The full shape of the day.

Alexandre Bouchard

CEO @ Hookdeck

Talk 01 · 15 minutes

Are Webhooks Dead Yet?

Shopify's Next Generation Events is the biggest overhaul of its webhooks in a decade. But does it actually fix webhooks? Alex has lived both sides of this problem: first as CTO of a Shopify merchant, and now building webhook infrastructure that has processed hundreds of billions of events. He'll break down what Next Gen Events really changes. The problems it solves, the ones it doesn't, and what that means for how you should be building on Shopify today.

Alex is the co-founder and CEO of Hookdeck. His journey into webhooks started as the CTO of Rachel, a Montreal-based Shopify merchant, where he built a custom e-commerce stack spanning a headless storefront, user accounts, fulfilment, and subscription management. That experience led him to build the Hookdeck Event Gateway, which has now processed hundreds of billions of webhooks for companies like Gorgias, EasyPost, Contentful, and YETI.

Sandesh Kulai

Co-founder & CEO at STOQ

Talk 02 · 15 minutes

2,999 Conversations

STOQ began with two engineers, a WhatsApp group, and no playbook for scale. Today, its 20-person team handles 2,999 merchant conversations every month. In this talk, Sandesh traces each year of that journey, sharing one practical lesson from every stage of growth: real, useful takeaways for small teams looking to build better systems and scale without losing touch with customers.

Sandesh is the co-founder and CEO of STOQ, Shopify's leading Preorder app, trusted by 30,000+ merchants worldwide and recognized as one of Shopify's Top 25 Built for Shopify apps. Product management is his foundation: before STOQ, he was a Senior PM at Shopify working on Partner payouts and platform infrastructure, and a PM at Dropbox. At STOQ, he's applied that from the ground up, writing code, shaping the product roadmap, and building every part of the org to becoming best-in-class at getting merchants live with preorders.

Katie Keith

Founder & CEO at Barn2

Talk 03 · 15 minutes

An Outsider's Guide to Building Shopify Apps That Last

After 10 years building a WordPress plugin business to $1.6m a year, Katie expanded into Shopify and discovered that being new let her see things Shopify-native developers can't, because they're too close to notice them. This talk walks through the practices WooCommerce takes for granted that barely exist in the Shopify world, and why an outsider's view also surfaces the AI threat Shopify devs should be acting on now, before platform growth stops masking it.

Katie Keith is the founder and CEO of Barn2, where she's spent 10 years building a WordPress and WooCommerce plugin business to $1.6m in annual revenue, with 19 plugins and a team of 14. In 2025 she expanded into Shopify, launching Barn2's first app, Bundles & Bulk Discounts, and documenting the journey publicly through her #ShopifyDiary series on X. She co-hosts the WP Product Talk and Do the Woo podcasts.

Gavin Ballard

Founder & CTO at Submarine

Talk 04 · 15 minutes

Moats for GOATS: Building sustainable and defensible Shopify offerings in the age of AI

Vibe coded competitors are flooding the App Store, and merchants are replacing agencies left right and centre with an intern and a Claude account. Or at least, that's the narrative. In this talk, Gavin will share his thoughts on how AI is impacting the development of products and services in the Shopify ecosystem, and the strategies he thinks we'll need to use over the next few years to stay competitive.

Gavin Ballard is a Shopify ecosystem veteran on both the agency and app side, having founded first Disco Labs (one of the first agencies globally inducted into the Shopify Plus program) and then Submarine, a leading platform for enterprise subscription and presale merchants. Now serving as CTO of both companies, his 15+ years of Shopify experience offer him unique insight into this rapidly changing market.

Sakshi Gupta

Engineering Manager at Swym

Talk 05 · 15 minutes

The Agent-Native Merchant Lifecycle: A Playbook for Shopify App Partners

Ten years ago, a great Shopify app was one that worked. Today, merchants expect apps that feel native, adapt to their business, and show up across their entire lifecycle. As AI reshapes the Shopify ecosystem, partners need to rethink not just what they build and how they build it, but where they participate in the merchant lifecycle.

This session introduces the Agent-Native Merchant Lifecycle, a practical playbook for app partners, theme developers, and agencies building the next generation of Shopify experiences. Drawing on lessons from evolving Wishlist Plus at Swym across 49,000+ merchants, Sakshi shares practical patterns for building products that work seamlessly with Shopify's emerging AI capabilities while keeping merchants at the center.

Sakshi leads Product and Engineering for Wishlist Plus at Swym, one of Shopify's long-standing app partners serving more than 49,000 merchants worldwide. For more than a decade, Swym has evolved alongside Shopify, helping merchants create engaging shopping experiences while adapting to every major platform shift. Sakshi is passionate about building products that scale, embrace emerging platform capabilities, and shape the next generation of AI-powered commerce.

Jordan Finneran

Founder at Pimsical

Talk 06 · 15 minutes

Building your app on Cloudflare, pick 3: Good, Fast, Cheap

Building and running an app has never been more competitive. Jordan shows how building on the Cloudflare platform can hand you a competitive advantage, and potentially a free bill too, by making your app good, fast, and cheap to run. For once, you get to pick all three.

Jordan Finneran is the winner of the 2025 Shopify Build Community Award and helps Shopify merchants get their backend and retail operations under control. He has worked with businesses of all sizes, from single-store brands to major European retailers, running over 5,000 stock takes and inventory workflows. With experience at Gymshark and Checkout Blocks, he brings deep knowledge of the Shopify platform, its capabilities, its limits, and the wider retail and operations ecosystem.