Shopify Raises $100 Million

Shopify Raises $100 Million(shopify.com)

198 points by allsop8184 12 years ago | 49 comments

smalter 12 years ago |

Echoing other commentators' sentiments that Shopify is a remarkable company:

Last year, we found out that a group of folks at Shopify were using my company's product, iDoneThis, when Tobi Lutke (CEO) emailed me about a customer service issue. They were by far our highest profile customers and we were super amped to have them. We thought, how cool would it be to visit Shopify up in Ottawa, get to know them and see how they were using iDoneThis?

I emailed Tobi and basically invited ourselves up there to visit with them. He not only said yes, he got excited, told me that he thought it was an awesome idea and that he wished he'd spent more time with customers in the early days of Shopify. They made space in their office and everyone on the team made time to talk with us, and we ate lunch and hung out with them and talked iDoneThis and Shopify for a week!

My co-founder and I were blown away by how good those guys are. Meeting the team was the kind of experience where it's just like, man, those guys are really good at their jobs and they're doing it their way. The culture had a distinctiveness and authenticity that made the concept of "culture" real to me. Shopify is an original. I joked that we had to leave Silicon Valley and go to freezing cold Ottawa, Canada, to learn about how to start a company.

And we became friends--I still play Starcraft with one of the engineers there and email and hang out with others when they visit the states. Because of the Shopify guys, we have a bunch of Ottawa-based companies that use iDoneThis and when we raised a round, Tobi invested in us, too.

Our visit counts up there as one of the best learning experiences as a company and it opened my eyes as a founder to what entrepreneurship could mean.

richardlblair 12 years ago | |

Thanks for the shout out! I'm glad you enjoyed the great white north!

mahyarm 12 years ago | | |

How has it been like running, starting and hiring a company in Canada? Did the founders have experience in the SFBA?

bjeanes 12 years ago | |

We use iDoneThis at Heroku. I love it so much. Thanks for building an awesome and simple tool.

daily 12 years ago | |

iDoneThis is quite an inspiration: a simple idea executed well. I'm also using it and trying to get my team on board. I should remember this example and reach out to iDoneThis in a few months ;-)

fourspace 12 years ago |

Great news. Shopify is the one piece of ecommerce software we use that isn't completely maddening. (Having a fantastic API is a large reason why.)

I was struck by this comment, though:

   "Using Shopify and Shopify POS together reveals our true 
   ambition: To be the first company in the world that fuses  
   all the distinct parts that are needed to run a complete 
   modern commerce business - all in one amazing product."

If anyone thinks they can run a complete business using only Shopify, they're sorely mistaken. It's only a shopping cart. If you want to actually ship items, you need to use one of their third-party apps or roll your own. Those apps are the reason that ecommerce with Shopify is still frustratingly difficult -- unnecessarily so.

dangrossman 12 years ago | |

I built a private app for fulfillment using their API and EasyPost. That was just a day project thanks to two very simple-to-use APIs.

Shopify's missing a lot more than that for retail. I wouldn't use their current POS app for running more than a flea market table or street vendor. It's just too basic even for the smallest store.

You can't handle hundreds of SKUs by paging through product thumbnails at checkout; you need barcode scanning, and from experience, iPads and bluetooth scanners are a real pain to work with. Shopify also has no real inventory management (figuring out what to reorder, entering in the new orders as they get delivered, tracking cost of goods sold and spoilage, printing price tags and barcodes, etc). The couple of reports they've built are inadequate for proper accounting.

I hope they get there eventually, but the number and complexity of features they need for a small shop to run their POS on Shopify means they're at least a few years out.

fourspace 12 years ago | | |

Agreed 100%. I was just touching the surface, and by "shipping" I really meant inventory management, purchase orders, and everything else involved in stocking physical goods.

It's clear the POS app is a test product for them, and I'm happy to see them experiment. I just wish they'd put a little more love into the core functionality. Even for ecommerce, Shopify is lacking some really basic things:

- Editing orders (e.g. marking an item canceled)

- Editing tracking numbers (fixing typos -- not allowed today)

- Allowing coupons to offer both a discounted price and free shipping (today they're mutually exclusive)

jusben1369 12 years ago | |

I think the key term there is "vision" vs "what we believe we are right now"

bradleyjg 12 years ago | |

Just FYI cinemaguy23 & stevebenjamins you guys are both hellbanned.

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2745880 for more info. IIRC, some people have had success emailing info@ycombinator.com to get unbanned.

Edit: state, if you don't have showdead=yes set in your preferences then you won't see the hellbanned posts. I don't know about the posts that got them hellbanned in the first place, but the dead ones here are completely unobjectionable .

state 12 years ago | | |

I'm guessing you're referring to other replies that we can't see. Is that the case? Just curious what you're talking about.

steve_benjamins 12 years ago | | |

Thanks for the heads up- I have no idea why I was hellbanned ...

state 12 years ago | |

It's so true. I spend the majority of my time working for a company that sells physical products, and we roll everything ourselves. Managing fulfillment, integrating with accounting, and basic CRM among a medium-sized team is an enormous task that's completely underserved by Shopify (or anyone else for that matter).

Knowing a good handful of other small to medium-sized business owners I know we're not alone in this (as your comment points out), and it makes me all the more eager to open source everything we do. But first, there are bugs to fix.

soundlab 12 years ago | | |

+1 I've found that the major bottleneck in all this for SMB's is Intuit's Quickbooks- whose terribly unstable sync/integration capability requires 5 different 3rd party systems just to receive an online order via your e-commerce cart, fill a phone order, input a purchase order received by email/fax..

And that's before you even get to pick/pack/ship an item and sync to your company file in QB, drawn down inventory on hand, send tracking info to your customer and update your CRM...

There seem to be a handful of startup software co's in this space but none can handle the entire picture:

methodintegration.com lettuceapps.com

andymoe 12 years ago |

A big congratulations to them but I have a slightly different experience to share than the other posters here. I was just in our shopify store trying to decide if I should pull the trigger and migrate to a weebly [1] site I've created.

Weebly is starting to be a real competitor in the lower end of the online store market.

The Real-time carrier shipping calculation feature shopify has might have kept me around but I can't justify the 2k+ a year plans just for that feature (that frustrating realization is why I started looking around) and I like weeblys layouts and site builder tools better.

Also, the shopify admin console was really really slow when I was working with it yesterday and I've had that experience at other times in the past as well.

[1] www.weebly.com - same price as the shopify basic plan for commerce.

alex_anglin 12 years ago |

As someone who hails from Ottawa, where Shopify is headquartered, this is wonderful news. From my perspective, they have contributed more to the tech and startup community in Ottawa than anyone since Nortel. Kudos to them on their success!

knappador 12 years ago | |

I wish they would just re-implement the whole thing on top of a hybrid API with reference FOSS implementations of web client servers and client apps so that programmers can pick-and-choose how much PaaS they need. Please get the "apps" on the backburner by letting FOSS compete head-to-head with the little mini-ISV's and their inevitable hodge-podge. Payments and 90% of inventory schlogg can take a hike, but when it comes to that 10% of customization, working on one's own source is so much better that I would use a fully FOSS solution and self host it if I ever needed to do an e-commerce site again for anyone for any reason in any circumstances. Shopify apps and most of the backend customization options really blur the line between software consumers and software users while ignoring that true consumers never want to become users in the first place and true users want total, absolute headroom. Whole world is better off if Shopify is FOSSier.

thezoid 12 years ago | | |

> working on one's own source is so much better that I would use a fully FOSS solution and self host it if I ever needed to do an e-commerce site again

Except now instead of focusing on the other aspects of your business you need to focus on the infrastructure as well. What if your products get super popular? Not you'll need to work on scaling out your store which will cost a boatload in equipment and specialization.

pootsbook 12 years ago | | |

I work in an incubator/accelerator space in the UK, and there's a new team who are working on a FOSSier, more flexible e-commerce platform called Molt.in You should see if their solution fits with your desired philosophy. It's definitely hitting a pain point that a lot of developers feel when they are forced into "off-the-shelf" solutions like Shopify, that aren't quite flexible enough for their particular needs.

haversine 12 years ago | |

Agreed. Not only more R&D in Ottawa but the fact that a a tech company's HQ is here is a positive. So many tech in Ottawa for R&D, but with their leadership silo'd in Toronto or another hub. Kudos to Shopify on this.

orenmazor 12 years ago | |

As fellow Ottawans, I think we all really appreciate hearing that. We all benefit from a stronger tech community here.

noarchy 12 years ago |

I don't work at Shopify, but I've been grateful to them for allowing many of the local dev meetups here in the Ottawa area to use their fantastic space for our meetings. So I am glad to see things going so well for them.

eswat 12 years ago | |

Definitely. When I moved here two years ago people complained that the government town image of Ottawa was reflecting on the startup scene and how there were no outlets for those that wanted to talk about their work or the industry.

But, in addition to the organizers that run these awesome events, Shopify actually did something about it. AFAIK they will be keeping the lounge after they move to Elgin, which is a nice gesture; it has become a hub to many people outside the company.

ihsw 12 years ago | | |

> after they move to Elgin

This has not been confirmed.

jonny_eh 12 years ago |

As an Ottawan living in the Bay Area, and a very happy customer, I couldn't feel more proud. Tobi, Harley, Mark, and everyone else, keep being awesome!

bendtheblock 12 years ago |

Congratulations to Shopify. As an e-commerce agency it's going to be remarkable when we can offer our clients a relatively low cost solution that also improves their bricks and mortar situation. I know Shopify PoS already helps with this, but there's a long way to go and I imagine this is where much of the money is going.

It would also be good to see Shopify Payments launch in the UK - hopefully this money will speed that up. Our clients are often concerned about the double commission (payment gateway + Shopify) on the lower plans, though I know it's money well spent and an equivalent bespoke/self-hosted ecommerce solution would be orders of magnitude more expensive. We have to explain this to our clients a lot though and a simplified and cheaper setup via Payments would be great.

We've watched Shopify since 2009 when we started our business and even in that short time the progress in what the platform offers has been outstanding, as has the support. Today we rarely use anything else for our clients as we don't need to, even 'high end' features are available when you take in to account the app store.

A lot of people here are commenting on the limitations of Shopify, which I agree exist, but the key thing is that they don't matter to a huge number of small/medium businesses. Shopify has enabled so many fantastic businesses that would have been otherwise stuck on crap platforms.

All this from a RoR developer that was dissatisfied with the existing market offering.

If you watch Tobias speak - interview on TWIT http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxBaDs0sGPw - you'll be enamoured with his vision, which this funding will let Shopify pursue.

This is a refined and enlarged version of a comment I posted on the OP.

simonbarker87 12 years ago |

As a Shopify customer I am very pleased to hear this - they do a great job but there are areas that need tightening up, hopefully this will allow them to grow in the offline world and improve their core offering.

visakanv 12 years ago |

I got to speak with Harley F once, and I was blown away by how thoughtful he was. He was very, very present and gave me his fullest attention. It was a pleasure talking with him. I've also interacted with some of the Shopify folk on Twitter from time to time and they're all just lovely, lovely people.

I think a world with Shopify in it is a happier place than a world without, and I wish them all the success in the world.

blairbeckwith 12 years ago | |

Thanks so much for the kind words Visakan. Always a pleasure.

topfunky 12 years ago |

Founder Tobias Luettke was the first person I interviewed for the Ruby on Rails podcast back in 2005. Glad to see him doing so well!

http://podcast.rubyonrails.org/programs/1/episodes/tobias_lu...

knappador 12 years ago |

Oh Shopify. One of the many reasons I support FOSS business models for anything programmers need to touch. Offline will definitely be an improvement.

smewp 12 years ago |

No slight to the people at Shopify, I'm sure they are good, but I still can't any company in their right mind would choose to pay both a monthly fee and a % of sales for this product. When I saw the % of sales adder, dealbreaker!

kevando 12 years ago |

Not the move I expected. POS integration has always been a huge challenge so I guess they're saying their online experience is good enough to shift focus away? It will be interesting to see how this move pans out.

niamh 12 years ago | |

I'm surprised to see this fundraise. They have a strong customer base and I worry when good companies get a huge investments like this and how it could affect the future of the company, it's growth, culture etc.

kin 12 years ago | | |

I was thinking the same thing. A huge round like this has me guessing they've got a hefty plan beyond improving just their current products. Others are mentioning that a shopping cart isn't enough, it's the apps. Maybe they plan on going that route either hiring to build them in house or using this money to buy those apps.

Yaggo 12 years ago |

Hopefully that helps them to launch the long-awaited 1.0 version of their open-sourced client-side MVC framework, Batman.js.

"Using Shopify and Shopify POS together reveals our true ambition: To be the first company in the world that fuses all the distinct parts that are needed to run a complete modern commerce business - all in one amazing product."