[00:00:00] All right. So about 20 minutes into this one mark side of the audio and video ends up cutting out. So only my side is left and, uh, we just decided to go ahead and publish it. As is because it's just kind of hilarious and we don't really have another option, but just in case you wonder why that happens. I wanted to explain it upfront.

[00:00:18] Kalen: Have you ever heard the phrase Chil fuck. What is it? Chil children of the planet Earth,

[00:00:25] Mark: children of, I've heard a phrase of children, of something,

[00:00:31] Kalen: children of hello From the children of Planet Earth. Have you heard that?

[00:00:35] Mark: Oh no. I have no idea about that.

[00:00:38] Kalen: Dude, that's wild. 'cause it's my buddy was telling me about that yesterday and it's it's a phrase.

[00:00:44] Kalen: That I gotta Google this shit. It's a phrase. Okay, where is this thing? He was telling me that it's a phrase fuck. It's a phrase. Oh, that from

[00:00:56] Mark: recording? Where is it? Oh, it's, oh, that's the thing that they sent into space. It's like a, that's it. Vinyl or something. That's it. That they launch in his

[00:01:03] Kalen: space.

[00:01:03] Kalen: That's it. That's it. Yeah. So I'm gonna give a quick sh Dude, I have, that's, this is so bizarre, dude. But my friend. My friend Imad told me that, so I'm gonna fucking clip this and post it, dude. 'cause he was like, he wants me to he's so weird. He's fucking cool. But he's he's Hey man, I want you to make me go viral.

[00:01:22] Kalen: And I'm like, what? I'm talking about, dude,

[00:01:24] Mark: if anyone can do it, you can do it. I like Toby.

[00:01:27] Kalen: I'm like, bro, dude. I'm like, dude, I got lucky, man. I screenshotted a video. It wasn't even my site. Some other dude, did you read the deep dive of that? The thread from you or someone? Oh no. Commerce, ui. The company's called Commerce

[00:01:42] Mark: ui.

[00:01:43] Mark: That, that video that they had all the models, like videos and stuff. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:01:48] Kalen: Cool. And then did you see the thread?

[00:01:50] Mark: I guess I don't think I did, dude.

[00:01:52] Kalen: Yeah, so that so that shoot, where is it that thread? 'cause at first when I saw it, I thought it was just, should I do a, should I record my screen for the thing too?

[00:02:03] Kalen: Or, it's up to you. Why not, dude, let's freaking do it, man. Just go nuts. How's your day going, dude?

[00:02:10] Mark: It's good. It's good. Yeah. Yeah. Pretty chill. Yeah. This has been like the, this is the highlight of my day I'm just like, hell yeah. Looking forward to this. Hell yeah.

[00:02:20] Kalen: Did, I'm looking forward to, but he, let me just find this thread, dude.

[00:02:25] Kalen: Because he did, or, yeah, the team did a really real, okay, here it is. Bro, they did check this out, dude. They did a whole deep dive on the studio on Check this out. Do you see this? Do you see this? Dude? Isn't that beautiful? It's crazy it's so nice dude. And anyways, I scanned it. I didn't like fully read the entire thing, but they did a pretty deep dive and then they did another deep dive on, headless on.

[00:02:55] Kalen: Specifically. Okay, so this is like why this is like how we did it. And then okay. Boom. Here's the other thread. They did a deep dive again, I didn't really read it, but why is the site headless, right? So blanklob I thought his name was blankbob for

[00:03:14] Mark: that's, I thought it too. Yeah, you did. I pronounce it in my head like that.

[00:03:20] Kalen: Same here. That's a, such a perfect name. But anyways, Youness who's cool as duck it's funny, we had a beef and then we ducking cleared it out and now we're ducking bros. But he He would say, his whole thing and this is, and your whole thing too, is that headless is overblown a lot of the time.

[00:03:39] Kalen: And anyways, I didn't fully read this, but it's talks about why they went headless and stuff like that. So people, hopefully people smarter than me are gonna look at that. Should we look at this beef? Should we look at this beef I'm getting into with the with the guy here.

[00:03:53] Kalen: This dude, you

[00:03:55] Mark: see this? Oh, no, I didn't know that was the beef that you had. I thought it was, yeah. Jon Manly the headless thing. It is interesting from the commerce UI perspective because they have a good point where, they were saying like, we built this in 2019 and we couldn't do a lot of the things that we could now with online Store 2.0.

[00:04:16] Mark: And I think that's like actually what Shopify's goal has been to make online Store 2.0 so good that headless is less necessary. Got it. Even though it, at the same time they're making headless better. I think they still like, prefer brands not to do headless. So it, it should be okay, if I can't do what I need to do, headless is the option, but Right.

[00:04:41] Mark: More and more I can do what I need to do just using, online store 2.0.

[00:04:47] Kalen: Yeah, I, yeah, I wish I knew the details of that stuff better, man. I feel like

[00:04:52] Mark: if that could dominate like so many. A podcast. It shouldn't dominate this one there. There's too much to talk about.

[00:04:59] Mark: Exactly. Exactly.

[00:05:00] Kalen: Otherwise, yeah. So maybe I'll just keep sharing the screen, dude, and we can just look at additions, man. Yeah. Going nuts,

[00:05:08] Mark: dude. The presentation where cooler and, I'm

[00:05:11] Kalen: sorry. I know. Go. It's so nuts. Dude. It's so crazy. Like the, literally, like when I saw the first editions that was, I was like a week and a half in, or I was like three weeks into drinking the Shopify Kool-Aid and I was like, this is the best landing page I've ever seen in my entire life.

[00:05:28] Kalen: Because not only is it like a beautiful landing page, the amount of content and the way Yeah. And then even the performance of it. How does it load so fast with all this stuff? I think it must progressively load or something must be headless, but must be. Yeah. Yeah. And so then that was the funny thing is that.

[00:05:47] Kalen: I was busting I was busting I can't find the tweet, but I was bus. Oh, that's funny. Shout out to Philip. I was busting I was busting Eunice's chops because he was complimenting the oh, I think he mentioned, or somebody mentioned that this is Shopify under the hood.

[00:06:03] Mark: In a, it's using like objects from Shopify or something.

[00:06:07] Kalen: And then so I was like, oh, now you like headless and stuff like that. But yeah.

[00:06:12] Mark: But but anyway, I can tell it's like not normal Shopify. 'cause it doesn't have slash pages, slash collection. Oh God. That's like the dead giveaway. That not

[00:06:21] Kalen: Gotcha. That's changing.

[00:06:22] Kalen: Gotcha, gotcha. Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha. You gotcha, gotcha. I'm gonna eventually understand Shopify's better. It's so weird dude. 'cause I'm so new to it. But also that's what we're here for the community. That's what we're here for, man. You're my mentor. You're my spirit guide into the realm of Shopify.

[00:06:39] Kalen: Oh boy. Buckle up. Yeah, dude. Nah dude. I honestly, I wanna say I appreciate you because I tweeted about this, but. There was a way in which I, over the past several years, I feel like I, I fell down a peg in let's say my career slash the ecosystem slash whatever, and I really did notice certain people treat me different because I didn't have whatever clout, I guess is the way to say it.

[00:07:05] Kalen: And 'cause I guess to a certain extent as cheesy as it sounds, I had some of that to an extent in Magento for a time. Yeah. And I remember at that time, I'd go to conferences and everybody was like, oh, what's up man? Every everybody want, talk to me and stuff.

[00:07:21] Kalen: And I was like, what the heck? And then and then I basically lost that the last couple conferences I went to. Fucking, nobody had any clue who I was. And I was like, just some fucking newbie. And I really saw which of my friends who I thought were my friends. Treated me different. And then in the end I realized they just wanted something, yeah. From me or whatever. But then like you and like several other people, I'm like, those are my fucking ride or dies. You know what I mean?

[00:07:50] Mark: I'm just grateful when business for business and personal gets mixed it's like a blurred line. And Yes. And then when the business is taken out of it, who's left?

[00:07:59] Mark: And it's okay, yes, we were actually friends. It, yes. It

[00:08:02] Kalen: wasn't just business. Exactly. And yeah. Yeah, man, I'm grateful for you and I feel like I'm gonna hopefully get back to, fucking getting that clout. But it sounds so dumb, my friend. My, it's such a dumb, sometimes there's words that are basically Gen Z words that you go, that's such a dumb word, but then you realize eventually it's just the right word.

[00:08:28] Kalen: You know what I mean? It's there was another word like that occurred to me that I can't forget. Oh. Main character energy. Oh. Have you seen that phrase before?

[00:08:37] Mark: Yes. I've definitely, it's, it can be

[00:08:39] Kalen: super cheesy, but I realize I realize it's totally the right word for a certain thing, but yeah, dude I'm bullish as fuck on Gen Z.

[00:08:48] Kalen: 'cause I think that people our age, like how old are your thir, you're. 35. 30. 35. This is so weird, dude. 'cause ev the guy I played pickleball today was 35. My basically new best friend in Texas. Ryan is 35. You're 35, so it's anyways, but age. How old are you? That's the f I'm 42. Really?

[00:09:09] Mark: Oh yeah. I thought you were still in your thirties. Hell yeah. That's what I'm have to hear. I'm not calling you.

[00:09:14] Kalen: Yeah. You don't. No. That's the Precises.

[00:09:15] Mark: You have 35 character energy.

[00:09:18] Kalen: That's it. That's precisely what I'm shooting for. Because there was a time when, honestly I, because I, I lost some weight.

[00:09:25] Kalen: There was a time when I was probably 39 and I was much more overweight. I kid you not, there was a time or two where somebody thought I was in my fifties. Wow. And I remembered feeling like, where's I'm looking forward to being my fifties in the sense that you could be super healthy in your fifties.

[00:09:44] Kalen: But if you're 39 and you look like you're 50, like something's like a little, tweaked a little, something needs to tweak. But so yeah, like now then I started to get to the point where people sometimes told me I looked or seemed or looked younger than my age. And basically that's what you want.

[00:09:58] Kalen: You want, like there's a guy I played Pickle Wa with who's 68 and he could pass for 50 and he's in super good shape. He runs fast. Yeah. He plays pickleball good. You know what I mean? So that's the goal is for all of us to feel and look young, younger than we actually are.

[00:10:13] Kalen: Pretty

[00:10:13] Mark: much. Yeah. I think everyone wants to once they hit 40, wants to stay like between 4 30, 5 and 40 and appearance forever. Yes. Yes. But like until then yes. You don't wanna be look too young because then people don't take you seriously. So there's like a curve. Totally.

[00:10:29] Kalen: The crazy thing is my friend Ryan he'll sometimes get carded and shit like that at a bar.

[00:10:34] Kalen: And whereas I haven't been in card like. They'll do it as a formality, but they like, they know that I'm fucking, especially if I have a little white in my beard, but he was mad that he got card and I'm like, what the fuck are you mad about, dude? Yeah, that's a lot of people problem to have, dude.

[00:10:50] Kalen: What are you talking about? But but yeah dude additions, man. I know you had, I know we're doc, so Yeah.

[00:10:58] Mark: Did, so you had, you guys had a watch party yesterday. How'd that go? Was that cool?

[00:11:03] Kalen: It was okay. It was literally, it was three of us total sitting around on the couch and they had, the dude had a tv.

[00:11:11] Kalen: My buddy Alex there, shout out to Alex, was SKU savvy. I met him at the Shopify Mart creator Mart. Randomly in the line. He's super cool. And he came out and we hung out. And then this other dude was there. But there was a tv but he didn't know how to plug the laptop into the tv 'cause he had just, moved there two months ago.

[00:11:29] Kalen: And his roommate, he didn't know how to set it up anyways, so we're sitting on the couch, three of us watching a laptop on a coffee table. So it was probably the worst watch party of all time in that sense. But old, we had a, we, yeah. So we had a fun conversation, but I'm imagining it'd be cool like to get more like events going in Austin type of thing with more people, but I don't know, man.

[00:11:54] Kalen: You know how it is with people. It's sometimes it's fun and sometimes it's I just don't like people, dude I just don't want to, you know what I mean? I don't wanna be around people.

[00:12:03] Mark: I like the idea of having some in-person event for the announcements, but maybe like in the evening at a bar.

[00:12:10] Mark: And it's not so much like you watched them together. 'cause like I think you should do that kind of on your own time, but it's more like, Hey, let's hang out and what we're you and I are doing now of let's talk shop about what this means. What's surprising?

[00:12:25] Mark: Or what's, like why are they featuring this kind of stuff? Yeah, totally. Some of it, sometimes I'm like, why are they pushing this? Is this like a pet project of like Harley or Toby? And sometimes I'm like, okay, this is actually cool.

[00:12:38] Kalen: Do you love Harley? And Toby? Jake genuinely.

[00:12:41] Mark: No. No.

[00:12:43] Kalen: Okay. I, is that a fair quick question? I we're recording. No. We are recording. I don't, I can take it out if you want, but I'm just, no, I'm just kidding. I'm just genuinely curious because I like, you know how I am dude. When I get into stuff, I get all the way in and then when I went, and then if my heart is out of it, my heart is all the way out.

[00:13:02] Kalen: So I saw the clip of Tobi watching the, the recent pro promo they released. I saw the clip of him looking at the couple that just made their first sale. Did you see that? Yeah. Yeah. And he started to like, he smiled and he started to tear up. And I was like, dude, this guy, like genuinely like I know, everybody's oh, they don't care about the rebels, the arm, the rebels.

[00:13:26] Kalen: They don't care about the small guy. They only care about plus. I get it. And I think that as an org, they probably are prioritizing mid-market enterprise heavily. They definitely are, but I really don't, I really think those guys believe in the mission. I really do. I really do. No I, and it's cool to me.

[00:13:47] Kalen: I agree. It's meaningful. It's meaningful to me. Because Magento lost that, like I believe Ro Roy and Yoav did as well. Believed in it. But then, they obviously sold, Roy sold for, I believe I forget the details. Anyways, it's cool to see Roy on Twitter again. Dude, I've seen him on some tweets and I think he dropped off of Twitter for a while.

[00:14:07] Kalen: Roy Rubin, and I've seen him recently, so I'm guessing he's working on something, but anyways, then they sold and, eBay and PayPal and I think for the last long as I can remember, it was like people were good people, nice people. Lavelle is a go is great. Like what a super, not super cool guy, super great leader, but I think it was more about, hey, let's let's tune this up in three years and let's get a return on it.

[00:14:33] Kalen: You know what I mean? Yeah. Whereas I genuinely believe, I think Harley said Shopify's a hundred year company do you remember him saying that? I think I saw him

[00:14:42] Mark: tweet that. That sounds familiar. I wouldn't be surprised if he said it.

[00:14:46] Kalen: Yeah. So I just feel like he, they genuinely I'm a big believer in founder led companies, as just in general.

[00:14:53] Kalen: But see here it is. We're building a hundred year company and I think that I think where the hell did that? Oh, here we go. Yeah. So I genuinely believe this and anyways, but that's my answer to the question. But I didn't let you finish giving like your answer to the question.

[00:15:08] Mark: I have to put some nuances into that. No. You're like,

[00:15:11] Kalen: hell nah.

[00:15:12] Mark: So no. So what I think about Toby is I agree with you. I think he has like a huge actual pers personal passion for the merchants. Yeah. Like the smaller ones. Actually, I think that for a while that was actually to the detriment of the company.

[00:15:28] Mark: I think they were a little more like too focused on the merchants that were probably not making them a lot of money. Which is why I think they resisted, like even raising the prices on their basic plans for so long. And then when they did, people like rose up, but then I don't think it, was a bad thing.

[00:15:47] Mark: But I think that they've found like a good balance between Trying to like, build features for the lower end internally in Shopify, and then also like leveraging the partners and the apps for the more advanced enterprise which kind of like really segues into this big announcement of Shopify subscriptions, which is a bombshell actually, because subscriptions have been such a big part of the app ecosystem. And now they're essentially like competing with that. But then they're like you, there's apps for more advanced things. On the one hand they're saying like, Hey, we have these basic versions of these features.

[00:16:26] Mark: Now it's free. You can do subscriptions for free on Shopify. But if you're like a bigger merchant, you can still use the apps, so totally. Yeah. What do you think about that?

[00:16:38] Kalen: So I feel like I, okay, so here was my realization. I feel like previously I felt the degree to which Shopify competes with its app ecosystem was random, it's as an app, like we're an app, we, flow is we would be an alternative flow. As an app. You, the, you are, you always have, let's call it cannibalization anxiety, right? Showtime. Yeah. Showtime. Yeah. I can't all that's a so I always thought okay, it's that's such showtime.

[00:17:12] Kalen: It's it's who knows? Who knows what they're gonna do. It's anybody's guess They could kill my business at any time. And then what I realized was that if they're gonna do an app, it's actually very clear what their playbook is. And I think it's logical, and I think it's really aligned with the whole ecosystem, which is, hey, if we create a, something that competes with the ecosystem maps, we're gonna roll out a basic version. Yes. Is that a train? Sorry.

[00:17:44] Mark: There is a train. That's

[00:17:46] Kalen: wild,

[00:17:46] Mark: dude. Bam. So it's like you just cussed

[00:17:49] Kalen: Uhhuh.

[00:17:50] Kalen: Dude, I just took a big old bite of an apple and then I realized, I wouldn't be able to eat it all. That'd be nasty. It take, it would've taken me like a minute to finish Chew, but anyways so I think that they The playbook. Yeah. Playbook, basic version, right? Look at Shopify email or is it called Inbox or e what the hell is it called?

[00:18:07] Mark: It's both. There's an Shopify inbox and a Shopify email. And what's the difference between Inbox is between, I think it's more, inbox is more of a live chat and email is like a Klaviyo like email market.

[00:18:18] Kalen: Oh gotcha. So I'm thinking of Shopify email which I think what I had seen and I saw I think I saw what's the privy dude's name?

[00:18:28] Kalen: Ben, I think I saw, is that his name? Anyways, he said dang it man, I can't find anything these days. He basically said that he thought that They were, he was impressed that they were iterating. Oh, here we go. So this is the dude that started Privy, right? Or he started, do you know this guy?

[00:18:49] Kalen: Yeah. Privy?

[00:18:49] Mark: Not personally, but Yeah I know. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So

[00:18:52] Kalen: then he knows what he's talking about, right? So anyways he was talking so I asked the question like, what's the what's the native, what's the native function? Lemme just read it, dude. Which native functionality that overlaps with popular apps heavily are you most bullish on?

[00:19:06] Kalen: And and I said, don't say subs, right? 'cause everybody's talking about subs. And he said email. And I had also seen, he said that, they've got marketing tools. They, there's, I think the way it works is there's flow templates that that tie into your marketing automation. Do you ever use those or.

[00:19:22] Mark: I've never used them, but I know they, they exist.

[00:19:25] Kalen: Okay. It's so funny because there's so much functionality that I'm always like, I haven't used Flow, just I've tested it a couple times, but I'll hear people discuss, you talk about potential limitations, and then I'll be, pitching them on Mason stuff but there's so much functionality.

[00:19:39] Kalen: Like it's almost like nobody's used every piece of functionality, like but but anyways, point being email or Shopify email is maturing. Yeah, when they launched it, what was it, four years ago? Five years ago? I don't know because I wasn't really following closely then.

[00:19:55] Kalen: You don't know when it was launched Shopify email? Seriously, because I thought it was like, okay. Two years ago. Okay. That makes sense. Two years ago, April no. April, 2020, dude, so that's three years ago. Three years ago. Yeah. So three years. But I remember at the time it was the same as subscriptions.

[00:20:14] Kalen: Everybody's oh my gosh, they're gonna kill they're gonna kill Klaviyo, they're gonna kill MailChimp. And then it came out and it was like really basic. And so everybody's of course we still use Klaviyo, like everybody and their grandma still uses Klaviyo. So I think the same is true of every category, like they launch and then they continue to mature as much as it makes sense to mature.

[00:20:40] Kalen: And so I don't know, subscriptions nearly as well as you do as far as actual fun. Like I know you do a lot of recharge like I, I'm guessing, and you probably know better than I do, that there's no client of yours that could use the native subscriptions as it is. Correct me if I'm wrong.

[00:20:59] Kalen: Okay.

[00:21:00] Mark: Right.

[00:21:01] Mark: Yeah.

[00:21:01] Kalen: Yeah.

[00:21:02] Kalen: Right.

[00:21:03] Kalen: Yeah.

[00:21:04] Kalen: Right.

[00:21:04] Kalen: Right.

[00:21:05] Kalen: Yeah. It, I would imagine I, my understanding is that it coincided with the meetings policy where they killed most all of their meetings over three people or something. I know a lot of people also like to trash talk the whole meetings thing, and they're like, oh, it's not real.

[00:21:21] Kalen: They still have meetings. But again I yeah yeah. I love that too. And I think they genuinely did kill a lot of meetings. I don't know if they killed every meeting. I'm sure they didn't kill every meeting, but it seems to me and I don't know if they've talked about this, but I'm just guessing that if you kill meetings, you have to replace it with something.

[00:21:42] Kalen: And what I would think it was replaced with was like KPIs. Because like our com, our company does KPIs and it's the first time I have KPIs and they're like good. Like I get it, but I don't like having KPIs, but I'm guessing that they must be shipping more because instead of just throwing meetings at every problem, they must have some kind of internal metrics for aligning everybody on let's ship features.

[00:22:14] Kalen: That's my, that's, yeah.

[00:22:17] Kalen: Yeah.

[00:22:17] Kalen: Ah, that makes sense.

[00:22:21] Kalen: They're Canadian. I love a Canadian dude. I was just talking to a guy that was from Toronto. Toronto. I love a Canadian dude. But that makes sense, man. That actually makes, that makes a lot of sense actually. I think you convinced me. It's more likely that it's leadership changes than it is KPIs.

[00:22:37] Kalen: 'cause KPIs can be good. It's they can be good or they can be bad and whatever. But like leadership is for sure a major factor. So something and see again, going back to the thing of how I really genuinely love Toby and Harley, even though they haven't followed me yet, but we're gonna change.

[00:22:55] Kalen: We're gonna get that changed at some point. We're gonna get that follow, we're gonna lock it in. But but they, everybody thinks I'm growth hacking and I'm like, dude, I'm not growth hacking. I understand. In the past, I have done some growth hacking and people think I'm just faking everything. I'm not, dude I genuinely like this dude.

[00:23:15] Kalen: Like when I saw him on the video, I was like, this guy is my dude. But he But you mentioned money, right? You mentioned being a millionaire, the people, the v whatever the whatever that level, that tier of VPs or whatever tier it was that had enough whatever stock or whatever to be like fu money.

[00:23:34] Kalen: Toby and Harley are both billionaires, right?

[00:23:37] Kalen: But they're both, but they're both billionaires, okay Harley net worth. Now these net worth calculators are not what? Four mil? What the heck? That doesn't make sense. Does that make sense? I thought he was a billionaire.

[00:23:52] Kalen: Oh, no. He's deaf dude. He's def dude, he's definitely a billionaire,

[00:23:56] Kalen: but he's clo He's, if he's not a billionaire, he's billionaire adjacent. Dude come on. I we're never gonna see the exact numbers, but for all intents and purposes, okay. I believe that. I believe that. Okay. But my point is both of these cats could sail off into the sunset and do whatever they want.

[00:24:19] Kalen: Which personally, I, if I could, I would be in Costa Rica surfing every day of my life for the rest of my life, but, so that's why I genuinely believe in them. I met Harley at the Creator Mart for a minute and a half, shook his hand. And I just saw the energy in this.

[00:24:37] Kalen: Dude's like eyes, like he's fired up, dude. He is fired up. And I know what it's like to have a successful product and then to lose the, or not, I don't know what it's like to have this level of success. I know what it's like to have a very small scale, little bit of a success, and then instead of building on it, You somehow lose the motivation, you somehow lose the vision, and then you just, get, it's like you're wandering in the desert, and it's like, there's no and then you just end up, it just doesn't go anywhere or you sell or whatever.

[00:25:14] Kalen: But these guys are in it for life. I think they're, I believe they're in it for life, and that's pretty special. That's pretty fricking special. I'm so sick of this whole fanboy thing. I don't want to hear the word like, but if anybody thinks, I'm just saying this for some, for some growth hacking purpose.

[00:25:34] Kalen: If you think I'm saying it for Twitter, like it's like we have to stop doing that. Dude. Debate it on the merits debate debate, it on the merits. And I'm sure that, like we just debated on the merits. Is it KPIs or leadership? And then you convince me it's probably leadership. If you think somebody's being inauthentic, debate it on the merits and I just gave my case.

[00:25:56] Kalen: I saw it in his eyes, shook his hand. They're both billionaires. They could both do whatever they want. They say it's a hundred year company, it is it looks like a hundred year company. It acts like a hundred year company. It walks like a hundred year company. Magento was a beautiful thing.

[00:26:12] Kalen: We both really loved the community. It was not a hundred year company unfortunately. It just wasn't.

[00:26:18] Kalen: Right?

[00:26:19] Kalen: Yeah.

[00:26:20] Mark: Right.

[00:26:21] Kalen: But it's funny, like I am starting to believe in them, but I don't know how common that is because I'm starting to get the lay of the land, and I feel like. I feel like yeah, there are, there are growth hack, there are growth hackers like that are, and then there's the whole debate around people that are people that are, apps that are manufacturing hype, right?

[00:26:43] Kalen: By paying influencers on the side, things that are, I think, unethical. And so everybody's so skeptical. Like everybody's it's all fake and send Lane. Okay. So I've been, look, I've been following Send Lane. Are you familiar with Send Lane at all? Okay.

[00:27:00] Kalen: What TV show,

[00:27:02] Kalen: what.

[00:27:03] Kalen: I remember the Commerce Roundtable. It was I remember that. I didn't know it was related to Send Lane, but I remember seeing you in a video of a Commerce Roundtable.

[00:27:13] Kalen: Okay, got it. Okay. So I've been following them, I've been following Jimmy, and I just had this sense that they were, onto something like everybody knows Klaviyo, everybody knows that they're really big, they're very popular, but they're big. They have pro, they have the problems that bigger companies have, which is maybe they're not as responsive, maybe, whatever.

[00:27:35] Kalen: And and I know that a lot of people love them and, you're probably a partner. We're a, we're not a partner, but we have an integration. They. They're, they have extraordinarily successful product, but I just got the sense that these guys were coming up, and I'm developing my instincts in the ecosystem because they're rusty, but it's all the same.

[00:27:57] Kalen: Like I, we've been observing e-commerce ecosystems for 10 plus years, and you start to notice patterns. Do you feel that way, like coming Magento to Shopify, do you see similar patterns and stuff?

[00:28:08] Kalen: Yes, exactly. Exactly.

[00:28:12] Kalen: Yes. That's what I'm talking about. Yes.

[00:28:16] Kalen: Yes. Yes. Exactly. Exactly. And so they're the 800, they're the 600 pound gorilla, right? I always forget, is it 800 or 600? 600? Anyways, they're the 600 pound gorilla. I'm starting I'm looking at Jimmy's tweets. He's always I like his style, right? 'cause he'll troll a little bit.

[00:28:36] Kalen: He'll be like, good morning to everyone except my competitor that's not answering support emails on the weekend, which is just, it's just hilarious. And it's not just hilarious. It's also a gigantic competitive advantage. And anyways, recently they, I feel like they've started to pop. I saw, I believe it was Greg Mead with the cross game type whatever.

[00:29:01] Kalen: He's like pretty big on Twitter. Yeah, I saw he switched and then I've saw two or three in quick succession kind of switch. I want to say eCom Cowboy, but I could be wrong about that. I'm just off the top of the dome. But I went okay, dude, I think they're popping. And then some people tweeted oh, let me guess.

[00:29:22] Kalen: Send Lane is is giving people advisory shares, like the insinuation being that they're essentially manufacturing hype, which was my understanding of the ins of the insinuation. And so I don't believe that, I don't, I th I know that certain companies manufacture hype. We may or may not have a competitor that we believe may have manufactured hype.

[00:29:50] Kalen: And I know that there are for sure apps that manufacture hype, but I don't think it's, I don't think they are. And so then when people are so pessimistic that every time an app pops, they assume it's fake. That's not the way, that's not the path. The path is, we gotta figure out which ones are fake.

[00:30:15] Kalen: And then if they're fake, then you know, people should know that they're fake. You know what I mean? I'm not sure how you feel about all that, but to me, the skepticism related to the apps is like similar. Like I have zero skepticism about Toby and Harley. I didn't know anything about them. I saw Shopify vaguely as the enemy for when I was in Magento.

[00:30:36] Kalen: Even though in theory you're not supposed to feel that way, the pie's big enough for all of us, blah, blah, blah. In reality, I saw Shopify as vaguely the enemy. It's first you laugh, then you, what is it? First you laugh. Then you fight. First you laugh. Then you join them. First you laugh. Wait, first they ignore you.

[00:30:57] Kalen: Then they laugh at you. Then they fight. Then they join you. This is so dumb. They're not. So my point is, we ignore, I, that's what I did. I had a Magento podcast for eight years. In the beginning, I ignored Shopify. We thought it was silly. We thought it was for tiny sites. Then it got a little bigger.

[00:31:15] Kalen: We started laughing. I'm sure I almost wanted to go back to the Maj Talk podcast and look these clips up. 'cause I know they're out there. Where, we would've, I'm sure made fun of Shopify in some way. And then fast forward, I've joined, and now my Twitter says Shopify in my name, Shopify Automation.

[00:31:32] Kalen: So that's an ego hit, that's a, that's an ego hit for me but I accepted it and, okay. Okay.

[00:31:40] Kalen: Okay.

[00:31:41] Kalen: Dude, this is Chase, the Apple. I'm on mute. I was like, let him, I was like, keep talking, mark. I need to, Finish this damn album. Gimme like seven more seconds of content.

[00:31:49] Kalen: See, that's see we're getting our, we're getting our momentum going. Dude, this is our second one. Mark and Kalen talk, Shopify. I think the name is, I think the name is so bad that it's perfect, right? It's so perfect. Like the ai, nah, hell nah. That came straight from the dome. Dude.

[00:32:10] Kalen: AI is garbage. It's stuff like that. But and then the acronym is cool too. It's max.

[00:32:17] Kalen: Max, let's call it Max. Oh shoot. It's basically pronounced, the acronym is pronounced Max, m a k t s. Hell yeah. That's cool, man.

[00:32:28] Kalen: Dude I'm, I almost want to just go like battle the Shopify dudes. These guys are all getting into fights with me. It's hysterical, man. I keep getting into fights with people, but I'm not being rude. I don't think I'm being rude. Like this guy was like, oh, Eunice drank the Kool or Kool-Aid effect.

[00:32:47] Kalen: And I was like, what are you talking about, dude? Eunice was just saying he goes I'm gonna just get into the beef. 'cause it's hysterical. He's He, I'm gonna just I'm just, this is all I'm thinking about right now. So he is like a new customer account, A P I B two B auth. I'm like, oh, that's interesting.

[00:33:02] Kalen: I'm curious about, I'm curious to better understand B two B au. There's been a couple use cases that I had heard of that I was curious about. I was interested in the B two B pricing, a p I and he's like the Kool-Aid effect. And I was like, oh, that's interesting. And I was like, what is the Kool-Aid effect?

[00:33:16] Kalen: Like I was actually curious about it because I didn't know if it was a thing, but I don't think it's a thing. I think he just made it up and drinking the Kool-Aid is a phrase. So basically he's doing that thing that I just described where he's being overly pessimistic about the fact that Eunice is excited about a new a p i, essentially.

[00:33:37] Kalen: And so I'm like, what do you mean? And he's expecting X. And I'm like, wait, is this a thing? And I'm like, I don't think it's a thing. I think Buddy is just confused. And so I look it up and I'm like, you're basically saying he's drinking the Kool-Aid. I was like, what else does Google say? I was like, it says a thing or two about a thing or two.

[00:33:54] Kalen: Did you coin the term Kool-aid effect or are you just misinformed? And then Eunice said, he's a cool guy. He just has a bad temper. And I said, I'll take your word for it. He needs to do more research before trying to spar with me. I'm gonna make him look silly. And then he tried to, oh, and then I posted, I'm gonna start getting into Twitter fights with anyone who beefs with blank.

[00:34:14] Kalen: I'm gonna call him blank Bob. Dude, I don't care. Blank. I can't even pronounce blank lob dude and blank Bob is just something perfect about it. And so then anyway, then he like, he's buddy injected himself to act intellectual without context. I'm about this heat. Let's fucking go.

[00:34:30] Kalen: And then I go, alright chief, you didn't answer the question. And then he didn't reply. I waited five minutes before we were getting ready to podcast. I was like, Hey buddy, struggling to reply. And I'm like, you know what, dude? Honestly, we're gonna become friends. I could tell. I could tell even though this guy.

[00:34:43] Kalen: I was like, we're gonna come. I like him. I like the fact that he's fighting with me. And then and then Eunice is you guys are perfect for each other. Trust me, I know you both. And then he goes, we're not gonna be friends. So I'm just like, all right, man. See you on the flip side.

[00:34:57] Kalen: So anyways, shout out to Pan Panoply. I'm definitely gonna become friends with Guy. He just doesn't realize it yet. But all these beefs are just like funny I love they're they're just awesome. Right. Yeah.

[00:35:08] Kalen: Yes. I agree. I agree. I agree. I agree. I think it's fine to be excited. I agree. And we need both. We j we actually, because we've seen, I've seen I, I used the word ecosystems what did I cycle or something like. These things come in cycles. We've seen these cycles in Magento.

[00:35:29] Kalen: Like people get excited about something, they become pessimistic. The company, it's like you described, the company gets so big, they start ignoring people. Everybody, this sense of resentment builds, right? The Magento community resentment was off the charts. And I thought in Shopify land that everybody was happy.

[00:35:48] Kalen: I genuinely thought everybody was a happy camper. But I'm realizing it's the same thing. There's people that are disgruntled about X, Y, and Z, right? Maybe there are maybe some May, there's a lot of recharge partners, right? Shout out to Recharge. We do a lot of recharge, right? Shout out to Kristen. She's super cool, man.

[00:36:07] Kalen: She's cool as hell on on On is that her? Kristen? Yeah, Kristen. Kristen LaFrance. She's cool. There's a lot of RECHARGE partners. Now our question is Recharge Partners are like, oh, what's gonna happen to recharge? Because we are invested in Recharge in the sense that we're partners. We've got rev share, we've got, and not just Rev share, but we have clients that like recharge.

[00:36:30] Kalen: We know how to use it. We've got good support channels. We've got projects that we know we can launch and rely on them and depend on them. You're invested in recharge. That's why Recharge is successful because they have a partner ecosystem that's invested in them. So then the question is, are you going to be pessimistic about the native functionality?

[00:36:52] Kalen: Just we all have incentives. Like I'm a partner now. I didn't used to be a partner. I used to be my cowboy. I said not a cowboy. I used to be like independent. I talk shit about part Magento all the time. Now I'm a partner, so I have to walk the line and I, but I've known my whole life partners in Magento and Big Con it's all the same.

[00:37:12] Kalen: Yes, you have to walk a line whenever you're a partner, you have to walk a line. You're not gonna just trash them in public for no reason. But the question is are you intellectually honest? And that's what I like about you, like you are an intellectually honest person. We all have our incentives and that affects our decision making.

[00:37:35] Kalen: But you're the type of person that you're gonna call it, like you see it, so you're not quite as in love with Toby and Harley. That's fine. Like I happen to be, but you're more skeptical and we need that. And it's good to Hash it out, but the people that say everything is dishonest, everybody who likes X is dishonest.

[00:37:57] Kalen: Like that mindset is just fundamentally wrong. And I, and so that's my whole, that's my whole spiel, dude. I had to get that off the chest.

[00:38:09] Kalen: Totally.

[00:38:09] Kalen: Right.

[00:38:10] Kalen: Exactly. Exactly. And I think we have to mention shop wear in this conversation, because obviously Ben Marks is there now, and I see them as a I see them as a version of al almost a version of the second coming of Magento. Like literally, I see them as the second coming of Magento in the sense that they're open source.

[00:38:33] Kalen: They have a similar kind of heartbeat. They have a similar ethos. They have a similar vibe and Ben Marks is there, right? I think that fundamentally when Magento started to decline they just did not fundamentally understand open source versus cloud and like the cloud, Magento cloud just had a lot of challenges.

[00:38:56] Kalen: Right? And to say the least, so I think, I don't know, I don't know how shop wear works. I don't know if they have a cloud. I'm assuming they probably have a cloud version. I'm assuming they have a deployed version. I haven't really looked at it, but I am pretty sure that whatever they're doing is probably solid.

[00:39:13] Kalen: And it's good to have an open source alternative. It's really good to have an open source alternative to Shopify. So it's cool. It's cool. But yeah, Magento just didn't, just didn't get it unfortunately. And, so it, it is what it is.

[00:39:27] Kalen: That would've been the move. ASSE would've been the move. Or Maj Mo or Ma or Maj Mojo too. Whatever. Everybody has their favorites.

[00:39:34] Kalen: Right, totally. Totally. Maybe we should wrap it up here. I I know we didn't get which subscriptions. We talked subscriptions, which honestly is I think, I know we didn't, I know we didn't like I know. We didn't really, okay. Okay. You, I'll let you close it out, dude. Give your take.

[00:39:52] Kalen: Give your take. High level take. I honestly. I thought col collab. Is it called collabs or is it called collective? Yeah, I thought collective looked awesome. My c e o Aaron made an interesting comment, which was that, which I thought made sense, which was that which was that he thought that collabs was the, one of the most, in collabs is a good example of something that was always going to be hacky when implemented by third parties.

[00:40:17] Kalen: There are some things just have to be inside the platform. And when he said that, I was like, yep, totally agree. So that seems pretty interesting for sure. Yeah, that's a good question. What's the difference between, see, dude, this is the thing, dude I'm still getting up to speed.

[00:40:34] Kalen: Okay. So I feel like when he said this, I thought he was talking about collective, but it may apply to both, it may apply equally to both in some sense. Although the, what I was thinking he was talking about at the time was collective in the sense that you're allowing this is wild, right?

[00:40:51] Kalen: Because now you're allowing, like you've got all, you've got all the Shopify stores, you've got massive number of stores, you've got the shop app that pulls in, and now the stores can all pull from each other. So that's, that seems like a fundamental innovation. Like you're gonna get network effects.

[00:41:08] Kalen: You're gonna I don't know. That seemed, I don't know very much about the details of it, but that seems to me pretty interesting Shopify Collective.

[00:41:16] Kalen: Okay, fair enough. Fair enough.

[00:41:18] Kalen: Right.

[00:41:19] Kalen: That's hysterical,

[00:41:20] Kalen: right? Yes. So I'm gonna say I agree with you on, I'm gonna say I agree with you on the influencer side. I honestly thought he was talking about collective. So I agree with you On the influencer side, that doesn't seem like it needs to be native. The thing that seems like it needs to be native is allowing one store to sell from another store.

[00:41:42] Kalen: That feels to me like the kind of thing that needs to be native.

[00:41:47] Kalen: Right.

[00:41:47] Kalen: Totally. Nice man. This definitely was not the best additions recap it could have possibly been, but I think that, I don't know. I feel like we talked about things that at least I was interested in and I know there's a lot. We could do a part two tomorrow, dude. We could do a part two soon and just get into more detail, but I I know we only barely scratch the surface as far as what's actually in additions.

[00:42:13] Kalen: There's so much in here. I don't even, I have not read this entire landing page, not even close, there's a lot, dude. There is a lot. That's what's so impressive about it. And I think what we wanted to do was a real deep dive. Maybe we can find the time to look at all this stuff, dude. How there's so much, it's like crazy. I know, dude. Like an eight hour what's it called?

[00:42:38] Kalen: Marathon. Do a marathon podcast for eight hours. Cool, brother. Good talking man. I'll go ahead and do we wanna do any closing? Closing? Nah, that's cheesy. Let's just close, let's just end it.