Bio
VP of Product & Growth at Shopify. Public reference for power-law-thinking applied to merchant cohorts: most merchants will fail and that is the deal — the few who scale generate disproportionate value. Operating discipline of permanent 5% holdouts and 1–3 year cohort tracking, applied at ~$235B GMV / 10% of US e-commerce scale.
Operating themes
- Power-law thinking on cohorts. Optimise for total cohort value, not per-user retention.
- Long-term holdouts. 5% always-on holdout; revisit at 3, 6, 9, 12 months and beyond.
- Absolute counts over conversion rates. Rate metrics create perverse "shrink the denominator" incentives.
- Monetary friction as growth lever. Trial extensions and pricing flexibility outperform most other levers in SMB.
Cards
- 30–40% of growth experiments with short-term lift show no incremental value at one year — 30–40% of short-term wins show no one-year incremental value [Tier A]
- Optimise for absolute count of users reaching each stage, not stage conversion rates — Optimise the count, not the rate; rates incentivise denominator-shrinking [Tier A]
Sources captured
- 2026-04-28 — Lenny's Podcast, "Churn optimization & long-term holdout experiments" (
raw/podcasts/archie-abrams--churn-optimization-shopify--2026-04-28.md)