How to Design Like Shopify

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Shopify’s always been that company—breaking the rules, doing its own thing.

They even ditched recurring meetings and started showing how much each one costs in $$$.

The results? Insane.

Shopify powers 10% of U.S. e-comm, with brands like Supreme, Glossier, Mattel, Vuori, Gymshark, and Allbirds on board.

They’ve handled half a trillion dollars in GMV, pulled in $6B/year, and are still innovating like a startup—17 years and 10k employees later.

I got the scoop from Glen Coates, their VP of Product, on how Shopify runs the show.

How far ahead do you go?

Not too far, actually. Shopify used to do huge plans for the year, presenting to the CEO and Finance, all detailed out in docs.

But by March, most of it was ripped up. Why? Things change fast, and the idea of planning a whole year? Yeah, it’s kinda a joke.

Now, we keep it real. Once a year, Tobi announces the themes for the year—six big ones that align with top priorities. 

They’re always from the merchant’s point of view—like, imagine a Shopify seller writing to their friend about how awesome Shopify is.

The point is that we want merchants to focus on their businesses. If you sell candles, do you want to learn AI and optimize checkout or let Shopify handle it while you sell?

We figure out how we can measure impact against those themes.

How Shopify plans?

We like to keep it simple and stay on our toes. We want to know exactly what’s coming in the next Shopify Edition and have a general idea for the one after that.

But we don’t go crazy planning too far out. Every six weeks, teams dive deep into sprint-level plans for what’s happening right now.

Tobi drops the big yearly themes, which turn into a six-month roadmap. Then, within that, there are four six-week cycles.

But with how fast the world’s changing—like, last year, the economy flipped, and this year, AI blew up—it’s clear: Plans don’t last long. You gotta be ready to pivot.

On OKRs

We don’t even say the word “OKR” around here, but yeah, people sometimes use stuff that kinda feels like them.

Why the aversion?

If a system or structure stops him from getting to the truth, it’s out. Some big companies—like Google or Facebook—love their metrics and numbers.

But Tobi’s not about that. He doesn’t want a bunch of micro-optimizations that make a number look good but wreck the product.

Take Shopify’s Checkout team. They’re super into metrics because it directly affects merchant sales—but other parts of Shopify? We care about the feel.

Like, we’re changing the look of the Shopify Admin (the seller dashboard) right now, just ‘cause it’ll look better.

No metrics, no numbers, just pure vibe. We’re about making things rad and keeping merchants hyped.

How does Shopify design reviews?

At Shopify, we don’t mess around with typical task apps.

We use GSD—it’s like Jira, but way cooler. GSD stands for "Get Shit Done", and it’s our project review system.

There are five phases in the process:

1. Proposal

2. Prototype

3. Build

4. Release

5. Results

We have a system called OK1 and OK2 for reviews.

For OK1, directors from product, UX, engineering, and sometimes data have to sign off.

Then it moves to the senior leadership team (OK2), where the same teams sign off again.

Product decides if we should do something, but Engineering and UX have veto power on how we do it.

At the end of the day, the PM has to know whether it’s ready to ship. If it’s a flop, the PM has to take the heat.

Are products and designs in the same organization?

Tobi (CEO) heads R&D and two people report to him. One is me, and the other is Kaz. Half the PMs report to each of us.

In my org, Product, UX, Marketing, Ops, and Partnerships report to me. Engineering and Data have their separate teams.

Under me, the reporting lines are functional: the head of UX reports to me, and all of UX reports to them. Same with product marketing.

How Shopify changed its organization structure

In 2018, Shopify had a GM setup with 10 GMs running their parts of the business, each with their own teams.

But about two and a half years ago, Tobi flipped it from 10 divisions to 2.

Now, we’ve got two main teams:

1. Core: Everything that comes with Shopify out of the box—like the online store, checkout, and Admin.

2. Merchant services: The add-ons, like the point of sale, payments, shipping labels, and Shop—the buyer-facing stuff.

Why change? As Shopify grew and had more features, we wanted the whole product to feel unified.

If the pieces didn’t fit well together, it wouldn’t feel like a one-stop shop anymore. And that’s a huge advantage we’ve got over competitors.

It’s a big challenge for any big tech company—can you tell how we’re organized just by using the product?

The best companies make sure you don’t. You shouldn’t see the org chart when you use the product.

This new structure isn’t perfect (big teams = lots of coordination), but the upside is that our org chart and the product feel aligned.

We’re working toward one clear vision, which makes everything work better for our merchants.

How does Shopify structure its teams?

We keep it simple—our teams are built around jobs to be done.

In the Core division, we have 11 teams, each focused on key jobs merchants need to get done. Some teams work on bigger parts of the product like the online store and checkout.

Others focus on things like Merchandising (how to set up and sell products), Engaging (marketing and customer outreach), building (developer platform), and managing the app ecosystem.

Why focus on jobs to be done? Because we’re committed to making sure our merchants never hit a wall.

We don’t want anyone to love Shopify, only to grow and find they have to move everything to another platform.

We want a smooth ride, from mom-and-pop shops to big names like Supreme.

So, no “Enterprise Team” or “Small Business Team” here. Every team thinks about the whole spectrum—from just getting started to IPO.

We want everything to scale seamlessly, no matter how big you get.

How does Shopify think about jobs to be done?

We don’t follow a strict JTBD framework, which is not rigid. Our work has some gray areas, and the maturity levels of different teams can vary greatly.

Take checkout, for example, for Shopify leads here. We’re way ahead of anyone else in the world.

But when you look at our Engage team (marketing tools and customer segmentation), we’re still challenging the big players like Salesforce Marketing Cloud.

It’s more of an upstart vibe there; it's still climbing but not as established as the Giants.

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