Gadget's Mohammad Hashemi

"Patrons Perspectives" is an interview series in which we learn more about the companies who generously support Craft+Work events.

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This edition of Patrons Perspectives features our Global Craft+Work Patron, Gadget. Our Global Patrons are essential to every event we're hosting in 2024, and we honestly couldn't do it without their support. A big thank you to them!

Please introduce yourself and your role within the company?

I'm Mohammad Hashemi, the co-founder and CEO of Gadget. We're a full-stack app development and hosting platform that makes building and shipping Shopify apps 10x faster.

Before founding Gadget, I was a product executive at various tech companies, primarily focused on fintech and B2B platforms. I also worked at Shopify for five years, building and leading products like Shopify Payments, Shop Pay, checkout and more.

Where are you and the company based?

Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

What does Gadget do?

Gadget is the fastest and easiest way for app developers and agencies to build, ship, and scale Shopify apps.

What are its main benefits?

Developers can skip the infrastructure setup, API integrations, boilerplate code, and maintenance, leaving more time to focus on the code that makes each app unique.

What types of businesses benefit most from it?

Shopify agencies, freelancers, and app developers

How does it integrate with other platforms or systems, especially Shopify?

Every Gadget project starts with hosting, infrastructure, and a built-in connection to Shopify's APIs out of the box.

Gadget handles the setup, OAuth, and webhook registrations automatically and keeps the API versions up to date.

Can you share some key success stories or customer case studies?

1. Code replaced their development stack and moved all Shopify app development to Gadget, saving their clients more than €15,000 a month.
2. Craftberry, a Shopify agency, saw a 30% increase in revenue and doubled the number of projects they could ship.
3. Rewind built their Alerts app and had it live on the app store in less than a month, because Gadget handled all of the app setup for them.

What's on the roadmap that people should get excited about?

• Autocomponents — Instantly generated Polaris app components with one line of code

• API connections — Connectors to other popular APIs on the internet, such as Klaviyo, Mailchimp, and Facebook

• AI automation — Further increases to developer productivity by implementing AI automation throughout Gadget's full-stack solution

What strategies have proven most effective in driving growth and success for your business?

• Word of mouth from excited customers who evangelize our product and generate interest among their peers

• Engaging with the Shopify community. Whether that's by attending community events, hosting hackathons and incubators, creating content for new Shopify releases, or hosting our very own conference.

What have been the most significant challenges in developing and growing your business?

Explaining Gadget to developers succinctly, without needing to show them a full demo of the product's capabilities.

What's your approach to marketing your product?

Our marketing is largely bottom-up, meaning we invest primarily in a great user experience and streamlined onboarding so that the user quickly has an "aha" moment, can see the value of the product for themselves, and can convert in a self-serve manner.

For top-of-funnel marketing, we primarily focus on content to drive interest. We listen to the community and then create content that they will find most useful. We find ways to show how our product can improve their experience and apply that to real-life use cases and pain points.

For example, teaching people how to build a checkout UI extension in 30 minutes or creating free forkable app templates for common projects agencies build over and over again.

What should someone do if they would like to learn more or have a demo?

Feel free to book a personalized tour of the platform here.

You can also find us on X and Linkedin.

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Read other Patron Perspectives

• Patrons Perspectives: Craft+Work On The Road
• Patrons Perspectives: Tidio's Olek Potrykus
• Patrons Perspectives: Craft+Work London Retrospective
• Patrons Perspectives: Sufio's Merryn Djibril
• Patrons Perspectives: The Support Heroes's Laura Moreno