E25: The Plan for Rivo with Stuart Chaney

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On this episode of The SaaS Operators Podcast, we talk with Stuart Chaney, founder of Rivo. We dive into what it takes to scale a Shopify Plus-focused SaaS in 2025—covering themes vs AI blocks, TAM ceilings, platform risk, agentic coding that actually ships, and why fixing the product still beats every hack.

Themes feel over, blocks feel inevitable

Shopify will keep turning the store into Lego. You will prompt a section, drop an AI block, and keep moving. Hunting for a theme because it has one neat widget feels dated. If themes were a subscription, quality would probably rise, but Shopify does not allow that. The center of gravity is shifting to composable blocks and agentic helpers that scaffold repeatable sections.

The TAM conversation that matters

Everyone loves a big number. Storeleads says one thing, Shopify used to publish another. Pick a range for Shopify Plus, call it mid to high tens of thousands, and do simple math. If your ACV is four to five figures, you can see the ceiling.

That is the point. TAM behaves like gravity. It pulls on your ambition and your plan. The market today is not 2021. Demand is sideways to slightly up. Supply exploded. That is the reality you plan against.

Rishabh made the venture case. Win 20 to 30 percent of a category and you have executed well. If the pie is 50, 10 to 15 is a next year number with exceptional execution. Bootstrappers hear that differently. The lens is not market share, it is absolute dollars, profit, and control.

Both are right. Your capital structure dictates your goals.

Platform risk is real, even when you are winning

Shopify is the reason these businesses exist, and also the reason some features vanish. Extensibility changes can delete your edge overnight. Not fatal, but easily a five to ten percent headwind while you rework. The older rule still applies. With platforms it is not if you get hit, it is when.

You can buy a hedge by going multi platform. Salesforce Commerce Cloud, Adobe, the rest. It is more complex, but if your sales motion and onboarding already look like enterprise, you can absorb it. Or you can stay focused on Shopify and raid incumbents. Both paths work. Pick one on purpose.

Agentic coding is a tooling problem, not a vibes problem

Stuart’s team rebuilt their codebase to be LLM friendly. Guardrails first, then generation. Force structured outputs, test them, and accept only what passes. Break work into small, typed Lego blocks. That is how you get from 60 percent helpful to production ready. The gains are real, but only after you do the boring setup.

Growth inside a sideways market

Two levers if new logos slow down.

First, price to value. When a customer switches because your outcome is better, they often pay you more than they paid the incumbent. Market revenue might only expand 20 percent, but you can grow 100 percent if you capture the value and package it correctly.

Second, services as the hidden P and L. In loyalty and retention, onboarding and success eat margin. The work is real, the cycles are long, and enterprise wants a partner, not a button. Staff accordingly, and be honest about gross margins after implementation.

Marketing is taking your product to the next market

Most people think marketing means ads and threads. Marketing is movement. Off the App Store into a direct motion is marketing. Crossing from Plus brands to non Shopify enterprise is marketing. Walking across a conference floor, shaking hands with the ten people who can actually buy, is marketing. The tactic is whatever gets you from here to there.

Building in public helps at one to five million when your name equals discovery. Diminishing returns kick in later. If your ACV is low, public posting is a brand tax you cannot always justify. If your ACV is high, one relationship can pay for three quarters and a half.

Choose your channel with a calculator, not a mood.

Headcount follows your motion

If you sell onboarding heavy software, your team will skew to sales, implementation, and success. If you sell a fast self serve tool, you can stay tiny on the go to market side and pile your calories into product. Neither is noble, both are tradeoffs.

Fix the product, free your mind

This sounds dumb because it is simple. It is also true. Bugs and sharp edges are a tax on every department. Support invents workarounds. Success burns cycles. Sales stalls. Slack fills up with avoidable problems. The fastest way to make the business feel calm again is a ruthless product cleanup. Then build again. Then clean again. The discipline is the point.

Where I land

1. Blocks over themes. The future is promptable sections and repeatable modules. Meet your customer where Shopify is going, not where it was.
2. Respect TAM gravity. Know your ceiling, then decide if you win by expanding price, raiding incumbents, or jumping markets.
3. Hedge platform risk on purpose. Either stay laser focused on Shopify and build the best Plus play on earth, or fund the pain to go multi platform. Drifting in the middle is how you get squeezed.
4. Invest in agentic guardrails. The hard part is not the model, it is the scaffolding that forces correct output and safe merges.
5. Market by moving. If the next dollars live in a different room, walk into that room. Do not romanticize a channel that does not fit your ACV.
6. Clean, then create. Product quality is oxygen. Everything else gets easier once the basics stop leaking.

SaaS is not a straight line. Some years you build name recognition. Some years you eat a platform change. Some years you simply raise prices because you finally created the outcome that deserves it.

Low time preference wins here. Make the product good, keep your relationships tight, reduce self inflicted pain, and choose your battles with intent. The rest is cycles.