Zapiet takes home a 2026 Shopify Build Award
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July 26, 2026
Olya Kryvonos
Emili is Zapiet's co-founder and CMO - she built the brand alongside co-founder and CEO Andrew Cargill, dreamed up Zapietousaurus, and designed our rebrand. But this award isn't really about one person. It's a recognition of something the whole team has built together over eleven years: a habit of showing up for this community, not just for Zapiet's own merchants.
Not apps. Not storefronts. Community. The one category you can't fake your way into.
That's our name up in lights at Shopify's DotDev 2026 in Toronto! Zapiet co-founder Emili Horncastle takes the stage to accept the 2026 Shopify Build Award for Community - a decade of building alongside this ecosystem, recognized on the biggest stage in the room.
An award that money can't buy
Here's what makes this one different: you don't win Community by shipping a feature or migrating a merchant. You win it by showing up. Again. And again. For everyone else building alongside you — with nothing to gain but a stronger ecosystem.
That's exactly what Emili's been doing for ten years, with the rest of the Zapiet team right behind her. Flying to events around the world. Taking the stage at conferences. Handing out everything the team has learned building Zapiet, freely, to anyone who asked — no pitch, no strings, no funnel.
You don't have to look far for proof, either. Just days before DotDev, Zapiet threw the YOLO Party in Toronto — and if you were there, you already know why our parties are the ones this community looks forward to all year.
Turns out Shopify noticed.
Eleven years, one instinct
Rewind to the beginning: Andrew Cargill spotted a gap in the Shopify forums, merchants desperate for a real store pickup solution, and built one. Emili joined soon after as co-founder, and together they've spent eleven years doing the same thing over and over: get close to the people with the problem. Everyone who's joined Zapiet since has carried that same instinct forward.
Then COVID hit, and that instinct got tested for real. Pickup and delivery went from nice-to-have to non-negotiable overnight. Zapiet was ready. Shopify featured us. The team exploded from 6 people to 36 in a matter of weeks, moms and friends roped in to help triage support tickets, everyone pulling in the same direction to keep merchants running.
Most companies would've turned inward after a growth spurt like that. Andrew, Emili, and the team did the opposite. They turned outward, toward the whole Shopify community, not just Zapiet's own merchants, and never really stopped.
Friendships, not just partnerships
Ask Emili what this award actually means, and she won't talk metrics. She'll talk people.
That's the same curiosity that walked her into the Natural History Museum's dinosaur rooms and walked out with the idea for Zapietousaurus. The same curiosity that's landed her in a Vogue spread and an 80s-inspired music video for a Brazilian pop star - the kind of places you end up when you say yes to people and follow where it leads. Emili gets close to things. Ideas, people, problems. And something good always follows. It's a spirit the whole Zapiet team shares, whether that's Sam flying to Manila for a merchant milestone or Andrew still answering forum posts a decade in.
Why this matters to all of us
An award like this isn't really about the person holding the trophy. It's a signal about the company behind them. Zapiet has always believed that building a great Shopify app means getting close to merchants and it turns out that same instinct, practiced by Andrew, Emili, and every single person on this team, and aimed at an entire community instead of one merchant at a time, is worth celebrating too.
Congratulations, Emili. And congratulations to Andrew and the whole Zapiet team - this one belongs to all of you.
Toronto was just the opening act.
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