I love the framework that like, you're never too late for anything. Like we're, we're still early for e-commerce. We're still early for Amazon. We're still early for Bitcoin, for launching apps in the app store. Like you only know that you were late once it's over. You know, like if Bitcoin ended today or tomorrow, then you would literally be late if you bought Bitcoin today. But if it's going to be around for 100 years, you're very early to buy Bitcoin, right? E-commerce is like Shopify has been around for 15 years, but like 16 cents of every dollar are spent online. You're still early.

I also think that on that too, it's you feel late to the party, but you realize that like the place at which the party has changed a little bit. That's really what you're saying too. Like there's the element of like, right, like e-commerce is still growing. And eventually when it eclipses 51 cents of the dollar for every dollar spent on transactional commerce, then you can be like, okay, maybe we're not in the first innings anymore or whatever. But even today, we're very much still in the first innings. I think as far as starting new companies, you're thinking like there are already 500 000 there's nowhere near that many there are already 10 000 roofing companies in the united states here today i'm too late to that all the good roofing companies are already built and in the market like you're right that that like supply demand for roofing companies is probably somewhat equal right now. And you coming into the market in a new market, you'll probably drive pricing down very, very marginally. But where you're probably wrong is that every roofing company on the planet uses a paper ledger, isn't willing to do quotes over the phone. They want to see the property first and don't know how to use Google Maps measuring, probably aren't willing to like, you know, use AI to search up county records and understand what the last roof was built based on a permit poll. Or also probably aren't willing to like use AI from an assistant. So they paid a $75,000 a year assistant and you can use somebody else, right? So like, are you late to a roofing company? Yeah. Can you still compete because you are early to the modern day roofing company version? Absolutely. And I feel like that's, that's kind of like the other way to look at all of that.

Yeah. And I would even take it a step further and say, let's say we're late to roofing late as compared to what, so let's say you do want to start a roofing company. Okay. I'm going to take 30 roofing contractors in my area, 30 phone numbers, and then let's just pick a tangential industry. Let's do landscaping and then let's do pool installers. That's 90 phone numbers. I'm going to call all 90 of them. Okay. Five people answered the phone and roofing, 23 people answered in the other two. Okay. Like we're late on all three of those, but it really seems like the supply and demand imbalance is in my favor if I'm launching a roofing business, because they're not even answering, which tells me either they suck or they're so busy, they don't need to answer their phone. Right. So it's like late as relative to what is, is also a relevant question to ask.

That's a great point too, just in terms of quality.

Yeah. So with the same argument of millions of apps in the app store, I see AI agents as something very similar. And we were speaking on your podcast yesterday and you brought up an idea that gave me another idea. You were asking about the YouTube play buttons and the Shopify buttons,

right? So, right.

And so it's like, let's say, just like we're still launching apps in the app store, we're going to be launching and selling agents in 20 years with different random, very specified use cases. Okay. There's millions of options. So as one random idea, like this is an agent that probably won't get built for five years that I'm about to say, but it could work today. Okay. And maybe this will put it out into the atmosphere and it'll get built tomorrow because someone heard this, but let's say you had an agent and all the tech is available to build this today. Well, let me back up. Would you agree, Connor, that it's not too late to start a YouTube channel and it's not too late to start a Shopify store? Completely agree. That's still great opportunities. Okay, so those are represented.

To put my money where my mouth is, doing both additional ones this year. Doable. So, yeah, so very, very much so agreed.

Well, and that carries more weight coming from you because you've had a Shopify store for years. And a lot of times when you're in that industry, you're biased and you're like, oh, it's saturated. Everyone's doing it because it's proximity bias, right? But for you to say the opposite, it carries even more weight.

So here's, yeah, I'm literally starting a new e-commerce brand this year. We're going to maybe talk about that a little later. I don't even know that. Yeah, we can chat about it a little bit more. I've got some interesting things in play. The thing that I would say is maybe too late is just like blatant drop shipping from Alibaba to Shopify. This is where it's like the game has changed. Like if you're saying from e-commerce standpoint, like, I don't know, do people not want to buy things anymore? Oh, they still want to buy things? Okay, cool. You're still good then. Like you're not too late. Whereas I think the knockoff stuff, like if you're competing on low margin products back in 2012, you could make a freaking killing selling next to anything and the product can be bad and you could still make money. Here, I will say that I think the types of products that you can do well with an e-commerce has changed a decent amount, but it's not too late to sell things on a Shopify website. Completely

agree. I look at drop shipping within the framework of the more effective a growth hack, the shorter its lifespan, right? Call drop shipping an arbitrage growth hack. And it was extremely effective for a while, but then it got people caught onto it. And then the CPMs on the ads went way up and you can't drop ship without paid ads, right? And your margins aren't great because you don't own the thing. You're dropping it, shipping it from some other place. And so that got oversaturated and it's hard to make that work. Totally agree. I

think the, just for some little game for people who are listening to this right now, the three categories I'm most bullish on when it comes to e-commerce in general for 2025 are anything premium and luxury. I really would not sell a low price product today. The idea of, I mean, I think tariffs are going to implement it today. So that might change from the Chinese Timu dropship competitors. But for how long, nobody knows. So it would be anything luxury where it's like, all right, I'm paying for the brand. Somebody might have the same exact widget, but I like your branding better. And I believe in your mission. And so that's why I'm buying it. That's the first one. Second would be anything custom. Really hard to compete with that from a retail standpoint. And I also think that it drops the reverse logistics returns substantially. And then the last one would be anything food and beverage. Same thing. There are return rates for sure, much lower than the average apparel category. And it's consumable. And it's something that isn't going to get competed with by Chinese competitors. Those are the three categories that I'm most bullish about. And

I'll add an asterisk to your third category. Having owned a company called Send Eats, where that's all we did was ship food for other Shopify brands. You want it to be a food product that is like preferably under 16 ounces so you could ship it on usps first class preferably doesn't perish for a long time preferably not refrigerated preferably has a higher price point so it justifies the shipping cost that's what i would but if all those are true absolutely

i agree that's the easy i think all right you've done this more than i have so push back where I'm wrong here. Really, what you just described is the easiest way to do it to make sure that you're not having the most returns. I think that's also the most competitive in that category. Because if you look at a company like ButcherBox, they exploded to like an $800 million a year brand bootstrapped in five years, which is... Actually, I just said those numbers a lot it sounds way too high it's

a lot

it was a not it is a nine figure brand i don't know if it's 800 million but it is nine figures for sure and you have to refrigerate this stuff with dry ice so i do think that that could be a competitive it works though

because the price point the price point is higher right like because we used to ship like meat pies and ice cream and butter. Like it's just the unit economics do not make sense. Like we would take on customers, household name brands that you have heard of that you see in the grocery store. And they're shipping like 50 orders a month because it doesn't make sense financially.

No, I agree with all of that. Dude,

I haven't even gotten to the agent idea.

Oh, sorry. Sorry. Yeah, go.