Our recurring guest Alex Danco of Spotify, err.. Shopify returns to Infinite Loops for his fifth appearance to discuss all things Web 3! Follow Alex on Twitter at https://twitter.com/Alex_Danco and read his essays at https://alexdanco.com/ Show Notes: Was it un-Canadian for Canada to pass the Emergency Act? Was the MAGA movement monarchist? Social meaning of NFTs What NFTs are not Catholicism — The original blockchain Code that can make commitments Wallets are the new web browsers What really is censorship Blockchains tell you what to ignore Porting from Web 2.0 to Web 3.0 NFTs as human readable format of a smart contract Why gamers end up as good decision makers How to identify an extremely online person

Alex Danco, a returning guest known for his provocative insights, dives deep into the dynamics of social media and the sad demise of Twitter likes. He explores the critical role of mystery in business strategies, arguing that emotional connections often outweigh conventional product features. The conversation also unpacks the evolving state of journalism and the significance of surprise in political discourse. Throughout, Alex emphasizes the power of friction in creative processes and shares innovative learning approaches that challenge traditional educational paradigms.

Packy is joined by Alex Danco of Shopify's Blockchain team to discuss "Tokengated Commerce." Alex breaks down what it means to make Shopify "wallet-aware," answers why this type of commerce needs blockchains, and paints a picture of what web3 commerce might look like in the future.  This audio essay is sponsored by Masterworks. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/ageofmiracles/message

Welcome to the first episode of our newest show, Business Breakdowns, featuring deep-dive conversations on individual businesses. In each episode, we will dissect a new company with investors and operators that know it best.  We’ve already released the first three episodes on Shopify, Chipotle, and Alibaba. Subscribe to Business Breakdowns through the podcast player of your choice:  Apple Spotify Google Overcast Amazon  Leave us a 5-star rating on Apple Podcasts if you like the show! ----- Today we will be diving into Shopify. Shopify was founded in 2004 by Tobi Lütke and Scott Lake around their original problem of why it's so hard to build an online business when they struggled to open an online snowboard equipment store. Today, Shopify's goal is to make commerce better for everyone, and it's used by more than 2 million merchants to run their online businesses. It's essentially an on-ramp for people looking to sell online.  To help us break down Shopify, I'm joined by co-host Zack Fuss and our guest Alex Danco, who works on the Money team at Shopify. To really understand Shopify, you have to understand its different business units -- Core, Merchant Services, Ecosystem, and the new Shop platform -- and the role they each play in making commerce easier and better for merchants. We begin this breakdown by covering each of those business units and how they compare to Apple's business lines. We then dive deep into how Shopify makes money through the first and second derivative of their merchant success and how Shopify thinks about friction in e-commerce. We close with an incredible analogy of Shopify and StarCraft and the tools that Shopify has built into the still-nascent world of e-commerce. For the full show notes, transcript, and links to mentioned content, check out the episode page here.-----Business Breakdowns is a property of Colossus, Inc. For more episodes of Business Breakdowns, visit joincolossus.com/episodes. Stay up to date on all our podcasts by signing up to Colossus Weekly, our quick dive every Sunday highlighting the top business and investing concepts from our podcasts and the best of what we read that week. Sign up here. Follow us on Twitter: @JoinColossus | @patrick_oshag | @jspujji | @zbfuss Show Notes[00:04:03] - [First question] - What Shopify is as a product[00:05:58] - Product pillar 1: Core[00:07:58] - Product pillar 2: Merchant services[00:10:02] - Product pillar 3: Ecosystem[00:12:04] - Product pillar 4: Shop[00:14:08] - The evolution of commerce with the rise of the internet[00:21:01] - Differences between high and low trust commerce[00:25:48] - The role of friction and trust in stakeholder variety[00:30:18] - Overview of all four product pillars’ business models[00:33:10] - Shopify App Store[00:34:16] - How Shopify competes and partners with their competitors[00:36:53] - Shop Pay expands to Facebook and Instagram[00:38:49] - Key areas where Shopify will continue to grow across their product pillars[00:42:52] - Affirm, Klarna, Afterpay[00:43:56] - Potential pitfalls of having such a high self-imposed quality bar [00:45:12] - Conway’s law[00:45:12] - Aggregators versus platforms[00:53:35] - Unique marketing aspects for Shopify’s sales and marketing with their subscription model [00:56:37] - Shopify: A StarCraft Inspired Business Strategy 

Today we are running a special episode in our Business Breakdowns feed. My guest is Alex Danco from Shopify - who you may remember from our Business Breakdown on Shopify in 2021. Our conversation focuses on a new concept, tokengated commerce, and how Shopify is building around this theme. Given the market turmoil in crypto assets, we talk about true use cases of tokengated commerce and why blockchain technology is unlocking something that was not possible otherwise. This episode originally ran in our Web3 Breakdowns feed and represents an interesting case study of corporations embracing blockchain technology. Please enjoy my conversation with Alex Danco.   For the full show notes, transcript, and links to the best content to learn more, check out the episode page here.   -----   This episode is brought to you by Coinbase Prime. Coinbase Prime combines advanced trading, battle-tested custody, financing, and prime services in a single solution. Clients have used our comprehensive investing platform to execute some of the largest trades in the industry because they are the only publicly-traded company with experience trading and custodying crypto assets at scale. Get started with Coinbase Prime today at coinbase.com/prime.   -----   Web3 Breakdowns is a property of Colossus, LLC. For more episodes of Web3 Breakdowns, visit joincolossus.com/episodes.   Stay up to date on all our podcasts by signing up to Colossus Weekly, our quick dive every Sunday highlighting the top business and investing concepts from our podcasts and the best of what we read that week. Sign up here.   Follow us on Twitter: @Web3Breakdowns | @ericgoldenx | @patrick_oshag    Show Notes [00:02:16] - [First question] - What Shopify itself is as an ecosystem and service [00:05:14] - An example of interoperability and the power of platforms outside of Shopify  [00:07:02] - How interoperability and platforms come together [00:12:08] - Where a a constraint-standard resulted in failure  [00:14:26] - Why Shopify is so heavily invested in tokengated commerce [00:17:10] - Lessons learned about the scarcity function of tokens and how they’ll work [00:20:34] - Whether or not Shopify will be building their own crypto wallet   [00:24:48] - The important role blockchains play in tokengated economics [00:28:16] - Overview of the mechanics and offering Shopify is building  [00:32:16] - Tokens help establish protocol adoption [00:34:27] - Which blockchains and protocols will be mostly used in Shopify’s endeavor   [00:36:33] - Why can’t it be key-gated instead of tokengated [00:39:00] - Conjuring demand and how Shopify will create demand for their new system [00:45:46] - The differences between someone's identity and a token holder [00:47:55] - Signals that suggest tokengated commerce will be a big thing  [00:51:02] - Why this concept hasn’t been more widely adopted already [00:54:39] - When there will be a solution to easily create and distribute tokens [00:56:39] - Where things will go from here  [00:59:35] - Reasons why this might not have taken off in five years