Unlock Your Potential: Shopify's Secret to Infinite Growth

>> Hello. Oh my god, look at this room. Oh, you look so good. I am so excited to be here. Like right here right before we start these incredible [snorts] two days together. I want to thank you. Clearly this room brings the electricity to Toronto. The lightning storm this morning [laughter] kind of messed up our badge plan, but you guys were awesome. Thank you for your patience and I'm so glad that you are all in this room and you guys can all roll with the punches.

So, why am I so excited? Why do we do dot dev? >> [snorts] >> [snorts] >> Well, I believe that it is this room. Shopify and its partner ecosystem that will define the next era of commerce. I believe that because we've been doing it together for the last 20 years. And the next 10 years it's going to be one for the ages.

This room actually represents something massive, something global. In the last year alone, 100,000 partners built a theme, built an app, got a new merchant launched on Shopify. In this room alone there are 68 there are 68 countries represented. countries represented. That is crazy. You guys flew Some of you flew so far to be here. Thank you so much. This room also represents the enduring quality of this ecosystem. The average tenure of a partner in room is 6 and 1/2 years. But we don't just stay still. 3% of you 3% of you joined the best ecosystem in tech in the last year. Welcome. Welcome. Yeah. [snorts] Yeah, props to the new kids. Yeah, thank you. And you OGs, like be nice to them, okay? Okay. >> [snorts] >> [snorts] >> Last year

>> Last year we paid out $1.3 billion in rev share in rev share to our app partners. It's crazy, right? You know what's crazier? For every dollar in revenue that Shopify makes you guys generate 7x that. Think about that. The value generation of this ecosystem, of this room is kind of hard to get your mind around. And big numbers are fun. But for me, the joy in my job comes actually from a very small number. One. The people behind the big numbers. All of you. And over the last 6 months, I've been spending a lot of time with you all. It has been a joy. I don't want to tell you about a meeting I had. Where are these people? Put your hands up. Where are my peeps? Yeah, yeah. Of course they're all Yeah, okay, great. So I had this meeting in New York. Um and this was like just, you know, casual get-together. Uh of some pretty OGs in our ecosystem. This photo alone represents 150 years years of building on Shopify. Yeah, I just go nuts. And it was a very New York meeting, you know? Like it was like everybody just like, you know, feedback and what's going wrong and all the ways that I can go and change things. It was awesome. It was intense. It was high energy. It was great. But my biggest takeaway was actually

what I think what makes this ecosystem special. What makes it unique. It's what I like to call collaborative competition. In some way or another, everyone in this photo competes for business. But they also have a shared Slack channel. They also go for dinner. And I'll tell you, they also finish each other's sentences. But it's what makes this ecosystem awesome. Is the mindset around opportunity. That we're not all fighting over a slice of pie, but rather that the pie is infinite. That every merchant, every new partner that joins this ecosystem makes it more valuable to be a part of. And when do you When you believe that, what can happen? Sometimes your mom calls at the

conference. Yeah. No, I'm just kidding. I'm just teasing. You build an incredible app that allows you to pay off your parents' mortgage. You go from being 16 and a Shopify affiliate affiliate to building an incredible business, hitting almost a hundred million dollars in ARR. You build your first Shopify store the same year you get your driver's license. And then you grow that agency to be over 80 people, grow 100% in 2025, and hit eight figures in revenue. And so, why can this exist? Why do things outcomes like this happen? Well, it's because, like Shopify, you all just really give a [ __ ] about solving merchants' problems. Big, small, and everything in between.

I got to hear one of these give a [ __ ] stories a couple weeks ago. I was in Barcelona for Shop Talk, and we held a partner meet-up. It was so fun. Always have a partner meet-up in Spain. That's what I learned. Uh and I met Yuri. And Yuri told me this awesome story. His wife has a jewelry company. It's called Kamai. I'm actually wearing their earrings right now. Beautiful stuff. >> [snorts] >> And early in their journey, Meghan Markle was photographed wearing her earrings. Now, Now, >> [snorts] >> [snorts] >> regardless of what you think about the Duchess of Sussex, if Meghan Markle is photographed wearing your earrings, your store traffic spikes, and the orders start flowing in. And what Yuri witnessed was a new company struggling to meet their moment. But luckily for Yuri, and for his wife, he had inventory management in his bones. He grew up working in his grandfather's shoe stores. He knew what inventory good inventory management looked like. And so he went and he solved this problem for his wife. And then he launched Prediko on the Shopify App Store, and now allows merchants to meet their moment anytime that that magical moment happens. >> [snorts] >> Hearing these stories is like one of my favorite things, and I hope come and tell me these stories. Maybe you'll be up here next year at Dot Dev. Telling them, though, is even more fun.

And we got to tell some of them in March when we held our partner town hall. We hadn't done one in a while and we had come out and said in January and said we're reinvesting in the partner ecosystem and then we thought maybe we should tell them what we mean. Um so we held a partner town hall. And I did a thing there. If you tuned in, there was 3,000 of you tuned in. Um and my PR team wasn't super happy with me. So what I said was every time I was like this thing is going to get bigger and we're going to change this. I at the end of all of those promises I kept saying and if that's not true by dot dev come find me. So now we're here and before you all come find me, um I thought I'd give you an update on a couple of those promises. So the first one was that we were going to just get together again. App developers, technology partners, agencies, Shopify, like let's let's hang out. And over the last 6 months we have held 70 partner meetups around the globe. >> [snorts] >> Uh I hope you guys have been able to go to some of them. They have been from like five people all the way up to 100. It's been incredible energy. And of course we held them in the usual places. New York, San Francisco, Toronto, London, Sydney. But we also held them in some maybe unexpected places. Vilnius, Lithuania. Vilnius, Lithuania. Yeah. Fukuoka, Japan. Yeah. Fukuoka, Japan. Istanbul, Turkey. Istanbul, Turkey. And Taipei, Taiwan. And Taipei, Taiwan. And we're going to do more of this. So if you want to help, like let me know. Let's do this. Let's hang out. We also held something here in Toronto for the first time called partner study hall. And that's actually when we brought partners together with our support teams. And [snorts] this gets me to my next

promise. Was that partner support was going to get better. Well, since that time we have changed the way that partner tickets get routed in our system. Getting you guys to technical answers. And answering partner tickets four times faster than they were this time last year. Yeah, whoever started clapping that's good. That's good. Thank you. And we're going to continue to make this better, right? It's important that you guys are getting the answers that you need so that you can help merchants every day.

Okay, next up. Deep breaths. App Store. Okay. Okay. Time to get apps reviewed. So, Etan Seidman, who is my partner in crime in all things, but probably more importantly VP of product here at Shopify. Um, he tweeted this out when the effort had started around addressing the wait time for app reviews. At its peak, app reviews were up to 40 days. You guys spend months building apps, getting them ready for review. And waiting a month and a half to even hear if you pass the review was unacceptable. And so Etan and the engineering team and the app review team put a lot of effort around this. I'm very happy to say that the wait time for a review is now four days. >> [applause] [applause] >> I have been at Shopify for 11 years. It has never been four days. So, um, I hope that that is feeling good and you guys are seeing that. Next step. I wonder if you guys thought I was going to talk about this. >> [laughter] >> Um

Incentivizing reviews and having fake reviews on the App Store has always been against our policy. But you guys rightfully called us out that we were not doing a very good job of enforcing this. So, 2 weeks ago, we announced some changes. Beefed up our policy. And yes, deleted some reviews. I know it's been a little bit bumpy. But what I hope you guys all see is this This is not just another Oh, Shopify is doing, you know, a review delete. We're actually rebuilding the system to make sure that we have an always-on way of maintaining the integrity of the reviews in the App Store and taking swift action against those that are going against our policy. The next hill to climb is copycat apps. We know. We know. Yeah. Yeah. So, So, this I will tell you is a much harder problem. It is nuanced. It is nuanced. And AI is not making it any easier. But if you saw last week, we announced our first step in climbing that mountain. Policies around titles. Policies around titles. But that's just the start. Over the next weeks and months, you are going to see us take the same energy that we have put behind review times and reviews in the App Store to this problem. And the reason that this is important is because we need to be sure that every single time a merchant shows up to the App Store that they can trust the reviews, that they can trust the apps. And just as importantly, that you guys all continue to see the App Store as a great place to build and grow a sustainable business.

Okay, last one. So, So, reinvesting in the partner ecosystem. Putting our money where our mouth is. >> [snorts] >> Last week, we announced a massive update to the way that we reward partners who build and launch stores on Shopify. You now share in the GMB growth of the merchants who you launch on Shopify. This is same side of the table. This is Shopify partners, merchants. When they grow, we all grow. Setting up a merchant for success and realizing that success should be something that you guys are rewarded for.

it's that these next two days are all about the infinite pie. All about opportunity. There's talks and you're going to meet with each other and Shopify folk and hang out and have fun. We have so many good parties planned. >> [snorts] >> [snorts] >> It's going to be an amazing two days. But it's also going to be the two days that we look back on and say, "This was the time that we started talking in earnest about what the future of commerce looks like." Or we started building towards that future together. And there is no one better to share the future of commerce from Shopify than my friend and VP of product, Vanessa Lee. Thanks guys.