In this episode of the SaaS Operators Podcast, we sat down with PJ Celis, founder of Judge.me, to unpack how he bootstrapped one of Shopify’s most dominant apps to $13M ARR without raising a single dollar.

PJ shares the counterintuitive strategy behind Judge.me’s rise, why he built a company that drives prices down, creates consumer surplus, and wins by aligning perfectly with Shopify’s incentives.

He explains how a low-cost, high-support model became an unbeatable moat inside the Shopify App Store, and why he believes price is the real innovation.

We talk about the tradeoffs of running lean, how Judge.me scaled self serve, why simplicity beats ambition, and the organizational challenges of staying efficient as success compounds.

PJ also talks about his shift into "founder mode," a philosophy of using software and structure to enforce accountability without middle management. The conversation ends with a deep dive into Shopify’s broader strategy to commoditize its ecosystem, the future of app store distribution, and what it really takes to build defensible SaaS without outside capital.