Hey, it’s Frank, Jerry, and Zoltan from Third View Private Wealth, and welcome to the Third View Next Gen Newsletter. This newsletter is designed to simplify personal finance, investing, and wealth building for next-generation wealth holders early in their financial journey. Hope you enjoy this month’s edition and learn something new.

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Third View Co-Founder, Frank McKiernan, recently joined Alyson Tucci on the Barron’s Advisor Podcast to share more on his career story and beliefs regarding the future of financial advising.

Frank shares how the Third View team approaches the work of advising clients—from treating individuals like institutions to investing with a long-term, business-owner mindset.

🎧 Listen to the full episode here.

We believe in investing in companies, not picking stocks. The difference? Investing in companies requires a deeper understanding of the business mechanics and differentiators that make a business likely to succeed long-term. Today, let’s use Shopify as an example to explain what we mean.

An internal memo from Shopify CEO Tobias Lütke was leaked last year, and it caught our attention. One part of the memo read:

“Before asking for more headcount and resources, teams must demonstrate why they cannot get what they want done using AI. What would this area look like if autonomous AI agents were already part of the team? This question can lead to really fun discussions and projects.”

Tobias’s post sparked some heated conversation about whether or not Shopify’s approach to AI was the right one. Whether it is or isn’t, it’s an example of Shopify’s disruptive approach to their business, and likely a contributor to their significant rise in the last couple of years.

Based on an article from The Stock Market Nerd, here’s a deeper dive into the Shopify story, and what’s contributed to their success:

In 2006, a frustrated programmer named Tobias Lütke set out to build his own snowboard store online. That simple project grew into Shopify, a $60 billion e-commerce platform now powering more than four million merchants worldwide.

Shopify’s business model has two key engines. The first, Subscription Solutions, charges merchants monthly fees for access to its software—everything needed to design an online store, manage products, track inventory, and analyze sales. The second, Merchant Solutions, earns a small percentage of every transaction that flows through Shopify’s systems. As merchants grow, Shopify’s revenue scales with them.

The company’s core advantage is integration. Shopify provides a single platform that connects all aspects of commerce—online storefronts, in-person sales, marketing, fulfillment, and payments—into one dashboard. Its checkout product, Shop Pay, is now one of the fastest and highest-converting payment tools on the web. Shopify has also expanded into point-of-sale hardware for physical stores and built partnerships with Meta, Google, and TikTok to help merchants sell directly through social platforms.

Shopify’s products aren’t just for small online retailers and Mom and Pop shops. For larger brands, Shopify offers Shopify Plus and Commerce Components, enterprise-grade versions that let companies like Heinz, Unilever, and Mattel integrate Shopify tools into their existing operations.

For investors, Shopify represents an enduring trend: the democratization of digital commerce. It’s a platform designed not only to lower barriers for entrepreneurs, but also to capture the rising tide of direct-to-consumer retail globally.

And when companies, like Shopify, are embracing disruptive technologies and are willing to disrupt themselves, that’s a sign of a business positioned to succeed for years to come.

While this isn’t meant to be investment advice, it’s a company we’ll definitely be keeping an eye on, and you should too.

🎧 One of our favorite podcasts, Acquired, hosted a recent conversation with Shopify CEO Tobias Lütke. Check it out here.

A lot of people assume advisors pick investments by trying to predict which stocks will go up next. That’s not how we think about it.

At Third View, we start by asking a different question: is this a business we actually want to own for the next decade? We’re not trading on headlines. We’re trying to understand the quality of the business, the strength of management, the durability of its advantages, and why it should create value over time.

From there, we use a mosaic approach. We pull together research from large institutions, independent analysts, market data, and our own experience to build a fuller picture. No single opinion drives the decision.

That’s part of what’s behind the name Third View: looking past the obvious, tuning out short-term noise, and doing the harder work of forming a thoughtful point of view. Our goal is simple: make disciplined, long-term decisions on behalf of clients.

Have a question you’d like us to answer in a future newsletter? Simply reply to this email to submit it to us.

📖 Frank McKiernan in Barron’s: For Wealthy Clients, Managing Investments Is Just Table Stakes. What They Really Need.

📖 Zoltan Pongracz on Forbes: The Three Biggest Exit Mistakes Business Owners Make—And How To Avoid Them

That’s all for this month. If you enjoyed the newsletter, the greatest compliment would be to forward it to someone you think would like it too.

- Frank, Jerry, and Zoltan

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Past performance is not indicative of future results. The material above has been provided for informational purposes only and is not intended as legal or investment advice or a recommendation of any particular security or strategy. The investment strategy and themes discussed herein may be unsuitable for investors depending on their specific investment objectives and financial situation. Information obtained from third-party sources is believed to be reliable though its accuracy is not guaranteed, and Third View Private Wealth makes no representation or warranty as to the accuracy or completeness of the information, which should not be used as the basis of any investment decision. Information contained on third party websites that Third View Private Wealth may link to is not reviewed in their entirety for accuracy and Third View Private Wealth assumes no liability for the information contained on these websites. Opinions expressed in this commentary reflect subjective judgments of the author based on conditions at the time of writing and are subject to change without notice. No part of this material may be reproduced in any form, or referred to in any other publication, without express written permission from Third View Private Wealth. For more information about Third View Private Wealth, including our Form ADV brochures, please visit https://adviserinfo.sec.gov or contact us at (203) 408-0098.