Catching Up On Shopify and Their ‘Platform’

I had never heard of this company $FIGS until their IPO but it is rather amazing.

The most amazing stat to me is that this $5 billion DTC (direct to consumer) brand was built on Shopify.

A LOT of companies call themselves platforms (this old Ben Thompson post is a great primer on platforms), but Shopify is really delivering on the platform promise.

My friend Fred Wilson has always warned founders (myself included) about trying to build a big business on the platform of others. Unplugged he has said ‘Don’t Be Their Bitch‘.

How many times has Twitter or Facebook crushed startups that were ‘their bitch’…a lot!

Early on when building Stocktwits I had to make the decision to just be Twitter’s bitch or raise more money and build our own platform to have more control of our destiny.

We raised the money and did that back in 2009.

Back to Shopify…

There will be many more billion dollar DTC brands to go public built on Shopify. That makes the stock hard to value which is what I love in a growth stock. The catalysts are all to the upside as Shopify continues to build trust in a massive part of the economy.

Stocktwits now has one person full time dedicated to the Stocktwits store built on Shopify that has some really cool products for the community.

Today, Netflix is launching their store on Shopify.

I had Shopify President Harley Finkelstein on my podcast back in February and he dove into all this so it might be worthwhile to have a listen.

Have a great Friday.

Disclosure – Long $SHOP