Reflections on CTO Life and Checkout Innovations

In this episode, I speak with Jean-Michel Lemieux, aka @jmwind, ex-CTO of Shopify who helped usher in the modern era sneaker drops and anti-bot protection. We talk about what it took landing Supreme as a customer and how it required a complete rewrite of the checkout flow. We also discuss the early days of anti-bot protection and how it evolved, including his relationship with Sneaker Twitter and bot developers. We also discuss Shopify as a platform and what makes it into the core platform and what does not and why. Plus a lot more!

Timestamps

00:00 - Cold Open: Stephen A
00:22 - Intro
03:18 - Sock Drop
04:29 - Interview
08:58 - Landing Supreme as a Shopify Customer
15:16 - Rebuilding Checkout
26:54 - Early Days of Anti-Bot Protection
33:09 - Dealing with Botched Drops
39:19 - Why is anti-bot only a Shopify Plus feature?
43:08 - Raffles
49:29 - Sneaker Twitter Ombudsman
01:03:16 - Zadeh Kicks
01:05:21 - Ticketmaster
01:07:48 - Outro

https://linktr.ee/sockjig