How to build for Shopify in 2026 with Daniel Patricio

In this episode of the SaaS Operators, we talked to Daniel Patricio, the founder of ABRA Promotions. Daniel told us his story, from building startups in university, to working at a fast growing design agency, to spending eight years at Shopify through the IPO, and then leaving in 2021 to go full time on his own ecommerce business, selling South African Biltong.

We talked about what broke for him after iOS 14, how discounts and offers are still way more complicated than they should be, and the moment he realized merchants needed storefront pricing that actually changes for the customer who is eligible.

Daniel explains how ABRA started as a prototype in 2022, why the first year hard because nobody understood the product, and how Shopify’s shift from Scripts to Functions helped ABRA become the answer for more advanced discount use cases. He also shares what it looked like to grow 14x in a year, then another 3x the year after, and why staying bootstrapped gave them more optionality.

We talked about Shopify’s direction, what “enterprise” really means in ecommerce, why the best merchants move fast and the enterprise moves slowly, and whether Shopify could ever build around ABRA or if the discount problem becomes big enough, just acquire a discounts app.

We also get into ABRA’s partnership driven go to market, why positioning is less important than finding specific cracks partners care about, and how an eight person team ships quickly by keeping engineers close to the problem and avoiding heavy specialization.

00:00 Introduction and Casual Banter 01:15 Daniel's Entrepreneurial Journey 08:45 Building on Shopify: A Personal Perspective 11:29 Debating Shopify's Enterprise Strategy 16:42 The Mindset of Enterprise Customers 21:59 Future of ABRA and Competition with Shopify 23:14 The Complexity of Discounts and Merchant Needs 31:10 Evolving Go-to-Market Strategies 43:07 Vision for the Future and Company Goals