How a 2002 Blog Post Defines Lovable x Shopify: Fire and Motion
Early in my career I was always a huge fan of Joel Spolsky, founder of so many tools in the Internet era, and a prolific blogger, he was just one of those must-reads if you were a developer back in the day. And proof that good content lives nearly forever.
He wrote a blog post in 2002 called "Fire and Motion" which described how Microsoft did strategy when it was in "peak Microsoft" mode -- essentially do something, force the competition to react, and then keep moving, do something else, repeat. Competition becomes focus on chasing your tail rather than where the market and customers are going. Meanwhile, you're learning before other people.
It feels to me this is a lot of Shopify's approach to AI. With lovable x Shopify, people are puzzling over who the target user is and if the workflow makes any sense since it only works on new stores. As if the technology can't evolve? Heck the agents are probably already rewriting it :)
For lovable it makes sense because lovable wants you to build anything with it, and Shopify just means "commerce" for a lot of people. Particularly entrepreneurs.
For Shopify it makes sense because of the fire and motion thing. Competition need to look up and think - oh crap, I was thinking about Claude, or ChatGPT, but what about lovable, Windsurf, do I need to pay attention to those too? What if they become the gateway for SIs, agencies, and other developers going forward?
So, yeah, fire and motion. It works. But learning works too. In the world we are in, we simply don't know which tools will catch on. I would be interested to know what percentage of lovable apps included commerce as a component. But instead of just guessing, you could just try it out. Build an MCP server and tie it into lovable.
Frankly with an MCP server, I'm not sure what they did was likely all that difficult even. As several people have pointed out, it's probably easier to build a fresh new store than modify an existing store. But it doesn't mean that's where it needs to end. But either way, they did it, and now they'll get feedback on it.
Overall, feels like something one developer might have done in a hackathon even.
And either way, you don't have to believe it's the best move ever to understand its use. Especially if your competition then has to wonder and copy it. Which... who do you think has more resources?
Sometimes that's enough. And the questions. Competitors will have questions, and questions create doubt. That's not a terrible byproduct either.
Fire. And. Motion.
