Newsletter #13: the disappearance of Shopify’s product reviews app, my favorite entrepreneur and a stunning house tour

Hi there,

I hope you're feeling good.

I'm doing wonderful: we just passed 300 subscribers! Thank you so much for being one of them.

It’s also a special time because last week I received more answers than ever. Many of you replied to share your feedback about edition #12 and my newsletter in general.

I have learnt that writing a newsletter is a solitary exercise. Every Thursday morning, I press the "send" button. However, besides the open and click rates, it's hard to know if you enjoyed it or not, and how much. 

This is why I really appreciate every answer. They are extremely valuable to me. So thank you again for that.

In today's edition, we're discussing the disappearance of Shopify’s product reviews app, my favorite entrepreneur and a stunning house tour.

Let's dive in.

Work

Something quite strange just happened on the Shopify app store...

Shopify removed their own “Product Reviews” app, without any announcement or comment about it.

“Product Reviews” was launched in March 2010. It had 1,800+ reviews and a 3.6/5 average rating.

Most importantly, many theme partners had built an integration with this app so that their themes could surface the customer reviews coming from it.

Why did Shopify remove this app?

A funny joke going around on Twitter says that it was removed because it did not follow the app store‘s guidelines, such as having a non generic app name. That’s a good one!

Other people notice that it’s been removed around the time Klaviyo released their own reviews app, which was published on the app store in June 2023.

I personnally don’t believe in this last hypothesis. Even though Shopify invested $100 million in Klaviyo, I don’t think they would remove one of their apps to favor them.

I believe Shopify’s vision is to build apps that will meet the basic needs of most merchants. And if merchants need a more powerful and customized solution, they will upgrade to a paid third-party application.

Not knowing the reasons behing Shopify’s “Product Reviews” app deletion makes it harder to predict its future.

Is Shopify planning on releasing a new improved version of this app? Or is it gone for good?

If this deletion is permanent, it surely means more market shares for third-party reviews applications. I have no doubt that they’ll see their monthly recurring revenue (MRR) go up in the upcoming months.

Inspire

Since I started this newsletter, I’ve written about many entrepreneurs who inspire me.

Today, I would like to tell you about my favorite entrepreneur, the one who has been my ultimate source of inspiration for years: Pieter Levels.

Pieter is one of the main figures of bootstrapping, which means building a business without any funding.

Originally, Pieter had a YouTube channel on electronic music and was travelling Asia making music videos. After his YouTube revenue started to drastically reduce, he went back to his parents house in Holland and entered a phase of deep sadness and anxiety.

His dad tried to help him by advising him to find an activity that would keep him busy.

Pieter followed his dad’s advice and this is how it all started.

He decided to launch 12 startups in 12 months and document his journey online.

Several of those startups got viral and the press started to get involved.

Then Pieter got his first huge entrepreneurial breakthrough: Nomadlist, in 2017.

Nomadlist started as a collaborative spreadsheet listing cities and rating them on several criteria to determine if digital nomads should travel there. Pieter shared it on Twitter and the post blew up.

He then turnt the spreadsheet into a website and it blew up even more.

Fast forward 6 years, Nomadlist is now making $45K revenue per month with thousands of paid members and 200K+ monthly visitors.

Pieter did not stop after Nomadlist. He kept building and recently focused on projects revolving around artificial intelligence. He is still completely solo, with no employee.

As of 2023, he owns 4 main websites that bring him a total of $2.4M per year:

• Nomadlist: $45K monthly revenue

• InteriorAI: $47K MRR

• RemoteOK: $50K monthly revenue

• PhotoAI: $57K MRR

The distinction between monthly revenue and MRR is important: Nomadlist and RemoteOK have a one-time payment business model, whilst InteriorAI and PhotoAI have a subscription based business model.

Pieter also has additional revenue sources such as his book “The indie maker handbook” which brings $10K per month, and his Telegram channel (3K+ members) which brings $4K per month.

These impressive numbers are only a consequence of the thing I admire the most about him: his mindset.

Pieter has an extreme no-bullshit mindset. He can’t stand people who talk a lot about doing things but never actually do anything. He is data-driven and keeps trying until he succeeds.

He follows what he calls the shotgun strategy: shoot a lot of projects and see which ones stick.

Regarding his tech stack, Pieter always advises people to use the tools they’re most comfortable with and that allow them to ship features fast. For him, that’s vanilla JavaScript, PHP and jQuery. The first line of his Twitter bio, “php+jquery4life”, acts as a reminder.

And needless to say that his strategy is paying off.

Learn more about Pieter Levels by following him on Twitter and watching his one-hour talk “How to Build a Startup Without Funding“ on YouTube.

Explore

One of my favorite YouTube channels is Architectural Digest.

Architectural Digest invites us into the homes of celebrities to discover how they were designed and built.

These videos have a calming atmosphere and are a great place to find design inspirations.

I have to be honest: a lot of the time, the houses that are presented look a bit too clean to be true. Their design amazes me but it doesn’t look like people are actually living there.

Don’t worry, that’s not the case for the video I’m sharing with you today.

My favorite video is the tour of Troian Bellisario and Patrick J. Adams’s home. This house was designed by the famous architect Wallace Neff and built in 1924.

Troian and Patrick moved there around 2016 and embarked on renovations a few years later with the designer Rosa Beltran.

We can really feel that it’s their home. We see books, kids toys, framed pictures and they’re really passionate about explaining the building process behind each space.

Enjoy.

Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for reading this edition until the end.

I'll talk to you soon.

Take good care of yourself.

Coralie