I recently had a 1h+ live conversation with Blair Beckwith (Ex-Mantle) in the Shopify App Founders community.

Blair has been in the Shopify ecosystem for almost 15 years. He joined Shopify in 2012, worked on the App Store when the team was basically just a few people, later worked with multiple Shopify apps, joined Mantle, and recently returned to Shopify.

We talked about Mantle, what he's now doing at Shopify, the future of the partner ecosystem, growing Shopify apps, the App Store, AI, vibe coding, and a lot more.

Here is the full summary.

Hey! Before reading this summary of our live session let me introduce myself.

I’m Mat De Sousa and I built App Store Pulse. The all-in-one tool to help you operate and grow your Shopify App.

We have a free plan so feel free to try it now: App Store Pulse

1. Who is Blair Beckwith?

Blair first joined Shopify in early 2012 as an intern while studying computer science.

At the time, there were only two people working on the Shopify App Store plus him.

He eventually joined Shopify full-time and, for a period, was essentially doing a bit of everything around the App Store:

• Developer support
• App reviews
• Developer relations
• Product work
• Growing the App Store team

He left Shopify in late 2017, but stayed inside the Shopify ecosystem.

After that, he consulted and worked with different Shopify app companies before eventually joining Mantle.