Episode 48: Jean-Michel Lemieux, ex-CTO of Shopify

In this episode, I speak with Jean-Michel Lemieux, aka @jmwind, ex-CTO of Shopify who helped usher in the modern era sneaker drops and anti-bot protection. We talk about what it took landing Supreme as a customer and how it required a complete rewrite of the checkout flow. We also discuss the early days of anti-bot protection and how it evolved, including his relationship with Sneaker Twitter and bot developers. We also discuss Shopify as a platform and what makes it into the core platform and what does not and why. Plus a lot more! Timestamps 00:00 - Cold Open: Stephen A 00:22 - Intro 03:18 - Sock Drop 04:29 - Interview 08:58 - Landing Supreme as a Shopify Customer 15:16 - Rebuilding Checkout 26:54 - Early Days of Anti-Bot Protection 33:09 - Dealing with Botched Drops 39:19 - Why is anti-bot only a Shopify Plus feature? 43:08 - Raffles 49:29 - Sneaker Twitter Ombudsman 01:03:16 - Zadeh Kicks 01:05:21 - Ticketmaster 01:07:48 - Outro https://linktr.ee/sockjig