Insights on the global eCommerce & DTC businesses

3. Amazon's moats come from strong demand-side businesses (Demand Generation and Advertisement) while Shopify's moats come from the supply-side (Platform fees)

2. Where Amazon has superhuman-level moats, Shopify has no play and is trying to build its playbook (Ex: Fulfillment, Demand Generation) or does not have a play (Ex: Advertisement)

1. Where Shopify makes money and Amazon doesn't, it is so because of business model differences (Ex: Platform Access, Point of Sale)

Amazon is 2.5x Shopify in terms of revenue contribution to the merchants that work with them. But the difference is that Amazon generated the demand that is worth about $200B in 2019 but Shopify does not generate any demand for its merchants.

In a multi-pronged competition with Amazon, Shopify has to shed its DNA as a technology company and become a consumer company. Impressively, Shopify did another shift well enough - from being a tech company to an infrastructure company. It's preparing for the next orbital shift - moving from being an infrastructure company to a consumer company.

These are transient opinions about a hurriedly launched product. But what's interesting is to lift the curtains to see how the product could evolve and why the start is important for Shopify. IMO, Shop is the future of Shopify.

5. Why would a D2C brand encourage its customers to download an app where its competitors are there?

4. It's local shops and not local products.

3. Discovery is bad or there is no discovery