You can hit the ground running, which is the big advantage like I'm not here to write boilerplate code

I just want to go and Laravel does that for me

Like you like you said if we write a query that's wrong. It's just it's slow internal application doesn't matter

They'll sit and wait for like 10 seconds. They don't care, but public facing they've gone. They've left

All right, let's do it. And I we published it

It got it went through review very quickly, which was unusual and they were like, this is great

We love it. Let's put it on the home page. And I was like, what?

Sometimes in an application for X and people are using it for Z

There wasn't any time for like show your apps are doing like how much monthly recurrent revenue where all your customers coming from

So we built like an internal dashboard for that. I

continued to grow the the perfect sharing app

For about a year and a half then that got quiet, which is it was great

This is one of the things that is good about the Shopify app

Development space and you got your first application

Approved and launch. There is no way back. You will be launching more applications

She will get into the system. There's no way back

So maybe if you have traction over the Shopify app store, you can launch to other platform

The Shopify application has been acquired. Can we know like at the value of the acquisition? I can say when I grew it

It was about

10,000 per month if someone from the Shopify partner developer team are listening to this part

hopefully we will have like a

integration with the Shopify instead of having the API key

Like a one click and you can connect directly to Shopify like misspelled keywords. They are normally quite a lot cheaper

If you are building a Shopify app right now

How you think you will be

Talk to them many times and they said yeah, we've got a big backlog which hey

Maybe all the vibe coding and loads of people are bringing out loads of apps

It does like I say a lot of times we all it because when you are using the provides

You don't have to think about the UI UX. You just need to think about the layout

And how you are building component or maybe you are ranking for a keyword

But the application is not offering that keyword in the future for you are ranking for SMS integration

But you don't have SMS you will have some issue. Maybe you will get a high bill from EWS because you expose your API key

So people I will be using you a three-pack it as a archive for this stuff

We just know what they are seeing but behind the scene or the dot code that's run this stuff to be able to view that

Stuff that you are seeing right now is not good enough for our production application

It's good for MVP and proof of concept, but it's not good for launching application and kitchen use

We've I coded his whole app and his database was a Google Sheet

And I'm just like what is going on here and do you think vibe coding or using a assistant

Made you feel that you are dumb because you will not be writing code and you will just be copying and pasting code

Spend more time with your family. It's valuable time

But you don't need to work 70 hours you can get it done

So welcome guys

We are the squad podcast a podcast we interview a software engineer to share the entrepreneur story

And here we are on season number two and we are currently on this episode number six and we have Benjamin

He is the founder of such insight and also a developer

He got his bachelor degree in information communication technology and also have been working as a

director and software engineer for the alias software and build custom software for other client and also been working as

software developer for a couple of company including

Superloop DPC and more about Benjamin story after this quick sponsored section

You

You

You

So thank you Benjamin for accepting my invitations will be a pleasure hosting you for today episode

So can you give the audience a more information about yourself?

I mentioned a couple of things in the intro, but I would love to have more insight about your story

Yeah, thanks very much for having me here. It's there. It's great. My first podcast. I'm sure

It will go well

And I want to ruin it for you

Yeah, like you mentioned, I've worked at quite a few different places and

Superloop was one of the one of the good ones. That was an internet service provider. So providing internet to people here in Australia

That was a very interesting time. I worked there

I worked there during COVID and they they forced us all to work from home

And then they forced us all to work four days a week and I was like, oh, this is interesting

I've got more time to work on my side projects

And then my side projects at the time would like working for different clients

So I asked them, hey, can I go to three days a week and they were like, no

You can't do that. Why would you want to do that?

So I yeah, I ended up leaving that place to work for myself building like custom solutions for

anyone no one to hire me

That's great. So thank you for the introduction

And one of the earliest question or the first question that I usually ask to the guest is how did you start with

Computers, especially as a web developer or a software developer

How was your first interaction with computer back then when you start working as a developer?

Yeah, so I've I've been working with computers for a while when I was really young I used to

Build them together take them in part to my friend's house

Because like we were young so we'd walk them over to our friend's house and play games together

And I always thought oh, I could build something with this

I could I could make some sort of program to hack into my friend's computer and do silly things

Which which was a lot of fun. I built some some random

I don't even know what it was written in but every time they close their CD drive it opened again

And it was very funny

Just watching that happen

But yeah, I went on from that to to actually go do a degree in computer software development

So during that part of that was like a did an internship where I really actually had real-world experience

which was great and

From there, I've been I've been doing it ever since it's over 10 years ago now. We're hiding lots of software

that's great and

You mentioned that you have bachelor degree in computer science and after that you did a new turn

And what was like at the technology that you have been working with the yeah back then

So my internship was part of my my degree and they were using C sharp

PHP and JavaScript and

That's that was it like nothing nothing really else like most of my stuff that I did then was in C sharp

Building like a desktop application for them, which thinking about it now. It should have been a web app, but

That's that's what happened that's sort of

Into the world of like PHP, which is what I do today

Makes sense. Yeah back in there was a lot of desktop application and currently in there like how I would say in the lead like

the recent like a five or seven years more

Webs like a website because everyone would love to have like a cloud-based application instead of installing in their desktop

Because you would love to have access

Whatever you would love like I have access to internet and it's always like a good for like a dream collaboration because yeah

It does like a hop with that and you mentioned that is like combo for C sharp and and I was kids like a

Unique combo. I never like I heard like a C sharp with times with like a rubber script

and you mentioned that you move to like a PHP Laravel and

I love Laravel. I have been working with Laravel in the recent stuff that I have been working as a

As an engineer with it was like a great experience

It was the first time using Laravel back then and this was a great experience

And I love Laravel as I mentioned in other episode and I don't like

PHP because like a lot of it have a lot of out of out of the box

Stuff that I just you can just plug and play you don't have to worry about like a session cookies and other

Like a stuff for rendering and it's great like a framework and it's been in always in the development

Which is great and what do you what is your take about Laravel as a framework for building web application?

Yeah, yeah, Laravel like to me I started with Laravel when it was back in its early days like version four

Well, I think it's version like 12 at the moment. So yeah, I started on it

When I moved to Australia, which was like almost 10 years ago

And it to me was my first framework. So out of the box

It just did everything like it does queuing. It does session management. Like you said, it does authentication

It does cron jobs everything everything you can think you don't need to

Use JavaScript and plug-and-play 50 different libraries. It's just out of the box. Here you go

You can there you can hit the ground running, which is the big advantage like art

I'm not here to write boilerplate code. I just want to go

And and Laravel does that for me. Yeah, that's true. That's true

You don't have to install the mini npm package to do like a key

And if I go no, that's true

That's a take for a

Oh, yes, yeah

Yes, PHP does have its downfalls like it's the language is

Interesting does some quirky things but they're working on it. They're trying to fix it like latest versions are much better

Lots of their strongly typed stuff. It's going in the right direction. Yeah, I think so. I think

Like the team behind Laravel is pushing a lot of work and especially with also the our lunch in Laravel cloud or

Think yeah, it's like a development. It's like a deployment frameworks

Will be like a some version for next jest will be same for Laravel

So it does plug and the play and you will have the Laravel app deployed

You don't have to worry about which is great thing because you know, like a like a deploying application

It does take time and you need to think about CI CD. So you can ship faster and

One of the things that I would like to ask you so after you mentioned that you did internet and been working at

Like a first intern. What was the second like our first full-time job that you have

Before like a working at super low super low. Yeah, so when I moved to Australia, I got a job and

I got a job in the first week that I arrived here, so I was in New Zealand before that and I moved to Australia

Because

New Zealand had an earthquake and I was like, okay, let's leave

So I was down in Christchurch in New Zealand. So I was like, okay, there's nothing

Nothing really job-wise I could probably get here and I've got family in Australia. So I thought, okay, I'll go to Australia

so I came to Adelaide in South Australia and I got a job the first week which was

Shocking to me. Like I don't have any experience. I'm a junior. I don't know what I'm doing and they I got a job for like a

Whole sale they wholesale like board games and video games. So I spend a lot of time

like

organizing

like shipments coming in

like

Application to run the business really so it was like an internal application. I worked on that and I was my first like

Intro to Larival as well

Which makes us

Interesting and

How long was this a lot? This is a full-time job lasting like much time

It did not last long

it lasted six months and

Okay, I

Wasn't looking for a different job. I was I was happy. I was learning lots and

I'm someone reached out to me on LinkedIn and they said hey, do you want to work here?

Here's a $50,000 paid rise. I was like, yes, I would love to work there. What do you do?

mix us

Yeah, so I worked at that next place a DPS publishing as a aged care and disability

services for for Australia. So that was a lot of them

high traffic

Websites, so I had to think about other things whereas I was doing internal application doesn't matter like there's 10 people

Maybe hitting it, but this other one was hundreds thousands of people hitting it. So I had to

learn a lot at that point and figure out what's going on like it

It wasn't scaling. We had to we had to do

big things to make it scale better and

Yeah, it was an interesting place to work

Yeah, interesting because you mentioned like a moving from internal to public facing applications would be different because like a tiny

like a function that is not like a scalable or like a

working correct it will be able to handle like a

Multiple transaction or something it will slow down or break the application

So you need to think twice about like a pushing the code before pushing is because internal also

Because it's internal people will have like a some knowledge about the system

But for like a public facing you will need to think about a lot of things about performance about UI UX

About scaling the application in terms of like a horizontal or vertical

So it's a good thing to be able to like to be faced with because it's a challenge to be able to work with like a scalable

like a system which also will

Open up a lot of

Like eyes for best practice on how I handle performance and other stuff. That's great

Yeah, we we definitely didn't do best practice to start with it was there

It was interesting because this is still like early days of Docker. Like it was yeah

So we yeah, we migrated to Docker and like EKS and in AWS and

It was interesting like I had to learn all that I didn't know any event and I became very very familiar with it

Very quickly because we needed and we needed to figure out how to scale this properly

Like it like you said if we write a query, that's wrong. It's just it's slow internal application doesn't matter

They'll sit and wait for like 10 seconds. They don't care, but public facing they've gone. They've left

Yes, yeah, that's true. You will have like a higher bounce rate

So people will be oh, yeah, like a leaving the application and also will have like a bad experience with the application

And also maybe losing revenue because of that

That's true. And and you mentioned is it like at this company's it was a startup because the thing that you mentioned about the stuff

Maybe I categorize as a startup, but maybe it's not can you like clarify that?

Yeah, so they're like publishing companies. So they they weren't really a startup the

Their their business in publishing was quite big, but their website side of it was not so big

So their website was what we were working on, but their publishing side

Like was was doing really well. So they're quite an old business like 20 something 30 some years

But yeah, they were doing printed like pamphlet stuff and not not really web stuff

So we had to bring out the scratching. Yeah, I got your point and after that you move to Superloop

I think just from your lengthy experience. Can you give what is a Superloop?

Also, what was experience working there? Yeah, Superloop Superloop was fun

I enjoyed that place and so Superloop is internet service provider. So we provide broadband internet to

Australia

Which was yeah, lots and lots of fun

I learned a lot of stuff like I hadn't worked for a tech company doing tech which like

Interesting because everyone or most of the people there are like tech people and yeah, really interesting

Interesting to to work out. Yeah, I worked

Worked there for like two and a half years

I'm not sure but I worked there and I learned a lot more

I thought I was really good at Laravel and PHP and programming before I went there and then I went there

I was like, I don't know anything

The my my mentor there Michael was was very good. He he taught me a lot and

Yeah, it was

It was a different challenge from the last one that was that because this was

Most of the stuff we were doing was internal but like some of it was public facing

So like if you're signing up for home internet and you want it connected today

We've got to get that connected in under 15 minutes

So having all the systems in place to talk to like 15 different external services to provide that

We were doing that

Interesting. Do you think like a working out like internet service provider because I never like

Have to meet like as someone working at the internet service provider. You are the first of all and interesting like a

What are the the things that are unique to working out like internet service provider because it's a critical mission

I would say because you are providing customer with internet, which is currently it's a must

There isn't like I know like a way around it. So what do you think is is unique about working that and there?

What are the level of skill ability and challenge that you are facing day-to-day? Yeah, it's

Luckily for me as a developer, it's not

My problem to fix like when the internet goes down because that will be a networking problem

And most of the problems with network related to not a developer needs to fix something

As most of the work that I did was for like the call center and the people managing

Like your your account. So making sure you can get a static IP address. You can pay your bill

You can do all kinds of different things in your account

That was the most of the stuff that I was working with but all like the technical jogging from the networking people was like

Ridiculous. I didn't understand a lot of it. I didn't get most of it

I had to learn all about how the static IP isn't IPv6 works and how they connected to different things in Australia

Like it's gonna be different for every every place

All very confusing and I I didn't even know the states of Australia at that point and I had to learn those real quick as well

You will like I have the map of Australia in your mind because of that

Yeah, they kept asking me like what about this state. I'm like I thought what what would you mean like no

No, we've got we've got six states and two

Two territories. I'm like, what what's the territory? What's going on?

That's a good to know and you move like you mentioned that you moved to Australia you are like

From which country you are from originally if you mind I'm from the UK

Originally, okay, and I moved to I moved to New Zealand when I was like 16 and then I moved to Australia

10 years ago

Makes sense and you mentioned like in the first section of the episode that you are been working like a four days a week for this

Company the superloop one how was experience working like a four days and you all have like a three days of weekend

Is it like at the same time as working like a five days?

Because maybe like a it's like a 40 four days, but you will have a lot of things to do

Maybe you are like a working eight or ten hours. I'm not sure about the schedule

Is it the same thing or is the difference so we have like a three days of weekend instead of two?

Yeah, so it was a really interesting time because of COVID like they they

Had to put everyone down in the whole company to four days a week so they could afford to keep paying everyone because

Like it was like it wasn't really a startup

But it wasn't like a big company like they're not they weren't one of the big players at the time for internet

So they put everyone down to four days a week and we were that's it four days a week your normal hours

So that extra day gave me time to work on my

Side projects which was working for clients building building custom applications, which was which was great for me

I love that. I thought that was great. I had more time to work on what I wanted to work on

Yeah, that's true. There's a lot of start not not a loss

But there's a couple of startups that's currently doing this four days work

It like I could remember only like a buffer because someone that I know work for buffer

I'd only work in like a four days a week, which is good

But it's like a four days like I would say content condensed

I would say it's like an extra day, but she's like a including in the four days of work

But it's interesting that you will have like an extra day to be able to work on the stuff or maybe just

Relaxing taking care of your family depending on your responsibility. You mentioned you have been working on your side projects

I think it's like the like a custom solution for client

What like I think that's how you have you have built for clients back then when you have like this

Free site products up

Yeah, so I built quite a few

projects for clients and I

Built quite a few actually. Yeah, good one. Um, I built something called ready study go kits. It's a it's a child

Sports management software for Australia

So you you can sign up your child ages

0 to 6 and they can go enroll into any any centre around Australia and they

You know a child would do multi sport activities

So they had a version of this website currently and I

Made it better. We wrote it from scratch because it was

spaghetti code

So that was it. That was one of the big ones that was interesting. That's it. It's still running today

I still I still manage that for them

Still still do improvements. That's

That one was a fun one

and I built others most of them are like internal applications to run their business again, there's a

There is a guy that does all like rubber manufacturing

So all his orders and manufacturing process

He uses an app and it links into like Trello and all these are the external services

Makes sense

And did you like work like on some Shopify app during that time?

I

Did start yes, that was my first introduction to Shopify because I've been building like

loads and loads of apps like

Not small apps either for clients and my my good friend

From the uk I used to used to go to school with him

He was like Ben like let's do something everything everything is like

Going crazy at the moment Shopify is great. Let's let's build an app. I was like, yeah, let's build an app

so I spent two months and I built a digital downloads app and I

I cut a lot of corners that not that I would normally do and I

I was like, all right, let's do it and I we published it

it got it went through review very quickly, which was unusual and

They were like, this is great. We love it. Let's put it on the homepage and I was like, what?

That's ridiculous. It wasn't like fully working or anything and we're getting hundreds of installs

And it's just it's going crazy. Like I did not build this to scale very well at all

Did not expect this to happen

And it started taking up and I was like, oh, what do I do?

That's a good problem job and

In which in which year we are talking about like when you build this digital

Digital download app. Is it like during the covid?

Yeah, it was um

mid 2020s so like

He proposed something I started building. Yeah, I spent two months. I think we launched in like october

August october in 2020

so late 2020 and yeah, this was before like built for Shopify or like

They're requiring you to do any any of this stuff

And because they they put it on the homepage, which you wouldn't get now unless you like built for Shopify and you did

blah blah blah

Yeah, and it was it was crazy. It was only there for like two weeks, but we got hundreds of installs and it was just

It was crazy

That's great. That's great to like have the app in the homepage because you will have like organic traffic and also you have like

You are being in the spotlight. So

Like the merchant will like I see the app in the in the homepage and you will have like some organic traffic

And that's great to be able to have the app in the homepage

So you can get that momentum for the app and especially because it's a new app

So we'll have like a great

Like a number of install for application and you will see

What are the people are using it for because sometimes you are building an application

For x and people are do are using it for z

And we're not like a

Why people are using it for z?

and because are people also people you are

Using it for z you will like a move and use that as a like advantage or a feature of the application that you can

Like a promote to other immersion

And this is like how you will like a find the product market fair for this kind of application

It's like a weird but yeah, this is how it works

Yes, I I completely agree with you like instincts going in were completely wrong like my friend that I built it with

He he was a Shopify store owner and he would sell digital files

But his problem was his files are really large and the digital download app

Apps were there, which I think there was only like two or three at the time

We're not very good for that. So we built it on the case of we're going to handle really large files

And we can do that like we've supported like up to five terabyte files

It would just work

Which that was even a fun challenge to build technically like I like when you're uploading it

I was like, I can't send this directly to my server to then send it to s3

That massive bandwidth cost for me

I we got to chunk that on the on the browser and send that straight to s3

Which like I didn't know that was possible and I figured it out

Yeah, that's the kind of challenge that's uh, like uh, you excited about other deploy. Yeah

Oh, yes

Yeah, so we won't even end with that like

thinking that this is what's going to happen and

turns out most people

are doing like three five meg files

Like we figured out we were catering for everyone like if you have massive files and it will still work

Yeah makes us that's a good thing because sometimes

Um

And I think sometimes it's a good thing to be able to think

In like the extreme side

So you end up in the safe space. So for example, you mentioned that the application is built to be able to support up to five terabytes of

Like a file and you like a I think

I couldn't imagine someone building more than five terabytes

Yes, it's like, uh, it would be like a uploading maybe some

Now the fire or something

It would be like extremely like a pretty like

Each case that I don't think it will be happen, but you are building it for

To be able to scale

Like the most extreme use case for that application, which is great and sometime which will like, uh, also be

maybe

Like a time consuming but yeah, you mentioned because it's like a

I think it will be a similar process of you are building it for five terabytes or like a hundred

Gigabytes because you are doing the multi-part

Forum upload for the file. It will be like a multi-part. So you are sending trunk for

Each duration, but yeah, I can imagine like about in

Someone for five terabytes or testing is you need to have like a five terabyte file to even test this application

Yes

Ridiculous that five terabyte was not even our limitation. It was we were using

Digital ocean spaces, which is basically s3 on digital ocean. Yes. I know that was their limitation

And not ours. So it was just like it's probably never going to happen. Let's not even account for that

Makes sense. That's great. And this is this application still like, uh,

Running or like a bit acquired or what?

Yeah, so

Yeah, yeah, there was so many different challenges with that like

Yeah, I need to get into it. But yeah, we spent a year growing that application

And then we started building another Shopify app

So I spent another year

building that app in like the background. So I was still working like

Basically full-time and working on this app. So I was working like 70 hour weeks and building another app in the background

And then we launched our second app

and that was a app

for

paying out profits

so if I

If you have a t-shirt shop and I collaborate with you and we build a design together every time that

T-shirt is then sold you would pay me like 10% or something

royalty for that

so we worked on that for one for a long time

and then we launched it and

We had iterated quite a few times to get exactly

What we thought the the market wanted

But yeah, that one that was slow growth on that one, but it was good

Yeah, we started pushing that to other platforms as well. So not just Shopify

By the end of it for like the a few years that I owned that one that was there

It was on to square space square Etsy

I

Got a lot of this we commerce and Shopify

There was a lot of third-party

apis I had to deal with

but yeah, so

Back to the original digital downloads app. I mean my partner split ways and he took the digital downloads app

and I took the profit sharing one which

We also had started another app

We were just doing loads of apps so we

There wasn't anything in the market at the time for like showing you how well

Your apps are doing like how much monthly recurring revenue where all your customers coming from

So we built like an internal dashboard for that

We we called that sess insights because it was like our insights to our sess applications. So I thought this was great

so

as part of like

Building that we thought maybe other people would be interested in using it

Like the the only thing out at the time was like partner metrics, which was quite basic

Yeah, so we we built that and we never actually launched it it got like

I think we got one beta tester to test it and then we we parted ways and

He took the digital downloads app. I took the profit sharing and the unlaunched app that didn't really do a whole lot at that point

So that one is still with him. He's still growing it. He's doing really well with it

Which is which is great. And I I stuck with the the profit sharing app. I

And the and the the sess insights app so I

I continued to grow the the profit sharing app

for about a year and a half and

Then that got acquired which was which was great

Yeah, and I

Thank you

I spent uh, I was working on sess insights at the time as well like to try

uh, actually launch it

So I I actually launched that so

Like you can see your metrics and your analytics your your lifetime value your way your customers are coming from all that

Uh insights for your app, which was great. So once I sold

The the other app I was working full-time on that, which is what I've been doing ever since

Which is uh, lots of fun. And I recently just got another app approved

and

due to go live next week

That's great. This is one of the things that is good about the Shopify app

development space

And you got your first application

approved and launched

There is no way back. You will be launching more application

It's kind of like a addiction. I would say

But like a many people that I know and I interview over this podcast

They will launch the the first application and after that they will launch the second one at the third one

It's like as you will get into the system. There's no way back

Yes, yep, I I completely agree with you

I see I I've looked at other other platforms and doing other like sass like a full-blown sass app and it

I just hate marketing. So I just I don't want to do it

So I if I can put it on Shopify and they market it for me and I just do a little bit

That's great. That's what I want. I don't need to build a hundred million dollar business just

small

Make me happy

Yeah, it makes sense

And also the one of the things that is good about the Shopify app development space is

Shopify as a platform is a good way to be able to test the application and you will have like some

Early traction and the stuff like that's because of the app store

So maybe if you have traction over the Shopify app store

You can launch to other platform and you mentioned like a third party application third party integration

You can do it with vex and other platform

and also you can also like have a successful application because

For example, uh, the recent story that's happened, which is the Shopify acquisition of checkout blog

Which starts as a Shopify application and the Shopify acquired for some good amount of money

So there's like a good chance that your application might get like acquired for some good amount of money

and you mentioned that

The Shopify application has been acquired. Can we know like the value of of the acquisition if you don't mind chain?

I

Can't tell you the value because it was in my contract to not say but I can see when I grew it. It was about

10,000 per month that it was okay. That's great. So thank you for sharing that so we can like uh

imagine the value

That's me. You could work it out. I can't say you could work it out. There's lots of calculators out there

Yeah, you can like uh, like you do your calculation on your own

Yes, that's right. And the one of the things that you currently working on it

Which is uh, such insight which is the Shopify a platform for

Other Shopify app developer and founder to be able to get all the metrics in one place

For all the stuff that is you are working on and then can you know more about what are the metrics that we can track?

and for example

Is it like a something similar to mixed panel?

For example, you will have an EPI or a widget to be able to insert in a Shopify application. So we can know

Like a resource of traffic or you need to like a connected with google analytics. So we can know more about

How the integration will be working with the Shopify application. So test insights

Uh grew out of need that I needed it because I didn't know what was going on

All I saw was the the Shopify partner dashboard and

That just gives you what they're going to pay you like it doesn't tell me how many refunds or what's my lifetime value?

or should I be spending x amount of money on ads because

Oh, yeah, I just didn't know any of that. So you're essentially you're just connecting your

You Shopify partner account like Shopify gives you a partner API and you can access that and it'll

That'll pull in all your transactions and all your events from your app

So if I install your app and then uninstall your app and

We can see those events so we can piece all that data together and create

Like all sorts of metrics of monthly recurring revenue lifetime value

How many active subscribers you've got like how many installs uninstalls?

What's uh, what's your retention rate?

Loads and loads of metrics so then

Like that's great. You can see your metrics

Then you need to know like where's your customers coming from how they get into you

What keywords are they searching on the app store? So then we added the integration to google analytics

So it's a one click like click login with your google account and it's all connected

We start pulling in data from google analytics apis and we can we can then push all that data together and figure out

Hey, these are the keywords that are driving your lifetime value up for these plans and these are the keywords that are

Getting the most of use but the most installs all sorts of interesting data around that

Interesting that's great. So you can know all about the key metrics about the application and all the stuff is like a

Getting all the information from other provider in one place so you can know

All the things that you need to know about the application and also which also make

If you would like to sell the application

You can know the valuation of the application because you will know all the metrics that are

Like for the application

And one of the things that you mentioned is like a one click install for google analytics

I am hoping it will be the same

And if someone from the Shopify partner developer team are listening to this part, hopefully we will have like a

integration with the Shopify instead of having the

The api key it would be just like a one click and you can connect directly to Shopify because people might get like

Maybe is this because of the copying of the api key instead of just connecting because

Yeah, because of like because you already know what

The stuff that will be shared because I'm

I built like a small

Stuff to be able to pull the data from the Shopify party api

And people would be hesitation because you need to copy the api key and it's not like the best UI

I'm hoping to be able to have like a auth for a Shopify partner. Yeah, instead of

api key if someone is listening

This is like I might take please

Yes, please. I've even looked into that like they do a lot in their own

Like between looks like microservices and I've tried like can I do this like can I

Hook in and use one of their client ideas and see if I can I can use this but

I can't yes, but it's it's annoying like

Like even I'll get lots of people saying are you gonna take over my apps and like

Yeah, what am I gonna do? I can't do anything. I can read your data

I can't take over your app

The only mutation that you can do with the Shopify partner api is to

Like a half up credit. So this is the only thing that you can do

You can it's already like a read only so you can just like a read all the event

And nothing will be like a done harm will teach your application. We're not be destroying the application

Yeah, we're just showing you all your data

Yeah, and easy to see way. That's it

And there's like a pricing plan for like a using it and where people can

Go to be able to test this application and to connect with their platform with their Shopify. Yeah

Yeah, so we we offer sets in search for free until you're earning

I think it's just over two and a half thousand per month

So that gives you gives you all the insights free, which is great. And then it's just a flat rate of $49

That's it. It doesn't matter if you're making

10k per month or

500k per month. It's the same

Makes sense. Okay. That's great

and

There will be like a other integration with other like a provider or something that is in the way

There is one of the things that is like, uh, for example, I'm not sure but I think it would be

For example, uh acquire.com have an integration to be able to verify the revenue for Stripe

But I think it would be from the acquire.com not side not from the platform

Yeah, I've tried reaching out to them as well. So I could be their provider for that but

Like hey, if you if you're watching, please reach back out to me. I would love to work with you

Yeah, I think it will be a great integration because people can know that this

Insight is verified by a third-party application because you can like a fake the revenue and all stuff

But if it's verify, you will have like a the address is verify by

The the platform and I think

If someone from the team of acquire.com are watching this

I think it will be a great addition to be able because they have like a special category for Shopify application

They do yeah, it will be great to be able to have

Someone to be able to verify that they are like Stripe

And it will be good addition for that because there's a lot of Shopify app currently in the acquire.com

And I think this one it will be a great addition to that and also partnership

With platform it does take some time, but yeah, this is the reality

Yeah, so yeah when I sold my last Shopify app like the the broker that I used

He was looking at since I just rule the metrics because he was like, this is great

Like he previously was just calculating it all himself

He would get he would get people to export all their data from upon the dashboard and he would calculate all himself

And he was like, this is great. I don't have to do any of this

I put the sales pitch together and I just got all this data. It's easy

Interesting and this like has some other feature that you have in the roadmap

If you don't mind sharing for such insight that people can like expect from the platform in the next upcoming months or weeks

Yeah, so we just launched a a great new feature that was a keyword tracking on like the

the

merchant forums

So the the merchant forums that

merchants are on and they're typing. I don't know whatever

I've broken my

My store or this pixel thing isn't working

Like we track those keywords and then we can send notifications. So we just launched that feature which is

quite useful, but

the the one feature that we're working on at the moment is

Wouldn't say it's a new feature. It's more providing your

your insights to

Keywords that people are using on the

the app store

better

with valuable

like actionable

Information, so saying hey, this is the keyword. This is how it's doing over time

Maybe you should be putting this into your listing or maybe you should promote this a bit better

On your the description part on this underneath your app

Yeah, promoting like insights like that. That's actionable is what we're working on at the moment

Interesting and also this thing could also benefit from if you are like going to the shop if I up store ads

so you can know which

Keyword to alter target for bedding so you can know

Yes, I have I'd love to do something with ads and

like trying

Track it over time of how much ad and ad would cost like the the best

Whatever they call it the best

Best match price or the prices in there like tracking that over time for different things, but

Shopify say if you you're not a match for your app, then we're going to give you

Higher value or it's going to cost more

So I'm trying to figure out something there like maybe like a chrome plugin that you install and it like sends data back to us

And we can like track that for you

I don't know so it's something interesting like that. I'd like to do

Also, you can like export the the SVG of the data that you have in the ads

And maybe you can use that to be able to calculate

Like the amount spent on each one

Maybe it will be a great like a thing to be able to do because you will already know

Which like a keyword are doing great for the number of install and it's like a cost effective in term of

the cost of installing and click because you need to calculate the

The cost per click and the cost per installed to be able to know if this will be like a benefit for beneficial for you

Yeah, yeah, because we would have the data already for how well the keyword is doing but yeah like

That would be great. Also things like misspelled keywords. They are normally quite a lot cheaper

And but we could figure those out for you like if we had like a current plugin like hey

This would only cost you like one dollar instead of the five dollars you're paying

And it's probably gonna break

Makes us because it's like a

It's in the same category, but it's like a different keyword than the keyword that people are searching for it's like a

To be able to know or like to hack not the hack

But it will be that to be able to figure out a cost effective way to be able to

Do well over the same keyword. That's great

And what is your take right now on the Shopify app store because you already mean in the

Shopify app store since

2020 and it's currently like a bin like a almost five years

What is your take about the Shopify app store?

Is it saturated?

How hard is the competitor right now with the the new Shopify store and the new

I would say new Shopify regulation and approval process. So what is

If you are building a Shopify app right now

How you think you will be building it

Yes, so for me I

Different different categories are saturated, but

Then in different categories, there's apps that look like someone spent a weekend

And they built it and somehow it's on the app store

So there is definitely still a lot of opportunity there

For my latest app that just went through a review. It took nine weeks, which is very unusual

They they I

Talked to them many times and they said yeah, we've got a big backlog which hey

Maybe all the vibe coding and loads of people are bringing out loads of apps

You know

That's true

But yeah, you're talking about the vibe for the later on

Yes

Yes

I think there's still there's still good opportunity like

For me my my other two apps were not embedded. They were not

Written in react like Shopify want you to like my new app is it's embedded. It's in react

It's using all Polaris components. It's like building a new app today. If you're not going for built the Shopify

You're not going to rank as well

Yeah, that's true. That's true. I think it does make sense because

and also because

People are already familiar to Polaris because it's already been like in the Shopify admin dashboard

So it will be much easier for them to be able to figure out all the layouts and it will be familiar to them

and also because when you are building using react especially react you will have access to like a

A bridge so you can like have access to the toss to the save bar

There's a lot of components that will be helpful to be able to integrate with your application

So you can and also it does like a save you a lot of time to be honest because

When you are using the Polaris, you don't have to think about the UI UX

You just need to think about the layout

And how you are building components and you just need to follow the best practice that they are mentioned in the Shopify Polaris

site and it will be great because you don't have to think more about the UI because

I like a talking about myself. I don't like I'm like to build the UI component

I just would like to be able to plug and play because I'm not the best UI

Engineer, I would say or a UI developer, but I have a good eye on design

So I think for me to be able to just use Polaris to be able to plug and they use the component to be much easier than just

writing

The UI component from scratch because it does take time and you need to be able to think about it

So just I think it's much recommended way to be able just to use what is already there

So it will be saving time and maybe

If you are not comfortable with the Polaris you can just use it for the EVP or the proof of concept

So you can like approve the traction there and later on you can build your like you can have like a some team of

Designer that will be building

like a your

Custom UI design. So I think it will be a good starter because

Time to develop and time to market will be much shorter if you are using like a watch is already built

And it's already been proved that he's working. So you don't have to think about it

I wasn't a react developer before I started this later sat by I wrote everything in vue.js, which is

In my opinion much superior. You don't have to think about

like re-render cycles or

Or any of these hooks. It just works. It's easy

So I had to learn react, which is which is fine. I get it. I understand it like

it's great my

My only problem with using Polaris is

Like you are saying I don't have any design input. It just it's all boring. It all looks the same as Shopify, which

It's good and it's bad

I I wouldn't like a little bit more input, but if that's how Shopify want it that's how Shopify want it and

It keeps the merchants happy keeps them in the same like environment

That's fine. I'd spend most of my time reading the doc. So like how does this component work?

Yeah, that's true

I got your point about like being boring. That's true. And also sometimes when you are offering more customization

people are will be

Not utilizing the components as you expected for example

If they offer more customization option

People are will be using it on the other way. That's Shopify expect them to be working

So they're like a restructuring the number of customization that you can do so people can use it as

Shopify want them to be used

I got the point about being boring. It's true because every apps really looks the same

You don't have like a lot of input. It's in like, for example, you will have like some

Let's say the badge you will have some a list of bad that tones that you can only use for example

For a button, you will have like a tree variant or for variant primary secondary tree or tree and

And that's it. So you have to use them if you don't use them

You need to build something custom which does the exam. So it's like a trade-off. So there is like a pros and cons

To be able to if you would like to see build something custom

You can go this out, but it will be taking you time

if you want like a faster and

Like a good way to people to just get something done, you can use valorize

it's like some

You have to choose one of the path

When so when you're using Polaris are you using any other?

like

Styling as well, like are you throwing tailwind in there or you're just writing custom styles as well

Sometimes I like a some application or some components. I will be using tailwind for that

so it will be like a maybe some mix of Polaris and

Tyluin but she will be because it's been a long time since I like I was running CSS

And Tyluin is just I already like I've been familiar with so sometimes it just will be mixing Polaris and

And Tyluin CSS as for some I would say some common use case that

There is not like a not a Shopify component that will do that for me

So I just need to figure out a way to be able to do it myself

But it's not like something that is I would say

Ui for example, you just need something maybe to do with the custom height or

Maybe some great the layout that I would like to have that is I need to figure out a

Solution for that using Polaris. So it does make sense to be able to just use Tyluin CSS for that

Yeah, yeah, okay. That's good because I I've been using it in my latest app and

Most of the time I'm just using it for like margin and padding between elements because

I can't figure out how to do it in Polaris and I'm just like, that's too hard. Let's just

Let's just put a margin top three on this

It works

Rapid and div just good move on

Makes sense

and

So I think we already mentioned

everything about Polaris the trade-off of

The what do you think is

Needed to be able to have a good

Uplistin for your Shopify application if you are building it right now because

Uplistin is one of the things that you need to focus on is your marketing landing page of your Shopify application

So what do you think is needed or he need to be able to be careful with when you are

building the Uplistin

I would say

your initial run of your app listing

is

Not hugely important because it's going to change like you should be tracking like how

How well you're ranking and changing it based on that like if you your keywords that you're putting in there like you should be

Doing research for your competitors doing

Sort of matching those but you don't want identical things. You need to stand out

like

Yeah, everyone can make it an image and we write some pretty tech chat gbt or regular some text

That's great, but you need to be going back and actually iterating on it. Like you can't just leave it

and just expect it to go up in the rankings

Makes sense. Yeah, it's like a and it will be a continuous iteration of

Like the Uplistin because you need to change it and to track it using google analytics to see

Why because you might like have a higher bounce rate because of

Maybe the keyword is ranking well, but it's not convergent. So maybe it could be

Yeah, you could be getting could be getting the people in like you could be ranking well for the keywords

Which is great and then they come in and like your

Your feature section doesn't attract them enough like you may need to alter that

Or maybe you are ranking for a keyword, but the application is not offering that keyword in the feature

For example, you are offering sms integration, but you don't have like a ranking for sms integration

But you don't have sms integration. Maybe it could be

Yes. Yeah, so those sort of things you're initial run if you're launching an app now like

It's probably gonna change in a week

Just like all your code that you're writing if you if you're writing code and you know

Like, you know, you're gonna throw away in a week. You're gonna write better code

It might be anyway, because you know, you're gonna throw it away. So

You're gonna refactor it refactor your listing page. Yeah, it's the same concept as yeah, that's a good thing

Yeah, and we mentioned the vibe coding and I would love to get your take in vibe coding because

it's been

I I'm not seeing as a

A hype currently because it's been like a maybe over three months or something to be able

That's people are wiping with the code and there's like a some

One yc competitor video about vibe coding. So what is your take about vibe coding? So

And do you think is it enough to be able to build as an application a production one?

Yeah, I

I'm probably very much against it all like I I see a lot of it on social media and I don't even

I don't do social media. I stay away from all that because

it's

I want to code. That's what I'm here to do. I I enjoy writing code

So I I see all these people vibe coding like the whole application that they think is production ready

Which is just hard coded a bunch of variables and like api keys and they were in it fully in javascript

So it's all visible to the browser

If you don't know what you're writing and you don't understand it, it's not you're never going to be able to scale it

it's

I think vibe coding is good if you want to do like an mvp

It will get you get it out like a non-coder could

Sort of do it which is great an mvp and then

Don't try launch that

It's not going to be great. You could get like a few people on there to give you initial feedback and the direction but

Not it's not there yet. I think it's going in the right direction, but

For me, it's not there yet

Makes sense. I think I agree with you about this point. It's not good yet. It's not good enough. And also if you are not technical

I think you should know the basic of programming

I think you just know what

the

The model is writing for you because maybe they are exposing some epi key in the front end. That is critical

so

You will have some issue. Maybe you will get a high bill from ews because you expose your epi key

So people I will be using your s3 bucket as a archive for this stuff

So maybe you think about this stuff and I'm see there is like a path to be able to

Have it in the next maybe few months or few years. I'm not sure about that

But it's currently good enough to be able to have a production ready application that is scalable and secure because

One of the things that is I would say that I'm concerned about is security

So exposing stuff stuff in the UI that shouldn't be in the in the front end. So this is very critical stuff

So also if you are not technical you might not know that is wrong

so

Maybe it's in what you are seeing because not technical people. We just know what they are seeing

But behind the scene or the that code that's run this stuff to be able to view that

Stuff that you are seeing right now is not good enough for a production application

It's good for a vp and proof of concept

But it's not good for launching application and getting user because you might get screwed because of that

Yes, I I completely agree with you like it could be writing anything for you like even like it

A docker file and it just might open a random port for you and you don't know what that means. You don't know what line

line

That's on you don't understand

You've just now opened an entry for for someone to take it down

Yeah, that's true

I've talked to lots of people like I I do demos for assessing sites and I've talked to lots of like app owners and I talked to one

one guy who

Basically vibrated his whole app and his database was a google sheet

And I'm just like what is going on here. You need to switch that to like an actual database

like come on

Yeah, it's scary

I can imagine the latency and the the schema for that database

Yes

I cannot stress enough the people that are using it

Because I mentioned it's good for MVP. So if the people if the owner like an

Test application is working, but it's not like a something that is scalable. It's not good enough

Even if you would like to get some user because

They will have like a lot of shit in your stuff because you will be exposing access token in the google sheet

So that's worse than exposing it in database

I know yeah, I completely agree with you. I I also think like the

prompt in

Like a normal editor where it prompts you to write the next line

I'm not a big fan of that either because most of the time I had it turned on today because my id did update

And it like I stopped and then waited and it wrote the line for me

So most of the time I'm just stopping waiting like I'm not actually doing anything. I'm just pressing tap

So I turned that off very quickly because I started writing it before it was writing it

I mean

It's not doing anything like I can write it in the same amount of time. It's writing it

Like yes, I guess like boilerplate to be generated, but like normal everyday code is just

It's what I that's what I like to do. Why why would I let someone else do it?

boilerplate yes, I completely agree

Yeah, I'm I'm using like currently I'm using ai to be able to assist me for

Some stuff admin of the stuff for example

Maybe there's some repetitive stuff or some UI stuff that I just wouldn't like to have

The overall layout, but sometimes I don't like the output of like the the model

So I just stop it and the right to myself

And do you think vibe coding or using a assistant

Made you feel that you are dumb because you will not be writing code

And you will just be copying and pasting code and maybe

You don't really the cold line by line

So it will be like a losing that

That flame of building the application

That's yeah

I don't usually use it for like writing code if I'm writing something that doesn't matter

That I'm going to throw away in like two minutes and I don't need to know how it works

Like the actual raw details like I'll

Generate it copy paste it use it. I don't need to waste my time to

To figure that out, but yeah

Most of the time it just it doesn't know the context of everything

I'm trying to do like I've got thousands of files in some apps

And it's just like it's never going to know about this thing over in the other place

And what makes that unique that we have to do it this way it just

Yeah

Yeah, it makes sense. That's true. And sometimes because it doesn't have a lot of causes

So you will have inconsistent code

Structure, maybe you are doing it

This way in this folder or this

utility function, but you are doing it the other way using this function. So it will be

Yeah, very inconsistent

Yeah, and consistent in terms of like the the code which is not good if you are like a good life to just get the application

But it's good. Yeah, there is like a some good use case for AI

And hopefully it's not the time to be able to replace as full time

No, it's it's going to be lots of people like vibe coding stuff

And then it's going to like take off and then any real developer to come in and make it better

So I I don't think it's going to take over our jobs any time soon

Yeah, I think it will just like

Increase the level of barrier for a good developer because

If you are like a dust doing x as developer right now

You should be doing like a 2x or 3x as developer because there is like a someone helping you assistant with some stuff

So it does need to be better. So there's like I would say

A big like a bigger expectation for a developer right now before this AI wave or like a vibe coding stuff

Yes, yeah, I agree. I I do think it has its place, but it's not gonna

It's not going to take a lot of jobs

Yeah, not soon even though all these people on social media. You recognize it

Like they're not in reality

yep

Like the reality is different and one of the things that I usually ask

In the later section of the podcast

It's what are the challenges and the lessons that you learn as someone building such application in this area. So

What are the things that you would like to say to

The earliest version of yourself when you start doing this house or like a tech entrepreneurship

So it's just like I would say reflection

I would say

Yeah, yeah, that's interesting

I would say

You don't need to sweat for the details

And spend more time outside

Spend more time with your family like it's it's valuable time like you don't need to work 70 hours

You can get it done. You can just

You don't need to do every single thing an mvp

That is really an mvp is fine. You don't need to do every feature

spend the rest of the time with your family

Hmm, that's great. That's interesting point to mention like

Yeah, it's like a unique one. It's like at the first time that I hear it over the podcast. Yeah, that's a great point because

At the end his family was married because

You are building this mvp to be able to have a good life or to make money or because you are enjoyed or both

So I think at the end of the time if you will be spending that money with your family

So you need to to spend some time with family because they are not like a there for a long time

So you need to spend some time with them. Yeah, because

Yeah, that's it. That's the whole point like we work really is to provide for for our family

Like I I don't really working 70 hours a day. I want to spend my time with my wife and my daughter. It's

That's what I want to do

I do

Do this in the meantime, maybe it'll take off. Maybe it won't take off

Hmm, that's a great point to mention. Yeah, it's really great point to mention interesting

And do you have like any resources that you would love to share with us or the audience as you currently listen to the podcast

Maybe books youtube channel

podcast

Right here, it's a great book. Okay, this is the best playbook

Rob. Yeah by Rob Worley

He runs like microcomf

Yes

Yeah, his book is is very good. I've also got like the lean startup next to my bed

It's a great book as well

um

Yeah, I like a lot of what Rob Worley does

Would recommend him

I didn't just get a different book the other day all about um personal

Personal development the power to be disliked or something

Are the courage to be disliked

Okay, I've heard it's very good and I have not I have not read it yet

Do you have any online resources that you would love to share with us?

I really don't do like any social media

I'm it doesn't have to be social media. It doesn't have to be social media

Maybe like a community that is online. Maybe already like maybe I'm thinking of

Top of mind. Maybe the indie hacker community if you already know it

Oh, yeah, uh, yeah, so the the only really community that I

I participate in a lot is

The php australia community

so for like php and lara vote like a

I would say um in that I go to the lara con in australia. I'm friends with the with the owner

the runner organizer

Which is which is great. I

um, I was thinking of submitting a talk this year to that but I

I don't know like I pitched him the idea of talking about sass implications

And he was like businesses and their employees here. Why would we send?

Why would I give you a talk about leaving a business and starting your own?

I was like, ah, yeah, that's what it makes and that's back

We cover great go round for your story

And you mentioned great point and think people will be benefits from that

and for people that would love to connect with you

If you have something that people can go to you

Even it's like a maybe your personal website. It doesn't have to be social media

Yeah, I I'm on linkedin. You can find me on linkedin

It's just search my name and you'll probably find me

um

Yeah, that's probably the best way to find me. I don't do any other social media if I do it's

I've probably written a script to do it

Okay, that's it

So I think I will be putting all the link that we mentioned in the show notes

So if you are listening from youtube, you will see that in the video description

If you are listening from apple podcast purify or amazon music, you will find that in the show notes

So you can just go there and check it out. Also, we have the official website of the other let's go podcast

So you can check it out

You can get lists of all the podcasts as we have and you will have also the show not there

So thank you so much Benjamin for

Spending the time with us to be able to share your story and

It was a pleasure to be able to host you for this episode and to share your story

With the all the stuff that you mentioned and the grace point that you cover for this episode

And this is your take for the last word

Thank you very much for having me. It was uh, it was an honor my first uh podcast. I feel like I'm I'm thrown in

That's great. That's great to you