I was at a hotel off Zilker Park, early enough that the coffee shop was still quiet. Austin has this quality where even the lobby of a nice-tier hotel feels like a coworking space by 8 AM. Laptops materialize. Quarter-zips appear and conversations drift from weekend plans into quarterly targets without anyone noticing the transition.

At the table next to me, three people who I can only assume worked at BigCommerce — or Commerce.com, or whatever they’re calling it this quarter — were talking about Canada. Not hockey or maple syrup. They were discussing tariff posture and the USCMA Review. The general posture of a White House that has made economic nationalism into something between a policy platform and a personality trait. This is standard fare for anyone paying attention.

When eCommerce entrepreneur and venture investor Jeremy Horowitz joked on LinkedIn about buying BigCommerce and putting it out of its misery, the post went viral because it captured something real about the current platform imbalance. But what made the moment more interesting was not the joke; it was that Shopify COO Harley Finkelstein liked the post publicly. That is not a casual gesture; Harley understands exactly what that post signals inside the market. The comment section is noise; the like was a signal.