Tom Smith

#Shopify in a nutshell

SHOPIFY SHAREHOLDERS BEWARE — Leadership @harleyf is selling AI dreams while quietly gutting the things that us merchants actually care about. @harleyf blocked me after this post. Reiterating my entire point. As a long-time Shopify Plus merchant, I can tell you what matters: operational reliability, clear fees, and real people who help solve problems quickly; not shiny AI demos. Entrepreneurship is defined by the ability to iterate quickly. You can't do that with painfully slow responses, clueless reps, and huge overreliance on canned automation that leaves merchants stranded during outages, payment disputes, and fulfillment breakdowns. Those failures drive churn far faster than new features attract sellers. Shopify's excellent merchant support that led to its growth has long disappeared. The current support levels make Beavis & Butthead look like Mother Teresa. Worse, most merchants don't even know these "features" exist. Unless you actively hunt down your assigned success manager, you hear nothing — and most merchants are too busy running the business to discover tools on their own. A great suite of apps is worthless if merchants don't know they exist or how to use them. 1.) Restore fast, experienced merchant support. Empower said support to actually be able to help resolve issues. 2.) Act as a partner, not adversary. Make pricing and contracts transparent 3.) Increase cross-department cooperation and communication. Trying to resolve issues is like competing on The Amazing Race, going from dept to dept trying to solve problem 4.) Refine anti-fraud measures. Shopify has right to police bad actors. But current measures equate to using a drag-net, punishing lots of good, honest merchants in the process. 5.) Invest in "success managers", empower them to act as advocate on behalf of merchant to different Shopify departments (see #3). Only then will AI be a real force‑multiplier instead of a distraction. If not and this degradation of merchant support continues, Shopify will have one hell of a sexy car to sell investors with all the bells & whistles. Yet when you finally look under the hood, you will find nothing there. Look at Harley's timeline and you see where his focus is.

FIRST ON CNBC: Shopify President @harleyf: AI makes entrepreneurship "dramatically more accessible" $SHOP cnb.cx/4uvjqhT

@harleyf Question for you. How come so many insiders (including you) are selling shares? You went from owning 3M shares to 1M and net buying for directors / officers over the last 12months is $0.

SHOPIFY SHAREHOLDERS BEWARE — Leadership @harleyf is selling AI dreams while quietly gutting the things that us merchants actually care about. @harleyf blocked me after this post. Reiterating my entire point. As a long-time Shopify Plus merchant, I can tell you what matters: operational reliability, clear fees, and real people who help solve problems quickly; not shiny AI demos. Entrepreneurship is defined by the ability to iterate quickly. You can't do that with painfully slow responses, clueless reps, and huge overreliance on canned automation that leaves merchants stranded during outages, payment disputes, and fulfillment breakdowns. Those failures drive churn far faster than new features attract sellers. Shopify's excellent merchant support that led to its growth has long disappeared. The current support levels make Beavis & Butthead look like Mother Teresa. Worse, most merchants don't even know these "features" exist. Unless you actively hunt down your assigned success manager, you hear nothing — and most merchants are too busy running the business to discover tools on their own. A great suite of apps is worthless if merchants don't know they exist or how to use them. 1.) Restore fast, experienced merchant support. Empower said support to actually be able to help resolve issues. 2.) Act as a partner, not adversary. Make pricing and contracts transparent 3.) Increase cross-department cooperation and communication. Trying to resolve issues is like competing on The Amazing Race, going from dept to dept trying to solve problem 4.) Refine anti-fraud measures. Shopify has right to police bad actors. But current measures equate to using a drag-net, punishing lots of good, honest merchants in the process. 5.) Invest in "success managers", empower them to act as advocate on behalf of merchant to different Shopify departments (see #3). Only then will AI be a real force‑multiplier instead of a distraction. If not and this degradation of merchant support continues, Shopify will have one hell of a sexy car to sell investors with all the bells & whistles. Yet when you finally look under the hood, you will find nothing there. Look at Harley's timeline and you see where his focus is.

Happy Tuesday. On today's show: - @ryancohen (GameStop) - @harleyf (Shopify) - @stephenbalaban (Lambda) - @MichelCombes (Lambda) - @scottstrazik (GE Vernova) - Brian Elliott (Blitzy) See you on the stream.

SHAREHOLDERS BEWARE — Leadership is selling AI dreams while quietly gutting the things that us merchants actually care about. As a long-time Shopify Plus merchant, I can tell you what matters: operational reliability, clear fees, and real people who help solve problems quickly; not shiny AI demos. Entrepreneurship is defined by the ability to iterate quickly. You can't do that with painfully slow responses, clueless reps, and huge overreliance on canned automation that leaves merchants stranded during outages, payment disputes, and fulfillment breakdowns. Those failures drive churn far faster than new features attract sellers. Shopify's excellent merchant support that led to its growth has long disappeared. The current support levels make Beavis & Butthead look like Mother Teresa. Worse, most merchants don't even know these "features" exist. Unless you actively hunt down your assigned success manager, you hear nothing — and most merchants are too busy running the business to discover tools on their own. A great suite of apps is worthless if merchants don't know they exist or how to use them. 1.) Restore fast, experienced merchant support. Empower said support to actually be able to help resolve issues. 2.) Act as a partner, not adversary. Make pricing and contracts transparent 3.) Increase cross-department cooperation and communication. Trying to resolve issues is like competing on The Amazing Race, going from dept to dept trying to solve problem 4.) Refine anti-fraud measures. Shopify has right to police bad actors. But current measures equate to using a drag-net, punishing lots of good, honest merchants in the process. 5.) Invest in "success managers", empower them to act as advocate on behalf of merchant to different Shopify departments (see #3). Only then will AI be a real force‑multiplier instead of a distraction. If not and this degradation of merchant support continues, Shopify will have one hell of a sexy car to sell investors with all the bells & whistles. Yet when you finally look under the hood, you will find nothing there. Look at Harley's timeline and you see where his focus is. @Shopify @ShopifySupport @ShopifyDevs @ShopifyEng

@Seanfrank Ecom renaissance. Shopify is the printing press. AI is the paintbrush. Everyone’s an artist now.

We are living in an Ecom renaissance

SHAREHOLDERS BEWARE — Leadership is selling AI dreams while quietly gutting the things that us merchants actually care about. As a long-time Shopify Plus merchant, I can tell you what matters: operational reliability, clear fees, and real people who help solve problems quickly; not shiny AI demos. Entrepreneurship is defined by the ability to iterate quickly. You can't do that with painfully slow responses, clueless reps, and huge overreliance on canned automation that leaves merchants stranded during outages, payment disputes, and fulfillment breakdowns. Those failures drive churn far faster than new features attract sellers. Shopify's excellent merchant support that led to its growth has long disappeared. The current support levels make Beavis & Butthead look like Mother Teresa. Worse, most merchants don't even know these "features" exist. Unless you actively hunt down your assigned success manager, you hear nothing — and most merchants are too busy running the business to discover tools on their own. A great suite of apps is worthless if merchants don't know they exist or how to use them. 1.) Restore fast, experienced merchant support. Empower said support to actually be able to help resolve issues. 2.) Act as a partner, not adversary. Make pricing and contracts transparent 3.) Increase cross-department cooperation and communication. Trying to resolve issues is like competing on The Amazing Race, going from dept to dept trying to solve problem 4.) Refine anti-fraud measures. Shopify has right to police bad actors. But current measures equate to using a drag-net, punishing lots of good, honest merchants in the process. 5.) Invest in "success managers", empower them to act as advocate on behalf of merchant to different Shopify departments (see #3). Only then will AI be a real force‑multiplier instead of a distraction. If not and this degradation of merchant support continues, Shopify will have one hell of a sexy car to sell investors with all the bells & whistles. Yet when you finally look under the hood, you will find nothing there. Look at Harley's timeline and you see where his focus is.

Shopify is the epicenter of the AI era. Our merchants are among the first to sell in AI channels, with @Shopify powering the full end-to-end commerce journey. Over 1 billion products are surfaced in AI chats through the Shopify Catalog, so they show up with accurate and up to date information. Our AI-powered tools blend two decades of commerce intelligence with completely personalized guidance for each merchant. Our merchants aren't just keeping up. They're better positioned than anyone who isn't on Shopify. Great conversation as always, @jimcramer.

SHAREHOLDERS BEWARE — Leadership is selling AI dreams while quietly gutting the things that us merchants actually care about. As a long-time Shopify Plus merchant, I can tell you what matters: operational reliability, clear fees, and real people who help solve problems quickly; not shiny AI demos. Entrepreneurship is defined by the ability to iterate quickly. You can't do that with painfully slow responses, clueless reps, and huge overreliance on canned automation that leaves merchants stranded during outages, payment disputes, and fulfillment breakdowns. Those failures drive churn far faster than new features attract sellers. Shopify's excellent merchant support that led to its growth has long disappeared. The current support levels make Beavis & Butthead look like Mother Teresa. Worse, most merchants don't even know these "features" exist. Unless you actively hunt down your assigned success manager, you hear nothing — and most merchants are too busy running the business to discover tools on their own. A great suite of apps is worthless if merchants don't know they exist or how to use them. 1.) Restore fast, experienced merchant support. Empower said support to actually be able to help resolve issues. 2.) Act as a partner, not adversary. Make pricing and contracts transparent 3.) Increase cross-department cooperation and communication. Trying to resolve issues is like competing on The Amazing Race, going from dept to dept trying to solve problem 4.) Refine anti-fraud measures. Shopify has right to police bad actors. But current measures equate to using a drag-net, punishing lots of good, honest merchants in the process. 5.) Invest in "success managers", empower them to act as advocate on behalf of merchant to different Shopify departments (see #3). Only then will AI be a real force‑multiplier instead of a distraction. If not and this degradation of merchant support continues, Shopify will have one hell of a sexy car to sell investors with all the bells & whistles. Yet when you finally look under the hood, you will find nothing there. Look at Harley's timeline and you see where his focus is.

Here's what drives it: → 20 years of commerce data, powering a platform at the forefront of AI. → Sidekick usage is up 4x YoY. Our AI assistant is being used every day to help merchants sell more and operate smarter. → Merchants are selling inside ChatGPT, Copilot, and Google. Orders from AI searches are up 13x YoY. → Iconic brands across fashion, luxury, and retail all joined this quarter.

Shopify just reported on Q1. The numbers speak for themselves. → $101B in merchant sales, second consecutive quarter over $100B, up 35% YoY → $3.2B revenue, up 34% YoY → $476M free cash flow, 15% margin That’s what a clear strategy, well executed, looks like. For Q2 and beyond, here’s what really matters. AI will accelerate entrepreneurship more than any other job.

SHAREHOLDERS BEWARE — Leadership is selling AI dreams while quietly gutting the things that us merchants actually care about. As a long-time Shopify Plus merchant, I can tell you what matters: operational reliability, clear fees, and real people who help solve problems quickly; not shiny AI demos. Entrepreneurship is defined by the ability to iterate quickly. You can't do that with painfully slow responses, clueless reps, and huge overreliance on canned automation that leaves merchants stranded during outages, payment disputes, and fulfillment breakdowns. Those failures drive churn far faster than new features attract sellers. Shopify's excellent merchant support that led to its growth has long disappeared. The current support levels make Beavis & Butthead look like Mother Teresa. Worse, most merchants don't even know these "features" exist. Unless you actively hunt down your assigned success manager, you hear nothing — and most merchants are too busy running the business to discover tools on their own. A great suite of apps is worthless if merchants don't know they exist or how to use them. 1.) Restore fast, experienced merchant support. Empower said support to actually be able to help resolve issues. 2.) Act as a partner, not adversary. Make pricing and contracts transparent 3.) Increase cross-department cooperation and communication. Trying to resolve issues is like competing on The Amazing Race, going from dept to dept trying to solve problem 4.) Refine anti-fraud measures. Shopify has right to police bad actors. But current measures equate to using a drag-net, punishing lots of good, honest merchants in the process. 5.) Invest in "success managers", empower them to act as advocate on behalf of merchant to different Shopify departments (see #3). Only then will AI be a real force‑multiplier instead of a distraction. If not and this degradation of merchant support continues, Shopify will have one hell of a sexy car to sell investors with all the bells & whistles. Yet when you finally look under the hood, you will find nothing there. Look at Harley's timeline and you see where his focus is.

SHAREHOLDERS BEWARE — Leadership is selling AI dreams while quietly gutting the things that us merchants actually care about. As a long-time Shopify Plus merchant, I can tell you what matters: operational reliability, clear fees, and real people who help solve problems quickly; not shiny AI demos. Entrepreneurship is defined by the ability to iterate quickly. You can't do that with painfully slow responses, clueless reps, and huge overreliance on canned automation that leaves merchants stranded during outages, payment disputes, and fulfillment breakdowns. Those failures drive churn far faster than new features attract sellers. Shopify's excellent merchant support that led to its growth has long disappeared. The current support levels make Beavis & Butthead look like Mother Teresa. Worse, most merchants don't even know these "features" exist. Unless you actively hunt down your assigned success manager, you hear nothing — and most merchants are too busy running the business to discover tools on their own. A great suite of apps is worthless if merchants don't know they exist or how to use them. 1.) Restore fast, experienced merchant support. Empower said support to actually be able to help resolve issues. 2.) Act as a partner, not adversary. Make pricing and contracts transparent 3.) Increase cross-department cooperation and communication. Trying to resolve issues is like competing on The Amazing Race, going from dept to dept trying to solve problem 4.) Refine anti-fraud measures. Shopify has right to police bad actors. But current measures equate to using a drag-net, punishing lots of good, honest merchants in the process. 5.) Invest in "success managers", empower them to act as advocate on behalf of merchant to different Shopify departments (see #3). Only then will AI be a real force‑multiplier instead of a distraction. If not and this degradation of merchant support continues, Shopify will have one hell of a sexy car to sell investors with all the bells & whistles. Yet when you finally look under the hood, you will find nothing there. Look at Harley's timeline and you see where his focus is.

@ShopifySupport @Shopify File a CFPB complaint (consumerfinance.gov/complaint/cred…) if you feel Shopify has withheld your funds without a clear, documented reason. Shopify must respond to CFPB complaints through the federal portal within a set time. Withholding merchant funds without a clear, documented reason (and without paying interest) may violate consumer protections and creates regulatory, legal, and reputational risk — so Shopify will want to avoid CFPB complaints describing that behavior. Be sure to state that in your complaint. Shopify can take steps to prevent fraud; submit a CFPB complaint only if your claim is honest and factual. If so, this is likely the strongest step you can take to get their attention. They legally have to respond.

@ShopifySupport @Shopify @tobi Hello, you have just disabled Shopify Payments for my store for no apparent reason. We generated 900k€ in revenue over three months with a dispute rate of 0.4%, the vast majority of which we won. We are partners, and I would like immediate action to be taken to resolve this issue.

@ShopifySupport @Shopify File a CFPB complaint (consumerfinance.gov/complaint/cred…) if you feel Shopify has withheld your funds without a clear, documented reason. Shopify must respond to CFPB complaints through the federal portal within a set time. Withholding merchant funds without a clear, documented reason (and without paying interest) may violate consumer protections and creates regulatory, legal, and reputational risk — so Shopify will want to avoid CFPB complaints describing that behavior. Be sure to state that in your complaint. Shopify can take steps to prevent fraud; submit a CFPB complaint only if your claim is honest and factual. If so, this is likely the strongest step you can take to get their attention. They legally have to respond.

@tobi @harleyf @Shopify @QiLikeCheetah @ShopifySupport its been 2 months now, ive provided all of the necessary proof and ive done everything u asked. how long yall actually do something? shopify support is just useless...

@ShopifySupport @Shopify File a CFPB complaint (consumerfinance.gov/complaint/cred…) if you feel Shopify has withheld your funds without a clear, documented reason. Shopify must respond to CFPB complaints through the federal portal within a set time. Withholding merchant funds without a clear, documented reason (and without paying interest) may violate consumer protections and creates regulatory, legal, and reputational risk — so Shopify will want to avoid CFPB complaints describing that behavior. Be sure to state that in your complaint. Shopify can take steps to prevent fraud; submit a CFPB complaint only if your claim is honest and factual. If so, this is likely the strongest step you can take to get their attention. They legally have to respond.

Shopify payments smoked me. Anyone have a solution?

@ShopifySupport @Shopify For anyone in the US, file a CFPB complaint (consumerfinance.gov/complaint/cred…) if you feel Shopify has withheld your funds without a clear, documented reason. Shopify must respond to CFPB complaints through the federal portal within a set time. Withholding merchant funds without a clear, documented reason (and without paying interest) may violate consumer protections and creates regulatory, legal, and reputational risk — so Shopify will want to avoid CFPB complaints describing that behavior. Be sure to state that in your complaint. Shopify can take steps to prevent fraud; submit a CFPB complaint only if your claim is honest and factual. If so, this is likely the strongest step you can take to get their attention. They legally have to respond.

Hey @ShopifySupport @Shopify @harleyf — need help getting this reviewed ASAP. Our Shopify Payments was recently disabled following a risk review, but our current metrics don’t reflect a high-risk operation: • 0.33% chargeback rate (excluding RDR) • ~1.01% including RDR (used proactively to resolve disputes early) • Fully staffed customer support with fast response times We’ve been processing for 6+ months and are currently doing ~500- 750K /month, with consistent fulfillment and active support in place. We’ve already submitted an appeal, but this is currently halting our ability to operate and serve customers. Would really appreciate a manual review or escalation here — happy to provide any additional data, logs, or documentation needed.

@ShopifySupport @Shopify File a CFPB complaint (consumerfinance.gov/complaint/cred…) if you feel Shopify has withheld your funds without a clear, documented reason. Shopify must respond to CFPB complaints through the federal portal within a set time. Withholding merchant funds without a clear, documented reason (and without paying interest) may violate consumer protections and creates regulatory, legal, and reputational risk — so Shopify will want to avoid CFPB complaints describing that behavior. Be sure to state that in your complaint. Shopify can take steps to prevent fraud; submit a CFPB complaint only if your claim is honest and factual. If so, this is likely the strongest step you can take to get their attention. They legally have to respond.

@Shopify @harleyf Payments banned on a store sitting at a 0.6% chargeback rate trending down across 13,000 orders. How does that even make sense, Shopify? Do you realise there are real businesses relying on your platform?

@ShopifySupport @Shopify For anyone in the US, file a CFPB complaint (consumerfinance.gov/complaint/cred…) if you feel Shopify has withheld your funds without a clear, documented reason. Shopify must respond to CFPB complaints through the federal portal within a set time. Withholding merchant funds without a clear, documented reason (and without paying interest) may violate consumer protections and creates regulatory, legal, and reputational risk — so Shopify will want to avoid CFPB complaints describing that behavior. Be sure to state that in your complaint. Shopify can take steps to prevent fraud; submit a CFPB complaint only if your claim is honest and factual. If so, this is likely the strongest step you can take to get their attention. They legally have to respond.

Yesterday Shopify terminated our entire store with no warning and no specifics, no chance to fix a thing. We're a legitimate UK business with real manufacturing and local fulfilment. Appeal submitted, no timeline, no comms. @harleyf @ShopifySupport @Shopify Need some help on this please, all our funds have also been held. We'll fix anything that needs fixing If you've been through this, please RT 🙏

Wow apparently @Shopify has been quietly stacking money transmitter licenses. MTLs are state-by-state licenses that let a company legally hold customer funds + move money on their behalf Getting MTLs means they would be able to hold and move funds themselves, instead of routing everything through @stripe Shopify did $378 billion in GMV in '25 --> owning the rails = owning more of the economics theinformation.com/articles/shopi…

Similar MRR here. We've dealt with this in the past and the Merchant Trust/Risk Operations team was quite reasonable. As of late however, it is a mess. They don't even assign the same person to a ticket and response times are atrocious. File a CFPB complaint (consumerfinance.gov/complaint/). Filing a CFPB complaint legally forces the company to respond through a federal portal and creates an official record that the CFPB uses to detect patterns and trigger supervisory or enforcement attention. There is a clear pattern of this behavior from Shopify. That said, Shopify does have reasonable justification to police bad actors and hedge risk, so just because payouts have been put on hold doesn't mean you have been wronged.

‼️URGENT HELP NEEDED‼️ $1,000,000 in recurring revenue DELETED! 0.2% chargeback rate after processing over $5.5M on Shopify over the last 5 months. We’re doing $150K a day losing the MRR we've worked so hard to build puts us in a very tough position @ShopifySupport @harleyf @tobi @Shopify , we need urgent assistance! Any retweets and likes would be appreciated. If anyone can help me resolve this or put me in contact with anyone that can resolve this we will pay $$$

I reached out via DM as you requested of me. I have not received a response. I have been patient and waited a week for this to work its way through the proper channels, and already created an escalated ticket on Friday with Shopify Plus Support. If this is not promptly resolved, I will be filing a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) fully detailing what has occurred here, how it has materially harmed my business, and pursuing all avenues available (social media, forums, etc) to share the link for others to file CFPB reports. I am surely not the only person this has happened to. There is no reason that the Merchant Trust Team can't assign a single person to a ticket, and promptly respond in under 48 hours. If this is how a merchant of my size is treated, I can only imagine how the little guys are treated.

@TomSmith30064 @harleyf @TraegerGrills @Shopify We appreciate you reaching out with your concerns. Let's move this to a DM, please send us a message with more information so that we can continue to assist you and to ensure your privacy is protected.

Most people replace what breaks. Entrepreneurs reimagine it. Joe Traeger turned a backyard barbecue disaster into a billion-dollar category. 40 years later, @TraegerGrills still leads it. They just launched on @Shopify. Welcome.