Misha Abasov

It's now increasingly possible for founders who are technically capable - and smart enough to realize that experience is a more important differentiator than ever - to pull back some of their tech stack. People are going to continue to move away from Shopify to consider the alternatives - especially as Shopify does away with third-party integrations - or they're going to push Shopify to its limits by focusing on building a custom front-end that better serves their needs. Even though Shopify is technically "built for CRO," it's also a lowest-common denominator scenario, because there's simply no way they can address all the potential use cases in play. Therefore, if a differentiated experience is a premium for your brand, gravitating toward no-code builders and a headless CMS as an alterative as Shopify is a reasonable way to maintain greater control. What are your thoughts about Shopify and its alternatives as no-code improves and technical founders want to take more control back? Tell me about it in the comments below. --- 💎 Hi, I'm Jonathan, the CEO of Boom Labs. 💎 We're an outsourced solution for those sticky Growth Marketing problems that need an experienced resource. 💎 I write about accelerating the growth of your eCommerce business through testing, optimization, and a measured approach to incremental wins. 💎 Follow me for more!

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It's now increasingly possible for founders who are technically capable - and smart enough to realize that experience is a more important differentiator than ever - to pull back some of their tech stack. People are going to continue to move away from Shopify to consider the alternatives - especially as Shopify does away with third-party integrations - or they're going to push Shopify to its limits by focusing on building a custom front-end that better serves their needs. Even though Shopify is technically "built for CRO," it's also a lowest-common denominator scenario, because there's simply no way they can address all the potential use cases in play. Therefore, if a differentiated experience is a premium for your brand, gravitating toward no-code builders and a headless CMS as an alterative as Shopify is a reasonable way to maintain greater control. What are your thoughts about Shopify and its alternatives as no-code improves and technical founders want to take more control back? Tell me about it in the comments below. --- 💎 Hi, I'm Jonathan, the CEO of Boom Labs. 💎 We're an outsourced solution for those sticky Growth Marketing problems that need an experienced resource. 💎 I write about accelerating the growth of your eCommerce business through testing, optimization, and a measured approach to incremental wins. 💎 Follow me for more!

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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

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Save time. Reduce chance of errors. Introduce a process everyone loves. That's the dream scenario any time we partner with people and finance leaders on comp planning, and working with Michelle and Sarah at Hopper has been just that over the last couple years. We were able to sit down and chat with them about the progress we've made together, and it was super rewarding to reflect on the results: ▶ Cut comp cycle prep time by ~90%, from weeks to just hours. ▶ Sped up the review approval process with improved access to data and collaboration. ▶ Saved hours of work for both the HR and finance teams. ▶ Ensured a highly repeatable process for future cycles. Read Hopper's story here 🐇 https://lnkd.in/g23FjRWf

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As a web developer, I’ve noticed something interesting: people feel more confident when shopping on websites built with Shopify. It’s amazing to see the level of trust Shopify has earned among online shoppers. What surprises me is how often I hear people specifically mention that a site is built with Shopify and how that immediately boosts their confidence in making a purchase. It’s a testament to the platform’s reliability and user-friendly experience. In a world where online trust is everything, choosing the right platform can make all the difference. That’s why I’m proud to build with Shopify—it’s a platform that not only supports businesses but also helps customers feel secure in their buying decisions. #Ecommerce #WebDevelopment #Shopify #CustomerTrust #OnlineShopping

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🎙️ "We hire people who are well aligned to our mission and who are really awesome at their craft. So at the core, it's a company for craftspeople, right?" - Eytan Seidman - Director of Product at Shopify It was interesting to hear Eytan's perspective on Dev Interrupted this week. Too often, it's easy for modern software teams to be thought of as an industrial process, like an assembly line, instead of a group of skilled problem solvers. To combat this negative perspective and the churn risk it creates within your engineering org, Eytan and I explored how Shopify creates an exceptional developer experience for both internal teams and external developers using their platform. Eytan shared with us how Shopify’s high-context, high-autonomy culture empowers engineers and product managers to innovate and make a real impact. By fostering a mission-driven environment, they ensure that developers can contribute without being bogged down by inefficient processes. If you're interested in building elite engineering teams and cultivating a culture of innovation, this episode is a must-listen. Check out the full episode 👇 https://lnkd.in/gMzKiCbR #DeveloperExperience #EngineeringLeadership #Shopify #TechInnovation #ProductManagement

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Shopify is not for small brands. Not anymore. Enterprise, B2B brands are leveraging the best of Shopify platform. Bobby Morrison has a point here.

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HOT question: How much HubSearch swag should I pack in my suitcase tonight? LIKE this post if you plan on stopping by Admin Central during INBOUND!! *The map is in the comments so you can find us 🙂

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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

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I have a confession... I love Shopify's new free theme Trade. That's counterintuitive right? My company makes premium themes for Shopify that cost money. Trade is my competition, but I keep coming back to it. Sure, it's missing some stuff. The nav isn't the best, it's not got all the sexy animations or cart features of other themes but it knows who it wants to be. It is a B2B theme. Arguably, the first purpose built B2B theme. The native quantity rules? Elegant. The built in quick order form for product variants? Effortless. It is clear that Shopify is pushing hard into this segment and it is laying down the gauntlet. Competition is good, thank you Shopify.

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Greatly enjoyed the conversation between Kyle and Mark (ex VP revenue at Shopify). Some interesting bits: > shopify did not have variable compensation for sales leaders in order to encourage a long term focus. > kyle’s own advice to founders is to steer *away* from the typical 50-50 base to variable comp structure for sales leaders. Series A-B companies are constantly changing quotas and forecasts, and having a high variable comp brings in a short term focus which leads to bad customer quality, and culture problems. > once a week, Mark, a sales leader, would meet with someone from engineering to understand their mental model of the product and business, and understand the technical challenges they grapple with. This was super helpful in influencing the product roadmap.

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Deadline approaching for Shopify merchants... 👀 The deadline for upgrading checkout.liquid is right around the corner. 🗓️ If you were optimizing your flow that is. And for the others... This might be a good time to give that checkout experience a boost. Why bother? More sales. ⬆️ A smoother checkout means fewer abandoned carts. Happier customers. 😸 They’ll appreciate the easy, intuitive process. And of course - greater customization flexibility. Check the official announcement here https://lnkd.in/ecBZw5QZ and ask away if you have any questions - I'm here to help. 😊

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We wrangled our whole team to Ottawa to celebrate Downpay's 2 year anniversary 😭 I can't believe how far we've come. Downpay's first year was Denis and I figuring out our MVP and finding the core problem we wanted to solve. In August of 2023, we publicly launched Downpay on the Shopify App Store. Fast forward to today and it's insane how far we've come. ✨ 6+ team members have helped... ✨ 800+ Shopify Brands process... ✨ $40M+ extra GMV with partial and deferred payments. 😍 Not to mention metrics I'd never thought I'd see in my #productmanagement career. ⭐️ + 47% checkout conversion ⭐️ + 25% AOV bumps ⭐️ + 30% increase in online sales ⭐️ Millions in GMV processed in less than a day, TWICE I'm so incredibly lucky to be on this journey with all these amazing humans who have the best laughing faces. Denis Zgonjanin Ian Kelly Brittney Oberfeld Jeremy Hanson-Finger Alain Achkar BFCM, Holiday season, 2025, we're here for it! 💪🏻 Let's go. 🚀 #shopify #startup

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Some Shopify brands are customer-centric, and then there's DOLAN. When you meet a customer-centric Founder, it's unmistakable. Jodie Dolan built an impressive scrubs brand that emerged in a competitive market with a best-in-class product and an organizational framing that truly puts the customer at the center of *everything* they do. As a size-inclusive brand, that obsession over the customer experience led her to provide her web visitors with the confidence to convert with The Dolan Difference. If you can't find your size, they'll straight up make you a custom pair. Now that's an unwavering commitment to the customer. Keep up the impressive growth, Jodie Dolan and Philip Atkins!

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What Does Shopify's Peel Analytics Acquisition Mean? If you missed it, Shopify made another acquisition in the last few months that is just starting to get some light shed on it. The company is called Peel Analytics, and it fits the mold of many of Shopify's smaller acquisition - it is a capability that it wishes to see in its platform. In short, the capabilities reflect a larger shift in DTC. From customer file growth to customer file optimization and activation. Here are some of the capabilities I expect to come to Shopify as a result of this acquisition (based on analysis of Peel's case studies): * Filtering out any messy or junk data in-platform rather than off-platform * Creating segmented audiences group (repeat purchasers, SKU and region filters), which then interface with Klaviyo and Attentive. * Cohort reporting out of the box, in particular with regards to behavior of customers acquired via influencer discounts. * Customizable reports including LTV calculations, CAC, LTV to CAC, returning orders and customers * "Frequently purchased together" and other types of product reporting based on market basket analysis. * Some subscriber reporting that previously you may have only been able to get in subscription platforms themselves. While Klaviyo is building a CDP, I expect that Shopify feels these Audience features will be a standard part of DTC going forward, and so should not erode much from where Klaviyo is headed. First, Shopify's Shop Cash offers have recently become "Shop Campaigns" and no doubt this acquisition is part of the reason for that. Also the elevation of Customers as a key concept within Shopify seems like one of their plans. Similar to the way Shopify has wanted to be the home of all checkouts and orders, I expect Shopify has started to feel that customer segmentation and analysis should happen on-platform rather off. Who is to worry? I don't think many companies have too much to worry about generally. On the other hand, some reporting-centric companies like Daasity and Triplewhale will likely have to move further up-market to continue to compete. The "Shopify reporting" space has gotten over-crowded in the last few years which is likely one of Shopify's signals that the base platform needed upgrades. I do think some of the lower-end subscription platforms could end up in the crosshairs also. How might this shape Shopify's Platform? I don't expect this solution to do so much for mid and upper-level Shopify Plus customers, but it could give Shopify a few more reporting capabilities to add to base tiers, and it's possible that more customizable reporting could become a Plus or even an full Enterprise feature. It's also not hard to imagine a Shopify where future Enterprise users may separately for a Data or Reporting module.

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Are you ready to unlock the full potential of Product Operations? 🔍 Only 2 weeks left until Product Ops: 101 - Getting Started with Product Operations on October 30, 2024, led by Denise Tilles! With only 2 spots left, this hands-on workshop will give you practical tools to implement and scale Product Ops strategies. By the end, you'll have a clear roadmap to drive better outcomes within your organization. Secure your spot now: https://lnkd.in/exBcs2V5 🎟️ #productops101 #productoperations #productmanagement #workshop

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On September 15, Shopify experienced downtime in the Add to Cart flow. Google Ads experienced an outage last week. To quantify this for all of you, in 2023, Shopify alone had 170 outages - most of them impacting Do you know how it impacted you and were you aware of it? With the upcoming holiday season, you want to know when Shopify (eCommerce platform) or your adtech and martech issues impact you. Shoppers are in a frenzy during this period, and even a brief system error can lead to thousands of dollars in lost revenue and even worse - wasted spend. This is money down the drain! The worst part is you don’t instantly realize when the issue happened, whether the problem is with Shopify itself or other parts of your infrastructure like custom code, third-party integrations, or apps. That’s why you need Out Of The Blue™ We monitor your key eCommerce systems in real-time, ensuring they stay operational when it matters most. Our continuous monitoring helps detect revenue-impacting events that need action - from delivering the best shopping experience by keeping your site working seamlessly to data disruptions to your adtech and martech platforms. For example, once you know that there’s an outage, you can: - communicate with customers - pause spend ad campaigns - reallocate spend to other working channels By staying on top of these issues, you can stop revenue leakage and keep your store running smoothly. Want to understand more about how you can save your revenue? DM me, and I’ll help. #ecommercegrowth #dataanalytics #revenueleakage #adtech #martech

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📍 Lake Louise | Banff National Park | Alberta, Canada How often do you take a moment to reflect on how far you've come? (I'm about to tie this to your company's RevOps maturity, buckle up) ↪ tl;dr you can skip ahead here to take our RevOps maturity quiz: https://lnkd.in/eA7rVeQ4 September always feels like my "new year" (birthday month), so August is always a time of reflection. Couple that with the STUNNING views I've been able to see on this trip -- I'm thinking a lot about the journey and the obstacles I've overcome these days: 📌 August 2020: COVID summer. Had just narrowly lost the most meaningful political campaign of my life with Suraj Patel. But so proud of what we accomplished. Figuring out the next campaign. Mixed emotions. 📌 August 2021: Two extremely painful personal challenges hit at once. Was running my own LLC (Cassie Communications) and consulting for a variety of clients. Starting to really feel the politics burnout. Proud of myself for going solo! 📌 August 2022: Reachdesk / BDR summer! Incredibly grateful for this time. Heart full with community, learning a new industry, summer memories in NYC. Had officially "made it" past the tough stuff - so I thought. 📌 August 2023: Landed in NYC from a month in Europe and fell into the worst depression of my life. So unsure about next career steps, so embarrassed about having depression. Makes no sense but I truly didn't see a way out. 📌 August 2024: Have a dream role at the intersection of content/community/events with RevPartners. Empowering personal brands. Road tripping across the PNW and Canadian Rockies. SO extremely grateful for this season and lesson that the toughest of challenges can have light at the end. I'm not sure if this is everyone, but I personally find a lot of meaning in reflecting on my journey over the years. I'm not perfect, I've made big mistakes, had incredibly painful seasons, and learned so much. And maybe that's the whole name of the game. ➡ Here's the classic tie in to B2B: reflecting on your journey isn't just for the personal stuff, you can also do so in your business! At RevPartners, our team has put together a RevOps maturity quiz to help you benchmark your current level of data visibility, CRM leverage, and KPIs to drive growth. ▶ ▶▶ Take it here: https://lnkd.in/eA7rVeQ4 My made up company received a Level 2... lots to work on, haha! If you take the quiz (or have some personal reflections), comment and let me know where you're at in your journey! Repost this one ♻ if only to reach one other person who struggles with depression. LinkedIn was a big part of my light in the darkness, and it's important to me to be that for others!

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Inspired by a recent post by Kevin Jurovich: Top acquired companies with small teams. How much did the acquirer value each employee? Twitch: 100 employees @ $970M acquisition → $9.7M / employee Waze: 100 employees @ $1.1B acquisition → $11M / employee YouTube: 65 employees @ $1.65B acquisition → $25.4M / employee Oculus VR: 75 employees @ $2B acquisition → $26.7M / employee Minecraft: 40 employees @ $2.5B acquisition → $62.5M / employee Instagram: 13 employees @ $1B acquisition → $76.9M / employee WhatsApp: 50 employees @ $19B acquisition → $380M / employee!! For reference, historically, the median valuation per employee for tech M&A deals is closer to $0.7M / employee. Goes to show, it's better to have a few gems than a pile of stones. 💎

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