w/ Harshdeep Singh Hura
Harshdeep Singh Hura didn’t just stumble into the Shopify partner community—he helped build it. In this episode, we meet the first-ever recipient of the Shopify Community Award, whose open-source projects now power nearly 8% of the app ecosystem.
Harshdeep shares his 10-year journey, from hacking together iOS apps as a teenager to leading a full-service Shopify agency, and ultimately shifting his focus to empowering developers and merchants alike. We delve into the art of app development—where solving real problems beats engineering perfection—and explore how community, open-source contributions, and a touch of humor shaped Harshdeep’s path. Along the way, we hear tales of triumph, a few bumps in the road, and why one app is designed to show clown emojis to would-be copycats.
Listen in for a conversation that goes beyond code to capture the heart of what it means to thrive in the Shopify ecosystem.
Kurt Elster
This episode is sponsored in part by Omnisend. Do you sell stuff online? Then you need Omnisend. Yes, that Omnisend, the powerful yet refreshingly intuitive email and SMS tool that helps you make $73. for every dollar spent. That one's so good it's almost boring. Like watching steady lines go up in charts and up and up. Just automate your email and SMS campaigns with Omnisend. Set it up once, then sit back and watch the sales roll in while you snooze. Oh, you're still awake? Then give Omnisend a try and start getting sales so steady, they'll definitely put you to sleep. Omnisend, your dot omnisend. com slash unofficial shopify podcast. Today on the unofficial Shopify podcast, we're gonna talk to a longtime Shopify partner whose contributions over the last decade got him recognized at the most recent uh uh Shopify event and at it he received an award of an award, a very hefty award, a Shopify community award. Because he's that involved. They only gave out a handful of these. There's like three of them. Uh, but because he's created popular open source boilerplates used by a thousand plus apps, he's got his own apps, he's working on a new app. I want to hear about it. I want to hear about his journey, challenges in app development, what being a Shopify partner means. Because it's, you know, that's been my career for uh quite some time and I I want to share that experience with the rest of you. I'm your host, Kurt Elster. Jack Nasty. And this is the unofficial Shopfield. Harshdeep Sing Hura, you are our guest today. Tell me, what uh what do you do? How did you get here, sir?
Harshdeep Singh Hura
Uh so it's you know it's only after ten years of spending on the Shao Fi ecosystem. and like watching you on the partners page almost every single day of until we recently. Yeah, that's that it took a while, but we are here finally. So to quickly introduce myself, I'm Hosh Deep Singh Hura. I'm the founder at Hura Media again. I sold the agency back in 22 when we were a full works agency. I took a little bit of a detalg, worked for this beautiful agency, a piece out of Edmonton. And now we are back onto building my own apps again. And this time I want to do public apps. Uh yeah, so I started back in 2014 and funny thing is in India you were actually filling out forms. And mailing them physically to Shopify India to pay for your subscriptions. And I still have a few of those forms with me. And even in the recent event that just happened like last week, we were talking about it with quite a lot of folks who were in like around 16-17. And I was like, yep, been here since 14 and uh it's it's been fun.
Kurt Elster
So ten years ago, what inspired you to become a Shopify partner?
Harshdeep Singh Hura
So I started out as an iOS developer uh back when I was an 11th grade. So I believe That should be about 2011-12-ish. I started building this iOS app called WrapItup. The job for Wrap It Up was to summarize text algorithmically and make it happen on device. And obviously uh the app needed a lot of funding. Someone actually approached me asking if I do websites and they were like, so I can't find uh developers for this one platform called Shopify. Do you know about it? And I was like, yes, of course. Like I've been searching for clients too. The reality was I started learning about Shopify after they had uh given me the advance on the retailer. And that's how it just started. I wanted to fund my iOS apps. Uh and yeah, the passion just grew because working with Shopify was fun and you know that time seeing it as a oh hey, there's this one tiny company priest out of. Toby's shed and they like five people building up an e-commerce platform to to do what it is. Even though I'm pretty sure back in 14 they were still pretty big, but at that point it just felt like, oh yeah, I just know like five people in Shopify who I see everywhere around. Uh so yeah it the the entire journey started because I just wanted to fund my iOS apps to then selling the iOS app and I was like let's kinda do this full time. This is really fun uh to then selling the agency in 22 and then now getting back into it with public apps. So it's it's been really fun uh all these 10 years of being in tour.
Kurt Elster
And so your it sounds like your side hustle replaced what you wanted to be your main gig. These things got flipped. Uh and Shuramedia That did that was custom app development?
Harshdeep Singh Hura
Correct.
Kurt Elster
And was that cuss custom app all for Shopify stores?
Harshdeep Singh Hura
Oh yeah. So I first started out as a freelancer doing a lot of storefront stuff. And then There was this need for doing a lot of custom logic and at that point I still remember learning a lot of Ruby to be able to build apps and working with apps at that point was extremely difficult like compared to what it is today. Like today you have documentation. Back in fourteen, fifteen, I I would even say sixteen, documentation was very sparse and you would run into issues all the time. But I think that was the old fun part about building apps more than uh storefronts is because storefronts were still like, hey, here's liquid which has been stable since forever. And the rest of the web, which is, you know, super stable. But the fun thing was, okay, I need something that's difficult enough to solve every single day. So we would come up with a lot of specific business logic and I was like, okay, so you specifically need this one integration with this one software that is built by a local vendor. And obviously they only serve like this tiny region. So I'm gonna have to like sit down, understand a bunch of stuff, and then figure out how to integrate. So yeah, a a lot of fond memories from that point of time, but uh What was selling that agency like Oh god. Uh very honestly a lot of people think like I got bored. Uh especially my friends here thought like, okay, you're done with the Shopify ecosystem. And I was very clear, like my day jobs Goal is to bring me revenue, not for emotional fulfillment. Right? So I was like, I'm getting a great price, and it got acquired by someone in Singapore itself because we still had a lot of Greek folks from there. And yeah, it was genuinely just because the price was great. And the agency who then took over, uh, we've been working with them for like a year or two at that point, and I knew all of them at a personal level So I was like, you know what makes sense for them to kind of take it on. But then I lost out on a lot of valuation because I was like, I want to keep the name because it has my sore name in it Uh that ended up not being a very good idea business wise, but I was like my surname's more important to me and if I ever plan to come back again, which I'm doing right now, I need my surname and that exact same branding to be in there. Uh so yeah it was it was almost bittersweet because I was like lost out on so much revenue because I want to keep the thing, but at the same time I sold my agency. So, you know, it was uh it was a great uh feeling.
Kurt Elster
And yeah, you mentioned that you had You had people speculating on why you would make this sale. Is it frustrating to have a stranger tell you why you made a decision that you know why you made?
Harshdeep Singh Hura
It's it's always weird, right? Because you don't know what's going on internally or in my head or in fact anywhere, right? Like think about us speculating what Shopify is gonna announce tomorrow or what the current announcements are like with GraphQL being the only way forward and REST being deprecated. we have the exact same thing, right? We're like, oh, why would you do that? Rest is just fine. Uh but I think that's just human nature at this point. It's like people are gonna speculate. So I would usually just attribute it to human nature and ignore it. Uh but yeah the talk with my parents I had to kind of clarify why I want to keep the name. And I was like, it's gonna suck to have someone else You know, be like, hey, that's Euro Media, but it's run by random people. And uh yeah, I was like, I'm not selling my name out there, I'm selling the company.
Kurt Elster
I I understand why you made the decisions you did. It'd be too weird. That's like this you have spun yourself off into a separate entity that you don't have control of. Not ideal. A little strange. Um no, I don't I don't blame you or question that decision for a second. Um so in the Having done this 10 years, what it's like, what are some of the big changes you have noticed within the Shopify ecosystem?
Harshdeep Singh Hura
Uh I think now one of the biggest ones is the push for enterprise. And back then it was usually like hey, you have to be a small or medium-sized business to be on Shopify. And it enterprise Um and even I think Plus was just out when I just joined. I think it is around the 2014 era when Plus was announced. I could be wrong on this, but I remember very clearly that as I was searching I read the announcement for Plus. uh on Shopfire. So I think one of the major and most amazing changes that I have seen over the last decade is Shopify hasn't shifted from SMBs to enterprise, but they have now stretched themselves from SMBs to enterprise. So in the sense that they are still catering to that core SMB and you know that individual uh entrepreneur company people and now they're also like hey you know what that segments create we're gonna like keep on innovating there Instead of now shifting focus, let's also stretch it out. Uh and also another great thing has been seeing Shopfi go from a From a product mentality to a platform mentality. So what I mean by that is Shopify itself, if you think about it, we're usually thinking about the e-commerce CMS product, right? That you can just kind of set up and you have an online store and you have all of these channels like POS. So what has been happening is you went from a single e-commerce product to building a network. of service providers and content creators and entrepreneurs and motions and shipping service which is what Shopify tried out. So it's like You've gone from like a very single-minded thing to like hey, you know what? Everything in e-commerce, which is what they're doing now, happens at Shop Fire. So we've gone from This is just a means to an end, but what they have been quietly doing from my perspective is making the network so tense that you do not have to go outside of Shopify to get anything done
Kurt Elster
I agree with you entirely. The reason we joined uh part of my attraction to it was we went, wow. their focus, their investment in partners, the community, and the ecosystem was obvious, you know, over ten years ago. And It has not changed. They have maintained that focus. Uh, and if anything, they have they have sharpened it, expanded it, improved it. And so being a Shopify partner, I feel seen, I know you do. uh and d having those resources available to us has always been quite beneficial. And so it it does it lowers the barrier to entry Uh but mainly it really reduces the frustrations that we had felt with other platforms. You know, I came from WordPress before Shopify Um and we had experimented. I mean we didn't just jump in on Shafi, we experimented with many e-commerce platforms. And they're I mean, hands down, it wasn't even close. We're like, this is the one. Let's just Well and we knew the importance of focus. I said, look, we're just gonna do this and let's see where this goes. But our background was web development, and so we went with that. Um and today we have a a built-for-shopify app, Crowdfunder. And that built for Shopify thing, uh they take that seriously. There's a lot of lot of revisions uh and effort that went into that. And so now that I have it and I had to go through it, it's like hazing. You know, I'm I'm proud of it. You're gonna have to pry that from me. I love it.
Harshdeep Singh Hura
Uh so even with built for Shopify, uh January 1st it's they're gonna like tighten up even ball. They have been on record on a lot of public forums saying like we are make like we're continuously learning from all of it and making it even more stricter. Which also comes me to uh brings me to the point that Today's Shopify, like this version of Shopify that we have today, in my opinion, is the most accessible version of Shopify we have ever had.
Kurt Elster
Why is that?
Harshdeep Singh Hura
Compared to 2019 to today, if I cry about anything on Twitter like, hey, this is broken or you shouldn't have deprecated this or XYZ things, I know for a fact within the next 48 hours Someone from Shopify is gonna take notice and they're gonna be like, hey, can we talk to you about it? Like the number one thing that I like about Shopify today is how accessible it is. As long as you're being civil and you're keeping emotion out of it.
Kurt Elster
Right.
Harshdeep Singh Hura
So now with me getting into public apps, if something preeks, I know 100 merchants are going to be mad at me and I'm going to have one-star reviews I can't have emotion come in between logic there, right? So I can't be screaming at a PM saying, oh, you are bad and you did this and that. But if I'm like, hey, so you did this This led to this, and this is why I feel we should be uh fixing one of these things. That's a much better way to kind of go about it. So yeah, like this version of Shoffer is the most accessible one we have ever had, uh, to my memory.
Kurt Elster
You're I mean it's absolutely right. If you raise a complaint and you have you know and it it's thoughtful, right? You can justify and explain it, you will get a thoughtful answer. Absolutely. It's been um well, I mean, you gotta be careful how you complain on Twitter, right? Do you want like do you necessarily are you complaining to Vent? You know, that's not helpful. Or are you complaining to be constructive? And the constructive stuff will it gets paid attention to. Like you absolutely can get results that way. And that is kind of magical, isn't it? Like when you think about the level of support offered to that partner community from a company of Shopify size, no one else is doing that. Yeah. I love my PlayStation. I enjoy Microsoft products. There are plenty of, you know, I love Apple. If I complain about those things on Twitter, no one's gonna care. I'm not gonna get a DM. from from somebody uh offering to help me. It's not gonna happen. So currently your focus is apps. And you have open source boilerplates for apps uh used by a thousand apps on the app store? Tell me about it. Why why do this?
Harshdeep Singh Hura
So right before Build Award, one of the developer advocates like called me up. They're like, hey, so how many apps do you think are using it? I'm like, uh roughly like 950 to a thousand. And then like, so about seven to eight percent of the apps store. And I was like If you put it that way, I mean Yeah, it's like one in ten to one in twenty.
Kurt Elster
Use it. And then that's what you enabled. Ever wake up to customers canceling orders? Maybe they said, I shouldn't shop when I'm high. This was a gift we broke up. Those are all real customer quotes, and they're all a real hassle for your customer and you. Why should the customer have to ask you to edit their order for them? What if they could do it themselves? Enter Cleverific! With Cleverific, you can empower your customers to make their own changes through a self-service portal. Cleverific is designed to reduce customer support tickets, ship orders faster, and even reduce returns and lost packages. Don't just take our word for it. where retailer Peter Manning New York cut their order support queries by 99% with Cleverific. And they're not alone. Exclusively. For listeners of the unofficial Shopify podcast, get 50% off Cleverific's Pro Plan, now just $49 a month, giving you full access to everything Cleverific has to offer Just go to Cleverific. com slash unofficial and use the promo code KERT50 at checkout to claim your discount. Take control with Cleverific and watch your customer support tickets plummet. Shipping speeds increase. and package returns decrease. And all of that means happier customers. Think about the amount of man hours you saved.
Harshdeep Singh Hura
On one end, I'm like Holy crap, like that's an insane number. And on the other, I'm like, why are people using my stuff? Right? And so just after I came back from Shopwurst and I was thinking about it again. I was like, why do I do open source? Like I do not have a rhyme or reason. Uh in fact the reason why I actually open source my boilerplates was I was like, I can't keep this to myself and I'm too irritated to be inviting people on Collaborator every single time we spin up a new app. I'm like, I'm just gonna open source it. And if it gets one star, I'm happy. Right? So the original idea was I need to help just one developer. And that one developer is Horjdeep Singh And if others use it, that's great. If others don't use it, I'm not gonna sit and cry about it.
Kurt Elster
Yeah, it is.
Harshdeep Singh Hura
Uh and and so I think the one thing that I learned about open source from all of this is you cannot like create a new project and open source it. It has to be something that you're using postally that you open source. And that's one of the only reasons why since 2019 when I first started to today, the repos have an update every two weeks. Whether it is just package updates and basic housekeeping to actually bring in the link to some great stuff. like managed webhooks and API updates and everything else. And it's been fun that way, right? So uh every single time I think about why do open source, I'm just like I have Like this new answer every single time. But after Shop Quest I've just decided that you know I've I've completely accepted that I do not know why I do open source I just love that it gets like I get to indirectly help so many people launch new businesses. And that's super in line with like we all do Shopify, right? It's to make commerce better. And so if my boilerplates actually help make commerce better by powering like seven-eight percent of the entire app store, I've I've you know like I'm in line with the entire uh idea of being in chop say.
Kurt Elster
I love that. That's that earned you, I mean ultimately that approach. And that open source framework got you recognized for Shopify Build Award for community contributions. And that that was a big deal. You know, a lot of people you got pulled up on stage, you get this award. This thing weighs like four pounds. That's not an exaggeration. I think it it's literally four pounds.
Harshdeep Singh Hura
It is heavy. It is heavier than uh the Merchant Awards. I think the Merchant Awards is like what two pounds?
Kurt Elster
I they're chunky.
Harshdeep Singh Hura
It's double the weight. Uh here's the thing about community awards specifically, right? And this breaks a lot of people's heads every single time I tell them, including a few people from Shopfire. My community builderboard is actually in my cupboard. It is not on display anywhere in my house.
Kurt Elster
Which this is true. You last time we talked you showed me you had to open the cabinet to go get it. Why are you hiding it?
Harshdeep Singh Hura
So here's the thing. I didn't get the community award uh the build award because I built the greatest app or the greatest storefront, right? I got the community award because of the people that actually follow me or the people who decided that hey, you know what, Oshdeep, you are the guy who we're gonna listen to and we're gonna follow. Because there's a bajillion people out there telling you today this is how you grow your Shopify store or how to grow your Shopify app. What I have on display instead is So I wrote a script that pulled everyone's usernames from Twitter and GitHub and like dumped it in a file And right as they called my name, I hit the script, saved everyone's usernames, and when I came back home, as like got three frames, printed everyone's usernames out, and that is on display. Wow. That avoid by itself means nothing without the people that put me up there.
Kurt Elster
That you know what It's too humble. I'm not buying any of it. This is all an elaborate act. The moment you've got like a button under your desk and that I think the award pops out of the cabinet. It's got spotlights on it. There's a song, you have your own theme song about how great you are, it spins in a circle, and everyone who enters the room has to kiss the ring. That's what I that's if I'm gonna speculate on your choices, that's what I'm going with. True or false? True, I knew it.
Harshdeep Singh Hura
I I wish that was possible. Honestly, like I think highly of myself, don't get me wrong there.
Kurt Elster
I know I'm like really good at it.
Harshdeep Singh Hura
But at some point you have to like remind yourself that That award only happened because of the people.
Kurt Elster
It's true. Yeah, you're we're part of something greater here, and that's kind of cool, isn't it? When we talk about the Shopify developer community, partner community ecosystem It occurs across many surfaces, right? I could find it on uh Twitter. I could find it like like I engage on Twitter, is I that's what I like. Um, but And you were just at a conference, and there's so many ways to engage with the partner community. What is your preferred flavor of Shopify, Shopify developer ecosystem? How do you access it?
Harshdeep Singh Hura
Uh I think Twitter has been my home ground for a good while, but now they're rate limiting me thinking I'm a bot. So that's a little uh frustrating and alarming.
Kurt Elster
Rate limited you tweeted?
Harshdeep Singh Hura
Yeah, like I make a post, it's deleted, and I have to kind of go back and post it again. This has happened multiple times over the last three months, and I'm on the highest paid tier. And I was like, maybe that should help. It doesn't help. Uh and I've written to support too, which is a little concerning. So I'm just like, okay, I need to diversify and really get into LinkedIn and a little bit of Facebook too.
Kurt Elster
LinkedIn's real active. Facebook's okay. I don't like just I think the algorithm on Facebook has changed in a way where it's prioritizing, you know, portrait video as opposed to anything else. Um, because I've I managed two Facebook groups with collectively, you know, like fifteen thousand people. And yeah, I you know, I I just don't see see the community aspect of of Facebook being a priority for meta right now. At least that's how it's felt. Twitter for sure, but it's like it's so weird. Threads is interesting. You know, I'm not I have an account. I'm not active. And LinkedIn for sure. LinkedIn, I'm like consistently surprised by how engaged people are.
Harshdeep Singh Hura
Yeah, but then LinkedIn still feels very fabricated because people are either trying to partner up, offer a job, or get a job.
Kurt Elster
It is very different.
Harshdeep Singh Hura
Yeah, it's it's like because the one thing that I really love about Twitter is its actual genuine interactions. And all the spam DMs are, hey, here's my office hours at like a bajillion dollars an hour. If you, you know, sign on, thank you so much for the money and I'm willing to now listen to you. If not, like thank you so much for ignoring me now. Uh so that's great. Uh but yeah, like I I would say like 95% of interactions on Twitter are actually genuine, uh, which is the only reason why I'm still there. Threads still feels incomplete for some reason. Like Twitter, even after the acquisition, all of that stuff, still has a soul. I don't know how I would describe it, but threads just feels like, yeah, just please post so I can like garner a bunch of attention.
Kurt Elster
I'm like on this show Someone told me Twitter is the sweatpants of social media. And that has stuck with me. And I'm like, I don't overthink posting on Twitter the same way might send a newsletter. And there is a freedom to the lazy authenticity of X, formerly Twitter, right? It'll always be Twitter in our hearts. Sorry, Elon. Um It I don't know, it's a fun place. You know, it's it it's low low key, low effort. If you haven't tried it, it's kind of fun. So what are you what are you working on now? You're building a new app?
Harshdeep Singh Hura
Yeah, so I'm building YARC. So the entire idea with Yak has been how to make bulk gifting more accessible, but also stop you from being lazy by just by gifting gift cards. Like hey, here's a bunch of money, just go buy it. Right? It it needs to be a little more thoughtful. So a lot of my merchants asked for something similar and I was like, you know what? This problem is difficult enough. That I want to wake up every single day and work towards it. So like think about it. When as a motion you think about bulk gifting, the numbers that come in your head are like 50, 100, 1000 people, right? What if bulk gifting was just five PP and it's five of your friends and you want to buy socks for them? We don't think about it that way, right? Because The bigger the number, the bigger the you know revenue and bigger the dopamine hit. But like what if you're losing out on a lot of sales because I either have to buy those five pairs of socks to my place and then ship it out or do five checkouts. So a very simple thing is if you could check out for five people at once, what would bulk drifting look like? And that's when Yak came in and I was like, you know what, this is actually a problem that I actually want to solve. Like it's been what like three, four months now? That I've been like working with a few merchants, kind of early access. I just submitted the app today for uh proper listing. And that's what we're seeing, right? More and more people and Or like, hey, you know what? Let me buy for three people, let me buy for six people, let me buy for ten people. And that's just been fun, right? Because now when I sit down with these eleven merchants and I'm like, hey, so how's Bulgifting going? And they're like the perspective shift on what they think was bulking versus what it is today is like it's just insane to see that a simple app, but it's not so simple honestly, can have that big of an impact on how they perceive what a bulk sale is from a like a consumer perspective and so from a like a huge P2B perspective.
Kurt Elster
You just submitted this app for the approval process. You've had other apps. Given that experience, you are uniquely in the position to tell me what's the biggest misconception you see new Shopify app developers having about developing Shopify or just being in the Shopify ecosystem. What's the big misconception for the newbies?
Harshdeep Singh Hura
A lot of people think it's an engineering game. Like you think you come in with all these engineering skills of like 500 years of combined experience and you're using Rust with AWS or you're posting with bare metal. Simply put The App Store is a distribution problem, not an engineering problem. Right? Because think about this. Shopfire does the heavy lifting follow the business logic I do not have to sit down and be like, hey, you know what? If I'm creating an order, go ahead and reduce it from the inventory and do this or do that. Shopfire is just like, hey, just tell me what you want to do. I'll handle all of the business logic, right? So any app that you build is just a bunch of UI and string gated API calls. That's what an app is. Like it's not super complicated. A lot of people think it's super complicated. It's not. Like, it's very rare that you're writing your own business logic. I came in with that on Yak and I was like, I have to write my own business logic for order splitting. And that is when I got reminded of this exact pain point that I keep telling other people. It's very rare that you do write a business logic, but 90% of your app is not an engineering problem, it's a distribution problem. Because what ends up happening is you could have the perfectly engineered wish list app or pre-order app or invoicing app in the app store. But if people do not know about it and if it doesn't actually solve a problem that motions have it's as good as being completely useless. Like that's just wasted engineering effort. Uh I really love developers who are like, hey, you know what? I have these five merchants who want this problem and their problems are like 90% on the novel app and there's a few niche use cases. I'm gonna build an app, have them test it out, and then I'm gonna push it out in the app store. Those are the kind of apps that actually work really well. Because they're actually solving a real problem and they are not concerned about engineering the solution, but about distributing the solution.
Kurt Elster
If I were to ask you what your one piece of advice for an aspiring Shopify app developer, entrepreneur, someone joining our community, what would it be?
Harshdeep Singh Hura
I would still stick to this. Like it's not complicated. You know, it's it's like uh If you if you're coming in, let's say from a Salesforce background, because I did Salesforce for a good while to help my custom out, and you're kind of coming and you're like, hey, I want to build apps, you're wrong. Start with the storefronts first. Because think about it this way. Today you run a full service agency. I have run a full service agency. When we come up with a problem, or like we're like, hey, you know what? We have to build an app this quarter. What do you think we're doing? Are we pulling solutions out of thin air or are we like, hey, pick up all of the support tickets from the last six months, see what a recurring problem is, and then list out 10 apps and be like, what problem do we want to solve? So anyone who's just entering the Shopify ecosystem and is like, hey, I want to be an app developer, I'm like, for the first two years, you're working on storefronts with motions. So you do storefronts, you understand how like what the actual concerns of the merchants are, you understand point and click tools, then you kind of go over to flow and then you come over to custom apps and then public apps So this flow actually helps you understand Shopify properly. You are not replicating what Shopify already offers. And you have a better understanding of the entire platform. So anything now that you build is plugging into their actual workflow, like the merchants actual workflow. Right, so if you're coming from the outside, loan storefronts work with merchants, and I'm like, if you do this for two years, you're gonna have an understanding to why I'm like saying all of this But then people don't have the patience for 24 months of like unrelated work when they want to build apps. And then uh On my community Discord, I have literally like 10 people asking about the exact same thing, and I'm like, I literally said, go work with a moji. And I was like, you know what? Work with two Rojins. And let's come back in three months and let's talk about it. The two people who took me seriously, they're like, Coach Leep, you were right. And I'm like, I spent a decade doing this. Of course I'm right on this. Uh so yeah, like the the entire baseline would be work with merchants on storefronts and see what they expect out of the platform and from like partners and then kind of go ahead and build apps.
Kurt Elster
It's great advice. Because like think about the the hubris of I'm going to put in the effort to build an app for an ecosystem in which I don't have experience with the end user. Not a great approach, right? You're setting yourself up for trouble versus like learn and work with the people that you are trying to help. Hmm. It seems seems like saying advice to me. Hey, aren't you forgetting something? If you're not using OneClick Upsell, you're leaving 10 to 15% of your total Shopify revenue on the table. OneClick Upsell is the number one upsell app. for over 15,000 Shopify stores. Listen to these brands, Tushy, Dr. Squatch, Buffy and Victoria Beckham, and guess what? It's already made sellers just like you an extra $750 million in upsell revenue. With one click upsell, you can add It AI-powered upsell funnels to every product on your store, including upsells on your product pages, shopping cart, checkout. And thank you page. Even on the shop app. So you increase your average order value automatically. And getting started is a breeze. You can install the app, launch your first upsell, and start making ten to fifteen percent more cash from every customer beginning on day one. As in today. Don't leave behind another dollar in free upsell revenue. Go to zipify. com slash curt and try one click upsell free for 30 days. That's zipify. com slash kurt. Are there any trends that you anticipate coming up? You know, where 2025 is right around the corner Uh and you're building an app and I didn't hear the word AI once here, right? Like it is what so what trends do you think are are gonna shape the future of Shopify app development?
Harshdeep Singh Hura
Huh. With the stretch to enterprise. It's not the proper B2B apps and it's not the proper small and medium-sized business apps, but it's the businesses that are too large to be called a medium business, but are too small to be called an enterprise. That space, right? Like think about it this way you're making a lot of money or like a lot of revenue that you are not fit for the advanced plan, like you need more But you're not making enough to justify being on plus.
Kurt Elster
Yeah, it's a it's a big jump when you go advanced to plus.
Harshdeep Singh Hura
Now think about this. If you were to look at plus, like one of the things that usually come up is B2P. How can you bring that B2P experience not in the proper plus way, do not exceed it, but like as a bridge to plus app? Right? So people come in and they're like, hey, I need plus and I cannot justify spending twenty-three twenty five hundred dollars a month for it. But I'd rather spend like another 500 a month maybe on a B2B app that gets me there. And so then when I see enough traction coming in, I'm like, you know what? Let's go all in on Shopify and native uh features. And let's juggle with B2B right with plus. So any app that is your bridge to plus is something that's really great. Either that or the I I wouldn't call it a trend, but like the baseline of just build what merchants ask you to build. It's not that complicated, but the most complicated part is like finding merchants who would give you ideas, which again, like I said, people don't want to do for some reason. And as far as AI is concerned Like AI is worth more than just being built chatbots out of or like for code generation. Like think about this. This is what YARC does. Uh, and I talked about it at ShopQuest. For every category of merchant, I have a completely new set of screens. So you as a FMV merchant selling cookies on the internet would have a totally different experience of Yak Versus someone who's selling socks on the internet. And you'd be like, why is that a thing? Right? What's happening here is one, while we are trying to set up bulk gifting, The way you want to set up is very different because one UI cannot potentially solve problems for every niche that's available, right? So while for the first six to eight months all users are gonna have the exact same experience, what's gonna be happening is since we're tracking a bunch of usage data And we know what category a store belongs to by pulling out like say you know 20, 30, 40 of their products. We can start categorizing users and be like, hey, you know what? This user who is doing FNB has the same usage pattern as 20 other people in FNB. So you know what? Let's build a screen now or let's assign them a set of workflows that works for them. So what you're almost immediately doing is uh you're taking up all of that usage data, running it locally uh to Llama 3, like that's what I really like now. And having that spread out in array, be like, hey, you know what? For product groups use screen two. For orders use screen three for the FNB category. And so then when you sign up to YARK tomorrow and we are like, hey, you know what, this is an FNB store. Let's actually serve you those specific screens. And then you're like, hey, you know what? I don't like this experience or this is there or that is there. We can always swap those out. So when you're using AI, it's not just about, hey, let's build a chatbot. or an autoresponder or hey here's image generation out of it you could do something that is like in the background and it changes the way your motion actually uses the app And now think about this. One UI cannot solve every problem, right? But if you have six different UI sets specific to certain categories of apps, you're not solving more problems And since a lot of the business logic is taken care of by Shopify, this becomes EOI USB. This is something that no one else can copy. Another fun thing that happens is I know a bunch of developers who are gonna try to copy a bunch of UI elements and these are God, I don't want to call them out, but they're repeat offenders, right?
Kurt Elster
There are there yeah. They see a successful app in the Shopify app store and then they clone it. Like they make the same thing And then it tweak a handful of things, but like r just slavishly the recreated.
Harshdeep Singh Hura
Yeah. And uh so the fun thing that I came up with was Because a lot of these are detectable with their emails or with the names and all of that stuff. And if they are on the Dev Store, I replace all of the UI and just spit out cloud emojis until their browser crashes And I'm like, see now that's fun, right? Like a bunch of clown emojis with like the clown circus music playing in the background and the new browser crashes. Like Imagine you're just like, you know what, this is a successful app. I'm gonna copy it, you install it on the dev store, and you plant emojis everywhere. So it's also necessary to have a bunch of fun, and I'm just hoping. Someone takes a screenshot of of this, sends me a DM, and be like, dude, well played.
Kurt Elster
It's quite the Easter egg you worked out. But in that I had that's very clever, I death thought about it. So what you're proposing here is as part of the onboarding or the app installation. You figure out what kind of store it is. And you're not asking the person to pick a category. You're doing it based off the product catalog and then assigning them a category that changes the admin, the interface of your app. to be more relevant to them. And then if it's you know, and then we have some some if then else in there where it's like, all right, well if the email address for the merchant email is at, you know, badperson. com or whatever, then then we do our clown emoji Easter egg. Right. That's funny. That's really good. That's very clever. I'm starting to think you're you're going places here.
Harshdeep Singh Hura
Hopefully Uh because like one build awards create, uh but there's like three categories and they only have one. So uh yeah, the app and storefront one are still pending.
Kurt Elster
Going for the trifecta, get all three. We need a good name for that. You know, like if you've got an uh you know an MA and Oscar Atone, you you can get an EGOTO and a Grammy, an E-Got award, right? We need like what's the the acronym for the Shopify Build Awards if you can get all three.
Harshdeep Singh Hura
Community apps and storefronts.
Kurt Elster
Alright, well that shortens to CAS. So we gotta work with that. Yeah, I got a Cass award. It's okay. I think we can do better.
Harshdeep Singh Hura
Yeah. That's what like we should actually leave it to people on Twitter and LinkedIn to really cover with an actress. Uh but before that we need to have someone to actually win all of those and then be like, hey guys, I need a new name. Hopefully it's me. But yeah, like this is something that's difficult enough. Because at this point once you've been building like three, four hundred apps over the last ten years, it just becomes boring after a certain while. It's it's like a regular jaw, right? Because you have all of the boilerplates. Then you have built your own Polaris like component library that you just copy paste it in. You then hit a point where you're just like, you know what? I need something more difficult to kind of wake up to This thing's difficult enough because for me to win my second, it's more harder than for anyone else to win their first And so I'm like, okay, that is something that I want to work towards. And I think you would have seen a few videos on Yacht where I kind of show how quick the page transition is between two pages.
Kurt Elster
I saw that this morning, actually.
Harshdeep Singh Hura
Right. And I was like, even with demo data, we can't actually do that. And how are you use how are you doing that with actual user data? Because the video starts off with like me actually filling up all of the information and then kind of spinning around. And that's making a lot of developers' heads. And I was like, when I tell you that I'm coming for the second vent of war, it's not a funny thing that I'm seeing to garner likes. I'm like, I'm actually focused on getting there.
Kurt Elster
Oh what? I believe you. I did not did not uh question it for a second. So we're we're coming to the end of our time together. Uh I want to know where can I learn more about you? Where should people go?
Harshdeep Singh Hura
Oh uh so you can always head over to Horsdeephura. com. That's like my baseline or my website, like that's my personal site. And also, by the way, before we close about this If you head over to Virgdipura. com, you're gonna see how closely it is to Paul's website. Uh, his personal site. Because here's the thing. Yeah. Uh And even though this is the code base that I've been using since 2004, when I first learned HTML, this was back in like fourth grade. Uh there was a tiny amount of time where I was like, you know what, let's actually like add some pizzazz to it. And around that time is when I saw Paul and you talking on the unofficial Shopfire podcast, and I was like You know what, let's actually check their sites. I opened up Paul's post for some reason, and I was like, if he does that, like I think I'm completely fine doing this. And yeah, like even just this very specific moment, right, where We hopped on the call and we were like, okay, you know what? Let's get started. It's a huge full circle moment from me because I remember reading your blog post on how you get got started with the partner ecosystem. To like watching you on the partners page to then watching you and Paul go back and forth with podcasts and like PFCM stuff to like now this happening and I'm like The child in me is extremely happy that he gets to do this. More than anything else, thank you so much for being that source of inspiration. to kinda actually help me get till here because I would have quit a long time ago.
Kurt Elster
They uh that's amazing. I uh I have goosebumps. You have made my morning. Like I I had no idea. That's fabulous.
Harshdeep Singh Hura
It's it's it's great. Uh yeah, like uh I think even when talking to Kelly, Kelly Vaughn, uh who's also been like one of those people who I always look up to, it was like when we were talking, she was like I didn't realize how many people that indirectly actually held. And that's also what's happening with me now. Like at Shop West, people coming up and be like, dude, like without you, I would have never gotten into Shopfare ecosystem. And I'm like I I feel what you're feeling right now. I was just doing my stuff, right? And you just now come and tell me that you saw me out of nowhere and I am the reason why you're here. But but yeah, thank you. Uh thank you so much for being part of Create Ten Yours already.
Kurt Elster
Thank you. Yeah, wow, that what a what a great way to wrap this up. Uh Harshdeep Singhura, thank you. And absolutely, uh when Yak uh is available, I gotta check it out.
Harshdeep Singh Hura
For sure.
Kurt Elster
Crowdfunding campaigns are great. You can add social proof and urgency to your product pre-orders while reducing risk of failure. But with traditional crowdfunding platforms, you're paying high fees and giving away control all while your campaign is lost in a sea of similar offers. It can be frustrating. That's why we built Crowdfunder. The Shopify app that turns your Shopify product pages into your own independent crowdfunding campaigns. We originally created Crowdfunder for our private clients, and it was so successful we turned it into an app that anyone can use. Today Merchants using Crowdfunder have raised millions collectively. With Crowdfund, you'll enjoy real-time tracking, full campaign control, and direct customer engagement. And it's part of the Built for Shopify program, so you know it's easy to use. So say goodbye to high fees and hello to successful store-based crowdfunding. Start your free trial and transform your Shopify store into a pre-order powerhouse today. Search Crowdfunder in the Shopify App Store to get started.