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Glen Coates: Why Shopify Will Dominate Amazon; How Microsoft Made Smartest Move of 2023 | E986

Glen Coates is the VP of Product @ Shopify, leading the development of Shopify’s core commerce platform. He also oversees the core developer platform and Shopify’s partner ecosystem, which includes over 10,000 publicly available apps in the Shopify App Store. Originally a CompSci grad, Glen moved from Sydney to San Diego in 2008 to run US distribution and e-commerce for an Australian eco-products company. In 2010, he attended Columbia Business School for one whole day before quitting to start Handshake, a SaaS B2B e-commerce platform. Glen joined Shopify in May 2019 when the company acquired Handshake. Glen has been in the Vice President role since October 2020. --------------------------------------------- Timestamps: 0:00 How Glen Made His Way into The World of Product 7:02 Glen’s Product Framework 15:00 How To Set Product Goals 22:03 Hardest Part of Building Shopify’s App Ecosystem 27:06 Lessons on Team Management 31:00 What Makes Exceptional Storytelling and Messaging 42:30 How to “Manage Up” and Shopify’s Competition with Amazon 45:36 Biggest Product Mistake 48:50 Quick Fire Round ----------------------------------------------- In Today’s Episode with Glen Coates We Discuss: 1. From Game Developer in Sydney to Running E-Commerce Warehouse in NYC: How Glen made his way into the world of product and e-commerce having started life as a game developer? Why does Glen believe that the best founders and product people often have their roots in gaming? What does Glen know now that he wishes he had known when he joined Shopify? 2. The Art of Product and Product Management: Is product more an art or a science? If you had to put a number on it, what would it be? What is “product management”? Why can it not be reduced to frameworks? What are “product principles”? How do Shopify use them? How should product teams set them? What makes the very best PMs today? What are the commonalities in them? What is the sign of a poor PM? What would Glen most like to change about the world of PMs? 3. The Art of Product Marketing: What does Glen believe is the true art of product marketing? How did a CEO group teach Glen how to tell truly great stories? How can one tell great stories when you have to cater to multiple different customers/personas? How does Glen evaluate the current state of Shopify’s product marketing? 4. Shopify and The Future of Shopify: Why does Glen think it is important for Shopify to have a tops down decision-making process for product strategy? What does Glen believe is the #1 reason why Shopify is such a large and successful company? What is the single hardest element of Glen’s role today? How does Glen believe that Shopify will be larger than Amazon in 5-10 years time? --------------------------------- Subscribe on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3j2KMcZTtgTNBKwtZBMHvl?si=85bc9196860e4466 Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-twenty-minute-vc-20vc-venture-capital-startup/id958230465 Follow Harry Stebbings on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarryStebbings Follow Glen Coates on Twitter: https://twitter.com/glencoates Follow 20VC on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/20vc_reels Follow 20VC on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@20vc_tok Visit our Website: https://www.20vc.com ------------------------------------ #GlenCoates #Shopify #HarryStebbings #VPproduct #productmanager #productmanagement

Harry StebbingshostGlen Coatesguest
Mar 7, 202356mWatch on YouTube ↗

At a glance

WHAT IT’S REALLY ABOUT

Shopify’s Product Chief On Beating Amazon, PM Frameworks, And Storytelling

  1. Glen Coates, VP of Product at Shopify, traces his unconventional path from game development to founding wholesale platform Handshake, which was later acquired by Shopify, and explains how those experiences shape his product philosophy.
  2. He details Shopify’s shift from fragmented product lines to a more unified ‘Core’ organization, and introduces his outcomes–assumptions–principles framework to reduce misalignment and wasted work in large-scale product development.
  3. Coates argues that Shopify’s long‑term edge comes from combining a powerful merchant platform, a high‑quality app ecosystem, and an emerging buyer aggregation engine (Shop), which together position Shopify to compete directly with Amazon.
  4. He also shares candid views on leadership, managing up to a product‑centric founder CEO, the importance of narrative storytelling in product and fundraising, common PM mistakes, and why Microsoft’s AI strategy is the smartest bet of 2023.

IDEAS WORTH REMEMBERING

5 ideas

Use an outcomes–assumptions–principles document to reduce product misalignment.

Before committing serious resources, teams should define how success will be measured (outcomes), what they believe about the world (assumptions), and clear decision rules for 51/49 tradeoffs (principles). This surfaces disagreements early and prevents months of work pulling in different directions.

Explicit principles prevent teams from tearing themselves apart over stakeholder tradeoffs.

Shopify routinely faces conflicts between merchants, developers, and buyers, or between small and large merchants. Writing principles like “when merchant and developer interests conflict, we break for merchants” tells everyone which way to go at predictable forks in the road.

Storytelling is as critical as metrics for product leaders and founders.

Coates learned under pressure that investors and teams need a simple, emotional story they can repeat—like ‘we make sure the shirt is on the shelf when you want it’—not just process diagrams and TAM slides. People act when they feel something, not when they hear numbers alone.

Platform extensibility must deliver first‑party quality for third‑party apps.

Shopify’s app strategy only works if external developers can build apps as performant and polished as Shopify’s own features. Technologies like Shopify Functions (using WebAssembly to safely run third‑party logic on Shopify’s servers) close the traditional SaaS gap between extensibility and performance.

Large platforms must think in 5–10 year horizons, especially at the bottom of the stack.

Coates’ Handshake misread how quickly the world would have ubiquitous connectivity, over‑investing in offline capability that became tech debt. At Shopify’s scale, changing low‑level primitives can reshape global commerce, so infrastructure bets must anticipate where the internet will be years out.

WORDS WORTH SAVING

5 quotes

At its base, product management is making good decisions about what to build and when.

— Glen Coates

If all the decisions are coming from the edges, the chance that it's all gonna work together and feel like it came from the pen of a single creator just goes through the floor.

— Glen Coates

If you do not tell someone a story that they can see themselves in and empathize with, you can say all the numbers in the world—no one gives a shit.

— Glen Coates

The best PMs have this feeling about them where it's like a freight train—if you try and stand in front of this thing, you're gonna get fucking flattened.

— Glen Coates

These days, I'd be fucking terrified to be competing with Shopify in commerce.

— Glen Coates

Glen Coates’ career journey: games, Handshake, and joining ShopifyShopify’s product and org structure: Core, Code Red, and Conway’s LawThe outcomes–assumptions–principles framework for product alignmentPlatform strategy: app ecosystem, WebAssembly Functions, and extensibilityBalancing simplicity with serving both small and large merchantsLeadership philosophy: senior ‘aiming’, managing up, and storytellingCompetitive landscape: Shopify vs. Amazon, and Microsoft’s AI strategy

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