Latest / Leaders on Shopify with John Readman / The wishlist app that knows what your shoppers want before they do...
Transcript
- John - Leaders on Shopify: welcome back to another episode of Leaders on Shopify. I'm really pleased today to be joined by Sakshi who's responsible for product and engineering at Swym who've got one of the most installed apps in the Shopify app ecosystem. And we're gonna get all into apps, Shopify ecosystem, the changes we've seen, the influx of vibe coded AI apps in the ecosystem. I'm sure we've got lots to talk about there as fellow app builders. welcome to the podcast. Sakshi Gupta: Thank you so much, John, for having me. And I'm John - Leaders on Shopify: Yeah. Sakshi Gupta: really excited to get through all of the questions that you have for me. John - Leaders on Shopify: Yeah, before we get into anything, I'm keen to understand when I was doing my research, I kept finding multiple titles for you. So if you could introduce yourself to the audience with various what your actual job is. And for those who don't know, what does Swym do? And if you're on Shopify, why would you want to be using it? Sakshi Gupta: Amazing. Yeah, so I think there are multiple titles because I wear a little bit of multiple hats here. But I work as the Product and Engineering Lead right now, specifically for our Wishlist Plus app. Most of you must have seen it on our Shopify app store. But over the years, I've worn multiple hats. I've also been the core engineer for something called the Gift Registry app that we released. So that was something that I did on and post that I've been working with the Wishlist app for quite some time. But I started as an engineering manager, being very honest, John. we did start to recognize that the product and the engineering teams need to work very closely. And it was time that with the way AI was going, that it all became like a combined function rather than product building and engineering working separately. So that is why you'd see so many titles over time. But right now, perfectly, You can call me the product and engineering lead who leads Wishlist Plus as an app function. John - Leaders on Shopify: Yeah, so I'm wishlist plus has been in the app store, I think since 2016. So you're like one of the OGs in the app store. And it's still Sakshi Gupta: Yes. John - Leaders on Shopify: the most reviewed wishlist app out there. I think you've got is it 4.7 stars across 1470 reviews, right? I was quite pleased when we only had I think when we got our first 15 installs and we managed to get 11 reviews from our first 15. So I was quite pleased with that, right? But you guys are sort of smashing it, but what do you think keeps a 10 year old app still one that everybody wants to install? Sakshi Gupta: Yeah, so I think a good thing is we're talking now, we're just celebrating 10 years on the app store. So it's been a decade. And like, I can't talk about Wishlist Plus before talking about Swym because that's what makes it so special. So we're best known for like a wishlist app. But Swym is a lot more than that, to be honest, John. It's an intent platform where we try to capture the intent when a shopper enters a store. And from there, use that intent to connect them to, you know, the right shoppers the merchants can get to and then finally convert that intent. So it's almost like the intent layer that understands what friction that shoppers have during the journey on the store and like tries to eliminate that for your merchants. And we do that in various ways. Like a lot of it is the heart icon that you see and helps people wish list what they really like. But a lot of it is like explicit and some of it is implicit as well, which is like we will not be like getting direct signals, but we'll be understanding their journeys. So that's what the platform really does. So it understands this intent in various forms. So imagine I save a product and it goes on a sale. So I'd love to be notified because maybe I did John - Leaders on Shopify: Yeah. Sakshi Gupta: not continue on the purchase journey because I was thinking it is too costly for me or like the price is not right. So me being informed about this is what matters. Or if I've browsed a product too many times. And I keep coming back to it if we can understand that intent and remind them that, there's like a special sale going on and you are browsing this product a lot, that is interesting. Or imagine you went to a product page and that was out of stock. You'd love to be notified, right? Like if it is some item that you're interested in that it's back in stock. These are just little triggers, but there's a lot of data that goes in. It's not just like directly, hey, this is out of stock, in stock. But the journey starts way before. It's like a discovery. Then from the discovery, there's an analysis, there's comparisons that happening. From there, it goes into they are now assessing the product and they're like trying to make up their mind. So it's a whole thing. So that is why I think the 10 years have all been about understanding the shopper journeys and eliminating that friction. Wishlist Plus is almost like a lever that helps us get into a merchant's store. But that's not where we stop. We stop at really getting them revenue and converting this intent into actual purchases for the merchants. So that's what makes it special. John - Leaders on Shopify: And are they two separate things? So if I'm on Wishlist Plus, I don't necessarily have Swym but if I've got Swym I've probably got Wishlist Plus. Is that the right way round? Yeah, Swym's the company. Yeah, yeah. Sakshi Gupta: So Swym is the brand. We have a host. Yeah, Swym is a brand and we have like a lot of apps right now, but at the end, like you get all of the functionality from the platform. So Swym is the platform layer. And on top of it, we have a wishlist plus, we have a back in stock, have a gift list and registries platform. And there's a lot more that we also do specifically at enterprise grade, which is not really marketed on the app store itself. So it is like the Swym is the intent engine and then like the App Store is one way that we're surfacing it, but there are we do have partners that are enterprise grade that we do try to understand what the problem they are facing and then actually solve it. How can they get more conversions from this intent? So imagine spending thousands of dollars in marketing, but not really getting enough out of those thousands of dollars. So those thousand dollars should go to good use. That's what we try to make it happen. John - Leaders on Shopify: Yeah, It's fascinating. And I think it's a bit like the secret that people really want to know is what are actual shoppers doing on my site? What? How can we help them get to that sort of conversion point quicker? And why did they leave and how can we get them back? So, yeah, no, I get it. And I suppose what changes do you have your Swym and wish this past scene over 10 years of being in the app store and And what's your view on the app ecosystem now? Sakshi Gupta: I think 2016, if you look at Wishlist Plus then, it would be literally a heart icon on most things and it looked like a very, very simple thing to do because Wishlist as a category wasn't existing in 2016 to be very honest. And we were one of the first to get there and understand that category from then to now. now it has become like a full end to end. you can capture intent, you can connect intent and you can convert intent, which means We're not just like the year old wish list that used to be like 10 year old wishes that used to be, but we're actually a customer engagement platform because imagine this platform in hands of a sales associate and them having this data about the shoppers. It just helps them understand the shoppers so much better. So we do have a POS solution now. We didn't have that 10 years back. We do have integrations with partners like Klaviyo Omnisend Ometria any partner that you name, most of the marketing platforms, we have integrations with a lot of storefront platforms like the search platforms, your collection platforms and all of that. So over the years, think we've grown because Shopify has grown. We have expanded our surfaces to get to where the shoppers are. They're not necessarily on the online store. They're sometimes in the offline store. They're sometimes on their emails. We've tried to get to them where they really are. So yeah, I think the scope has... John - Leaders on Shopify: And if I'm on the Shopify POS and I go into the store, you'd know if I've added something online to my wishlist and you could potentially offer me a deal in store on that. Sakshi Gupta: Yes, exactly. Yes, especially high-end jewelry John - Leaders on Shopify: Yeah, that was super sick. Sakshi Gupta: stores or any high-end purchase stores. This helps quite a lot in that case. John - Leaders on Shopify: Yeah, no. And who, who's a sort of, if you were to give a shout out to one particular client who's using your platform in the best way, is there one Sakshi Gupta: Mm-hmm. John - Leaders on Shopify: or two that you would want to go, yeah, these guys are really nailing what we built the platform for. Sakshi Gupta: So like I think you're in UK, so I'm going to talk about somebody we just did a story with. It's Beaufort Bonnet. It's a child apparel store. I think they're doing a great job. They have a gift registry and a wish list with us. And I think just in like a year, they've seen around 252 % increase in their revenue because of Swym. So I think they have nailed it. Like they've decided how can they make their in-store experience and online store experience pretty organic because of this. understanding that shopper journey better. That's one. are others. are lots of brands you're going to find. We are on 49,000 brands right now. Killstar is another one. You must have heard Canada Goose. We have Indigo. John - Leaders on Shopify: Yeah. Yeah. Sakshi Gupta: We have Fashionphile. There's a lot of brands that I can drop here, but you'll find them all on our website. And some of these, like each brand that does well, you know that they have been very thoughtful about their shoppers, like who they're... customer is because they're really trying to understand how to make it easier for them to continue on this shopping journey and how to make it easier for them to find the items that they're looking for. I think that's what they do really well. Brands really care about making that experience friction free and good part for us is we do care about the same problem. So that's where our parts really meet. John - Leaders on Shopify: Yeah, no, no, I get that. And we've obviously talked in the past around the influx of new apps coming into the app store. And there's like 20,000 apps now. And in order to stand out, you sort of need to be built for Shopify. And you guys were one of the first in your category to be built for Shopify. What, in your opinion, does that mean? Does that help you stand out? What's your view on all of that stuff? Sakshi Gupta: So I think Build for Shopify definitely, I think we got it two years back and it wasn't as easy to get it back then because all the automation that they have now in place to quickly get the replies from the Shopify team didn't exist. So it took us six months to get that badge, let me tell you. And six months of at least two developers and maybe three at times because the challenges were unreal. We were an app already existing in the ecosystem. We had our own setup, we had our own admin and they wanted us to embed ourselves into the Shopify admin. And there was a lot of reporting analytics that we could do very well on our admin and the constraints that came in with Shopify's admin weren't as easy. But at the end, I can comfortably say whatever changes we did make, it made our app better. So it was worth it because yes, it was painful. It wasn't an easy journey, but it was worth it because at the end, we're also very happy with the user experience that we ended up having for our merchants because Yeah, it is easy for me to set up the wishlist app because yes, I work with the DN9, but not so easy maybe for a merchant. So when we try to hold back on things and try to understand they're coming from a familiar platform, they don't want to relearn a lot of things. So that is why Shopify does what it does to have that badge. In terms of an upside, definitely it helps because it helps you stand out. But also we are able to get across to more enterprise-grade merchants. So your Shopify Plus and... advanced professional these kind of plans, it's easier to have them, you know, be targeted rather than like a bunch of it. Because yes, I wouldn't say that we are a long tail app. We are more for the, you know, higher end. Yes, yes, yes. John - Leaders on Shopify: mid-tier enterprise, the sort of the bigger ones, yeah. And how many apps have you got in total at Swym? Sakshi Gupta: now published officially are three. We do have a few other like advanced customizations that we do on top of it. But like officially right now it's just three. John - Leaders on Shopify: Yeah. And if you want to just so we've got the wishlist, you've also got a back in stock app. What's Sakshi Gupta: Yes. John - Leaders on Shopify: that one called? And I just want to give you the opportunity to talk through the three main apps. Because people, again, might know the apps, but they might not know necessarily that Swym sits behind all these because they've just seen the apps. Sakshi Gupta: Yeah, so I think it's the Swym Back in Stock is what the app is called and Swym Gift Lists and Registry is the third app. The Back in Stock app, it's your classic app for having subscriptions done on your online store and offline through the POS. So imagine if an item is out of stock and you want to be subscribed to getting a notification as soon as it is back in stock. We can do that. The merchants can do various configurations for like even like an early drop like not necessarily a back in stock, but a new drop is coming in and they want to notify customers about that. That is also John - Leaders on Shopify: Yeah. Sakshi Gupta: coming soon is the category. It does all of that. And the third one, gift lists and registries, we do have an extension now that is coming in the list space, which you'll hear shortly from our side coming soon. But the gift list and registry was the app that was supposed to be our general gift registry. So imagine. going to a store and purchasing out an item, I know you have the scanner guns where people go scan hundreds of products and here is what I want in my gift registry. And then people purchasing it out for them, for their wedding, for a baby shower or whatsoever. So that's what that app does right now. John - Leaders on Shopify: know that fantastic. So if we go back, you're saying built for Shopify was painful, it was hard, but actually in the end you ended up with a better app, a better user experience. Overall, and having the badge gives you the opportunity to target the right types of customers inside the app store. Because once you get the built for Shopify status, it opens up a whole new level of advertising in the app store. Would that be a sort of fair summary? Sakshi Gupta: Yes, definitely. I think if you want to sell on the app store, getting it, I think it's become like a qualifying criteria to be very honest, John. It's no more like a special thing because now if you see most apps are built for Shopify, if they are cutting for it, like especially if you've got like enough, 5,000 odd customers by now, you would have like perceived this, okay, I want to get a build for Shopify because you want to make the 5,000 or 50,000 and so far and so beyond. So if you're doing an app store outreach, I would say yes. But if you are more like sales led, I would say it's not needed. it depends on what your strategy really is. John - Leaders on Shopify: Right. I suppose if you're trying to go product-led rather than sales-led. Sakshi Gupta: Yes, exactly. John - Leaders on Shopify: And you've made a decision a while ago to turn off your free version. Why Sakshi Gupta: Yes. John - Leaders on Shopify: was that? What was the story and what's happened? Sakshi Gupta: I think we were a free app for quite some time and the decision was not an easy one because we want to give back to this community. We want to make sure that the merchants can experience our app. But what we did do is we removed the free plan. We do have a free trial, which is you still get to enjoy that free period. It's just that you have to have a card on file. I think there were two reasons. One definitely was that giving the free plan was exhausting our customer support team because a lot of times it gets like unreal where somebody is not really paying us enough and expecting an immediate response, But that was not the only reason. To be very honest, we wanted to hold ourselves accountable that we will be able to get people onboarded within seven days, which is our free trial period right now. And in those seven days, we are able to show them value. So it actually came from an intrinsic thing that reflection people were taking a lot of time to make that choice of, hey, should I really, you know, go ahead with Swym, choose a plan or choose a plan. John - Leaders on Shopify: Well, I suppose if it's free, there's sort of no urgency because I think getting people to actually make the decision on value and getting that time to value. And something that came across at DotDev in Canada, was Shopify struggling with thousands of new apps being published. A lot of these apps are vibe-coded and have no real human being sat behind them. And some of them are even copycat apps. What's your view on human customer success, human onboarding, human training? Where do you sit in this world? Sakshi Gupta: So I'm a big fan of being AI first, but I'm not such a big fan of just using AI as your complete partner and just letting it go wild on its own. There needs to be some holding back on it, to be very honest, especially the thousands of apps that have come in right now, vibe-coded. I'm pretty sure that at the end, when there is a problem and when they have to really give support to their customers, it's gonna get challenging because when you write like, hundreds and thousands of lines of code in 15 minutes, you have no idea what the John - Leaders on Shopify: you Sakshi Gupta: hell that app does. And at the end, when there is like a problem, I am going to again, vibe code and ask the agent itself, hey, what did I do? Why is this person complaining? And most often than not, when you don't have that depth of, hey, what am I really trying to solve for? You'll solve for all different things, which are all wrong things. Like AI makes it very easy to build all the wrong things very quickly. That's what I generally have a problem with. I can do this. Yeah, I John - Leaders on Shopify: Alright, no I- Sakshi Gupta: can make an app in 15 minutes. is it solving a problem for my merchant or is it causing more problems for the merchant? That's the question you must ask before getting down that road. John - Leaders on Shopify: It's yeah, I completely agree because something I was hearing very loud and clear from Shopify is The apps that are going to win over time are actually the ones that have real practitioners who really understand the customer's problems sitting behind them. Not necessarily just technologists who've spun something up because they can see some potential opportunity for some subscription revenue. They really understand the problem. And we've actually recently changed some of our messaging on our App Store page to go real human customer success. So I never thought it would move that quickly to where that's now a USP is we've got you can actually speak to somebody and they will real human account management. So yeah, it's fascinating how quickly that suddenly a human is now seen as a bit of a luxury in a premium in the process. And Sakshi Gupta: But I just like to add on to that John, it is good to have that automation if you put the content or the context behind it. So we're using Fin (Intercom's AI agent) on our end as well, which is the AI agent, but Fin has the right knowledge. Like it has the knowledge that is the knowledge which a human has and it can answer those questions very well as well as I probably could. When it cannot, it doesn't hallucinate and like just keep on rambling. It sort of passes onto the human. So the human in the middle is required. and the AI is required because things are moving fast. So there's a balance there. That's all I'm saying. I'm saying it don't eliminate it. Make it like you're like you have to amplify it in a way that is actually productive rather than just a menace. John - Leaders on Shopify: So, and you've had quite a few sort of ideas and things around Sidekick and you've recently launched a sort of a what's the right word? There's two types of it's not a bolt on is it but your app now can work inside Sidekick as well. Whereas what's your view on the direction of where Shopify is going with its own in sort of internal AI within the platform, before we sort of get into agentic commerce and the future of all of that sort of stuff. But in terms of like, the AI that Shopify is building inside the platform to help merchants and where do apps fit in with that? Sakshi Gupta: So I think definitely Sidekick is the right step and in the right direction. we have an extension on top of Sidekick. John - Leaders on Shopify: That's it, extensions, yeah. Sakshi Gupta: So what the Sidekick extension can do is help merchants get answers to their daily questions. Like, hey, why am I getting less revenue on a weekend? Or why am I not converting enough of the sessions that I have? I have 100 shoppers visiting me, but not everybody is buying my product. So we've made it very generic because that's the one gap. you can't put your app out there and expect the merchant to ask the right question or prompt it correctly. They don't do that. And that's the biggest gap right now with Sidekick has. most of the app partners, they've put their hey, our onboarding journey and our recipes of what features should be enabled is all on Sidekick. But I don't think a merchant is going to ask about hey, their bread and butter is not to make Wish list work or like back in stock work. Their bread and butter is I need a great average order value. I need a great conversion rate. I need to have more revenue. And I think that's John - Leaders on Shopify: Yeah. Sakshi Gupta: what we should be solving for. John - Leaders on Shopify: So yeah, I think it's going in the right direction. I agree. And I think there's a really good opportunity. And it's another good reason for people to be built for Shopify and fully embedded, because then the connection and leap is an extension into Sidekick is so much you're going to be able to do that rather than just a connector app to outside. So you've got your three apps inside the app store, you've got 1900 different reviews between them, tens of thousands of installs. Is the app store still how merchants find you or do you think that's already moved somewhere else and what do you do in your sort of marketing to promote all your apps? Sakshi Gupta: So definitely the App Store is a good engine even now. But like you said, the App Store is getting crowded. and I think everybody sees that, especially because there are apps that are now like building and submitting an app within a week. So that's definitely happening. And we are using like partners, the partners are our biggest strength and we are making sure that we are able to educate our partners. and help our partners deliver value to the merchants. an agency today also, what their main objective is, is how can I make more value for my merchants? And as long as like, we can prove we're also helping them in that path, partners are more than happy to support you. So I think the next generation of how do we get like more partners to sign up with us and understand like what can Swym do for them as a platform? and help convert better sales or increase the average order value, whatever that statement is, we're trying to get playbooks around that and making sure they are part of our journey because like you correctly said, like just growing from the App Store, I don't think it's going to be viable for very long time. It is still working for us what it's worth, but yeah. John - Leaders on Shopify: Yeah. Yeah, I think it's really interesting because I think a lot of merchants feel a little bit of merchants who've just migrated to Shopify feel a little bit overwhelmed. 20,000 apps, where do I start? So then they need to rely on a trusted advisor, who's their e commerce partner or who is their agency. And then the agency will go, right, well, you've got choice of this or this. This is why this one's good and this is why that one's good. So I think, yes, we need to have a good quality product and we need to have some good reviews and it needs to do what it, but it also, I think we need to have relationships, but you hit the nail on the head there. think the relationships with the agencies, it's not really about commission or referrals. It's about, our products help your customers have a better experience for their customers? And I think if we're all thinking like that, then there's a great opportunity to partner with the... And we get a lot of e-commerce agency owners on the show and they're very much like, when I ask them what makes a good tech partner, they're all about, they've got to do a good job for our clients and ultimately help our clients look after their clients. Sakshi Gupta: I'm also talking about app partners there. I think Swym has great app partnership with TapCard, Klaviyo Omnisend Ometria because we are all trying to solve for the same reason. John - Leaders on Shopify: what does a merchant who leaves you right and you must get people who churn and leave which we all do what do you learn from that and what do they tell you as they're leaving? Sakshi Gupta: Yeah, this is a tough one. But I think there multiple reasons, John, and I think there's always a lesson. It cannot always be that, the merchants just not understand the app enough. There are things that we are learning how to rectify. So like I said, I think some of the most hardest goodbyes have been with people who've had really good lessons for us to learn from. Especially, it came from a few years back, think five, six years back, our app. user experience, even from the storefront was still a little vintage and we knew we had to make it happen. So I think we made that happen. Now when merchants leave us, a lot of it also has to do with, hey, I'm going to go and build my own in-house solution or I'm going to go for this app, which is a little cheaper than you. Those ones like I think is also giving us signs that, we have to make value front left, left, and center for all our merchants because If you say that, you are going to be able to make $100,000 a month from us, they're not going to question the price of your app. And you need to make sure John - Leaders on Shopify: Yeah, I got it. Sakshi Gupta: that you're able to do that. So I think that's the biggest lesson for me and for the team is, hey, you need to make sure that they see the value directly in front of them. Like sometimes it's very like hidden. They don't know what they're really leaving on the table. And sometimes like the features that we have, which are supposed to add value to them. that's not really coming like right in front of their like, you eyes, like they don't see that, I need to turn on a Klaviyo integration because if I don't do that, I'm not going to have all this intent really utilized on John - Leaders on Shopify: Yeah. Sakshi Gupta: my marketing emails. So those kinds of things, like we need to make them aware, like they definitely don't know how to use our app well. We are learning how to make sure that value like their success is our success. So that's the only mission. John - Leaders on Shopify: So I suppose that's almost like the bit people leave because they don't understand it. So then actually look at ourselves around how we're educating people and how can we be more proactive in understanding. And you guys must have huge amounts of data across all your clients around things people add to wish lists or what price point or what percentage of sale triggers someone to actually then purchase. What, if anything, are you going to do with the data? Because you could almost be a data business. Sakshi Gupta: I say we are a data business. That's what I've been trying to tell you. John - Leaders on Shopify: No, but you could actually potentially monetize and do research on the data and publish some like... Sakshi Gupta: So I think that there a couple of challenges right now with that, Like Shopify doesn't want you to use the data to model it and to actually use cross merchant data. And also like our merchants and us, we have a contract where we do not allow their data to be used by another store. So it's more like keeping that value true. So we don't do that. But for themselves, like the data that can make their business more successful, especially when it comes to Hey, a shopper is like there, he wants to purchase something, she wants to purchase something and they're not able to do that because this product is just not in stock. That kind of data like, what is the right time to like, you know, restock a product? What is the right time to, you know, announce a sale and what shoppers are more interesting? That sort of data we do provide already and we do like, I think there's a lot more coming up, which I don't want to talk about right now that you will see happening. John - Leaders on Shopify: That was going to be one of my next questions is what's coming next, but if you're not going to tell me that, that's fine. But Sakshi Gupta: Hahaha John - Leaders on Shopify: I think there's loads of cool conversations we could have about data, right? We could probably have a whole separate podcast Sakshi Gupta: Yeah. Yeah. John - Leaders on Shopify: on that. What have you guys built that actually nobody ever used or which features did you think was going to be amazing that actually didn't fly? Sakshi Gupta: So we had a product recommendations engine ourselves. We did have people use it, very few people, but we got beat to it. Like we were not like the right fit for it because product recommendations needs a whole lot of its own thinking, modeling and things like that. So I don't think we nailed that very well at that point of time. And given where things are now, right now with the whole LLM world, I don't even think we should be pursuing that angle anymore. But I think there's a whole new way of looking at it. And plus, Shopify does it much better right now. They have their own product recs So these things happen. There's a lot of competition. And competition is good, I would say. And for some of the larger stores, so the number of products in the stores were also very, very large to come up with that recommendation list. John - Leaders on Shopify: Yeah. Sakshi Gupta: Yeah, I think that was one. I think we've had a couple when like back in stock. Let me talk about that. Like I think we realized that we were becoming an app engine or an app factory at one point of time where we had back in stock as a separate app and wishlist as a separate. But wishlist or like back in stock within wishlist is something that works way better. We still have the app because it does get us traffic. But I think in hindsight, we should have all had it under one like platform. the wishlist platform and rebranded it better. So that's another thing. I think we've had thoughts about it, but right now we're like sticking to having back in stock as its own app because it does solve a, somebody who doesn't. John - Leaders on Shopify: well, this is an ongoing question we have as well. Should we split out some of our functionality into different apps or should we leave it as one platform? And this is just an ongoing debate, I think, Sakshi Gupta: Yes. John - Leaders on Shopify: app builders have. And Sakshi Gupta: Yes. John - Leaders on Shopify: if we sort of, right, so you get millions of requests, right? So what's Swym actually built on? So for the technical people sat listening to this or the other app builders, what's the tech behind all this that keeps it running at such high velocity? Sakshi Gupta: So, like we reach a scale of around 1 million RPM during BFCM, which is like 1 million requests per minute. And that's John - Leaders on Shopify: Yeah. Yeah. Sakshi Gupta: not easy, like you said. So, we have like our backend is a lot of it is written in Clojure I don't know if you know the language as well, but it is based out of this. And our front end is Mod React and Node 3.x. Our pipelines, they're a mix of Python and in the back end, also have Postgres, Mongo, and a lot of queues, especially when you scale a platform, you need all the queues that you can because you have so many product webhooks throwing updates at you that it is tough to manage. That's more the tech stack that we have. There have been lessons in that and I think because it's 10 years old, we've actually updated quite a bit of it over the years. But yeah, that's what it is. John - Leaders on Shopify: Yeah, it's probably one of those things is that there's a phrase this won't mean anything to you, but there's a phrase in the UK called triggers broom. And it's like had everybody says it's still the same broom, but it's had multiple handles and multiple broom heads over the years. And actually, It's not the same thing. But it's the same thing if that makes sense. Sakshi Gupta: Yeah. Yeah. John - Leaders on Shopify: how much right how much of your own code base is actually AI written? Sakshi Gupta: Interesting. So I think AI started writing code base for Swym in the last six months, I would say. Before that, like, it was like helping us Vibe code a bit within and it was still reviewed and monitored by humans. But now in the last six months, a lot of it is written and it's rightly so I would say, John, like the humans are actually doing the product thinking are thinking about problems and not thinking about how do I write this code neatly? Because it's easier, like I said, you can make the right decisions with AI, but also make all the wrong decisions. So the humans are doing the right thinking and AI is writing a lot of code. So at now, it would say 70 % of the code in the last six months is heavily AI written, but very thoroughly reviewed. It is having all sorts of John - Leaders on Shopify: Yeah. Sakshi Gupta: blocks, all sorts of checks and all the guardrails that we can. We take security very, very seriously. And we take all the thoughts of, you know, trust that our merchants put in our team very, very seriously. So we are an SOC 2 certified company. We do take care of all the right checks in place and vulnerabilities are not something that we treat as a small thing. John - Leaders on Shopify: So one question I've got, right, we're moving to this AI future where suddenly we're going to have agents buying stuff for us. A lot of your products, you're going to have, you have wish lists across all different types of things. So small purchases to high value purchases. If shoppers start buying through an agent rather than browsing a site, what happens to wish lists and save products? Sakshi Gupta: So I think that is the near, not near, but I would say a future where there will be agents shopping for shoppers. But I think it's far away. I know Claude launched its open source agents as of now. I don't know if you took like, looked at it. I don't think it is there yet, being very honest. And people love to touch and feel and understand and experience a product. And I don't think that is going to go away. And when that happens and if they're not wishlisting, they're still showing intent. That's the whole point because we only worry about the intent. If the intent is going to be shown on Claude we will make sure that the intent is captured on Claude But to be very honest, John, it's a little far away. The experience still like if you go and talk to, you know, a 50 year old person today, like how would they like to shop? Very few of them will tell you that he I would like to talk to somebody on like Claude and tell me. this is what I'm supposed to wear for a party because they want to see it, they want to experience it and I think that's the joy of shopping and that's not going away. John - Leaders on Shopify: Yeah, and I'm interested in it's like there's certain things. I think certainly like some of the stuff you just end up buying on Amazon that's practical. Maybe I'll get an agent to buy. Right. But there's certain things. Yeah, it's that research that you like doing yourself and looking and browsing. I think there's an element of human behavior. So right. So we're going to close off with some quick fire questions. What one metric would you run the product on if you could only see one? What's the key metric? Sakshi Gupta: I think it needs to be direct value, which is direct revenue for my customers, for my merchants. That's the one major thing that I'd run it on. John - Leaders on Shopify: yeah and so this is a hard one wishlist plus sits on four point seven stars in the review what's stopping it being a five Sakshi Gupta: This was actually over the years. We've had some reviews like thrown at us, which are more to do with my supports not answered in a day and stuff like that. But we do have SLAs for different tiers Right now, it's Shopify's review engine, which has like, you know, cancelled a lot of our five star reviews. So the actually used to be 4.9 before the purge and after the purge it was 4.7. John - Leaders on Shopify: haha yeah now we lost we lost a few of our five-star reviews as well and it's like well hang on they were but they were real reviews and how do we get them back it's like yeah Sakshi Gupta: Exactly. John - Leaders on Shopify: yeah killing the free plan was that the right call Sakshi Gupta: I think so, yes. I'm very happy with that call so far because now the kind of quality installs that we're getting, they're serious customers, John. And we're not getting distracted by people who are just like there, who barely have like five products, 100 sessions. There's not much I can do for them. Like, Wishlist cannot do much for them. Swym as a platform cannot do much for them because they have a bigger problem. They have their product problem, their brand fit problem, and those are not the problems that we are the right people to solve for. John - Leaders on Shopify: Yeah. So and what's your sort of best advice for someone joining the app ecosystem in 2026? So a new app about to launch, what's your advice for them? Sakshi Gupta: Always think like a merchant. think I always tell this to everybody. Think what a merchant wants, not like what you want to build for the merchant just because it's fascinating. Think what the merchant really needs and wants and think like them. Like be in their shoes. That's the biggest advice I'll give anyone today. John - Leaders on Shopify: yeah. And who in the ecosystem should I have on the podcast next? Sakshi Gupta: Interesting. I think I think you should have Trudy. love, like I'm a big fan of Trudy. I don't know if you've already spoken to her, but I've learned so much from her and she's a wonderful person to listen to and understand about Shopify as an ecosystem. John - Leaders on Shopify: and for those people who want to find you and want to find Swym and all the apps, where can they find you if they want to carry on a conversation with you? Sakshi Gupta: So our website is getswym.com. You'll find all about Swym and all about our apps there. And like you can hit me up on LinkedIn as well. And the app store has our apps if you just search by Swym. John - Leaders on Shopify: thank you very much for being a great guest on Leaders on Shopify. Sakshi Gupta: Thank you so much, John. It's been a pleasure and I've enjoyed our conversation a lot. Thank you.