ShopShop: The Headless E-commerce Platform Built By Operators, For Operators

Our Story

We've built a portfolio of 5 e-commerce brands since 2017, generating $100M+ in revenue with consistent year-on-year growth in US and Australian markets. We've battled with every major platform - Shopify, WooCommerce, Webflow, Recurly - and experienced their limitations firsthand.

Everything changed in 2021 when our WooCommerce store was hacked through a plugin vulnerability. We realized we couldn't keep running on WordPress - a blogging site masquerading as an e-commerce platform. Despite constant maintenance, we always felt on the brink of disaster as our transaction volumes grew.

Shopify wasn't the answer either - no native bundles or subscriptions meant relying on third-party apps with their own checkout pages, little to no customization, fragmenting our customer experience and data.

We evaluated every alternative: Webflow and others weren't mature enough for serious e-commerce, while platforms like Magento were plagued with reliability and speed issues, built on unstable technology stacks.

Stuck between platforms that couldn't support our growth, we made a decision: build the e-commerce platform we actually needed. Starting with just 2 developers, 1 UX designer and our own capital, we began creating ShopShop. Today, we have a team of 8 developers, we're already running one of our brands on it and migrating the others in the coming months. We are the first customer of ShopShop, when fully migrated we estimate this will save us a minimum of $380,000 per annum in fees plus increase our conversion rates.

The Problem We've Lived

After building multiple successful e-commerce businesses, we've experienced firsthand the frustrations of existing platforms:

• Shopify: Best in class but bloated, inflexible, poor subscription capabilities, expensive, and locks you into their ecosystem
• WooCommerce: Unreliable, slow, insecure, requires constant maintenance
• Magento: Over-engineered, resource-hungry, requires specialized developers, enterprise costs without enterprise support
• Common Issues: Obfuscated data, no native app control, vendor lock-in, expensive developers, poor performance, old and outdated system architecture/codebase

Our Unfair Advantage

We have built and run our own 8-figure e-commerce businesses, with one already running on the ShopShop platform. We're not just developers - we're operators who understand every aspect of e-commerce including acquisition, retention, inventory, and expansion because we do it every day.

The ShopShop Solution

Core Platform

• 100% Built on Go: 40x faster than Ruby (Shopify), 15x faster than PHP (WooCommerce) - 10x faster than Node.js, handles 100K+ concurrent requests on a single server while others struggle with 1,000
• True Headless Architecture: Use any frontend, build native apps, POS, own your data
• Multi-tenant SaaS: Subdomain provisioning, instant store creation
• No Lock-in: Full API access, export everything, transparent data structure

Key Differentiators

• Native Subscription Management: Handle physical or digital product plans
• Native Bundles: Any combination of products and subscriptions, even bundles within bundles!
• True Omnichannel: One platform powers web, mobile apps, and POS - significantly reducing tech costs
• Payment Flexibility: Braintree, PayPal, Stripe, Airwallex - can integrate with anything
• Shared or Standalone Hosting: Easily accommodates small to enterprise customers hosted anywhere in the world
• Speed, Reliability, Scalability: At a fraction of the cost, driving increased conversion rates
• More Control: Own your data, customize everything, integrate anything - built for operators who want to grow
• Scale Without Breaking: From $10K to $10M MRR on the same infrastructure - no replatforming needed
• AI Frontend: Developing the ability to build any front end with AI trained on our api library

Target Market

Semi-technical e-commerce founders who:

• Have outgrown basic platforms
• Want control over their technology
• Understand the value of owning their data
• Need reliable infrastructure for scaling

Business Model & Unit Economics

Revenue comes from modest monthly subscriptions and a percentage of transaction volume. ShopShop will be cashflow positive - we're able to develop efficiently without the massive overhead of traditional SaaS companies. We've already invested $1.7M+ of our own capital and continue to bootstrap development, proving we can build enterprise-grade technology at a fraction of typical costs.

Traction & Proof Points

• Operating 5 e-commerce brands with $100M in cumulative sales since 2015
• One of our own brands already migrated, others in progress
• $1.7M+ invested from founders
• Partnership discussions with payment providers

Go-to-Market Strategy

1. Product-Led Growth: $1 per month trial with demo stores
2. Woocommerce Migration Tool: Move your store to shopshop
3. Content Marketing: Video documentation and tutorials
4. Paid SEM SMM: We are already experts on Google and Meta Ads
5. Community Building: Forum for operators to share strategies
6. Channel Partners: Integrations with Airwallex, Braintree/Paypal, Customer.io, Klaviyo, ShipStation

The Team

• Founders: E-commerce operators with combined $100M in online sales
• Resources: 4 Backend Developers (Golang Specialty), 4 Frontend Developers (NextJS/React), In house UX Design, Marketing Team
• Seeking: CTO and Head of Product who've scaled SaaS platforms

The Ask

Raising $10M (USD) to:

• Extend the team with key positions
• Ready the platform for external signups
• Accelerate platform development and AI capabilities
• Scale customer acquisition globally
• Develop comprehensive integration ecosystem

Why Now?

Total ecommerce market: $6.8T (2025) → $8T (2027)

Payment processing market expected to reach $139.9B by 2030

Shopify showing strong 24% GMV growth and 31% revenue growth

The e-commerce platform market is ripe for disruption. Shopify's stock price reflects their bloat, and technical founders are seeking alternatives. We're building the platform we wish existed - and we're using it ourselves every day.

Note: This is a confidential expression of interest document. Not an offer to sell securities.