Launch HN: Shogun (YC W18) – Storefront Builder for ECommerce Sites

69 点作者 Finbarr大约 7 年前

We're Finbarr and Nick, co-founders of Shogun - a storefront builder for eCommerce sites. We started the company 3 years ago. Initially it was a page builder for Rails apps[1, 2]. After about 9 months, we couldn't convince many companies to pay us for that, but one of our prospects wanted to use it for a Shopify store. So we wrote a Shopify integration, waited a week, and gave up.Within a month of giving up, we had some paying customers, so Nick and I continued to work on it as a side project. I went to work as a software engineer, and Nick moved to Thailand. We continued to work on it in our free time, and figured maybe someday it could be a lifestyle business.But it continued to grow. And grow. And grow. By spring of 2017, it was making enough to pay Nick and me a modest salary, so I left my job and Nick came back from Asia. By fall, our growth wasn't slowing down, and we figured that this could be a full-on software company.We applied to YC, and Shogun grew 30% during the month between our application submission and our interview. We got in to the Winter 2018 batch.Today Shogun is one of the most popular apps on Shopify. We just launched on BigCommerce as well and are now building out support for other eCommerce platforms.In regard to tech, the hardest part has been implementing workarounds for all the bizarre quirks of each platform. We also build our pages to co-exist with the existing CSS and theme elements, so we have to be really careful with styling conflicts.There are a lot of page building tools out there. Our major differentiator is that we focus on eCommerce specifically and integrate into your existing eCommerce platform/backend. Shogun is also developer friendly with strong controls over details like padding and margins. We also built in a "custom elements" feature that allows developers to code re-usable drag and drop templates. Finding the right balance where developers love it and non-developers can learn it is very difficult.We're looking forward to hearing feedback and ideas from the community.[1] <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9257363" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9257363</a>[2] <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9571603" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9571603</a>

17 条评论

orliesaurus大约 7 年前

Aren't you afraid that if tomorrow Shopify releases their own version of your plugin directly baked into their tool, you could lose a lot of customers over night? The reason I say this, it's because as someone who has seen a lot of vendors changing and limiting APIs and access, or just releasing baked-in products - I have seen my fair share of companies having to pull a dangerous U-turn! Nevertheless, it looks like a cool product!

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philfrasty大约 7 年前

How does this compare to most builtin page builders in themes on e.g. Themeforest? „Compare“ as in: why does Shogun seem to have SO MUCH MORE potential in YC's POV?For comparison: a top-selling theme on TF with a top notch built-in page builder is usually around $50 to $70 one-time fee. Shogun with similiar features in the most expensive version is $60 per month.

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jonbishop大约 7 年前

I’m a Shogun fan. I was on a tight deadline to design, build, and launch our new site on Shopify. Designing a new site is enough work without introducing new functionality through apps you’ve never used before, especially in the time frame I had. Not the recommended way to do things with so many ways it could go wrong, but this was just the situation.Shogun was an important factor in me hitting the deadline as it was very easy to learn and build with. There are a lot of page builders out there, and many hit a solid level of functionality, so it can hard to describe why Shogun is better.For me, the difference is the speed that I can build a good design at. The UI, prebuilt templates, and backend speed all helped me move faster than with other page builders. While I haven’t used their support, a lot of their reviews on Shopify talk about how good it is (one reason I decided to take a look at the app)

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ajiang大约 7 年前

Awesome. I don't know how common it is to see an app with 600+ reviews without anything less than 4 stars. Great work to a great team.<a href="https://apps.shopify.com/shogun" rel="nofollow">https://apps.shopify.com/shogun</a>

physcab大约 7 年前

Looks like a great tool. I have a Shopify site that has a large amount of products. I've had to build a lot of backend tech to manage all the syncing of the products with the API. Making sure the products are updated with the right info, are in the right collections, are connected and visible within my SEO strategy. I've punted on the UI side and opted for just buying a nice theme and doing some basic customizations bc working within Shopify is too painful.I like the idea of smart data collections. If you guys had direct DB connectivity, auto-populated the collections AND synced that between platforms, that would be baller. And if you offered direct FB / Google Merchant center feed control, that would be even more baller.Would love to start a trial, but it seems daunting to figure out the migration component. If you made a tutorial video on that, I can see that easing that friction point.

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le-mark大约 7 年前

We applied to YC, and Shogun grew 30% during the month between our application submission and our interview. We got in to the Winter 2018 batch.This makes very little sense. If you had a proven, growing product in a large market, why not just go for some angel investment or even series A funding? At this point maybe you just need some cash to seize the oppurtunity ie fund some developers to add polish, marketing, advertising to draw customers. A paltry YC batch investment seems trivial, certainly less than you need. Also a business based on Shopify and n1, n2, ... nx where x < 10? Seems like a lot of risk.

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yding大约 7 年前

Great story!One thought: I'm looking at your pricing and it looks pretty low. Is that something you've played around with?Besides integrating with other platforms, what do you think the longer term play of the company is? Is it to build your own shopify like platform?

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gupir大约 7 年前

I think it is an interesting product. I am launching a website builder in a few weeks, and this kind of product (web builder) is more complicated than I initially devise. I wish the best for the team.

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lxxvii大约 7 年前

Looks useful!I noticed you have quite a few reviews in the Shopify app store - is there any particular strategy you use there? Do you encourage reviews in-app or with email?

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swaggyBoatswain大约 7 年前

Are you basing a lot of your designs off webflow? (Drag and drop)Also, what future ecommerce carts are you looking at porting over?

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locusm大约 7 年前

What stack did you build on? I'm assuming Rails for back end, what about js frameworks etc

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rpedela大约 7 年前

On a Pixel 2 using Chrome, clicking the top-level hamburger icon does not work for me.

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tmikaeld大约 7 年前

What about rendering speed?Is this not an issue when you have many dynamic elements on a page?

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mindhash大约 7 年前

looks interesting. I had requirements from clients (e.g. apparel manufacturers) to create product configurator. Is this sort of requirement your tool can address?

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claudiulodro大约 7 年前

Cool stuff. Any plans for WooCommerce?

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vimarshk大约 7 年前

Great Story!

newscracker大约 7 年前

If there's one thing that makes me highly suspicious and mistrusting of any company, it's the absence of a pricing link right on the homepage. It reminds me of "Contact Sales" schemes where the price is decided on how much can be extracted from each customer. I'm not saying that Shogun falls in that category, but putting a pricing link on the homepage would make it whole lot easier for people to decide if it's for them or not. [1] Features and pricing — both are important for decision making. Please don't force people to sign up or search through help pages to find out how much it costs.As of this moment, when I do a "Find on Page" and look for "pric" (just part of "pricing"), I don't find anything. Whenever I get to such sites, I just close the tab and move on.[1]: <a href="https://getshogun.com/" rel="nofollow">https://getshogun.com/</a>

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