Newsletter #41: open source projects, Maestrooo, and Harvard CS50

Hi there,

I hope you're feeling good.

This week, I explored London in one of the best ways: through food. I savored the best donut ever at Crosstown Donuts, tasted an incredible homemade tiramisu at an Italian restaurant in Soho, had Belgian waffles covered with whipped cream and strawberries in Chinatown, and bought a beautiful 18-month old comté cheese at Fortnum and Mason.

I know, none of this is a British delicacy, but they are definitely London ones!

I’m writing this newsletter with a round and happy tummy.

In today’s edition, we’re discussing open source projects, Maestrooo, and Harvard CS50.

Let's dive in.

Work

It’s already my 7th week working at Shopify… Time flies!

On the side of my job, I keep testing the latest Shopify tools to see what is possible to do with them, and understand how merchants can leverage them.

Instead of coding privately, I’ve decided to open source the projects that I’m building for testing purposes. This way, they can perhaps be helpful to others.

My first open source project is a cart validation extension-only application, which contains the following features:

• General rule for non logged in users: they can't add more than 2 items of the same product variant to their cart

• Special rule for logged in users: they can't add more than 5

• Localization of the error message: English and French

• No coding required to update the rule: the maximum amount of items can be updated by the merchant, using a metafield on the Shop model

Discover more on the app’s GitHub repository.

My second open source project is a banner checkout UI extension, with several elements that the merchant can customize without coding, directly through the Checkout Editor:

• Title

• Description

• Status: info, success, warning, or critical

• Collapsible

• Localization of the banner’s title and description: English and French

Discover more on the app’s GitHub repository.

I had a lot of fun building these two apps, and the response I got on Twitter and LinkedIn has been super positive.

I will share other open source projects very soon.

Inspire

In edition 23, I wrote about Michaël Gallego, co-founder and lead developer at Maestrooo, the French theme developer company behind Focal, Impact, Prestige and Warehouse.

I had listened to a talk he made in November 2023, and shared with you the valuable advice that he had given regarding how to optimize theme performance within the constraints of the Shopify Theme Store.

Michaël Gallego has so much experience in Shopify development that I listen carefully to every one of his - rare - interviews.

This week, he was interviewed in the 19th episode of the E-commerce Podcast, hosted by Thomas Bertrand, Director at Bento&Co and Founder and CEO at Ship&Co.

This interview, recorded in French, was very interesting and inspiring.

Here are my key takeaways from it:

• Michaël co-founded Maestrooo in 2013, at the end of his studies, with his business partner Axel Bouaziz. Michaël was more of a back-end developer, and Axel was a designer.

• They launched their first Shopify theme in 2014, when the Theme Editor did not even exist. Back then, the maximum price for a Shopify Theme was $180, and Shopify was taking a 30% commission on every sale. Today, it’s very different: most themes cost $350, and Shopify takes a 15% commission, with zero commission on the first million of dollars made every year.

• Maestrooo’s first Shopify theme did not sell well: only 80 copies were sold in a little bit more than a year.

• After this failure, Michaël wanted to give up on Shopify theme development. However, his business partner Axel pushed for them to continue. He saw an opportunity in Shopify and really wanted them to surf this coming wave.

• They launched their second Shopify theme, Focal, in 2015. It was a big success. In parallel, Shopify was growing exponentially.

• They launched their third Shopify theme, Kagami, and their fourth one, Prestige, which is their best seller.

• Prestige’s pricing evolved from $180 to $320, then $350, and finally $380, with absolutely no impact on sales, meaning that sales did not go up or down because of it. The revenue, though, increased massively.

• Maestrooo does not have any employee dedicated to marketing. They don’t like to do marketing, and don’t want to do it. They count on the Shopify Theme Store and its algorithm to bring sales.

• Before Online Store 2.0 was introduced, Shopify themes usually included 10-12 sections. Now, with Online Store 2.0, the merchants’ expectations have increased drastically: they expect 20+ sections, ideally 30+.

• Maestrooo now has an in-house theme boilerplate that they use for every one of their new themes. It saves the team a lot of time and allows them to focus on the design, which has always been one of Maestrooo’s biggest strengths.

• According to Michaël, there is a market for Shopify themes focusing on very specific markets. For example, building a Shopify theme for the Japanese market. Japanese online stores have a very specific design (with more information, more details, often written in smaller characters) that none of the existing themes currently addresses. Michaël also thinks it could be interesting to release a theme dedicated to restaurants.

Discover more by listening to this podcast interview (in French).

Explore

One of my favorite YouTube channels is freeCodeCamp. I admire the hard work and passion they put into building multi-hour long coding courses. I always find them very clear and accessible.

Recently, on this channel, I stumbled upon one of the best teachers I’ve ever seen. His name is David Malan. He is a computer science professor.

I watched the first five minutes of his “Harvard CS50” course and I was immediately hooked. David Malan is very clear and speaks at an unrelenting pace from which it’s impossible to look away. Minutes rapidly turn into hours.

I have enjoyed every part of this 25-hour long university course.

Having only studied web development for 9 weeks at Le Wagon’s coding bootcamp, it was super interesting for me to discover the context and the reasons behind some actions I do every day at work.

It provided me with a general knowledge that I’m now happy to have. It also showed me that I’m not only interested in web development, but also in other topics like C, memory, and cybersecurity.

If that sounds interesting to you, and you have 25 hours to spare… You know what to do!

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