Shopify and The Key Decision for Business-in-a-Box Platforms

But it’s not just ecommerce. Venture capitalist Nikhil Basu Trivedi recently wrote about Business-in-a-Box Platforms (BiaB), including but not limited to Shopify, that “enable new businesses to be started, managed, and grown using their products.” These BiaB companies all take a set of products someone would need to start a business in a particular... See more

The point is context — by abstracting a core function and delivering it in situ, value is created. That is achieved by removing friction or utilizing unique data. Shopify is the canonical example. In recent years, the e-commerce platform has moved beyond integrating Stripe to offer a range of embedded products, including merchant lending that uses ... See more

In a landscape where customer attention is the scarcest resource, Shopify’s very identity as a neutral platform and invisible infrastructure is perhaps both its greatest asset and its greatest limitation.

These successful companies in most cases weren’t true platforms, but aggregators, locking in demand and exerting central control.

In the language of Ben Thompson, Substack has two choices. It can become a full fledged aggregator, build network effects and community, personalized content and so forth, but risk the moral purity of being one of the last ad-free algorithm-free corners of the internet, or it can become a platform, provide valuable infrastructure and flexible prici... See more

I think it’s inevitable that Shopify will become a consumer destination, but the way it monetizes demand gen will need to be aligned with its role as a Platform.