Hey everyone, I hope you're doing well.

The last few days have been quite intense, because a few things happened at the same time. The Wide Event is over, App Store Pulse is now public, and I am starting to see more clearly what is happening inside the Shopify App Store.

In today's email we're going to talk about:

• Why I am building App Store Pulse in public

• What I learned after organizing The Wide Event again

• Why AI is pushing so many new Shopify apps to launch

Let's go! 🔥

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Why I am building App Store Pulse in public

I've started a new journey recently. 🔥

It is called App Store Pulse (https://appstorepulse.com), and the idea is quite simple: I want to build a SaaS for Shopify app founders, in public, from $0 to $10K per month.

I know it sounds like a content angle at first. And of course, it is partly that. When you build in public, people follow the journey, they see the progress, and they understand why you are building the product.

But for me, there is another reason.

The Shopify App Store is becoming too important to treat like a black box. For many app founders, it is still one of the main sources of installs, but most people do not really know what is happening there.

They know their own listing. They know a few competitors. They know if installs are going up or down.

But they often miss the bigger picture.

Who changed their pricing. Who updated their screenshots. Which competitors are ranking for which keywords. Which categories are getting crowded. Which keywords look interesting. Which apps are launching, disappearing, or suddenly changing direction.

All of these things matter.

Not because you should obsess over every competitor, but because the App Store is a market. And when you are building inside a market, you need to understand how that market moves.

That is what I am trying to build with App Store Pulse.

Right now, the product can already track competitor changes, keyword positions, competitor keyword rankings, keyword volume and difficulty, keyword opportunities, listing scores, niche data, and App Store insights.

Very soon, I also want to add review intelligence and listing analytics.

But honestly, the most interesting part is not the feature list. The most interesting part is the thinking behind it.

I have been building Shopify apps for years, and one thing I keep noticing is that founders often make App Store decisions with very little information.

They change their title because it feels better. They rewrite a listing because another app did something similar. They enter a category because it looks active. They create a free plan because other apps have one.

Sometimes it works.

But many times, it is just guessing with confidence.

I don't say this as criticism, because I have done it too. When you are building, you often move fast and make decisions with whatever information you have available.

The problem is that the Shopify App Store is getting more competitive. So the cost of guessing is probably going up.

If ten apps were competing for attention, maybe you could afford to be vague. If hundreds of apps are fighting for the same keywords, clarity becomes much more important.

That is why I want to make the App Store more visible.

Not to create another dashboard full of vanity metrics. Not to make founders check data every morning and panic every time a competitor changes something.

The goal is different.

I want app founders to understand where they stand, where opportunities might exist, and what is changing around them.

Because when you see the market more clearly, you make better decisions.

You can see if a category is healthy or saturated. You can notice keywords your competitors rank for but you do not. You can see if many apps are suddenly launching in the same space. You can understand if your listing is probably creating friction before merchants even install.

That does not guarantee success, of course.

Data is not a strategy by itself.

But it gives you a better starting point. And for founders, a better starting point can save months of wrong direction.

The other reason I want to build this in public is that I do not want to build too much in isolation.

It is easy to sit alone, imagine what founders need, build a lot of features, and only discover later that the product is useful in theory but not in the real workflow.

I would rather show the product early.

Let people tell me what is confusing. Let them ask for things I did not think about. Let them use it on their own apps and show me where the real pain is.

That feedback is part of the product.

It also makes the journey more honest. I will share what works, what does not work, how the revenue grows, where I get stuck, and what I learn from trying to grow another SaaS in the Shopify ecosystem.

I do not know yet exactly where App Store Pulse will go.

Maybe it becomes a small useful tool for app founders. Maybe it becomes a bigger platform around App Store intelligence. Maybe the first version teaches me that the real opportunity is slightly different from what I imagined.

I am fine with that.

At the beginning, the most important thing is not to pretend I already know everything. It is to build close enough to the market that the product can become sharper over time.

That is the journey I want to share.

You can check it here (there is an early-bird price): https://appstorepulse.com

What I learned after organizing The Wide Event again

The Wide Event is over. 😁

And honestly, I am exhausted.

This was the 4th one I organized, and it was the biggest one so far. We had 250 people in Paris, coming from different countries, for one evening around the Shopify ecosystem.

When I write it like this, it sounds simple.

But it never feels simple when you are inside it.

We started with 100 people in 2023. Then 150 in 2024. Then 200 in 2025. And now 250 in 2026.

Every year, the event becomes a bit bigger. More people. More expectations. More details to manage. More chances for something to go wrong.

And that is the part people do not always see from the outside.

When the event goes well, it looks smooth. People arrive, meet each other, listen to talks, have conversations, take pictures, and leave with good memories.

But behind that, there is a lot of stress.

You have to think about the venue. The timing. The speakers. The sponsors. The food. The check-in. The problems that appear at the last minute. The small details that nobody notices if they work, but everyone notices if they do not.

That is the strange thing about organizing an event.

If you do your job well, many people never see the work.

And I think that is okay.

The goal is not for people to notice every detail. The goal is for them to feel that the room works. That they can meet the right people, have real conversations, and feel that the evening was worth the trip.

From the feedback I received, people loved the event. That is the most important part.

Still, I won't lie. It is intense.

When you organize something like this, you spend a lot of time carrying invisible pressure. You want the speakers to have a good experience. You want the sponsors to feel it was valuable. You want attendees to meet people, not just stand in the room waiting for something to happen.

You want everything to be good for everyone.

That is impossible, of course. But you still try.

This year also reminded me how much the team matters.

I can be the person behind the event, but I cannot do it alone. An event is too many moving pieces for one person to carry properly. You need people who see problems before they become visible. You need people who stay calm. You need people who care about the experience as much as you do.

Without that, the stress becomes too heavy.

The same is true for sponsors.

Crisp, FlyRank AI, Hookdeck, Photoroom, Judge.me, and The Support Heroes helped make the event possible this year. Sponsors are not just logos on a page. For an event like this, they are part of the ecosystem that makes the room exist.

And the speakers too.

Emili M Horncastle, Sofia Panwar, Panayotis Silintziris, and Adrien Naeem all brought something to the event. Different perspectives, different experiences, and different ways to help people think about what they are building.

That matters a lot, because The Wide Event is not only about gathering people in Paris.

It is about creating a room where Shopify founders, partners, agencies, and builders can talk about things they do not always get to discuss online.

Online content is useful. I use it every day. I post, I read, I learn, and I meet people through it.

But there is still something different when people are in the same room.

The conversation changes. Trust builds faster. You can ask better questions. You can understand someone's context in a way that is hard through comments or DMs.

That is why I keep doing it, even when it is stressful.

Not because events are easy.

They are not.

But because every year, I see something happen in the room that is hard to measure. People meet future partners. They reconnect with people they only knew online. They leave with new ideas. Sometimes they just feel less alone in what they are building.

For a founder, that can be very powerful.

I think this is also why the event keeps growing.

It is not only because the Shopify ecosystem is bigger. It is because people need real spaces. Especially now, when AI makes it easier to build products faster and online content is everywhere.

The more digital everything becomes, the more valuable real trust becomes.

That is something I keep coming back to.

I do not know yet exactly what next year will look like. I said we will do more, and I mean it, but I also want to keep the quality of the room.

Bigger is not automatically better.

The hard part is to grow without losing what made the event valuable in the first place.

That is probably the next challenge.

For now, I am just grateful. Grateful to the people who came, the team, the speakers, the sponsors, and everyone who trusted the event enough to spend an evening with us in Paris. 🙏

I am tired, but it is the good kind of tired.

The kind where you know the stress meant something.

AI is pushing a new wave of Shopify app launches

Something interesting is happening on the Shopify App Store.

In the first 20 days of May, more than 2,000 new Shopify apps were launched. 🤯

I gathered the data with App Store Pulse, and a few things caught my attention. Analytics and SEO categories represented around 10% of the new apps. Almost 30% of the new apps mentioned AI. Only 24% had a free plan.

And I also noticed some developers launching many apps.

That last part is probably the most interesting to me.

Because the number itself is already big. More than 2,000 new apps in one month is a lot. But the deeper question is not only how many apps launched.

The deeper question is why it is happening.

I think AI is a big part of the answer.

Not the only reason, of course. The Shopify ecosystem is still attractive. Merchants still have many problems. The App Store can still be a strong distribution channel. And many founders already understand that a small vertical SaaS inside Shopify can become a real business.

But AI changes the launch equation.

Before, launching a Shopify app required a certain level of technical energy. You had to build the product, understand Shopify APIs, create the listing, write the copy, design screenshots, handle support, and improve the app from feedback.

None of that disappeared.

But many parts became faster.

AI can help you write code. It can help you debug. It can generate copy. It can help analyze competitors. It can summarize reviews. It can create first versions of onboarding, documentation, support answers, and marketing content.

For a solo founder, that is a big change.

The first version of an app can happen faster than before. Not necessarily better, but faster. And when something becomes faster, more people try it.

That is probably one reason we are seeing so many launches.

Some are new founders entering the market because the barrier feels lower. Some are existing developers testing more ideas because they can produce more quickly. Some are probably teams launching narrow apps around very specific problems.

I do not know the exact split yet.

But the pattern is visible.

AI is making it easier to go from idea to App Store listing. That does not mean it is making it easier to build a durable business.

This distinction matters a lot.

Launching an app and winning with an app are not the same game.

AI can help you create the first version. It can help you move faster. It can help you look more professional from day one. But after the launch, the real Shopify app problems still appear.

Merchants have edge cases. Themes behave differently. Support questions arrive. Reviews matter. Onboarding matters. Pricing matters. Trust matters.

And none of that becomes simple just because the first code was faster to write.

That is where I think many founders might get surprised.

When the technical barrier goes down, the market does not become easier. It often becomes noisier.

More apps means more choice for merchants. More choice means less patience. If your listing is unclear, they leave. If your screenshots do not explain the value, they compare another app. If your support feels weak, they lose trust quickly.

So the advantage moves.

It is not only about being able to build anymore. More people can build now.

The advantage becomes choosing the right problem, understanding the category, positioning clearly, supporting merchants properly, and improving based on real usage.

That is a much harder advantage to copy.

The AI number is interesting too. Almost 30% of the new apps mention AI, and honestly, I expected it to be even higher.

But mentioning AI is not the same as creating value with AI.

Some apps will use AI in a real way. They will solve problems that were hard to solve before. They will analyze data, generate useful outputs, automate workflows, or help merchants make better decisions.

Others will just add AI to the listing because it sounds modern.

Merchants will feel the difference.

This is why I think the next phase of the App Store will be more competitive, but also more interesting. The flood of new apps will create noise, but it will also reveal which founders are serious.

The serious founders will not only launch faster.

They will learn faster.

They will watch the market, understand categories, track competitors, read reviews, talk to merchants, and improve the product in the direction of real pain.

That is why I am building App Store Pulse at the same time.

If the App Store is moving faster, founders need better visibility. They need to know what is launching, which categories are crowded, where competitors rank, what keywords they are missing, and how their listing compares to the market.

Because when the market accelerates, guessing becomes more expensive.

I do not think the conclusion is that the Shopify App Store is dead or that there are too many apps now.

It is more nuanced than that.

More apps means more competition, but it also means more people are seeing opportunity in the ecosystem. AI is making experimentation easier, and some great products will probably come from that.

At the same time, many apps will disappear because launching was the easy part.

The hard part is what comes after.

Maintaining the product. Supporting merchants. Building trust. Finding a real position in the market. Turning a first version into something people rely on.

That is where the game is now.

AI makes the start faster.

But it does not remove the need to build something that matters.

Thanks for reading!

I’ll see you in the next email, in 14 days. Until then, take care!

Mat.