The Investor's Podcast (We Study Billionaires) - The Investor’s Podcast Network
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Shawn O’Malley and Daniel Mahncke revisit Shopify (NASDAQ: SHOP) fifteen months after Shawn pitched it, called it one of the best businesses they’d ever studied, and recommended passing on the stock at around $80 per share. Since then, the stock has nearly doubled, gross merchandise volume has grown more than 30% for five straight quarters, 2025 revenue rose 30% to over $11.5 billion, and Shopify paid off its convertible notes and launched its first-ever buyback program, now totaling $5 billion. Shawn and Daniel grade their original analysis: what they got right about the business, what they got wrong about the numbers, and whether the decision-making process itself was flawed. They dig into how Shopify became central to agentic commerce through its Catalog of over a billion products, the Universal Commerce Protocol it co-developed with Google, and agentic storefronts inside ChatGPT, Gemini, and Copilot. They also cover Amazon blocking Meta’s Muse agent while Shopify partnered with it, the bear case that merchants will vibe-code their own stores, Sidekick’s rapid adoption, and whether a great business is worth owning at 112 times operating profits. IN THIS EPISODE YOU’LL LEARN: