Newsletter #6: Shopify Summer Editions, a $6,300 MRR SaaS sold for $300K and the perfect home

Hi there,

I hope you're feeling good.

I just had the nicest surprise: Shopify sent me some merchandising! A dark green hoodie, a white tee-shirt made with organic cotton and a comfy green corduroy hat.

A note came with the package:

How lovely of them! I'm very grateful for these gifts.

In today's edition, we're discussing Shopify Summer Editions, a $6,300 MRR SaaS sold for $300K and the perfect home.

Let's dive in.

Work

Twice a year, Shopify publishes a rundown of everything they built.

This bi-annual event is called Editions.

During Editions, Shopify officially presents recent platform updates and unveils new features that were still unknown to the public.

6 months after Winter Editions, it's now time for Summer Editions.

Summer Editions took place on July 26th 2023. They were presented by Glen Coates, Vice President of Product at Shopify, live on YouTube at 11am CET.

Here are the major announcements made during this long-awaited event:

• Shopify Inbox is now powered by Shopify Magic to provide merchants with autogenerated answers for their customers.

• Contextualization: merchants can now change their store’s pages content for specific markets or B2B, directly from inside the Theme Editor. It makes the editor a bit more complex but is certainly a game-changing feature!

• New B2B features such as volume pricing or PayPal payments.

• Shopify Sidekick, which we already discussed, got an additional demo. It seems that it can now help with design suggestions. I can’t wait to start playing with it!

• Flex sections allow merchants to add blocks inside their sections and customize their size, positioning, alignment. I wonder what this feature will look like under the hood for theme partners. It will for sure be very interesting! According to Vanessa Lee, Vice President of Product (Storefronts) at Shopify, a developer preview for flex sections will be available in 2 months.

• Shopify Collective allows merchants to display products from other Shopify stores on their own store. As Glen Coates explained during Tobi’s AMA Twitter Space that took place on August 1st 2023, Shopify Collective is related to Shop Pay in the way that it’s part of the philosophy “1 + 1 = 3”. The goal here is to help merchants create synergies and move forward together.

• Shopify Collective Marketplace allows merchants to manage their marketplaces listings and orders (example: from Walmart) directly inside their Shopify admin dashboard.

• Checkout extensions: merchants now benefit from 17 new APIs and updates to help create the best checkout experience for their business. Apps can now inject a custom validation logic to the cart and the checkout. They can also offer customized delivery options like delivery dates and times. So many new possibilities!

• Shopify Bundles app, which had previously been announced, is now available on the app store.

• Shopify Subscriptions app. Sign up here to be considered for early access.

Learn more about Shopify Summer Editions on the official website.

Inspire

I’m very inspired by Noah Bragg, who built a SaaS in public for 2 years and sold it for $300K in June 2023.

This SaaS is called Potion. It’s a website builder which allows you to easily turn Notion pages into a fast, SEO optimized website.

What I like the most about Noah’s journey is that he documented everything.

He consistently published videos on Twitter and YouTube to share his progress and challenges.

It took him 2 months to build the minimum viable product (MVP).

On day 2 of Potion’s early access, he got his first customer. And within the first 3 months after launch, he already had 75 users, who all came from Twitter.

Noah brought Potion to $6,300 MRR, with a steady monthly growth rate of 6%.

After 2 years, he felt ready to move on to a new challenge and decided to sell Potion.

He listed it on acquire.com and sold it for $300K.

What an amazing journey!

Learn more about Noah Bragg on his YouTube channel and his Twitter account. He recently started working on a new project, called TrustScore, which I’m following closely.

Explore

Let’s have a relaxing time watching this video of what I consider to be the perfect home.

The special things that caught my heart are the high ceiling, the big windows, the living room table, the kitchen counter and… the amazing wooden bathroom door!

I’m not a fan of the shower and I don’t need the jacuzzi. But, if this house were to be given to me, I would do with them haha.

More seriously, trying to imagine what my dream home would look like helps me understand what I truly and deeply want in life.

To me, the perfect home has:

• A spacious kitchen where I can cook comfortably.

• An outside space: it does not have to be big at all. I just feel like it’s such a luxury to be able to go outside and still be at home.

• A cosy decoration: wood, warm colors, soft textures.

• A treadmill: it allows me to walk or run everyday, no matter my schedule or the weather outside.

• An office area where I can place my desk setup, allowing me to work productively and turn ideas into reality.

That’s all I need.

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