership's responsibility. As you grow, not everyone can be in the room anymore. You have to trust the people delegated to make those decisions. And it's not only leaders; it's a group of people where ideas are vetted, keeping leaders grounded in reality. Get very good at running very rapid tests. As you grow, it's imperative to test changes before full implementation. Assumptions/Emotions don't matter when you have a real reason to implement change. Don't get emotional about change. Ultimately, it will be better for your career. Embrace it. You can say, "Hey, if I were to change something, here are some things that might make a difference." If you need help understanding the WHY behind the change, feel free to speak up and ask. You should have a solid answer. Alignment = common objectives and truth in data 

87

7 Comments

It's Shopify Editions conference week! I'm teaming up with Nihar for a live CRO session: Get your free ticket 👉 https://hubs.ly/Q02C6s1d0 The # 1 problem for most Shopify stores? They can't pinpoint where they lose sales. → Is it your product pages? → Your checkout flow? → Something else? Without this process, you're just guessing. We'll show you how to: 1) Identify the key conversion issues in your store 2) Analyze your full ecom funnel 3) Implement our 5-step CRO process Because in ecom, every % point matters. Fix the key elements stalling your sales. Join us today at 2pm EST!

70

16 Comments

Regarding the Shopify agency landscape… As Shopify continues to move into the enterprise space, a handful of agencies will peel off from the crowd and thrive while the rest get stuck servicing the long tail of smaller customers. Agencies I talk to are quickly learning that the buying journey for enterprise clients is so different than small brands where senior leadership is part of every conversation. They’re also learning that other agencies aren’t their competition, the big system integrators are. My advice? Don’t think about the agency next door holding a better happy hour than you, worry about Deloitte’s partners that have existing C-suite relationships that started when they were getting their MBAs together at Stanford and how to meet them where they’re at. Focus on smaller projects with champions from specific departments to get in the door, not big bang re-platforms or digital transformations. Bring them enterprise-grade technology with partners that move the needle, not a shipping calculator. Prepare to show up with humility and justify your existence every day, they likely employ people smarter than you and your goal is to stay ahead of their next questions, not deliver the same old advice recycled from smaller engagements. Agencies that learn how to engage with enterprises are about to make a ton of money, the rest are going to flounder for a while as the Shopify Plus landscape shifts under their feet. Also, there’s nothing wrong with sticking with smaller brands. They move quickly, usually pay their bills on time, and you get to help the backbone of the economy (small companies and entrepreneurs) be successful.

34

5 Comments

Who better to talk about Shopify's trajectory and future than Benjamin Lang • OLY.? In our 50th podcast episode, I had an extremely interesting conversation with Benjamin about a lot of awesome topics that are close to my heart, and I can't be more excited about what's happening in the Shopify ecosystem. For example: • B2B features • From only online commerce to commerce in the more broad sense of the word • The focus on TCO • Customer centricity I'm very grateful I had the chance to talk to Benjamin, and I hope we can do it again some time in the near future as things are moving so fast. Thanks a lot for your time and effort Benjamin! #deardigital #shopify #podcast

21

1 Comment

"Siena learns like a human would. It’s not simple input/output. No two customer interactions are the same and Siena’s AI can handle almost any customer context without pre-programing exact answers. It can even match your brand tone and voice." – Damon Dixon, Founder of douxds when douxds faced the challenges of providing swift, personalized support to their growing customer base, they turned to Siena AI. the results speak for themselves: 🚀 17% increase in CSAT scores (from 3.6 to 4.2) ⏰ 44 hours saved per month 📈 more resources allocated to marketing and growth initiatives Siena's ability to provide instant, empathic support across all channels—web, social, and email—has been a game-changer for douxds. their CX team can now focus on gathering strategic product feedback, informing and enhancing product development efforts. read the full story in the comments and reach out to us if you want to see what it's like to have Siena on your team! 🪄

29

3 Comments

Interesting watch for anyone in the Shopify & Klaviyo ecosystem. 🎥 At the recent Editions.dev conference in Toronto, Shopify CEO and founder Tobi Lütke & Klaviyo CEO Andrew Bialecki (AB) had a fireside chat discussing learnings, strategies, and challenges scaling up both businesses. 🚀 It was a great experience being at the live event, and the session was recorded for those interested in watching these two eCommerce heavyweights in conversation. Watch the insightful discussion here: https://lnkd.in/duazpj6Z #Shopify #Klaviyo #eCommerce #BusinessInsights #EditionsDev

11

1 Comment

48 revenue leaders in Toronto for a GTMfund dinner Tuesday night and this is the text Scott Barker sent me in the morning with 5 photos 😂 I’ve been asked by people before why we don’t hire a professional photographer for our dinners. I’ve considered it.  But there are pros and cons to doing so.  👍 Getting a photographer to take nice pictures increases the likelihood that people will post online about it, increasing awareness/impression. 👎 Being on the other side of a lens can unintentionally make people feel less relaxed. As a result, can be harder for them to connect authentically with others. As everything, it comes down to the objective of the event. I’ve been to dinners before where it made sense to hire a photographer, they did, and it was fantastic. Some people even came away from it with new headshots! But that’s not our objective. GTMfund LPs/Members are spread globally and we host 10 dinners per year in various geos (plus an annual retreat) to bring everyone together. It’s all about community and connection. These connections can shape the trajectory of people’s careers. So, for now at least, I don’t plan to hire a photographer. But could definitely use a new iPhone for better cellphone photos ha. Snap the selfies. It’s the most authentic representation of the event.  Half blurry? Allll good post it anyways :) What’s your take on photographers at dinners?

56

26 Comments

The 0 to 1 journey for brands growing up on Shopify today is nothing like when we started Chubbies in 2011. Here are some observations from the last 10+ years of brand building. --> When building a brand, don’t try to appeal to everyone. Define your audience clearly and engage with them deeply. When we launched Chubbies, Google was the only scalable advertising platform to reach new customers. We have Google, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Snapchat, Amazon, and more at our disposal today. This is both a blessing and a curse—you have more potential to scale, but you also have much more noise. While your team must develop best marketing practices across all the ad platforms, it’s even more critical that your products stand on their own, selling themselves across these platforms that are starting to behave more and more like marketplaces. To borrow a line from Preston 🩳 Rutherford, your products must stand out in a “sea of sameness.” Chubbies stood for carefree weekends and had a pretty irreverent voice, which made the brand unforgettable and shareable. In 2025, your brand & product must mean something unique—don’t be afraid to be polarizing. --> Don’t fight the retail math; build into it early. Here are a few universal retail truths you must never forget. 1. Master your margins early Get your product gross margin right and build towards profitable unit economics that works from Day One. In apparel, this means over 75% in product margins. It’s different for other categories—you’d know this, and you’d need to build towards hitting the number. 2. Lean into seasonality; don’t fight it Know when your customers buy. Reducing seasonality is rational, but it’s very hard to accomplish. Chubbies’ summer-centric style succeeded because it didn’t try to be “year-round.” We tried to completely own the mindshare of our audience in Spring and summer when we were most relevant. 3. Go where customers buy Whether online, in stores, or pop-up shops, just make it easy for customers to find you. Chubbies succeeded by being accessible in as many channels as possible over time. Expanding into the wholesale and owned store channels was the most effective way we reduced our reliance on ad spend. 4. Beware: economies of scale can be elusive We were taught in Economics 101 that as you get bigger, your per-unit costs should go down. As we scaled Chubbies from $5M to $50M, our supply chain became far more complex, and ultimately, there were many short-term per-unit price increases. The bottom line is that “economies of scale” aren’t always guaranteed—you have to go get them. At GoodDay, we’re continually enhancing operating tools to simplify scaling, make it more efficient, and fine-tune it to meet the demands of today’s market. For anyone starting out, remember that it’s not just about reaching audiences but also about creating an experience they want to return to. Got questions? Drop them in the comments. #omnichannel #ecommerce

43

2 Comments

Custom stacks can lead to two very real problems: depending on custom development and increased tech debt. Combined, your pace slows and ultimately, your trade-off is innovation and growth. That’s why Mejuri went from a fully custom stack to Shopify. Before Shopify, Mejuri was on an entirely custom stack: custom ecommerce, payments service, and middleware that was built to connect their custom ecommerce site to their point of sale system [POS]. This led to a ton of challenges. They were spending too much time building and maintaining 3rd party integrations to coordinate channels, data, and functionality between systems. With limited resources and team members, the trade-off of building custom features was they were not able to address their mounting technical debt. Addressing those issues in-house, slowed down their pace of innovation making them unable to deploy features as fast as they needed to. That’s the ‘invisible’ cost component with a custom stack. You spend an inordinate amount of time building custom features at the cost of innovation. Brands can avoid that with Shopify. Shopify is a natively unified ecommerce and POS system so everything just works together really really well. It doesn’t require middleware or integrations. Your customer, order, and product data flows to both channels from a single source of truth. It’s simpler and allows you to move faster. Hear about from Mejuri yourself. Rohit Nathany, the Chief Digital Officer sat down with us to talk about the pain points they faced on a custom stack. As Rohit says, what better way to simplify than to have a unified ecommerce and POS solution? See the full interview here: https://lnkd.in/eyCSdVgf

469

24 Comments

In case you missed it, here's a summary of some of the takeaways from the Toronto Product Management Association event I participated in last week

14

Four reasons Shopify is WINNNNING in the enterprise. Caveat, this is also why Andy Cloyd and myself are betting so heavily on the Shopify ecosystem in the coming years at Superfiliate Now, how are they winning? Product Velocity: Shopify's relentless product innovation is pulling enterprise brands into their ecosystem. It's not just about switching platforms, it's about Shopify's ability to integrate every crucial business need, from Shop Pay to POS to Commerce Components (CC and kudos to Ilya Grigorik) The Power of Shop Pay: This isn't just a payment method... it's become a trusted brand that drives conversion. By introducing Shop Pay to non-Shopify sites, they're starting to show significant lift, easing brands into Shopify’s full suite of solutions. Agency Migration: The shift is happening quickly. Former exclusive Salesforce Commerce Cloud agencies are now building Shopify teams. They’re attending Shopify Unite not just Dreamforce. This momentum is driving enterprise re-platforms at scale. CIO Career Moves: Just like the cloud migration was once the career-defining project for CIOs, Shopify is becoming the same for enterprise commerce. A new generation of tech leaders sees the upside, and Shopify is positioned to be their golden goose. My favorite quote from Andy about choosing Shopify as a brand: "...it starts to become stupid to be anywhere else." The leadership at the top of Shopify knows exactly what game they're playing and are building a multi-front product, technical and services infrastructure to become the dominant player. Kudos for the masterclass: Tobias Lütke, Kaz Nejatian, Jeff Hoffmeister, Mikhail Parakhin, Harley Finkelstein, Bobby Morrison, Archie Abrams, Glen Coates, Daniel Debow

161

32 Comments

i want to talk about "admin flavors", something i start to notice, is how Shopify is secretly replacing many business and ops tools. many brands we worked with at Autrement, have one way or another a business tool, a custom built technology that reflects team expertise, some brands use ERPs, some have it in-house, some use both, especially in b2b, or retail. a tool that unifies many aspects of the business, each business is unique thus each business stack has its own challenges, its own flavor i call it. what's the relation between this and that? good question. the concept of "admin flavors" is a key outcome of this approach. a flavored admin is a customized version of Shopify (operating commerce system and backoffice), tailored to meet the specific needs of different businesses especially verticals. - for instance, fashion retailers might have integrated size guides and lookbook and e-merchandising management tools inside shopify. - while food and beverage businesses could benefit from recipe databases and nutritional information blocks. - electronics retailers might have specialized warranty management and technical specification tools built into their admin interface. these customizations improve operational efficiency and allow brands to maintain their unique workflows. shopify is an open and extendable platform at its core, they give you the building bricks (extension components and apis), a map where you add them (extension points) these blocks act as bridges between shopify and other business tools, enabling seamless integration of various operations. as this process unfolds over time—an admin extension here, another there—you end up with a unified operational system. a tool that centralizes everything you use across different platforms. instead of switching between tools, which can cause significant issues, especially regarding privacy and permissions at scale, you have a single, controlled environment. in a disjointed system, a staff member might be denied access to a resource in one platform but inadvertently granted it in another for a specific task, leading to potential security breaches. a unified system helps mitigate these risks, that will ported by shopify. looking to the future, we may see the emergence of industry-specific apps offering pre-configured admin flavors for different verticals. I've personally observed this in fashion, where some solutions have moved outside Shopify to build this up, because Shopify's current admin extensibility state isn't yet mature enough to fully accommodate these tools. However, it's only a matter of time before it will be.

30

It's been a while since I've posted here, so obviously this is important (slight tone of sarcasm - but really). At Ecom North this past weekend, Canada's first and biggest (1000+ attendees), I met a lot of amazing entrepreneurs, brand owners, and agency owners. A couple common mistakes really stood out to me with the younger/newer entrepreneurs that tend to shoot themselves in the foot: 1. Needing to fulfil every requirement under the sun before getting started. Real example: A very nice lady I was speaking to was getting into the CPG supplements space, she's been working on it for months, still doesn't have a product, already wants to rework her logo, and is way too concerned about all the liabilities and insurances she should have. All before validating her business and just putting an offer online, in front of a prospective market. When building a new business there are thousands of little invisible requirements that are frankly, just that. Invisible. All you really need to focus on first, is what you're selling, and who you're selling it to. You only run into all these little invisible "requirement roadblocks" when you go looking for them. 2. Not knowing, and not being able to admit it. I get my best advice from people who are the best in the world at what they do by simply presenting my constraints, what I've tried, and then admitting I need help or I don't know something or how to do something. A young entrepreneur who was also trying to build a supplement brand was speaking to me and aside from saying his supplements were organic and natural couldn't answer my questions of "who's your customer avatar? (who are you selling to", "What's your angle? (what story do you tell them)", and "What's your specific unique selling proposition (Why should they choose you?" His answers were a slurry of "healthier option" and "organic" and "natural ingredients" and many, many, "you know???"s. No man, I don't know. That's why I'm asking you. Please tell me, and if you don't know, let's find out together, but I can't help you if you don't ask for it. Lastly, in case you haven't heard yet, yep, I've built a supplement brand. I am my customer avatar, and I'm sure there are more high performers who need a healthy dose of mental enhancement and recovery so they can move the needle with their best work. The substances we've launched are the results of my 10+ years of testing every (healthy) substance known to man in attempts to overcome my ADHD distractibility and maintain high productivity without burning out. We worked with leading FDA compliment labs in the USA to create these. The only downside is that they're kinda pricey, and the capsules are a bit big, but boy do they work, and that's what I'm excited about, functional substances that actually work.

8

4 Comments

While I have yet to read in detail why Shopify's stock is down 20% post earnings, a not widely talked about recent event did catch my eye. That is Shopify’s recent acquihire of Peel Insights. Analytics is a tough category, and has long been afterthought within Shopify as there’s not a clear monetization strategy. Yet Shopify’s Triple Whale investment and deal with Peel point to a large theme that may be at play. Demand generation has long been Shopify Achilles heal, instead relying on the likes of Meta, Google, and TikTok to drive traffic. But in the wake of privacy related issues the efficacy of media platforms in driving DTC sales is in question. This leads to a spiraling effect, as with questions comes: ** Lack of confidence of where to spend ** Lack of confidence means tighter budgets ** Tighter budgets means less revenue growth ** Less revenue growth means lower payment processing revenue for Shopify (e.g. ARR) And where does Peel’s team come into play? Tools like TripleWhale that are pixel-based are having a hard time with tracking in the wake of privacy issues. I see this as a hedged bet to work with a team that is more familiar with compliant first-party data from Shopify as well as showing impacts from external marketing sources. This is another reason why Shopify has worked so hard to in-house data feeds from the likes of Amazon Buy With Prime and TikTok Shops. While analytics may be a loss leader, smart measurement is a critical piece of confidence building both for brands and investors who fund budgets.

55

13 Comments