Founder & CEO @judgeme. We help over 700K Shopify merchants scale their brand with consumer confidence.
London, UK
- Tweets 2,992
- Following 775
- Followers 4,773
- Likes 59,601
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Recording of my talk in Toronto on how to scale to 500K merchants on the app store.
I share how we think about our strategy and how we build an organisation to deliver it.
piped.video/watch?v=h57aq8op…
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Jan 2025 @judgeme was 75 people (35 core + 40 support) at 10 million USD ARR.
Today we're approaching 19m USD ARR and are 60 people (30 core + 30 support).
Going multi-product and adding "genius bar calls" to keep team employed in AI world.
Target 30m ARR with same soulcount.
Five years ago Recharge had 400 people.
Today we have 390.
But the business is 6x bigger.
The biggest mistake I made was overhiring. It was also the hardest mistake to reverse.
When you have more people than the business needs, good people go looking for ways to have an impact.
They find work. Then they create work.
Instead of focusing the company on the top two or three things that matter you find reasons to pursue on every ok idea.
Every new priority pulls resources focus and energy away from the ones that matter most.
Focus compounds. Distraction does too.
Smaller teams work differently.
People can see their impact. They have more ownership and more autonomy. There’s less room for people to build fiefdoms because everyone is too busy doing work that matters.
This is becoming even more important with AI.
Software companies used to combine more people with technology to build the product.
Now we need to start with technology and systems, then add people where they create the most leverage.
The companies that win won’t be the ones with the most people.
They’ll be the ones where every person has the most impact.
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Ilya Sutskever on AI progress going from scaling back to research
piped.video/shorts/pLHWn5SQv…
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Why we think the same 15 USD / month pricing is right even for super large Plus stores:
- Simplicity is underrated. Our pricing is super easy to remember and explain.
- A company can create value or capture value; those are the only 2 options. We want all our effort to go to creating value.
Cause real customer obsession = 100% value creation mentality in the company.
So many companies claim to care about the customer then spend all their time trying to A/B test every penny out of their customers.
So our rigid pricing policy enforces simplicity and value creation culture.
Over time the market then rewards us with majority market share and the scale allows us to make a healthy profit despite the pricing.
We operate at 20+% profit on 18.5 million ARR right now, and profit % is going up with scale and AI adoption, and ARR compounds at 40%+ annually.
Also, we're bootstrapped, I own 95% of the company. I make plenty of money.
I love this model. It's win-win, motivating to work on and it makes us the last mover in every vertical we enter.
Don't you think you're missing out both on better perceived value and market positioning by keeping that same rigid and honest price position?
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We're working on it. In fact we have some custom flows now etc, may post an overview later.
Issue is that it's not EVERY Klaviyo custom flow yet, so saying "we have Klaviyo import" is not true in general but true for more and more merchants each week.
We don't want to oversell.
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It's been 1 month now since we announced @judgeme email, so time for a traction update.
Without cross-promotion from our Review user base, Email now has 1087 active installs from 68 countries.
4.9 rating with 18 app reviews. 8.1m emails sent in September. Position 14 in app store.
72 stores pay us for the 15 USD / month Awesome plan and the 15 cents/1K email usage charges were a but over 800 USD in September. So that's a bit over 13K + 10K = 23K ARR.
A good start for a deliberately slow organic launch!
After 12 years of being focused on just reviews, we're adding a second product: @judgeme Email.
Priced super low: 0-15 USD / month for features, 15K emails per month for free, then 15 cents per 1000 emails.
That's 10x cheaper than the competition. Even compared to Shopify's own Email app, we're 85% cheaper.
The product is in early stages, but we're adding features constantly. The price will never go up as we add value, as we optimize for market share, not profit.
After you install the app, you'll be able to request a call with our team to go over your email marketing needs and your setup.
Very excited to have this app live, and if you're a Shopify merchant, hope to see you soon!
apps.shopify.com/judgeme-ema…
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Radio silence on X last few weeks was because I decided to go back to business school.
Am doing the Owner / President Management program at @HarvardHBS, which is 3 weeks on campus 3 years in a row.
The coolest thing is that we're doing the case method HBS is known for, but everyone in the room is owning and running a company doing at least 10 million USD in revenue.
Just finished unit 1 which was about understanding ourselves and the business, units 2 in 2027 will be about scaling and transforming the organisation and unit 3 in 2028 finishes up with long term leadership and legacy planning.
We're living on campus in groups of 8 - our "learning group". Couldn't have asked for a better group of people, we bonded like crazy and made some friends for life. LG62 for the win!
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Here's a dedicated landing page about our review app benefits for Plus stores: judge.me/solutions/shopify-p…
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This is VERY impressive for a government initiative.
Chief Design Officer @jgebbia officially unveils America.gov, the new online home for the United States of America
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Update on @judgeme Email app:
MCP is live. You can now create, edit and schedule campaigns and edit flows via MCP.
BUT: You can only edit default flows for now, custom flows coming soon.
On Klaviyo import: Importing lists is coming soon, very likely this week. After that we’ll work on importing Klaviyo templates and flows.
Thanks for all the feedback on our @judgeme Email app launch. Sat with the product team today and our priorities for September are:
1. MCP/API every endpoint
Highest priority. 100% coverage as a target. An agent should be able to do anything the app can do.
2. More features
Feature requests prioritized by requests and impact. This expands complexity of merchant setups that can switch over and what our MCP/API can do.
3. Klaviyo import
After we have a few more features rolled out, have support trained in switching Klaviyo users over manually. Then automate that process into a middlelayer and when ready, expose it for self-service.
Let's gooooo 🚀
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In large markets with uniform demand, shared economies of scale is the best business model possible.
Truly helps the client, inspiring mission for the team, simplifies marketing, builds a moat, makes you last mover if you stay the course and it outperforms the index too.
More startup entrepreneurs should study Costco. There’s a reason Charlie Munger loved the Costco model. And if it’s good enough for Charlie, it’s good enough for me!
(Taking inspiration from judgeme) we went a flat $15/mo where the incumbent is $20-$200 and it’s been working well. I wouldn’t recommend it for a niche app but if it’s something that lots of merchants need and you can keep your costs down it’s interesting
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This gift arrived in our office today from an early @judgeme Email app user.
Shopify merchants are simply the best.
I’m teary eyed from this.
Carla @goodwashday you are amazing!!
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Thanks for all the feedback on our @judgeme Email app launch. Sat with the product team today and our priorities for September are:
1. MCP/API every endpoint
Highest priority. 100% coverage as a target. An agent should be able to do anything the app can do.
2. More features
Feature requests prioritized by requests and impact. This expands complexity of merchant setups that can switch over and what our MCP/API can do.
3. Klaviyo import
After we have a few more features rolled out, have support trained in switching Klaviyo users over manually. Then automate that process into a middlelayer and when ready, expose it for self-service.
Let's gooooo 🚀
After 12 years of being focused on just reviews, we're adding a second product: @judgeme Email.
Priced super low: 0-15 USD / month for features, 15K emails per month for free, then 15 cents per 1000 emails.
That's 10x cheaper than the competition. Even compared to Shopify's own Email app, we're 85% cheaper.
The product is in early stages, but we're adding features constantly. The price will never go up as we add value, as we optimize for market share, not profit.
After you install the app, you'll be able to request a call with our team to go over your email marketing needs and your setup.
Very excited to have this app live, and if you're a Shopify merchant, hope to see you soon!
apps.shopify.com/judgeme-ema…
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