
BigCommerce S1 - blackdogie
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1626450/000119312520191966/d844671ds1.htm
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dstaley
I actually helped my previous company migrate from Magento to BigCommerce, and
found their offering incredibly compelling compared to Shopify. I do think
BigCommerce is focused more on medium-sized businesses whereas Shopify is
targeted towards smaller businesses or businesses that aren't really focused
on their e-commerce side. My favorite feature of BigCommerce was the ability
to run the site locally for development, using live product data from the
site. I even made a few open source contributions to that framework, which was
a nice change of pace compared to Magento development.

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dragonsh
The main issue with BigCommerce is that they do not offer any compelling
advantage over existing open source system. Moreover being a loss making
entity like Shopify without any sticky system like marketplace which drives
traffic, I doubt there is much value in it except that investors wants to
cash-out given the current unrealistic stock market.

In case a company use magento [1], Saleor [2], Sylius [3], Shuup [4], Solidus
[5], Spree [6] combined with vue-storefront [7], storefront UI [8] and
openflutttercommerce app [9] the amount of efforts to build a highly resilient
and functional system is cheaper with complete control over customer, supply
chain, pricing, product, marketing, sales and promotion data. Also the efforts
will be similar to using shopify, bigcommerce with more cost-savings. Indeed
shopify itself use many components from rails eco-system built by Spree and
Solidus community.

Its very easy to build a highly customized and resilient system using cloud
offering combined with these open source systems. So I do not see why a mid-
size business will choose shopify or bigcommerce. They are good for mom-pop
shops and simple commerce, but for unique shopping experience they fall short
and better to build customized one with complete control.

[1] [https://github.com/magento/magento2](https://github.com/magento/magento2)

[2] [https://github.com/mirumee/saleor](https://github.com/mirumee/saleor)

[3] [https://github.com/Sylius/Sylius](https://github.com/Sylius/Sylius)

[4] [https://github.com/shuup/shuup](https://github.com/shuup/shuup)

[5]
[https://github.com/solidusio/solidus](https://github.com/solidusio/solidus)

[6] [https://github.com/spree/spree](https://github.com/spree/spree)

[7] [https://github.com/vuestorefront/vue-
storefront](https://github.com/vuestorefront/vue-storefront)

[8] [https://github.com/Divanteltd/storefront-
ui](https://github.com/Divanteltd/storefront-ui)

[9]
[https://github.com/4seer/openflutterecommerceapp](https://github.com/4seer/openflutterecommerceapp)

~~~
nl
Shopify is profitable[1] even with the high levels of growth they are
undergoing. There's little reason to think BigCommerce would be anything else.

Most commerce companies don't want or need complete control. They want a
unique look and feel (which Shopify/BigCommerce gives) but beyond they they
want reliability and ease of integration with things like stock control.

[1]
[https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200212005238/en/Sho...](https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200212005238/en/Shopify-
Announces-Fourth-Quarter-Full-Year-2019-Financial-Results)

~~~
dragonsh
Sorry to burst your bubble Shopify is loss making except when it was itself a
small service provider. In 2020 has a loss of 132 million dollars so far. It's
a listed entity so you can check Income, Balance Sheet and Cashflow. The most
important thing cashflow and Incomes both are negative for shopify. Since it's
listing never made a single dime of profit. So please before putting a link to
news verify on their annual reports [1].

    
    
       2019-12-30:
         Total Revenue: 1.578173 billion dollars
         Operating Income : -141.147 million dollars
         Net Income: -124.842 million dollars (i.e. loss of 125 million dollars)
    
       To this month (TTM):
        Total Revenue: 1.727692 billion dollars
        Operating Income: -178.590  million dollars
        Net Income: -132.120 million dollars (i.e. loss of 132 million dollars)
    

[1]
[https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/SHOP/financials?p=SHOP](https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/SHOP/financials?p=SHOP)

~~~
nl
> So please before putting a link to news verify on their annual reports

The link I had in my comment was to their 2019-12-30 financial release to the
SEC. It has the same 2019 information you have: _Net income (loss): (124,842)_

But that includes their selling and marketing expenses of over $400M, and
their cash and cash equivalents at hand went from $1.97B (2018) to $2.46B
(2019).

They are making lots of money and they have good accountants. Astonishing..

~~~
dragonsh
> They have good accountant

That’s true their accountant are good at sugar-coating the bad state of
company, negative cashflow along with net income loss which is consistently
increasing since listing. Not making one dime in profit and still claim
profitable business.

For $1 revenue they spend more than $1, so sorry they are loss making company
not profitable and on top due to negative cash-flow much worse.

The numbers speaks for itself without sugar coating that shopify is loss
making venture. As long as investors money through stocks will keep coming
they will survive and will be bought out by someone one day to cash-out those
investors. Anyways with cost of borrowing 0, sooner or later someone will
acquire it.

~~~
nl
They are a company during the high-growth phase of their business, with a
proven business model where the cost of revenue is less than the revenue
gained. See their accounts on the link you posted.

They are a "loss making venture" because they are investing in growth. That's
why the cash-at-hand is important - if it's low then one can question if they
can cut expenses quickly enough. That's the difference between WeWork
(unprofitable, not much cash, unclear what they could cut to make profits) and
Amazon 10 years ago (unprofitable, lots of cash, easy to see places to cut to
make profits)

Shopify have over 2 years of expenses as cash just sitting there, and they can
cut the marketing by 10% at any point and become profitable. That's why
investors have confidence in them, and it's why customers can have confidence
too.

This isn't a hard balance sheet to read - it's a rapidly growing business with
plenty of resources they are investing in growth. That's the same situation
Amazon was in for years - "unprofitable" because all their revenue was going
into the business.

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rwhitman
Met Brent at the BigCommerce partner summit a year or so ago. I can't think of
a CEO I've met who is more open and accessible. He sat down at my table during
the keynotes and asked for feedback during the breaks, went around the room
and chatted about the product during lunch. Definitely fostered that culture
with the full team, his exec leadership team all were equally inviting and
open to feedback about the product and strategy. As SEC filings go, this one
certainly makes me smile.

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noeltock
For SME/Enterprise, WooCommerce is not even listed on the Gartner quadrant [1]
— so whilst the software might be fully capable and open-source, it's not
represented at this level whereas BigCommerce and Shopify are.

[1]
[https://ok.commercetools.com/hubfs/Images/Website/EN/Webinar...](https://ok.commercetools.com/hubfs/Images/Website/EN/Webinar/Gartner_MQ_DigitalCommerce.jpg)

~~~
tlamponi
The gartner quadrant is mostly pay to win, so who really cares about that one?
I'd at least not make any decision solely, or to a large part, based on it.

~~~
hef19898
True that, it is still usefull if you look for solutions in a field you are
unfamiliar with. Doesn't replace doing your own research, so.

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jkuria
they say they are #2. I thought Shopify and Woocomerce were #1 and #2 and they
were a very distant third, or even fourth if Magento is to be believed. Or
does WooCommerce not count as SaaS?

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thaumaturgy
Yeah, I can't figure out what they're talking about there. There is no "SaaS
ecommerce platform" category on BuiltWith (that I can find); none of the
subcategories under the eCommerce category on BuiltWith has BigCommerce near
the #2 position
([https://trends.builtwith.com/shop](https://trends.builtwith.com/shop)).

They do note later in their document that their competitors include Magento,
Shopify, and WooCommerce.

I almost scrolled by and didn't care except for your comment, which surprised
me quite a bit. The number of Shopify, WooCommerce, and Magento sites I've had
to do some amount of work on over the years more or less tracks with
BuiltWith's stats. I've never worked on a BigCommerce site.

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codecamper
Just buy any of these stocks. Their PS is so high that they will always make
numbers. Just buy their own product! (at 30+ price to sales, it makes sense!)

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MuffinFlavored
how do they rank compared to Shopify?

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aphroz
It is third in the SaaS ecommerce behind Shopify and Wix.

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ksec
Isn't Wix just a website generator? Sort of like Online Dreamweaver?

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xyst
damn - I had an opportunity to work here. My million dollar mistake, I suppose

