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Wix Founder: Will Base44 Win the Vibe-Coding Wars? | The Truth About the Economics of Vibe-Coding

Avishai Abrahami is the Co-Founder and CEO of Wix, the NASDAQ-listed website creation platform serving millions of businesses worldwide. Today, Wix generates more than $2BN in ARR and has a market capitalization of approximately $2.1BN, after reaching a peak valuation of $17BN over the past two years. The company also acquired Base44, one of the fastest-growing AI application-building platforms, scaling it to $150M in ARR in record time. ----------------------------------------------- Timestamps: 0:00 Intro 04:26 Wix at $2.8B Market Cap on $2.1B Revenue — What Does the Market Not See? 06:27 Base 44 Gets Zero Credit in the Wix Valuation 07:10 Why Salesforce & Atlassian Are More Resilient Than People Think 13:13 Base 44's Margin Profile vs Wix 15:00 Why Wix Built Its Own AI Model 21:00 Wix Has 3,500 People — Will That Shrink or Grow With AI? 29:25 What to Do With Cash: Buybacks, Acquisitions or Hiring More Engineers? 32:10 How to Retain Talent When Your Stock Is Down 35:34 Why Off-the-Shelf AI Customer Support Doesn't Work 38:43 The Real AI Dream for SMBs 41:40 Are SMBs Excited or Terrified by AI? 51:34 Why Choosing to Be Here Gives You Power Through a Shitstorm 52:06 How to Build Resilience 56:39 How to Context-Switch Between CEO Mode and Being a Present Partner 57:46 Parenting Advice From a Public Company CEO Under Pressure 59:15 Quick-Fire Round ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3j2KMcZTtgTNBKwtZBMHvl?si=85bc9196860e4466 Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-twenty-minute-vc-20vc-venture-capital-startup/id958230465 Follow Harry Stebbings on X: https://twitter.com/HarryStebbings Follow Avishai Abrahami on X: https://twitter.com/Avishai_ab Follow 20VC on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/20vchq Follow 20VC on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@20vc_tok Visit our Website: https://www.20vc.com Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://www.thetwentyminutevc.com/contact ----------------------------------------------- #20vc #harrystebbings #ceo #ai #avishaiabrahami #wix #base44 #vibecoding

Avishai AbrahamiguestHarry Stebbingshost
Jul 13, 20261h 4mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

  1. 0:00 – 4:26

    Intro

    1. AA

      You're not gonna vibe-code Shopify, no matter how good you are. Today we are trading on others company's news. We're not trading on Wix news.

    2. HS

      It's a tough time for some public company CEOs with the SaaSpocalypse. That is more true for this CEO than almost any other. The Wix market cap is about $2.8 billion. They are doing 2.1 billion in revenue. They have Base44, which is now well over 150 million in ARR, growing incredibly quickly. And quite frankly, the public markets just won't give them a break. And poor Avishai, their CEO, is going through it.

    3. AA

      We make about $400 million a year in free cash flow, and we invest about 200 and something million into Base44. We all give too much credit for AI and what it can do. If I would be in the university studying today, I would be terrified. If I'm here, I need to be fully committed to what I'm doing because I've chosen to be here. Nobody made me. Be the CEO of Wix even stock crashing like that, you know, all those things. I've chosen to be in the middle of that.

    4. SP

      Ready to go? [upbeat music]

    5. HS

      Avishai, it is so good to have you on the show, dude. I've wanted to make this one happen for a while. Thank you so much for joining me.

    6. AA

      My pleasure. I'm so happy to be here. I've watched a lot of episodes, and as I said, I learned a lot, so I'm very excited to be on the spotlight.

    7. HS

      Dude, you know, I've just got to start with just a weird thing, but I like to bring people to personality and life a little bit. I spoke to Eran on Monday before the show, and he told me that you stay up insanely late. Is that true? And what does the sleep schedule look like just before we dive in?

    8. AA

      So I usually go to sleep at around 5:00 to 6:00 AM. And, uh, and, uh, I'd wake up around 11:00, 11:30. And so that's been my routine s- pretty much since I remember myself. I, I think there's something good about it for a CEO, as surprisingly as it might sound, because I have a few hours where I can actually think and work on things and plan things and do things and, a- as opposed to always being, you know, in a meeting where I have to fight to get a clear schedule. So I've, eh, eh, eh, eh, probably four hours where I can, you know, do real work and not just talk to people.

    9. HS

      Do you mind what time people come in in the morning? If you're sleeping till 11:30, you're gonna be in the office at 12:30, 1:00. Do you mind if people are the same?

    10. AA

      Actually, I don't mind. I don't mind. But most people don't like that schedule, right? So most people will not agree with that and be volunteering for that. I think that it also created another thing which I like, is that when you're a smaller company, people want the CEO to solve their problems. You know, they're like, "How do we mitigate between arguments and..." But by the time I would arrive, most of the things would be solved by themself. Okay? So the things that were left, eh, for me to handle would be the more, eh, the more, well, the harder things to solve and between people communication skills and other things. So I mean, I think that actually helps the organization be more mature.

    11. HS

      Totally get that. Um, your Whoop or your Oura must absolutely hate you, and your sleep score must be shit, respectfully.

    12. AA

      Actually, Oura did at some point added a sleep profile where they defined that, uh... So they had this theory, right, which is a very, I would say, eh, Northern California, which is you have to go to sleep at, like, 9:00 PM or something. And that was the beginning. And, and then at some point they, they added, well, that's an early sleeper. Then they had a normal sleeper, which I think is around 12:00 AM. And then they added very late sleepers. Okay? So they kind of like, they said, well, there are different profiles. And apparently, by the way, those are genetic profiles, so, eh, it's very hard to move between them.

    13. HS

      Well, thank God. Otherwise your sleep score would've been in the basement. [laughs]

    14. AA

      What, what, what time do you go to sleep?

    15. HS

      I go to sleep at about 2:00 AM, so I, I'm pretty late, but I'm not quite as late as you.

    16. AA

      Yeah. I, I figured that. So yeah, so you're privileged, right?

    17. HS

      Yeah.

    18. AA

      So Oura would probably now classify you as a late sleeper, and that's what you're gonna get, uh-

    19. HS

      I don't use it, dude. I don't need another fucking device to tell me that I'm shit. I'm sorry. Like [laughs] you know what? Life is hard enough. I, I've got a girlfriend to tell me that I'm not doing well enough. I don't need a fucking Oura. [laughs] Um,

  2. 4:26 – 6:27

    Wix at $2.8B Market Cap on $2.1B Revenue — What Does the Market Not See?

    1. HS

      but, uh, I want to be direct. You got a market cap today of, like, $2.8 billion.

    2. AA

      Yes.

    3. HS

      And you do 2.1 billion in ARR, give or take. Both kind of give or take. What does the market not see, Avishai, that they should see?

    4. AA

      Well, I think that's kind of a thing now with all SaaS companies, right, where the multiples went to shit. And I think a lot [laughs] of it is, is because the market don't know how to, eh, calculate the danger for SaaS companies with AI. And so I, I think that's the reason. Uh, in some cases I agree, in some cases I disagree. But overall, I, I, I think that's what we're experiencing now. And, eh, and, you know, time will prove who's right, but we are working hard.

    5. HS

      You are working hard. Um, yes and no. A lot of the SaaSpocalypse, many of them have come back, and then some of them haven't come back.

    6. AA

      Yeah.

    7. HS

      Es- essentially what they're doing-

    8. AA

      What, what did you come back all the way up?

    9. HS

      I mean, Atlassian's come up again. I mean, CrowdStrike never went down. Palo Alto Networks is up, obviously. Um-

    10. AA

      Palo Alto's not SaaS.

    11. HS

      Box is up. Uh-

    12. AA

      Right.

    13. HS

      So, so-

    14. AA

      But, you know, Salesforce is down. ServiceNow is down, right? Figma would be down. So there's a lot that at, at the core, okay, I, I think are, are still down. Atlassian, if it went up, that's actually w- the one I'm more concerned about. And I own a lot of shares, so. But, but I didn't notice that it went up.

    15. HS

      Well, there you go. I've provided you with some good news for today. I'm, I'm a bringer of good news. [laughs] But essentially, like, you know, I had Mayur on the show from Base44. M- B- Base44 is doing 140, 150 million in revenue last announced.

    16. AA

      Wow. Yes.

    17. HS

      I'm, I'm sure more now It, it kind of ascribes zero value to the core business. Is that just completely nuts to you, or are you like, "Yeah, I get that. In a new world where technology creation is easier than ever, I understand that." How do you think about that?

  3. 6:27 – 7:10

    Base 44 Gets Zero Credit in the Wix Valuation

    1. AA

      Well, I think that... I mean, uh, uh, first of all, I think it, it describe- ascribe less than a, than a zero value to the current business. Because if you look at peers, they're doing a, a vibe-coding, uh, uh, the multiple is much higher than the one we would get for Base to be at 2 billion, right? So Base, uh, uh, on its own should probably be at 8 billion. So, uh, uh, you know, I'm not trying to guess the, the stock market logic. You know, I think that most of the time when you follow companies for a long time, you understand that the market got them completely wrong, completely right, a- and there's always a mix and, and it's a cycle, right? And, and the- this cycle, uh, I understand where it's coming from, okay? I disagree

  4. 7:10 – 13:13

    Why Salesforce & Atlassian Are More Resilient Than People Think

    1. AA

      with it, and I disagree with it, uh, strongly in a few companies, less in other companies. For example, Salesforce, okay? Salesforce, what, what is the biggest value Salesforce provide? It's not the CRM. It's the fact that you trust a SaaS providers with your data, right? You have huge banks, huge companies that actually allow Salesforce to hold all of the customer data because they trust Salesforce, okay? You're not gonna vibe-code that because the trust is massive, right? It's a massive part of the value that Salesforce gives, okay? And the... A- and yes, they have the marketplace, which a lot of functionality and other things, but the CRM itself is, is a s- very small part of the value. So in my mind, I don't see how you compete with that with some kind of a Claude code project.

    2. HS

      If Salesforce becomes a valueless database that agents are able to scrape and then provide in different interfaces, then you basically become a commodity piping provider, which would mean that you could almost just replace with-

    3. AA

      Uh, what other platform, uh, will JP Morgan trust for their customers' data outside of the JP Morgan closed garden DMZ secure, uh, environment? None. The answer is none. They don't trust anybody else with that, but they do trust Salesforce, right? A- and that's huge. That's not a small thing. It's huge. It means that, you know... A- a- and, like, it, it's extremely hard to change that.

    4. HS

      I get that, and actually the g- I was thinking of the government contracts that Salesforce has and has won. Again, I would say, trust your point. But is that a one of one? If we go to the other providers, the other people who've been hurt by the SaaSpocalypse, they're not in that same gilded trust.

    5. AA

      Oh, I agree. I agree. It depends which one. By the way, Atlassian for me is actually the one where... Again, I'm a shareholder, so I wanna be clear, okay? And I love the company. I've been a shareholder for a very long time. And, uh, and when I look at it, at, uh, Atlassian, uh, I think that the customers are the one that are more likely to build things with Code Claude, right? Because... Code Claude because they are developers, right? So I'm always in a, in a bit of a concern there because I'm like if somebody were to replace their, really the, the, the management stack of the tickets and, and workflow, those would be those guys, okay? And yet you said this is the one that recovered, so obviously I'm missing something, right? And, uh, and, and, and I think for Wix, look, our customers, most of our customers will be the pizza store next to your house, okay? Your hairdresser or a lot of small businesses, okay? They're not gonna use Claude code to build, okay, their business stack. They're not gonna do that for the w- all of what they need. It's, it's just not in the realm of possible now. Maybe in a few years they are, will be able to do that, but we are very far from it. Right? We tried at Wix. You know, one of the first thing we did with Base44 is that, okay, should we integrate the business logic of our vertical offering into Base44? And we make a test and we said, "Can we build the hairdresser, just the business logic to manage a hairdresser business in Base44?" And so we had the team, they tried, professional developers, they tried to do it for a week. They ended up doing a little bit. And so we said, "Okay, we're gonna bring a, a, a stronger team," okay? And actually the team that's already in Wix. And, and two weeks later they still didn't achieve that, okay? Those things are complicated. And, and so I don't think your- the guy in the, in, in the, I don't know, the pizza next to your house is gonna use Claude code to build his delivery, his scheduling, his staff and management system and, and, and then all of those things, and then build a website, okay, to do that. Well, some, yes, okay? Some, yes. And we see it. We see it, okay? The- we see that some do, okay? We see it. A- and again, Claude code is much harder than Base44. Base44 gives you a lot coming out of the box, so you can do way more with it. But we see that some do, but I don't think the majority will. So I think this is where Wix is, right? This is our c- those are our customers, and to assume that they're gonna one day just say, "Well, you know what? I'm gonna start building all of those things," maybe, but we don't see it yet.

    6. HS

      I totally get that, but then the, the counter would be, okay, so it's just a TAM reduction. Because some will, and maybe that's 20%, and that means the TAM that was 100% is now 80%, so it's like a smaller market. Is that fair?

    7. AA

      Well, yeah, maybe, Harry. But then where are they gonna go move to? Vibe-coding?

    8. HS

      Move... Yeah, move to Lovable, Wrapp, Base44.

    9. AA

      All right. So but we own Base44. [laughs]

    10. HS

      Sure. Fantastic. Yeah.

    11. AA

      I see... [laughs] Okay. You're saying that they might move from here to here. That's fine.

    12. HS

      If you say, "Hey, you know, the hairdresser's not gonna do it, the construction worker's not gonna do it," I get you. Do you not think they will in tomorrow's model or the year after's model? You know-

    13. AA

      Perhaps

    14. HS

      ... I had Sam Altman on the show and he said you have to build for the model of tomorrow or next year.

    15. AA

      Well, we are. That's Base44. That's why we invest so much into Base44. Because if that will be something that happen in that way, okay, that's why we have Base44. Uh, e- essentially, the way I look at it today is that there are three different options. One, the guy that built the pizza place, he said he wanna build a website and the management tools for that, okay? He's gonna be staying a Wix customer because he don't wanna put the effort into that. His business in life is build- is making pizza, right? So that's option number one, right? So he, he's g- a lot of them will stay here. Option number three, and I'm gonna say, is that they're gonna say, "Well, I'm actually really interested in that. Base44 made it so easy for me to vibe-code everything I need. It's custom-made for me, so I'm gonna use Base44 for that," okay? And, and there is, of course, the middle ground, which is, like, some people will be here, some people will be there, okay? Which, which is, I'm guessing, the more likely scenario to happen in the next five, six years, right? Not everybody will be in this side or in that side.

  5. 13:13 – 15:00

    Base 44's Margin Profile vs Wix

    1. HS

      Can I ask you, when you think about, like, Base44's margin profile, a lot of the providers, you know, we've had Lovable, we've had Wrapplet, we've had Mayo on the show. Um, and, you know, their margin is, is one that's hidden in a lot of cases, and it leads to negativity and skepticism around whether they're actually good businesses. How does the margin profile of a Base44 compare to the margin profile of a Wix?

    2. AA

      Well, Wix is, uh, uh, way, way, way, way, way more profitable, right? The cost of a Wix we- generating Wix website, uh, i- i- is, is pretty much zero in comparison, and hosting pretty much zero in comparison. So way more profitable in Wix than on Base44. Uh, the margins are much better. The retention is also better. Because you start building something, you need to put a lot of effort to finish it. Uh, and, and, and so it, it's way more challenging, but we did get the cost to go c- we're continuously seeing a decline in the cost, uh, in, in Base44. There's a brilliant team always leading that. Then, uh, and we just released our own AI model, right? So we, we, we, we fine-tune a few models and, and then combine them, and we're using that. And then we're actually achieving a equivalent to the top of the t- top-tier models, uh, with that, so the cost of that is dramatically less. And, uh, so I, I think that in, in, in two years or maybe less, uh, this is not gonna be an important question.

    3. HS

      Can you talk to me about the decisions to your own model? It's a big technological decision to choose to do that versus use open source off the shelf or frontier models. Can you talk to me about the decision to do that and why you thought it was strategically

  6. 15:00 – 21:00

    Why Wix Built Its Own AI Model

    1. HS

      right?

    2. AA

      Yeah, of course. I think there are two parts to that. Uh, number one is, uh, quality, right? We have a huge amount of training data that is happening for our-- that we're getting on, uh, on Base44, right? And, uh, and, and because we get, you know, we see what user are trying to do, I see where it fails. We understand better and better what they're trying to say and saying it with the wrong prompt, right? So we learn all those things. A- a- and by learning all those things, we c- we think we can actually create a model that is better for Base44 than it is for, uh, uh, than just, you know, the, the, the frontier models that are more, way more generic, right? We don't need, right, the knowledge that a lot of them have on Chinese poetry, right? Be- because they do, you know? They've been trained on that, okay? But we do need the knowledge that they have on, on to focus and, and increase the knowledge they have on, on, on what is it you mean when you say, "I wanna create a task manager for my, for me to manage my husband," okay? "Or to tell my boyfriend where he's wrong." Okay? So you have that, right? So you... All of those things, okay, and we have a huge amount of data that we can use to create a model that is better and better, right? Now, it, it's not trying to replace the frontier models and, and, and w- but it's trying to be c- to make us better at Base44, right? So it's a different target, which is why it's easier than building a Feibel or Mittas, right? We're not trying to build Mittas. The other thing is that we've did it on already on Wix, okay? So on Wix, when you generate a website today, we run, we, we are running a model that we trained, okay? And it's faster, it's cheaper, but it's also better, and it makes less errors. And we keep improving it because we have continuous, right, a continuous improvement loop, feedback loop, because we see when customers like something. And so every week, we are trying to run it again and train it again to get to a place where it's better.

    3. HS

      How much cheaper is own model versus using a frontier model?

    4. AA

      It, it depends, but I would say between 1% to 30%.

    5. HS

      Wow. That's not nearly as much as I thought it was. Um-

    6. AA

      Well-

    7. HS

      You, y- that might be surprising, but, like, Chamath came out and said that, hey, when he uses open source, it's 14 to 16x cheaper.

    8. AA

      Yeah, but it's-

    9. HS

      Why?

    10. AA

      ... uh, is using it on a smaller task. Yes, that's absolutely true, by the way. If you're using open source models, okay, then and, and, and you can use the really basic ones for a lot of different things. They work great, okay? Then it would cost you even less. But when you wanna use a complicated model, for example, what you need for something like Base44, okay, it's not gonna get to that much of a level. But you can achieve 5% to 10%.

    11. HS

      Do you think we're in the cost optimization period for Base44 yet [chuckles] given you have, like, a Wrapplet who do, like, multi-agent, uh, and multi-model modes? They are not cost optimizing at all, but they are delivering a good customer experience. We're not in the cost optimization stage for these businesses yet, are we?

    12. AA

      No, I think it's more about quality. I b- if you, uh, let me have 20% less in quality, uh, sorry, 20% more quality, 20% less cost, I'll definitely go for the quality. It's a new market. It's just happening, starting. We should make it better.

    13. HS

      Why do you not publish Base44's numbers? Like, they're amazing. Like, would it not be helpful to tell the story?

    14. AA

      Well, we do publish them every once in a while. We do the, uh, ARRs. Uh, Mao told you, and we do publish them every once in a while. So we do publish them. And, I mean, none of the p- players in this market are actually publishing a, on a weekly or a monthly basis. I know only when they raise money. We do it quite more often, that's it. I think there's no need for us, uh, to start breaking the numbers because from Wix, when we do the quarterly report, a- a- a- as we tend to do things like move customer between one platform to the other, right? We're pushing pla- uh, customers in between.

    15. HS

      Do you encourage customers to try each platform?

    16. AA

      Yes. But more than that, we en- encourage, encourage our partners and agencies to use Base44 now. All right? So we do that. We actually spend time on that.

    17. HS

      And you do that because you think it's the future? Because you have a, a worse margin profile on that, it would make sense financially to push them to the core business.

    18. AA

      Yeah, I, I think that it's part of the future. I, I wanna be clear. I think that the future is what I said, it's gonna be a combination. And I think it's a bit more complicated than that. I think that, uh, if you ever tried to use any vibe-coding tools, and you try to build anything very complicated, it's hard. When you're trying to do visual editing, it's really annoying, okay? The, the, there's ... It's a bit more complicated than that. But ... And so I think the future is a combination of both, and we want our agencies to have all the tools they need for the future. And I'm 100% sure that Base44 will be part of the future. But I also, almost as confident, if not more confident, okay, that things like Wix will also be part of the future. You're not gonna vibe-code Shopify, no matter how good you are. The business stack is too hard. Okay?

    19. HS

      So what, what happens then? Stock markets just appreciate that trust is important, people want Salesforce, and Wix market cap rises again? I, I, I'm genuinely being naive here. Help me out. What happens?

    20. AA

      I have no idea. I'm, I'm not a stock trader. All right? So this is the truth. Right? I do that for my, my, my, my fun, and I'm, uh, as I said, I don't even make sense because I own a lot of Atlassian, even that I'm like, "Oh my God, all the developers will replace it with their own thing," which obviously doesn't happen, right? So I was wrong on both sides, except being lazy and not selling my stocks of Atlassian, yes.

    21. HS

      Are you able to detach

  7. 21:00 – 29:25

    Wix Has 3,500 People — Will That Shrink or Grow With AI?

    1. HS

      your happiness from the market cap or the stock price?

    2. AA

      Yes. I, I really don't care. I, I wake up in the morning, I have one thing that I need to do. I have to focus on my business, okay? And I can control, uh, some of it, not all of it, right? And, and, and, and I focus on that. Today we're trading on others' company's news. We're not trading on Wix news. We're trading mostly on what OpenAI or Anthropic are saying, or Google is saying, right? And the reality is that I cannot influence that. I cannot influence what people are thinking. And, uh, so, and, and I, I, to be honest, I, I care less about it. I really don't look, wake up in the morning and say, "Oh my God, it went 20% up or 20% down." Even when we went up, I w- I was more concerned about the issues that we still have to solve, which is the same thing I do today.

    3. HS

      I completely understand that, and I think that's a right and very healthy mindset, one that very few CEOs are able to do. So I'm thrilled for you that you're able to do that. Um, uh, Aran from Monday said he was not able to do that. [laughs] Uh, and so-

    4. AA

      I have more, I'm all white hair, you see that?

    5. HS

      Uh, yeah, slightly. Yeah, he's got great surfer hair, I have to admit. Um, where it does become an actual tangible challenge is in M&A. One of the joys of being public is you have a, a tradable currency that you can buy companies with, and when you are priced lower, that currency is less valuable to buy other assets, like a next Base44. With the price today, does it make M&A impossible?

    6. AA

      Well, we still have cash, and we can get more cash if we need. I think our issue today is that we've a, uh, the M&A of Base44, right? Well, we bought a company with one person. I, I wanna be clear, right? And, uh, and, and, and then we put a lot of people from Wix into that. All right? So that's actually complicated M&A j- because you have to build a company around it, okay? We didn't get a company. Luckily, Mao is brilliant person, scr- amazing leader. But, uh, uh, uh, so e- essentially, I don't know how to do another one of those, all right, at the same time and have the same q- quality that we, we can merge the operations together. So it, it's very hard. So ... And we are about to launch another product next month. All right? So that's a different product from, uh, that we have built. And, uh, so I think that our challenge today is actually execution on, on, uh, not finance. So if we wanna, uh, do an M&A, it will fall on the execution, uh, challenge and not on the finance.

    7. HS

      You said one-person company there. It did break news when it happened. It was a great story. One person, $80 million. And since, it's been an unbelievable acquisition. Obviously it's now, uh, m- probably double the revenue that you bought it for price, um, in terms of its 160 million, give or take.

    8. AA

      More than that, yes, more.

    9. HS

      Yeah. Wild. Talk to me about, like, bringing that into a board meeting or bringing that into an exec meeting and being like, "Hey, guys, I found this one guy, Mao. He's great. It's a one-person company. Um, we should buy it for 80 million." What did that decision-making look like, and how did the discussion go?

    10. AA

      To be fair, very easy. You know, I, actually I never thought about it in the l- in the way that you describe it, so, uh, you, you're right. Uh, uh, maybe it was, uh, surprising that it was that easy. Uh, we have a really good board, really smart people, okay? And, uh, we explained the logic behind it And they were like, "Yeah, it makes sense." And all, uh, they would kind of ask us a lot of really smart questions, but none of them was that, "Why are you willing to pay so much for one person?" That, that was not part of the questions. They actually focused on the business, the business logic, what are we gonna do in terms of marketing, how are we gonna build a team around it? So we got a lot of questions in regards to that. Also about why we think it's better than Replit or, or Lovable, right? And, uh, and, uh, so we explained it and, and, uh... Yeah, so no, nobody ever told us anything. Uh, until now I never thought about it like that.

    11. HS

      Can I ask you, you said that, "Oh, we have a lot of cash." How, how much cash do you have? I, I should know this and it's public, but, like...

    12. AA

      I, I, it's, it's complicated. I actually don't... Uh, like we have a debt here, a loan there. Uh, and then we make about $400 million a year, okay? In, in, in free cash flow.

    13. HS

      Uh-huh.

    14. AA

      Right? And, uh, and so we make cash, and we invest about 200 and something million into Base44, or a bit more than that, okay? That's an... And so overall, I think we, we, we're okay, you know?

    15. HS

      Totally. If I was sitting with you and we have pubs in the UK, I'm not sure if you have pubs in Israel, you probably have bars. Um, if we were sitting in a pub, I'd say to you, "Avishai, dude, let's take this private. Like, what a great business, what a mispriced asset. Would you like to take it private?"

    16. AA

      I think it would be pretty much illegal for me to even answer that, right? [laughs] I, I, I gotta say, uh, my- I'm focusing on the company and building the company. And, uh, and, uh, I think we're doing incredible things, and we have super smart talent. It's an exciting journey, so I love that. And, uh, and we're go- gonna continue to do that. And, and, you know, I'm not buying the company, that I can tell you. And, uh, uh, and I think the stock market should be a place where smart people make money, and, uh, you know, if they think like you do that it's a mispriced asset, then that's a great opportunity. If they think that AI is gonna kill everything, then obviously that's a terrible opportunity. And so this is everybody has to do their, their own, you know, uh, decision-making and planning.

    17. HS

      Totally get you. In terms of, like, the stock market and how people make money from it, you did do the buyback. How, how did you think about the buyback, and any thoughts and reflections on that?

    18. AA

      Well, obviously we had terrible timing.

    19. HS

      [laughs] Dude, I didn't say it. I did... I ca- I could've, I was like, "Come on."

    20. AA

      You know, I think that, uh, but it's very hard to time the stock market, okay?

    21. HS

      [laughs]

    22. AA

      Very hard to time the stock market. I think we had too much float, and I think we had a lot of money in the bank, and, uh, that was sitting there. We knew that we're not gonna do a major acquisition because we are too focused on the new product coming and on Base44. So we knew, uh, we cannot do both things. Uh, we cannot do another acquisition, so we had, uh, a billion and a half dollars that we're kind of like, "Okay, it doesn't make sense for us just to hold it." And then we said, "Okay, let's, you know, let's use that opportunity where the stock is very low to buy it." Obviously, you know, the, the, the stock market jumped like this when we did it, and then jumped... Went crashing down. Uh, that's part of life, but, uh, I think the big question is not what happened in the last three months, it's where it's gonna be in three years, right? And I hope that by that time it's proven to be a smart decision.

    23. HS

      I mean, if you want real bulls, then you buy back more now. Is that conversation, like... Is it like, "No, no, no, no," [laughs] like we, we, we had that discussion? Like, how, how do you reflect on future buybacks given what you know now?

    24. AA

      I, I think that buyback are a fantastic tool for a company, and companies should use that, and I think they don't use it enough. I think the concept that companies, you know, always issue more and more, decrease their dilution by issuing more shares to employees and, and for other things is, is, uh, uh, something that should be balanced by, with buyback when the company can. So I'm, I'm, uh, I'm really in favor of that. I think that it's another way of giving a dividend to all of your stockholders. That, that's my opinion. And again, I'm not a professional, you know, stock market person. You know, that's not my profession. I'm a geek, I'm an engineer, I'm a bit of a marketeer, I'm a product guy.

    25. HS

      I'm worried about the level of s- uh, stock-based compensation that we're seeing. It seems like we're normalizing insane levels, a la Snapchat, that candidly make it very difficult for me as an investor to see the same attractiveness in terms of returns that I had before. How do you think about SBC being good to employees but also not screwing investors?

    26. AA

      Well, I don't think you have a choice, right? I think that, uh, I would say that you wanna get the best talent, and you wanna keep, maintain the best talent, right?

  8. 29:25 – 32:10

    What to Do With Cash: Buybacks, Acquisitions or Hiring More Engineers?

    1. AA

      And, and, uh, and, and, and part of it is allowing, uh, them to... Because they build the company. They should be invested in the dream, right? You should give stocks to employees. That, that's my opinion, right? I think that the fact that it's only in technology companies and it's not in any, uh, in many other companies, that's a, a different issue, right? I, I would actually love to see that every fashion company, right, give the whole team stock options, because I think that's m- way more fair, right? And maybe if the, uh, if the US government would do that, or the British government, would actually have better people running, right, uh, running the, the country and, and somehow getting, uh, uh, finding that their compensation is related to their achievements, right? So I think it's a really good mechanism. I think that when company's starting to m- uh, starting making cash, right? So you collect cash. You have essentially a few option what to do with this cash. Number one is acquisition, okay? But you can only do so many acquisition, uh, and maintain the company. I mean, some people master that, and I, I, I look at them and I admire them. I would be in, be able to do that. But the majority of the companies didn't, right? And, and majority of acquisition fail. So I think that that's a path that some companies should pursue. Every company probably should pursue a little bit, but, so this is one thing you can do with your money. The other thing you can do with your money is do a buyback, which essentially is the same as give dividends, okay? And, and then you balance your, your, your stock-based compensation. Uh, and I think the third thing you could do with your money is invest into hiring more engineers maybe, but then your EBITDA get destroyed, right? So the stock market hates you.

    2. HS

      At this point, though, do you give a shit if the stock market hates you? I'm, uh, one of my own neighbors is a public company CEO, and he's like, "Honestly, dude" ... And he's, he's one of the companies that have been hit. We haven't mentioned them, but he's like, "Honestly, dude, at this point, can't do any worse, can I?" Right? Fuck it.

    3. AA

      Well, I, I'm sure we can, but it's hard. Okay?

    4. HS

      [laughs]

    5. AA

      And [laughs] , and, uh, and, uh ... But, but a- a- again, I, I have a huge amount of respect for everybody who put money in Wix and bought stocks, and I know, I do understand that my job is to, uh, do my best to create a wonderful company. I have a bigger, actually bigger obligation, right, to my customers, right? That's another big obligation that I have. I don't think they are one against the other. I think I should balance both. And then, too, for my employees. But I think that, like, there's no stock market you can talk to, right? It- it's millions of people with different opinions and, and so I, I don't know how to take that into consideration.

  9. 32:10 – 35:34

    How to Retain Talent When Your Stock Is Down

    1. AA

      I don't know how to even listen to that.

    2. HS

      I am friends with many of these enterprise SaaS company CEOs. Uh, we've mentioned some of them. And when I chat to them, all of them are like, "Oh my God, my talent is leaving." And you know, their stocks is not worth what it was, and it's very diff- and morale is down. How do you advise them on how to retain talent when you are in an environment as you are?

    3. AA

      I think it's a huge challenge. First of all, I don't think there's a magical, uh, solution. There's no magic here. I, I think that everybody gonna lose talent, and we are losing talent. Everybody lost ta- everybody will lose talent, okay? And I think a lot of time it's healthy for, for a company. As long as you don't compromise on who you keep, and you make sure that the people that you allow to stay, okay, are really great people, you're gonna find you have a lot of, um, talent that you never noticed before, okay? And that gonna refresh a lot of the organization. So it's not about how do you prevent people from leaving, right? And it, it's more a thing about how you make sure the organization keep being a organization where the vast majority are top talents, right? And, and, and, and the fact that a lot of us gets very, well, used to, very spoiled by saying, "Well, you know, we have people here working for 15 years that are always top talent and nobody ever leaves because our stock is at whatever." Okay? And that, that kind of made us spoiled to the fact that that's not a natural thing, okay? Now, I do highly appreciate there's a lot of super smart people around me that I would be extremely sad if they leave, okay? And worried. But saying that, it's still, I think that we got a bit spoiled on that, and I think we need to remember that when we got those people, they didn't have 15 years of experience, right, working on, on our problems. And, and they, they became, and the, the reason that they are here later and they are super now because they had talent to begin with, right? And so we need to find a new generation and actually bring a lot of those in. So I think that's for me the challenge. In saying all of that, just to be clear, I'm working extremely hard to keep the top talent in the company, right? But that's life.

    4. HS

      Totally get that. Uh, always a big challenge in terms of talent retention. How many people are, are in Wix today, and how many are in Base44?

    5. AA

      So Base44 is around 400 people.

    6. HS

      Wow.

    7. AA

      And Wix in total is about, including about 3,500. Uh, we have a u- you have to remember, we have a lot of small businesses. We need to support them.

    8. HS

      3,500?

    9. AA

      Yes.

    10. HS

      Well, hello, Jeff Bezos. What, what ... I'm so sorry. What, what do 3,500 people that ... Where's the majority of them? In customer support? In, in, in-

    11. AA

      Customer support is our biggest department.

    12. HS

      Wow. Are you using AI? That, that must get taken to, like, zero pretty soon.

    13. AA

      No. Well, I, I, I feel, I don't think ever it would be, right, zero. I think we have far-

    14. HS

      Not quite zero, but maybe 10

    15. AA

      What, 10 customer support representatives do you mean?

    16. HS

      Yeah.

    17. AA

      Uh, it's ... Well, we have a, we, we are offering our services in 192 countries. It's a bit tricky to speak for 10 people to do that. I, you know, we, we just have to remember, right, it's a different scale of operation when it comes to that.

  10. 35:34 – 38:43

    Why Off-the-Shelf AI Customer Support Doesn't Work

    1. HS

      Did you build your own customer support AI, or do you use off-the-shelf providers?

    2. AA

      We built our own. It, it doesn't work.

    3. HS

      Avishai, this is what I don't get. You know, you see all these hyped customer support companies, and I'm gonna get in trouble here, but I'm too old to give a shit to, so who cares? Um, and, and on the ... Everyone who I speak to, whether it's Airwallex or Klarna or Novan or Wix, you build your own.

    4. AA

      We, we, we actually tried not to build our own, you know. We tried. We tested many different things. It doesn't work.

    5. HS

      I, I don't get this market.

    6. AA

      [laughs] Well, to be fair, you know, we- we're looking at young companies that built AI agents, right? And they prove something very quickly, and they hired a bunch of salespeople and trying to sell it. And then they are going to one of those companies you mentioned, where they have super smart engineers that are really focused on that. They have more engineers supporting their support, right, than all of the, the, the, the, the HR on those as companies that are trying to sell them, okay? And, and better engineers a lot of time. So yes, it's not so ... You know, I ... It will take time. I think in five years gonna be different.

    7. HS

      I ... Do you ... It, it's gonna be different in five y- again, dude, I, I have no idea. I'm a fricking podcaster in London. You're-

    8. AA

      May- maybe. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I like, to be fair, I don't know. I don't, I don't know. But, uh, but, uh, but, uh, uh, uh, we tried, it didn't work. We tried again, it didn't work. We tried again, it didn't work. We kept working on our solution on the side. At some point it was like, "Okay, that, enough."

    9. HS

      Wow. Okay, got you. In, in three years time, how big will the Wix team be then?

    10. AA

      Well, it's very hard to say, you know? I would love to say, "Well, Wix team in, uh, three years will be, uh, a thousand people in Base44 and a thousand people in Wix, and everything else will be AI agents," okay? I'm not so sure it, it is possible. I, I, I think that we all give too much credit for AI and what it can do, right? And, and, and when you start looking at the details, it's not really doing that well for a lot of the things. It, it's amazing, it's incredible, it's super powerful, but, and the but is pretty big.

    11. HS

      You need to be more American, okay?

    12. AA

      All right, all right. AI's the best thing in the world. It's gonna change everything. Everything gonna happen and bla- and whatever. Well, I'm gonna be by myself in the office, me and my ... Or, and most of the time we're gonna play PlayStation, all right? And this is [laughs] ... I, I don't think it's happening that way.

    13. HS

      N- now you're like Sam Altman, dude. You sell the dream. It's much ... I've learnt this. It's much easier in life to be Walt Disney, tell me a story, than it is Jerry Maguire, show me the money. And the trouble with Israeli entrepreneurs, I find, is you're all like, "Show me the money." You're generally not that excitable. You're very realistic. You're very direct.

    14. AA

      No, I, I could tell you what I dream about here, but it's not about AI replacing my customer support. Okay? That's a nice thing to have. I think that we're gonna be able to have a way for AI to do so ... With AI and with technology, small businesses will be able to achieve so much more than they do today. That they'll be more efficient, grow faster, and way more profitable,

  11. 38:43 – 41:40

    The Real AI Dream for SMBs

    1. AA

      right? And I think that is something that I'm sure will happen, right? So if you are ... If you run a gym, right? Or, or you're a personal trainer, or ... Your ability to utilize AI to manage your business better, to sell additional product, and to reach out for new customers will be massively enhanced, okay? And not in 10 years, not in five years. Next year. A- and, and that will done ... really have a massive effect on how you do things as a small business. So that I'm sure of.

    2. HS

      Is that what ... But dude, is that not a little bit, um, paradoxical? And you're like, "It'll have a massive effect next year." Great, I'm a venture capitalist. That means massive revenue growth and my companies grow fast. Cool. But you just said AI's not that great, and it doesn't actually do that much, and, like, the questionability of values there.

    3. AA

      No, no. I actually said, "Well, AI's really doing a lot of amazing thing, but" ... And the but is very big, okay? Because we all tend to ... How, how many times you go to ChatGPT and you said, "I wanna know what this thing in medicine is" or, "I wanna know what that is" or, "Tell me what is the chance?" And I, and, and, and, and I can tell you, like, I, I, I, we need, I needed to test something and, and I wanted ChatGPT to write me the safety protocol, right? I actually used Claude, not ChatGPT. Sorry, Sam. And, uh, and, uh, sorry. I got, I got six gates, okay? And he said, "Those are the gates. You have to make sure to test every one of them," okay? So I started to ask why this one, and we started to analyze, and we worked on it. From six, it became one. All of the other ones said, "Oh, okay, question. You know what? You really caught me here. I might have overstepped. Uh, uh, uh, no. We're gonna emphasize that." And then he writes, "Well, I'm removing it from something you must test to something that you might need in the future to take a look at." Okay? A- and we all tend to do that, right? We all tend to do, have this massive trust into AI models. And, and, and, and, and, and I think that's one of the thing where the but is, okay? But when you take an AI model and make it work really well for something, okay, it can be incredible. The ... I, I'll give you an example. Like, the most basic thing we all take for granted now. You can actually have a conversation with AI model, right? You can actually have it talk to you on the phone, talk to you on, on your computer. We couldn't do that five years ago, four years ago. And, yeah, I actually do that. You know, I do that when I drive. I can actually ... If I have a thing I want to do, I click on it and I love the way it works in ChatGPT. Uh, so there is a big difference between if you take AI and try to do customer support for a very complicated company, or to help you run your customer's order, your schedule. And if you build the right skill, the right tools for it, then it bec- become super efficient. And it can also call your customer and talk to them and, and do things. So yes, you can have that massive extra layer.

    4. HS

      Do you find that SMBs are excited or terrified by AI, both in the product and when you speak to them? There's a lot of skepticism. It, it's not always

  12. 41:40 – 51:34

    Are SMBs Excited or Terrified by AI?

    1. HS

      welcomed.

    2. AA

      Well, I didn't see that with SMBs, actually. I think that we see it more with, uh, everybody else. I think SMBs, when they wake up in the morning, they have so many issues, right, of the running their business, that they really want something to help them run their business better.

    3. HS

      Yeah.

    4. AA

      Right? As opposed to if I would be in the university studying today, I would be terrified, right? That's the truth of AI. Because, like, why am I learning this? Would it even exist in a year, okay?

    5. HS

      Do you, do you wanna hear something wild? To change a university curriculum, in the UK this is, so forgive me. I'm sure it's pretty similar around the world. But it takes three years to change the material that goes on or goes through a yearly program. Three years to change it. Imagine the changes that have happened in Claude. If you're doing computer science, [laughs] like, it's pre-ChatGPT almost.

    6. AA

      I think that, uh, uh ... Actually, I don't know how long it takes here. But, uh, it takes time, and it's challenging, I think. But, uh-

    7. HS

      So, so if you were genuinely advising A 22-year-old. Imagine, you know, um, 20-year-old son of yours. I know you- you've got a newborn, so just skip a few years. Um, what would you say to him, genuinely?

    8. AA

      I would not be s- that concerned with LLMs replacing every kind of, uh, white collar jobs. I, I... That's not gonna happen. I... It's not that smart. It keep making silly mistakes. It's not very good. Actually, it's not very good at reasoning. It's very good at collecting data and, and, and reframing it. So, uh, I would be less afraid of that. All right? However, if we get another two or three jumps in algorithms, right, then, then I think we all becomes a bit like monkeys, right? [laughs] And, uh, so-

    9. HS

      The, the core question for me actually is that, you know, we're an investor in Agora, which is an AI law, uh, legal service. Um, and the core question for me is, do we see the same rate of improvement in adjacent functions to coding that we saw in coding? You know, Andrej Karpathy went from doing 20% of his work, coding work, with coding tools to 80% in six months. Do we see that same jump in amount of legal work done by AI?

    10. AA

      It, it depends on a few things, right? Uh, uh, and law might be a very good, uh, e- example for it, but I do believe that in law, when it comes to laws, uh, w- we... because laws, a bit like code, are mostly about textual context, right? And, and there's a tremendous amount, a huge amount, endless amount, way too much amount o- of, of legal written documents, right? And, and, and cases and, and, and, and, and, and so I think that this is one of the perfect places for it to be useful. But every time I see a doctor trying to do research by using LLMs, okay, I get horrified, because that's the wrong tool. It will probably read... It will answer you what some- it read somewhere on Reddit, okay, that somebody wrote. And, uh, and for... The LLM perspective, it's equivalent to the best research done on Nature, right? There's no, no difference. The... It holds them all in this giant thing that it has. It will try to verify it somewhat. Most of the time it doesn't read the research when it actually answers you, even if you use the highest level of, uh... So for legal stuff, I think that's really good. For a lot of other thing, I truly think that it's not the right algorithm.

    11. HS

      Do you buy that for the health? I'm just being honest here. Like, I think OpenAI and ChatGPT is a lot better than the majority of doctors at this point actually. Um, and on top of that, you know, health is now the second biggest usage of ChatGPT.

    12. AA

      Well, I'm invested in a company called K Health. I don't know if you're familiar with it.

    13. HS

      Yeah, yeah, yeah. Alon.

    14. AA

      Yeah, Alon.

    15. HS

      Yeah.

    16. AA

      And, uh, and, uh, they've proven that they diagnose better than most of the doctors. All right? But that's not the same as doing research, right?

    17. HS

      No, it's very different to doing research.

    18. AA

      Yeah. And, uh, for that, absolutely. I think that if you have... Because most of the time you go to a doctor, right, th- they diagnose you have a flu, go home. And, and [laughs] they give you some pill, and they tell you, "Well, take the pill and you'll get healthy in five days." And you would get healthy without a pill in five days. So nobody knows, [laughs] you know. Uh, and, and, and so when it come to the specific cases, yeah, I think that I, I think that it makes sense that AI, when it comes to understanding the natural scenario that you go through, okay, then yes, absolutely. So legal, okay, the legal system will have a lot of those, okay? And, and... But, but there's no research in legal. Well, what is research? Uh, you know, and, and but you do have research in medicine. I think when it come to research, it's not a good tool. So it's a bit different.

    19. HS

      Do you think frontier models will really only be used for a very small use case or kind of small amount of use cases, like s- science research, molecular biology, astrophysics, very, very difficult, complex things?

    20. AA

      Can't do that. Harry, they cannot do those things. You cannot do research on, on, uh, astrophysics with, uh, w- with LLM. They don't have the capacity for that. It's not what they do. You're gonna... They might answer you, but they don't run the models, the simulation in the background. You want to have the simulation background, you have to move to the next de- the DeepMinds, right? They do some of that, but not ChatGPT.

    21. HS

      Yeah. Be- Fine, but, like, model providers, you don't think they will do that in three years' time?

    22. AA

      Uh, uh, maybe, but then they have to connect different kind of models and different kind of architecture to their LLMs.

    23. HS

      Do you think model-

    24. AA

      And it's not that trivial

    25. HS

      I, I'm not... I don't think it is, but I do think your Isomorphic Labs and your Latent Labs and your Chai Discovery, who specialize in very, very complex reasoning around scientific-

    26. AA

      Oh, yeah, but that's not... I agree, but that's not just an N- probably not just an LLM, unless they just try-

    27. HS

      No

    28. AA

      ... right?

    29. HS

      I, I totally agree with that. Um, so yes, 100%.

    30. AA

      So those are complicated models. Uh, absolutely. Yes, you can.

  13. 51:34 – 52:06

    Why Choosing to Be Here Gives You Power Through a Shitstorm

    1. AA

      right, i- is that freedom and that knowledge that I'm here because I've chosen to be here. There's no other reason except that. I think that's, for me at least, is, i- i- i- i- is, is the freedom to understand that if I'm here, I need to be fully committed to what I'm doing. Because I've chosen to be here. Nobody made me. There's nobody, no reason except me choosing, okay, to be here, the, be the CEO of Wix, see the stock crashing like that, see other thing happening. You know, all those things. I've chosen to be in the middle of that, and that, I think, is tremendous amount of power.

  14. 52:06 – 56:39

    How to Build Resilience

    1. HS

      What would you say to someone who wants to build resilience for a shit storm that's about to come? Like you said that, dude. I mean, the pressure, the fucking headlines, the stock crashing, the this, the... It's just like hit, hit, hit. And, like, what would you advise me or someone listening who wants to learn how to be resilient for the hits that are gonna come?

    2. AA

      I, I, I think that the first thing to, to accept is that it will happen. Yeah, we- because we tend to think that, you know, if yesterday was easy, the day before that was easy, then tomorrow will be easy. That's not how life works, right? You never know where the next storm's coming from. You never know COVID arrives. You never know, you know, uh, war arrives, or you never know when the stock market crash. You never know. And it will happen for sure, 100%. It will happen. We tend to believe, you know, reality is going like, like this. You know, if you're here, it's gonna go slowly up and slowly down. But it doesn't. It goes in an extreme speed a- at, at some places, right? So it will go like this, and then boom, and then boom. And this is how reality is. The worst thing we have, right, the, the worst thing that happen is probably gonna be some random thing that happen on some random Wednesday, okay? It's not something that you get a lot of warning for, okay? In, in, in this, uh, sense, I think AI is the exception because it will be an... it was an extreme thing that we've seen happening in slow motion, right? It took a few years. It didn't happen boom. But, uh, so I think the first thing is to accept that it will happen. And, and, and the second thing, and this is something I remember from Babylon 5. You remember that TV series?

    3. HS

      Yeah.

    4. AA

      Right? In that there was this, uh, time of flying to this conflict somewhere and, and there were a lady on... the, the captain on that ship was, uh, very nervous, and the guy that, uh, told her, "Why are you nervous?" And she's like, "You know, well, we're going there and I wanna make sure." He said, "Listen, we're gonna get there when we get there," right? "And the weapons that we have are the weapons that we have," okay? And this is the most you can do, okay? So you just have to think about it, that this is how it is. And, and this actually run in my mind. It's not very smart, you know. Not a, like, a very inspiring sentence, but for me it run why, "Am I doing the best that I can?" Right? That's a huge question, right? And I always, uh, try to make sure that my answer for that is yes, right? And, and, and then everything else is, is what can I control? I, I cannot control more than what I can, so I try to do the best with what I can control. I, I know it's not a deep answer, but I don't think there is a deep answer here. The big question is, are you doing the best that you can in the situation that you are in? And, and if you are able to be honest with yourself and say, "I think I am," right, then, then that's a lot of the pressure going away. The other thing is that I think that I, I believe in meditation, I believe in neural and linguistic programming, NLP, and I did a lot of those, and that's really helpful

    5. HS

      I, I totally get you. One of the things I always think too is a mentor said to me, "You're never wrong to do the right thing, and the right thing is often the hard thing."

    6. AA

      Oh, I, I agree with that 100%. And then I'll tell you the last thing I always remind myself is that you go around and you see happy people, right? In a lot of its places, and they are not necessarily correlated with how much money they have or where they are or whatever. So I always remind myself, the happiest people I ever seen on the planet are in Brazil. I can always move to Brazil. Are you surprised it's not England? I mean, I mean, obviously, right? After 5:00 PM, people in England become more happy, but, uh, when they go to the pub, right? By the-

    7. HS

      Dude, you haven't been to England in a while. We go to the pub at 3:00 PM, okay?

    8. AA

      Okay.

    9. HS

      3:00 PM.

    10. AA

      I- at two hours more happy. All right.

    11. HS

      Yeah, yeah, yeah.

    12. AA

      All right.

    13. HS

      Uh, dude-

    14. AA

      And they-

    15. HS

      ... Finland, Finland is actually the happiest country in the world, which is astonishing to me when you look at the hours of light in Finland, but they, uh-

    16. AA

      I, I, I, I'm, I'm guessing the one who wrote that never been to Brazil

    17. HS

      [laughs]

    18. AA

      Uh, but, uh, I, for me, at my experience, they have. So I always say, you know, worst case scenario, I can actually... All these things matter to some degree, you know? At the end of the day, I can always go to Brazil.

    19. HS

      Do you find it difficult to contact switch in your relationship? My biggest problem now in my relationship is, like, I come home and I'm stressed. I've been bashed all day by whatever's happening. And then you come home and it's like they wanna talk about life and just, like, normal things. And you're like, you're still in the h- in your zone.

  15. 56:39 – 57:46

    How to Context-Switch Between CEO Mode and Being a Present Partner

    1. HS

      Do you struggle with that, and how do you-

    2. AA

      I used to. I used to. It was horrible. That was very hard for me. I would come home and I have this massive list of things in my mi- my mind, okay? And, and then I would be either not patient for my partner or, or, or, or not really attentive or whatever, and, and that would, it would be very, it was very hard for me. I, I learned with time, as I got older, that I stop most of it now, and then I'll do it later, the thinking, and that's why I go to sleep at 5:00, right?

    3. HS

      You time-bound your thinking-

    4. AA

      Yeah

    5. HS

      ... and it allows you to turn off for the time being with your wife?

    6. AA

      Yes. And so I'm just doing that, and then I'm turning it back on. And sometimes I write, I write myself things that I need to think about in, in, in two hours.

    7. HS

      I mean, dude, that's, that's perfection because I cannot do that at all. Um, final one, and then we'll do a quick fire. I care very much about being a great parent. Um, I don't have kids yet, but I, I very much want to. You, you do have kids, and you're a public company CEO and under a fuckload of pressure, let's just be honest. Um,

  16. 57:46 – 59:15

    Parenting Advice From a Public Company CEO Under Pressure

    1. HS

      what advice would you have for me on how to be the best father that I can be?

    2. AA

      Well, I think that kids don't care so much for the amount of time that you're with them as much as they care for the quality in that time. So if you find yourself and give yourself, let's say, oh, you know, I can be with them for a few hours every day or every few days, okay, make sure that you are there and happy when you're there, and have fun with them when you're there, a- and not when, uh, a- and not coming there because you force yourself and then you're on your phone and then you're fighting with everybody. Remember, it's more about how you're there than how often you're there or how long you're there.

    3. HS

      Yeah. Goes back to what we said about being, like, present, not stuck in your own head. Um-

    4. AA

      Easy to say. It is. I'm not sure it's so easy to do, but yes.

    5. HS

      Impossible to do. It's like, it's like the tying happiness to stock price. I honestly, I've, I, I remember interviewing Vlad from Robinhood, okay? And I interviewed him when it was worth, like, $20 billion, and interviewed him when it was worth $120 billion. I can tell you he was legitimately six times happier when it was worth $120 billion compared to when it was $20 billion.

    6. AA

      [laughs]

    7. HS

      It wa- it was a different fucking person. He looked different. He sounded different. He was different. [laughs]

    8. AA

      Oh, yeah. Yeah. And-

    9. HS

      I, I get it. Um, okay, we're gonna do a quick fire. What have you changed your mind on in the last 12 months?

  17. 59:15 – 1:04:25

    Quick-Fire Round

    1. AA

      Actually, a bit on AI. I'll, I'll say it like that. I, I was very concerned. Very concerned with how quickly we're gonna find humans being replaced with AI. And I think I'm now looking at, looking at the same thing. I think it's gonna take much longer than I anticipated.

    2. HS

      Why?

    3. AA

      Because, you know, I remember that, you know, a, a year ago we would hear Elon Musk speaking about he's waiting for AGI because AGI can have conversation with it about how to solve big problem in physics and how to do a lot of things and everything. And now everybody's talking about, well, you know, we kind of achieve AGI, but it still cannot do those big questions, right? So we kind of like, we kind of change the definition to fit something that doesn't do the critical things. And the more I know about AI, the more I see the frontier model, the more I see things. I think they're tremendous, as I said, but I don't think they're gonna replace us that quickly.

    4. HS

      Yeah, I think you're being far too nice. I had a picture of me and my mother on the beach from a holiday last week, and I said, like, "Remove the people from the background" to, like, Gemini. Dude, they changed my mother's face. They put a different woman in there.

    5. AA

      [laughs]

    6. HS

      I was like, "What?" [laughs]

    7. AA

      I, I think solving that might happen faster than you think. [laughs]

    8. HS

      Which competitor do you most respect, and why them?

    9. AA

      So it's not direct. I think that the one company I really, really appreciate, Figma. I think they have brilliant product understanding of their market. And, and when I look at it, uh, I'm just like, I really admire some of the thing, the quality they can bring into that. So I really like them. Like really in terms of not just respect, it's almost admiration in some of the thing they can do. People are almost religious about Figma, right? I, I know very little product that are like that. My designers They love it. They go crazy about it. They'll do their groceries list on Figma, okay? They, they'll do everything they can on Figma just because they love using it so much. And, and that takes m- uh, massive skill from, from, from Figma to do it.

    10. HS

      What's your single biggest concern today?

    11. AA

      Uh, it's always the same. I think that, uh, uh, uh, execution. You know, I think we have good plans and good ideas, and I think the biggest challenge is always from execution. Like, it's, it's how do we get a team to be super efficient? How to get them to be more ambitious? I think that it's to, to, to, to go for a bigger goal. I think those kind of things.

    12. HS

      You said that Base44 is 400 people today.

    13. AA

      Yes.

    14. HS

      How many people is it in two years' time?

    15. AA

      Oh, that's one of the things that it's very hard to predict because it depends how well AI does or not and how many models they got. I'm a huge believer in Base44, okay? I'm a huge believer in Base44. I huge believe in what Wix does. I hope that Base44 will, uh, uh... Uh, and I see the way it scales. I, I would imagine probably, uh, uh, 800 to 1,000, and the majority of them would actually be engineers, right? So I think that is another thing.

    16. HS

      Final one for you, my friend.

    17. AA

      Of course.

    18. HS

      What is the kindest thing that anyone's ever done for you?

    19. AA

      Uh, I think there's a lot of really kind things that people did for me. And, uh... And, and now when I started, I see how often, you know, people that were, uh, way ahead of me in, in this business, right? Would take time to sit with me and to talk to me about things that, you know, a- about mistakes they made and then give me advice and think with me about other things. And, uh, and I think that's extremely kind because this is not about giving you money, it's about giving you the most precious currency those people had, right, which is time. And, and, and, and, and, and when, and you see that, I, I, I think, and, and advice i- i- is, it's amazing that they did.

    20. HS

      12 months' time, who will have a higher market cap, you or Monday?

    21. AA

      It's kind of like asking me to compete between, uh, uh, w- which kid, ki- kid of mine I like more, right?

    22. HS

      Uh-huh.

    23. AA

      And so-

    24. HS

      Your eldest.

    25. AA

      Sorry?

    26. HS

      Your eldest. [laughs]

    27. AA

      [laughs] And, uh, so my eldest, Wix, right? But, uh, but, uh, I, I think I, we... You know, I, I've been lucky to be involved in a few amazing products, right? Wix, uh, Monday, uh, and, uh, Base44. And I think I got this rare opportunity to see that happening, uh, uh, to see this thing happening three times, and, and, and I think that's an amazing experience. And, uh, a- and I do believe that all three company, uh, all three products, right? Have tremendous, uh, market potential and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and potential to be helpful for many different people, and so, um, uh, hard for me to choose. By the way, Eran, I think Eran and Ori are really incredible CEOs. Probably better than me, so maybe I'll bet on them or me. No, actually. But then Mor is a great CEO as w- I don't know. It's very complicated.

    28. HS

      Avishai, it's been fantastic to have you on the show. Thank you so much for being so open, for being so, uh, wise in your love, family, uh, parental CEO advice. Uh, it's been fantastic, man.

    29. AA

      All right. Cheers, man. Thank you so much for having me.

Episode duration: 1:04:35

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