Shopify isn't an ecommerce store–it's an ecommerce infrastructure provider.
My only beef with shopify is that I don't see any of these fast growing etailers using them. I know why (makes no sense to give up that kind of % when you're at huge scale) and I wonder if it will hurt them in the long run. They seem to just help people with the MVP of their store.
While there are no billion dollar revenue businesses on Shopify yet, it's really easy to underestimate the size of many of it's stores. Also I'm not sure what percentage you are referring to, we don't take one. We make a minuscule amount on the credit card transactions but we really pass economies of scale savings there to our customers.
We constantly have larger retailers replatform to Shopify who previously were spending 100k or more on their ecommerce software.
I don't think it's surprising at all. Shopify is software, off the shelf. Most retailers that fit into their model will probably get as good or better a result with shopify as they would on a sub $100k budget with custom software.
Beyond a certain scale, (a) the benefits from controlling the software get bigger and (you don't have to do shipping, promotions, inventory, UI etc in a way that is supported by shopify) (b) the cost of doing your own software is less of a barrier.
Benefits like accessibility to non technical people don't mean anything once you hire specialists to be in charge of things. T
Off the shelf software that a non specialist can use makes sense for SMBs. That's shopify's target market.
Not at all:
1. He is talking about how people actually make money out of E-Commerce - that is driving sales and ensuring you have a margin on what you sell. It is very myopic to believe that the technology underlying the E-Commerce solution will drive the success of E-Commerce (a situation all to common on Hacker News - yes I am aware it is technology focussed, but not the exclusion of everything)
2. Andy Dunn has backed Spree Commerce through Ayr, Bonobos, Red Swan. I imagine, he has done that because he believes proprietary all in one platform solutions have inherent limitations. Spree Commerce has the opportunity to significantly disrupt the Shopify model (and likely will impact their valuation and/or longevity).
