Newsletter #61: 1 year at Shopify, a mind-blowing AI demo, and a heartfelt song

Hi there,

I hope you’re feeling good.

The past few weeks have been so intense that all I do on my weekends is rest. I sleep 9 hours at night, then have a 2-hour nap in the afternoon. Not all weekends need to be full of activities, sometimes it feels good to just rest and take things slow.

In today's edition, we’re discussing 1 year at Shopify, a mind-blowing AI demo, and a heartfelt song.

Let's dive in.

Work

March 4th marked my first “Shopiversary”: 1 year since I joined Shopify.

It’s surreal how some days it feels like I just started and other times, like I’ve been here forever.

I’m incredibly grateful for this opportunity. I seized it without hesitation and couldn’t be happier with how this first year has unfolded.

In March 2024, I joined a team of 7 people, primarily based in Europe. Fast forward a year, and we've more than doubled: now 16 people, spread across Canada, the US, Europe, and APAC.

My day-to-day work is quite similar to what I was doing as a freelance Shopify developer: helping merchants, answering their Shopify-related questions, and building custom features for them. But the scale of impact is so much bigger.

By sharing our learnings through case studies, workshops, consulting sessions and training programs, we help the whole ecosystem move in the right direction.

Fabian and Paige, our conversion rate optimization (CRO) experts, leverage data analysis, redesigns and A/B testing to help merchants maximize growth. Their insights constantly teach me something new.

Deanna, our SEO expert, crafts SEO roadmaps to help merchants migrate successfully from other platforms to Shopify. She also provides long-term strategic guidance.

Mateusz, our performance expert, brought so many performance improvements to the Shopify ecosystem that I lost count. He’s worked with theme developers, app developers and agencies, with always one goal in mind: make Shopify stores faster. Every gain he delivers benefits everyone: customers enjoy a better shopping experience, and merchants benefit from higher conversion rates.

It’s an honor for me to work alongside these experts and contribute to the team effort.

I also enjoy working on projects with other teams such as the Education team or the Partnerships team, it’s always a great learning experience.

All in all, I feel incredibly lucky to work for a company I admire, on a product I truly believe in.

This first year flew by in the blink of an eye. Cheers to the next years ahead!

Inspire

Working in tech, we see AI becoming an increasingly important part of our lives.

Like millions of people, I took my first steps into AI using ChatGPT. It quickly replaced Google for me, becoming a knowledgeable companion I can turn to for answers on any topic.

I then discovered Midjourney, and spent countless hours generating all kinds of images. I was so amazed at how it brought my silly ideas to life.

Today, I use 3 AI tools daily:

• Cursor, which replaced VS Code for me.

• Gemini, which turns each of my merchant calls into a transcript that I can then query through a chat interface.

• Perplexity, which is gradually replacing ChatGPT for me. I like how the answers are structured, include sources, and are presented in a more factual way, whereas ChatGPT usually has a more conversational style.

On the side, I still keep an eye out for new AI tools and am always happy to try demos to stay up to date.

Last week, on Twitter, Tobi shared the demo of an AI tool that absolutely blew my mind.

It’s an AI conversational voice. You can talk with an AI that will answer you not only accurately but also with the right emotional intelligence, conversational dynamics (timing, pauses, interruptions) and contextual awareness (adjusting tone and style to match the situation).

All you have to do is click to start talking with the AI.

This demo was released by a company called Sesame.

Sesame’s goal is to achieve “voice presence”, which is what they describe as “the magical quality that makes spoken interactions feel real, understood, and valued”. And honestly, they’re on the right track.

The first thought I had after trying this demo? Humans are going to fall in love with AI companions very soon. In a world where more and more people feel lonely, the ability to talk to an AI companion that sounds human, and seems like they understand you, is definitely going to sound attractive.

The time where we were very close to a “Black Mirror” episode is over, we’re now living in one.

I don’t know what the use cases could be for this conversational voice tool. Is it to improve all existing voice features to make them nicer to interact with? Is it to help the elderly feel less lonely at home? Is it targeted at young people who might consequently form AI relationships even before they form real ones? I don’t know. The possibilities seem endless.

It’s as scary as it’s fascinating to witness how fast AI is progressing.

Learn more by trying Sesame’s demo here. Want to have some fun? Do what one of my colleagues did: launch a demo from your laptop and another one from your phone to make the two AI companions talk to each other!

Explore

Because I took things slow this weekend, the beat of the music I listened to also slowed down.

There is one song in particular that I listened to on repeat: “Tell Me”, by RY X.

It’s such a beautiful song. The melody is sublime, and the lyrics are filled with poetic grace.

“Tell me, I waited
For a love that can open my heart again
On a love, when you call and I fold you in
To a love that we both know we're falling in”

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