I'm incredibly disappointed this was the top comment.
Instead of asking whatever it is you want to know in an optimistic way, you just threw a random comment that with decent chance just makes the OP feel worse.
For starters, a really simple question you could have asked that may update your belief of how weird it is they got into YC: "How much money are they making and how much are they growing per week?"
I appreciate the compassionate nature of your comment, but anecdotally I can very much attest to this thought being the first thing through my mind when I read the post title.
This question sitting at the top further validates that other people are wondering it, so disappointing as it may be - people are curious!
ambition or "importance" don't always manifest in the early stages of a startup (they probably usually don't). Shopify started as a snowboard selling company and I'm sure that the founders here pitched YC a larger vision that was appreciated.
Yep, that's the first thing that came to mind. Seems like a great bootstrap / indie venture but they raised VC money, I don't know why.
The founder does say that they want to change all of pricing. Even then I'd argue that launching making recurring revenue would have got them more favourable terms with a VC in the future.
I'm actually surprised this is not already built into Shopify by default. This seems like a very basic functionality which can be added at any moment so what would that do with a startup?
Former Shopify employee, but speaking based on public knowledge;
1. Liability. A result of "raising prices by $10 is 5% more revenue" is not confirmation that raising prices by $10 is a good idea. I expect a non-trivial error rate, especially since most merchants aren't statistics savvy (forming experiments, doing risk analysis and interpreting data is hard). If Shopify causes this, it's a story. Startups will have room to develop features / legal to adjust to the liability concerns
2. Channels. Shopify is a very multi-channel platform and many stores actually rely on Facebook or Instagram integrations and physical stores rather than their online store. To be able to control prices on all these channels is an engineering challenge, and will also further dilute the value of the data. It'll also amplify concerns about pricing-inconsistencies.
3. Just a high-risk idea. Customers don't like seeing different prices. Merchants don't like running experiments that could cause them to lose money. Merchants also like being "good" to their customers by some measure, and some merchants would consider this unfair.
I agree with all of this. If there was any store I shopped at and realized there were two different prices I would think they have some savvy marketers but would also stop being their customer. I don't want amazon or airline fluctuations in price when I'm shopping.
Best of luck though. I can see many stores thinking this is the way to unlock profitability.
All great points. Data significance + education on how it works is super important here (and something I've been personally explaining to many brands and merchants).
Another thing I'd like to add: most of the comments in this thread are assuming price is going to be increased when in reality a good number of merchants are going to actually end up lowering their prices (and serving more customers). In the end, it's all about delivering + capturing as much value as possible.
It may appear that way, but it's not surprising at all.
First of all, it's a great business. Shopify is exploding like crypto kittens, and with millions of sellers, even if you secure just the top sellers, let's say 1% of the Shopify market, and charge $10,000 per year, that's a 100-million-dollar-business. That's incredible.
From there, you have a choice to either expand further in the market, or start offering more advanced tools to your best customers. Given that Shopify is currently at 100B market cap, yours could be 1B in just a few years, if not sooner.
Yeah, I feel like people don't understand how big shopify is and how quickly it's growing. If you look at Elliot who just failed trying to be a competitor to shopify, you will realise that this is a much better route to go.
YC is a crapshoot. We had the most impressive metrics in our interviewing class and killer recommendations and didn’t get in. The ones from our interview group that did were astoundingly dumb.
There wasn’t a single successful entrepreneur amongst the “partners” who interviewed us.
Here we are a year or so later flying at 7 figure revenues thankful we didn’t give up nearly 10% of our business to an incubator that’s a shell of its former self.
I've said this here before (I think) and I'll say it again. With almost all initial YC partners leaving and YC getting bigger, they also get more risk-averse, just like any growing business.
Therefore I'm afraid that we will see less and less interesting and "out there" YC companies but more confirming ones.
I'm aware that growing has other benefits for YC and its companies, but I'm personally just a bit sad about this...
Edit: I feel like Seibel is the last interesting full-time partner and I wouldn't be surprised if he leaves within 2 years.
they could have gotten in with something more ambitious, then pivoted to this when they realized it wasn't going to work. Not uncommon to launch something different than what you were accepted with (see Brex)
For starters, a really simple question you could have asked that may update your belief of how weird it is they got into YC: "How much money are they making and how much are they growing per week?"