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Avishai Abrahami
Co-Founder & CEO, Wix.com

Wix Co-Founder Shares Website Tips from 250M+ Users | Avishai Abrahami

🎥 Apr 01, 2025 📺 Foundr ⏱ 53m 👁 2628 views
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About Avishai Abrahami

Avishai Abrahami, co-founder and CEO of Wix, has been discussing the company's growth, the impact of artificial intelligence on web development, and his management philosophy in several recent interviews. In April 2025, Abrahami stated that Wix sees about 1.5 million new users joining each month and has over 300 million registered users. He noted that while high interest rates have made it harder for small businesses to start and have affected Wix's customers, the company continues to see demand because a website is a critical part of a business. Abrahami also commented on the state of AI, saying he believes large language models will become a commodity and that "none of us will remember LLMs in five years." He expressed skepticism that AI can be controlled, stating, "I believe there's no chance we will be." Abrahami has also spoken about his approach to running Wix. He said he reviews about 130 pages of metrics monthly and 30 pages weekly, arguing that simplifying measurement to only ten things means "they don't know what they're doing." He emphasized the importance of maintaining company culture and not adopting habits from less successful companies. In a 2022 engineering podcast, Abrahami described his hands-on involvement in coding sessions aimed at dramatically reducing the amount of code needed for services, with a goal of making projects that took months take days. He has also discussed Wix's history, noting that the company went public in 2013 with 32 million users and 550,000 subscriptions, and that by 2016 it had grown to 86 million users and over 2 million subscriptions.

Source: AI-verified profile updated from Avishai Abrahami's recent appearances. Browse all interviews →

Transcript (76 segments)
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Avishai Abrahami0:00
My personal belief is that great products are always focusing on what the customer wants to do, what's the best way to do it, and how it should end up looking. Take a look at PowerPoint, right? You want to create a presentation, but you want to make a beautiful presentation. If we give people the ability to generate their vision and to make it as beautiful as they want, then we have a winner. The hardest part in building a website is that it takes a lot of effort to do the first version, and everyone has a different story and different way to talk about it, want to present it, and this is what you want to carry into your website, that personal feeling with the story around it.
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Nathan Chan0:42
Before we dive in, I want to extend a warm invitation to join our thriving founder community. It's the perfect place to discover more insightful interviews aimed at helping you build, grow, and scale your business. So don't forget to hit subscribe. Your support means the absolute world to us. Thank you so much for subscribing. Let's get stuck in. Today's discussion: hear the stories, learn the proven methods, and accelerate your growth and future through entrepreneurship. Welcome to the Founder Podcast with Nathan Chan.
So Avishai, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me today. The first question that I want to ask you is, what did the first 60 days of business look like for Wix? How did you start the company? What did the first 60 days look like?
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Avishai Abrahami1:31
Well, we actually started by having a different idea, right? We had a concept about a smarter way to do file sharing, and we raised money for that. And then my partner at that time had two ideas. There was one of them that we agreed on, and the other one was we thought about the issue of editing web content. And then I said, you know what, I'm going to test this idea. I'm going to try and build a website for the file sharing thing. And it really sucked. I felt that, you know, I'm a developer by profession and I've been doing it for so many years on different platforms, but I tried to actually edit HTML and CSS myself at that time with Dreamweaver, and it was such a bad experience. Went back to the investors, well, we're not going to do that thing anymore, we're going to do something else. And it was kind of an interesting thing because all the investors said, yeah, absolutely, it sounds like a really good idea, we'll back you on this new thing. So this is how we started. So the first month was probably just changing everything.
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Nathan Chan2:49
And you wrote an article on Entrepreneur.com in 2014 where you said that the early days of Wix was like treading a minefield of potential catastrophes. What were they and how did you avoid them? Could you talk us through some of that?
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Avishai Abrahami3:05
Well, I don't remember what we had almost started thinking about in 2015, but I can tell you one of the hardest challenges we had is that we had this thing where you could easily, at that time it was Flash, you could easily build Flash content, right? And it was a drag-and-drop interface that you could build these very beautiful Flash widgets or pages. And I think the hardest challenge in the beginning was to choose what to do. And we had a lot of concepts, and funny as it is, about, I think I would say about 40% of them related to Myspace. And then so luckily we didn't choose that, right? If we would, we would not be existing today. There was another portion which was building for designers, and we actually put out something similar to Canva. We didn't do that as well. I think that time actually much harder if we would go down that path. And we ended up doing, you know, websites. So this is really how the company started. A lot of it came from the fact that we felt that we understand the business model and that we are not depending so much on other companies like Myspace. And so that was one of the hardest challenges, I think, to pick up. We had 11 different options of how we're going to use the same technology to create a product. So we had this base product, right? But how to package it, that we make it into a company, was something that we had 11 different options of what to do with. And I think for many companies, this is one of the hardest challenges. Why do you have it? It's the concept of how do you, so you have this technology, but now how do you package it and how do you market it, how to take it out is very tricky to do in the beginning. Yeah, you kind of have to understand what's going to be the easiest path where you still maintain control over your life and your dependence on the one hand, and then on the other hand that you can actually generate a business model for it. I mean, we got lucky that we chose the right one.
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Nathan Chan5:17
Yeah. And how did you get your first customer? Who is Wix's first customer? How did you get your first customer?
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Avishai Abrahami5:22
So it was actually interesting. The second that we actually launched all the 11 in the beginning. So we launched all the 11 concepts and built a page, and we wrote about it to different places, approached a few blogs in every relevant area. And the website thing and the Myspace thing just took off. So it was kind of obvious to choose probably one of those two. And we had also another one which was greeting cards. So we had this really cool way of trading greeting cards with a design aspect, so you can actually just create really beautiful designs, not necessarily websites, but more for print or for other things. An investor, but in particular, loved that plus one. Anyway, so we just, you know, probably the first day we started closed beta for Wix, we started to have people that register, and it kept growing every day.
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Nathan Chan6:20
Yeah, got you. And you guys started the company in 2006. There's been a lot of tools that are like competitive to Wix. There've been a lot of website builders come and go. What do you think has been the number one thing that has ensured the company's growth, survival, and you know, it's almost 20 years. This is an incredible company. You guys are listed, like massive market cap. Like what do you think it's been that, if you could boil it down to a couple of things, that has ensured the sustainability of Wix?
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Avishai Abrahami6:55
And I think it's a different focus on what is the customer. And there were so many tools when we started, right? There was Dreamweaver, which is a very hard-to-use tool for editing HTML. There was Yahoo Website Builder or FreeWebs, which kind of like, well, the concept behind it was that your grandmother can build a website. And there was Apple had iWeb, which was another tool. Microsoft had FrontPage. There was a lot of them. Google had Google Sites at that time, it didn't do websites, not just back end. But I think we picked a different approach because we said that we want the customer to be people that know how to use a computer. We didn't believe that making a website for grandmothers is a sustainable business plan. Essentially, we figured our customers are the smart guys, so we're going to build product for smart people. And even today, which is something that you have to learn how to use, it's not, if you don't know how to use a computer, you don't have a chance. If you don't know how to use the level of knowledge that you would have to use Excel, PowerPoint, then which is probably too hard for you. But if you are one of those people that we come to for a computer, which is an easy experience, and but you don't, I mean, FrontPage and always ended up making ugly websites. We didn't think anybody wanted that. So the first thing we said, we want to aim at intelligent users that are computer savvy, that are not necessarily technical. They don't need to understand HTML and they don't need to understand CSS, not Flash, they don't have to know any. You have to know, if you know how to use computers, we need to give you a way to create stunning websites. And the emphasis on stunning websites was one of the places we've been unique, I think, because we realize that people really care about the design of what they do. And might look oddly for me and you, right, for us, but if we give people the ability to generate their vision and to make it as beautiful as they want, then we have a winner. And that was pretty much the key, I think, from day one. I still remember, you know, every time we're sitting in product roadmap meeting on the product, and people got, well, you know, we don't have an undo, do you think we need to do an undo? And I would always go back like all those really smart features, and I would say, no, no, no, we need to have better galleries, we need to have better fonts, we need to have more effects, and they're making for them crazy. But that became very, very successful for us as a strategy because you can really create things that you're proud of.
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Nathan Chan9:43
Yeah, I see. So for founders that are listening to this right now and they're in the early stages, how can they stand out in a crowded market for their business? What advice would you give?
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Avishai Abrahami9:55
Well, I think the number one is that don't ask too much about who is the customer, care more about what they are trying to do. And I try to explain, and this is the first thing every product lecture I usually listen to, they always say, well, you should think about who is the customer. Who's the customer of an iPhone? Who is the customer of Chrome? Who is the customer of Facebook? Who's the customer of Instagram? Who's the customer of... well, the answer is everybody. So if all the good products are built on the concept that it's for a huge amount of people, then why would you focus on that? Then the other side of it is that, well, it's very easy to say what those people want to do. When you have an iPhone in your hand, we kind of know what you want to do. I don't want to use an application or maybe talk, right? It's not that common anymore on the phone. But and then if you use Chrome, you know what you want to do. If you're using Excel, we know what you want to do. So it's very easy to define what the customer wants to do, and that usually leads to great products as opposed to who is the customer and they try to build something around that. So that's number one. And then ask yourself what is the most important thing for the customer when you want to do it, right? So for example, in Wix, it would be create a stunning website. And so that makes your product stand above everybody else because you deliver a product that gets to what your customer wants to do and not to what you think they should be.
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Nathan Chan11:34
Yeah, so I love that. Because the thing that comes to my mind is they say that if you try and create it for everyone, you create it for no one, and the riches are in the niches. What's your statement to that? What's your thoughts around that?
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Avishai Abrahami11:52
None of the great products on the planet was ever built with that mentality. I do believe that a lot of the great products were created by finding what is it that you want the product to do very well, but somebody wants to use that, right? What is it that they want to achieve? Take a look at PowerPoint, right? Or Slides. Well, you want to create a presentation, but you want to make a beautiful presentation. So I would say all of them are lacking in that because it's just one example, right? And there are many of such examples. It's again, my personal belief is that great products are always focusing on what the customer wants to do and how it should be, what's the best way to do it and how it should end up looking, as opposed to who is the customer.
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Nathan Chan12:43
Yeah, love that. So when it comes to work and passion, I read that you used to work 18 hours a day, now you've dropped it to 12. Is that correct?
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Avishai Abrahami12:57
Well, I don't measure the time, right? So I sleep about five, six hours. I have about six hours and four or five with my family, and the rest of it is work. So probably that is about the right amount of hours. I actually don't think that it's like, I don't feel that it's a lot. As how many hours do you spend with your friends every day or what do you do for the rest of the time? And so I don't know how many hours to sleep, but assuming you sleep six hours or seven hours, then you end up having a lot of free time if you work for nine or eight hours a day. In fact, if you sleep for eight hours, right? Sorry, if you move, yeah, sleep for eight hours, work for eight hours, and you have eight hours free, right? So like, I don't know how much free time do you need, but for me, five hours a day is more than enough, usually a lot less than that. So if I sleep for five hours, then I have nine hours, four hours free still leaves me a huge amount of time to spend focusing on what's more important for me.
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Nathan Chan14:12
So do you think that if anyone's listening to this that's in the early stages of their business, they have to be prepared to work 80 hours a week if they want to build something of true worth and significance?
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Avishai Abrahami14:25
I've never seen anybody who has managed to do it without it. I don't know, maybe you are talking to a lot more founders than me, but every founder I've seen is always obsessed, and I mean that obsession is tremendous power.
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Nathan Chan14:40
I agree. They're not only obsessed, but they're hungry, desperate. That hunger, you cannot put a price on because that's where it's at. Like if you are hungry enough, you will find a way. Where does your hunger come from? What fuels it?
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Avishai Abrahami15:00
I don't know. I always, since I remember myself, I knew what I wanted to do. If you would go to me probably the age of nine, I already knew what I wanted to do when I grow up. I knew that I wanted to build technology companies. At that time there was no name for, of course, software companies. So I knew exactly what I wanted to do from the age of eight. How? I'm sure for my family, it has to do with it. For me, my dad is a love science, love technology. He has a few degrees in that that he did later on in life, but that was the conversation around the dinner table. So the conversation on the dinner table would usually be around invention and technology and science and coming up with ideas and how to solve things. And so I just guess I grew into that.
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Nathan Chan15:54
And I guess tell us about your first, because Wix wasn't your first company. You started another company, your first business in 1993, AIT Inc. It was a web management company.
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Avishai Abrahami16:08
Yeah, it was actually, we did software projects for other companies and ended up doing, we did the, you guys from Australia, right? I think. And so if you, I don't know how old you are, but there was a city room that had all the Yellow Pages and White Pages on it in Australia. So that was, if I'm not sure, that was our first project. We did it for a company in Israel that did it for a company in Australia. We actually implemented that. So that was a first big project. We did a bunch of those. We ended up specializing in creating, as opposed to building software for somebody, building products for other companies. So that was very good for me. And we ended up with a product that we called Magic Kit, which was a set of components for developers to build advanced user interfaces and their user interfaces. So that was one product which was sold pretty much around the globe, and the company was sold in 1997. Yep. In a terrible deal. I was so naive there. I just thinking about how little I knew about business at those days. And so when I joined the purchasing and the company that bought us left that, but then started a different company because a spa, and which did a management layer for hosting companies. We did the first virtual server and technology. Yep. It was even before VMware existed, I believe. And we started to sell that, got hit very strongly, of course, with the dot-com collapse. Yep. And which made me realize that I need to unlearn about economy because, you know, one day everything was great and then the next day everything was bad, and nothing changed in my business. And I had like, no, like it was like this external thing that happened and everything changed in what I do. So I spent quite a while after that trying to learn as much as I can about economy because it was obvious that it is a significant, big significance for my life. And the next company that I founded was Wix.
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Nathan Chan18:52
Yeah. So you've been building technology companies for over 30 years.
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Avishai Abrahami18:59
Yes, yeah, more than that. Because as a kid, I know I had this scout that we were doing things together, right? Not practical things, but we're doing things.
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Nathan Chan19:09
Yeah, yeah. And all of those companies you've always built with your brother?
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Avishai Abrahami19:12
No, this is the first company I did with my brother.
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Nathan Chan19:16
Okay. You said something interesting that I'd love to unpack, I'd be foolish not to. You said you spent a lot of time studying the economy and you realized around if the market shifts or where the economy is at, it can affect your life, your business, etc. You know, the economy right now is, you know, it's 2024 and the economy right now is a bit up and down. You know, probably since COVID, it's been pretty up and down, rocky, up, down, here, there, everywhere. People say that during this time period has a similar resemblance of the previous tech boom and bust, especially with the introduction of AI, cryptocurrency technologies, blockchain technology. What's your take?
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Avishai Abrahami20:11
Well, I think obviously there was a big bubble that burst. I think that we saw the market crashing and I think that in many places it's still too low to where it should be. But we have an issue, right? That interest rates are high, which makes it hard to fund companies, right? Because money has another place to go to. So as a company, you get less resources and debt is more expensive, and less small businesses or medium-sized businesses are being created, which is usually a big part of the customers that you would have early on in any kind of a software business. So we're still, I would say, we're still at the down of the cycle, maybe starting to climb up, but we are not there yet. I think the governments are not necessarily doing a good job of managing it.
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Nathan Chan21:11
Yeah. So you know, you guys are on the forefront of AI technology. Last year you launched an AI website builder and you can basically build your own website in Wix through prompts. Where do you see that technology going?
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Avishai Abrahami21:27
I love that. I think that so we released the first AI-based website builder in 2016. And you just go in, type a few things on your business, and we would search the web for more information and just generate a website for you. Well, today it looks like very naive algorithms, but at that time it was like really cutting-edge algorithms. And I think that when I look at AI, of course, there are many very intelligent people that try to predict it, but I am a strong believer. I think that there's a long way for us to advance there. My one prediction is that none of us will remember LLMs in five years. That's one, my small prediction. I think we're going to get to much more interesting algorithms. And as for Wix, the hardest part in building a website is that it takes a lot of effort to do the first version, and a lot of different kind of efforts because you have to do textual content, you have to have visual content, you have to do the composition between them, you have to get storytelling right about your website. And it doesn't matter if it's a podcast, right, or if it's a website about selling T-shirts, or if it's a yoga studio, that everyone has a different story and different way to talk about it, want to present it, and this is what you want to carry into your website, that personal feeling with the story around it. And I believe that AI is a fantastic tool to make it easier for you to start, for you to change things, to edit things later. So I'm a strong believer in that. We've already seen great results with it. We're seeing now with the current site generation and funnel that help you. And so I'm a strong believer that by reducing the friction and the amount of effort you need to build a website, we're going to get great results for our customers, and that in turn will lead to growth. Yeah, yeah, of course. But beyond that, it's the thing about that you can come and say, well, I want to tell my story and I'm a yoga and I'm specializing in a studio in Brooklyn and I'm specializing in Mopa meditation and this kind of a thing, this is my philosophy. And to do that today, right? Well, you might be able to, but my English is definitely, even my Hebrew is not that good that I can actually write it in a very proper way that make people look, wow, that's really an interesting story. And with the AI, I can do it easily. So I think that this is a, I can probably even do it in Chinese now, right? Because the AI can translate to any language. So I think it's an incredible amount of power that we can give our customers, and I love that. I love every time we can do something like that to just get me excited.
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Nathan Chan24:39
So you went public over a decade ago. What's kept you motivated to lead Wix and continue to lead Wix?
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Avishai Abrahami24:46
Well, because I think a couple of things. First of all, I said that was my, I always knew what I want to do. So I didn't wake up one day find myself leading Wix and like, oh my God, I just want to sell it and do this other thing that I wanted to do with the rest of my life. I'm doing the other thing I wanted to do with the rest of my life already. So that's a very important thing. The other side of it is that I believe there's so much potential. So I actually get excited about a lot of the things we do. I go to work and a lot of time I'm waiting for the meeting because I'm excited about what we're going to do today, what we're going to work on today. And so I mean, that's a lot of it. And it was a big part of it, which was I knew that if we are able to go, because Wix is one of the few companies that IPO'd in Israel at that time from Israel technology companies, everything, I think that I understood that this is going to be transformative to the local economy, which I'm sure going to happen more and more in Australia because I see brilliant companies coming from there, right? And I think this is something that all of us care about, the environment around us. So all of those things, but mostly because I'm doing the thing I love to do.
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Nathan Chan26:12
I'd love to hear your concept around decision making. You said before that you only have to make around four decisions every quarter. How is that possible? Can you talk us through that?
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Avishai Abrahami26:25
Yeah, absolutely. So, and this is something I see a lot, there are many CEOs that, I mean, mostly young CEOs, that they decide everything in the company. And they know what is every customer problem, the support problems, how much the pizza cost, how much the flying cost. They know all those things. I know none of that. I never approved a flight, I think, in my life to anybody. I never ordered the pizza or I actually never checked the bill for the pizza if I ordered it or you one of other things. Even in the professional side, I believe that good CEOs should hire fantastic people. You need to make it visible for them what do you want to achieve and what are the KPIs they have to look at. And you need to create this environment where you push the decisions down so you can actually leave, you know, your mind can focus on the things that really matter, right? So we built this beautiful campus, and I saw the plans, but I was not involved. And the reason is mostly because I need to worry about the income, not the expenses, right? So that's already two-four of the decisions that I don't have to do. And I know I have really smart people to do that. And then there's a lot of things when it comes to the product and marketing that they have really smart people. So I know they approach me if they want to hear my thought about something. But if I didn't trust them, why did I hire them? And I always like to think about it that if I go to a room at Wix, to every meeting at Wix, and I think that I'm the most intelligent person in that room, I'm a shitty CEO. If I go to a room and I think that, oh my God, most of those guys are way smarter than me, they know so much more about what they do than me, then apparently I'm doing my job well. So I need to empower people to have the tools to make decisions and to have a framework by which we can measure the decisions, see the decisions, see the results of things. And I think that is a lot of what my job is. I'm not sure I'm taking four decisions a quarter, maybe sometimes less.
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Nathan Chan28:49
Yeah, that's crazy. So it's something that I find so interesting and it's not talked about enough publicly, is businesses are built by people. And you said shitty CEOs, you know, they make too many decisions, they're too involved in the day-to-day. They don't, they like, I love what you said around if you don't trust that person, why did you hire them in the first place? Then the question goes to naturally, how do you find great people? Like a lot of founders really, really struggle with this.
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Avishai Abrahami29:23
I think this is probably the hardest point in founding a company, getting this team that will stay with you for a very long time with fantastic people. And I believe that you interview a lot of people, you hire, and you are the one that you believe are superstars. And then you have to be realistic about it and know that it's very hard to know if somebody's a superstar when you hire them, but it's very easy to do it a month later. Let's say I'm hiring somebody, it looks like a superstar, it's very hard to know if it's true or not. You get better at it, but you're always going to have, you're not going to always hit it. But a month later when you work with somebody, you know if he's a superstar or not. It's very easy to know if not after a month, after two months, three months, you don't have to wait 10 years for that. And I believe that you don't be brave and fire people if it doesn't work. It's fine. But in the beginning of a company, you don't have the luxury of waiting. So hire the people that you are willing to take a bet on because you think they have this star quality or this high level of quality that you want to have in your team. And then if it doesn't work, you just have to say bye quickly. I hired for a marketing position and would probably interview 200 people and hire 23. Number 23 was the right person. Number 2... yes. And by the way, some of them started working at Wix, right? It's not like I always had to find really great people, but they could not lead what they wanted in marketing. So how was running very quickly. Same thing for a lot of hires that we did, 23 times to hire your marketing leader.
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Nathan Chan31:22
Yeah. Well, I didn't hire a marketing leader, I hired marketing people, right? And I always try to see what happens if I try to use them as more of a leader. Okay. And number 23 was the one that we stayed with until today.
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Avishai Abrahami31:37
Wow. How long did that take?
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Nathan Chan31:40
About nine months or a year, something like that.
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Avishai Abrahami31:44
Wow. Where this was in the early days of Wix, you guys are funded, yeah? You guys are funded, so you could move pretty fast. But still, that's an interesting concept. I don't know anybody who knows how to hire always superstars. I never seen that. There is another thing that you have to know about every top talent that you can find is that they are going to be amazing at certain amount of things and then terrible at some other things. And your job as CEO is to recognize where they are very strong, what they're capable of doing, you never have to think about that, and then make sure to find a solution for the things they're weak with. And again, this is another, I almost, I look at young CEOs, they kind of like, oh, here, got the keys, solve this for me, or and then they start helping them to manage around it because there are things that this person cannot do well. And then you're getting engaged in that instead of appreciating, saying, well, this guy is amazing at that part of the job, terrible at this part of the job, I'm going to bring somebody to help him or I'm going to have a way around that. So, and this is always true. Every superstar, things that he's great with and then a few things that he's terrible with.
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Nathan Chan33:07
You want great leaders, right?
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Avishai Abrahami33:12
Yes, of course. I think that you want, everybody wants great leaders, no? Yeah. And that's the goal. You want to build, you don't build a product, right? You hire people to build a product. You don't do marketing, you hire people to do marketing. You don't build servers, you hire people to build servers. Well, maybe you build servers, but most of the build done. And so you want to make sure you hire great leaders for that position or people for that position.
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Nathan Chan33:40
Any questions that you love to ask from your hiring journey of probably hiring thousands of people over the years? Is there one question or two key questions or anything that you have to do always to try and identify incredible talent and superstars?
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Avishai Abrahami33:59
Well, and there's a couple of tricks that I always use. And the number one, and most people, you know, they come with questions, and I tend to ask people about a project or something they do. And what I noticed is that superstars always talk about what they did and not about how important they've been when doing that. And that's a huge difference. And so if I would ask you, I say, well, tell me about interviews, and then you, right? And I start asking you about interviews, and if you tell me, well, this happened here, I did that, or this is how things are going, and then I did this, right? I will know, okay, you're a doer. And because it's that simple to know that you're somebody is doing things just by that. Another great advice that I heard about hiring managers, and this is to the, and Graham formalized it so well for me, is asking about the people that you fired and if you ever stayed friends with any of them. So if you want to hire a manager, ask that. And because you cannot be a great manager without having some time to fire somebody, especially in the early days, because after a while you have a team that you know, you know they have quality, but before that you still have to. So if they've stayed friends with that person, that means they're a great manager after they fired them. Well, if they stay friendly, right? Oh, but more than that, you will start hearing about how many times they fired somebody or why and how it worked on and those hard decisions. Because there are people that you like in the company but they're not that good professionally. What do you do with them? And great managers will have a very organized answer for that or a well-thought-out answer for that in cases to deal with in reality and in their reality. So start hearing about those stories, and I think that it's one of the key principles that great managers should have.
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Nathan Chan36:15
Yeah, I love that. Well, look, we have to thank you for sharing about hiring because I think it's not talked about enough and it's clear that you've been able to build an incredible company from being a fantastic CEO of finding the right people and keeping them on the bus and identifying them and making sure they're on the bus.
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Avishai Abrahami36:34
I argue about the amazing CEO. I think that one of the things that keep me so passionate is that I'm still learning all the time on how to be better. And there's a lot more I should probably learn before I can say I'm an excellent CEO.
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Nathan Chan36:46
Like what?
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Avishai Abrahami36:50
Well, a lot of things. How do you scale properly? How do you create a lot of the more, everything that has to do with scale. And I think it's something that I'm still learning a lot about. And how do you ensure that we keep hiring great people and keep refreshing that? How do you give more freedom to those smart people that you have to know better what you want them to do? Like every year we write this, so we started with just, you know, presentation, me talking to a few people. Then we had this presentation about the plan. Now we have documents about that. We just completely changed the format of that document and how it integrates to what everybody's doing. So there's a lot of that that I feel that I'm learning every day how to do my job better. And I never managed at the scale we are. I always know how to operate a company with one or two scales smaller than that in a good way. But to the scale we are at, that's in time. I always think that it would be, well, I just never had enough time to learn how to do that properly.
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Nathan Chan37:58
Well, look, I love how humble you are because I think, you know, if you think you've got it all worked out, that's when probably from my experience as well, I think the times when I've kind of thought I'm on top of the world and I'm untouchable and nothing can stop me and everything I touch turns to gold is the time when things start to not go the way I want it to and I'm in for a shock. So I think that's a really good mindset to be humbled and know that you're always learning. And you know, a lot of people would look at yourself, Avishai, and like they would go, wow, he's got it all worked out, he's the ultimate founder, you've had incredible success, but you're still learning.
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Avishai Abrahami38:45
Well, I think that it's a big part of the fun, right? The learning.
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Nathan Chan38:51
Yeah, I agree. So what we have to work towards wrapping up, but I want to talk about website advice. I'd be silly not to. What makes a great website for founders or businesses?
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Avishai Abrahami39:04
Well, depends what you want to achieve, right? I think that every business is different, every category of a business. So let's say if you're building a medical device company, right? You want to be able to capture this atmosphere of like, okay, we are really smart, we have a very strong team, and this is our story. You're doing well, I was saying yoga studio in Brooklyn, okay? You want to take the vibe that makes the place feel and put it inside the website and make it easy, very easy and approachable for people to try your place, right? And so I think it's telling the story, personalizing that, and then the other part is making it easy to try and making it easy to take the first step. And I can give you just the simplest example. A friend of mine was a lawyer and she built a website on Wix, and I told her, well, the most important thing today is a small chat. So people can easily ask questions, not calling, just ask, well, how about this and how about that? And of course, that drove conversion three times. And so a lot of it is about making it look and tell a story, but also enabling people to try what into it very quickly and very easily. I'm always less concerned about things like and making it huge or Google will find you and love you. It's okay. And Google is really smart. And so if you build a proper website that people interact with, you'll get the SEO boost just from that.
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Nathan Chan40:54
And how do you stand out? Like there's so many websites, that's a question that a lot of people ask is how do you stand out, how do you differentiate yourself for your website?
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Avishai Abrahami41:05
Well, it depends what you're doing, right? It really depends. If you, I would say that if you are a yoga studio in Brooklyn, you want to make sure that there's a lot of content that is relevant to your neighborhood, so Google knows what this is, that place, right? And then you appear in the right places on the searches, and it has this element for search which is localized range from where you are, so you appear high on that range. So that is the number one thing you want to make sure. But if you are doing something that is more global, you have to make sure that you understand what people try to search or where they're going to look for you and to be in those places. Without a concrete example, it's always harder. But promotion is always a tricky job.
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Nathan Chan41:56
Yeah. And I think when you're first building a website, from my experience, it's hard. You're effectively promoting yourself and your business in the early days, and it's hard because you feel like an imposter.
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Avishai Abrahami42:12
True. Right away for a lot of the businesses, that's very true, right? That's why it's so good to have AI help you write that and not you writing that. I don't know, I would not be able to promote myself in a proper way.
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Nathan Chan42:25
Yeah. So what do you think, speaking of AI, what do you think founders should be aware of with it rapidly changing the internet landscape right now when it comes to AI?
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Avishai Abrahami42:39
I think that the speed of change is so fast that you have to prepare yourself that things will change. And if you go back to 2017 when Google published the 'Attention Is All You Need' article, which is essentially the LLM architecture, nobody did that for ChatGPT coming, right? I think you have to realize that change will come. It's going to be in many different ways, in many different places. I also believe that if you are building a startup on top of LLMs with the assumption that packaging it differently, you should probably do something else. Because there are going to be so many doing that, it's going to continue to change very rapidly and going to get better and better. So I wouldn't try that again, my personal feeling. But when it comes to tech companies, the number one advice I would give to tech companies that want to build anything that has to do with AI in any level of, well, kind of any touch point of the core product with AI, is to learn how AI works. And that's the most important thing. So do not delude yourself about what it can do or cannot do on one, and the why, which is probably a lot more important than most companies building technology in the past two decades knowing how a server works. Because the server is a tool, while AI is the value. So I would argue that knowing that is probably way more important than knowing other technologies.
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Nathan Chan44:44
Yeah, I love that. And I think with the theme of just kind of always learning, it's just how hard though to know where to allocate your time because there's so many things to learn.
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Avishai Abrahami45:01
It is true. I mean, that's part of the fun, right? But again, if you're building a startup that has to do with AI, I don't think you can survive the next couple of years without understanding exactly how it works. And it's easier than it's time, by the way. It's easier than it. I think at least the basic concept of how it works. But I'm also excited about other things. I think that we're going to see incredible things coming from quantum mechanics. I think that we're at this point of time where because quantum computers are something that so many companies are working on, then suddenly you have engineers that are learning the universe of quantum physics and quantum mechanics. And in the history of the human race, there are only very few times in which engineering moved to a new layer of physics, right? We had fire, can argue about steam maybe, we had electricity and nuclear, right? So that's four times, maybe I miss something, but I'm not sure I actually miss something. And every time that happened, it appeared to get magic in the next 20 to 30 years or 50 years. I mean, electricity, what Edison, somewhere around I think in 1876, I'm not sure, probably around that time. And then you get radio, radio, right? Broadcast probably within 10, 15 years, 20 years after. And computers is 50 years later, right? And like if you would go and see that, oh wait, there's a light bulb here, it turns on and off, there's no way you could predict that leading to computers or radios, right, or telephones so quickly. And we're at a point of time in quantum mechanics where we're starting to have a lot of engineers that go into that, and we're going to see fantastic things coming out of it. So this is for me super exciting.
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Nathan Chan47:06
Couple last questions, we have to work towards wrapping up. I almost forgot about this one. You're an avid gamer and you talk about gaming. And I never forget one of my old mentors, he ran a, like his company is listed on the NASDAQ, but he's not active anymore. And I never forget I was looking to hire somebody that was a gamer and that was their passion. And I said to him, I don't know if that's a good idea because they won't get much sleep because they game all night. And he said to me, why is that a bad thing? Gamers are some of the best people I've ever hired because they are incredible problem solvers, they get obsessed, they work super hard. And yeah, what's your take there? And why do you like gaming?
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Avishai Abrahami47:57
Well, I can tell you first of all, it's fun, it's problem solving, it's a way to get your mind relaxed at the end of the day. And usually, you know, one brain's working super fast. But I think the greatest entrepreneur on the planet, Elon Musk, right? I saw him, I think about a year ago, posting that his Elden Ring character was level 85. Okay. And he posted this build, not a great build by the way, but if he has the time to, you don't know how long it takes to get to level 85, probably about, I don't know, continuously playing for 300 hours, right? So if Elon Musk is doing that, it has to do something good. But some would argue that he's a billionaire, so he has the time. He's building five companies at the same time. I was struggling with one and a half, and he's doing five, and each one of them is super impressive. So if you can do it, I'm sure that. But also, how do you wind down? Like how do you calm yourself at the end of the day? I mean, there are not many options, right? Some people meditate, that's not that common. Some people drink, that's probably worse than gaming, right? Yeah. Some people, then maybe some can do it with sport, but I think sport doesn't calm your mind as much as other things. It's fine, it's great, but it doesn't. So I think probably from most of the ways to wind down, to slow down at the end of the day, gaming is the one that gives you less of a headache in the next day or a hangover or you're not sure where you woke up or stuff like that.
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Nathan Chan49:57
Yeah, okay. Well, look, couple last questions, move to the hot seat round and then we'll wrap. But thank you for sharing, this has been a really fun, interesting interview. Hot seat round, rapid fire questions and answers. First question, what's your favorite video game of all time?
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Avishai Abrahami50:12
Actually, I loved Elden Ring. I think that was probably one of the best ones. And then I love, I can't really remember the name, Call of Duty. I used to spend too much time Call of Duty.
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Nathan Chan50:25
What's been the 'aha' moment in your business?
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Avishai Abrahami50:27
First time I realized that we're starting to get 12 subscriptions a day for the value of $120 a day, right? And that we're getting that consistently, and then realized we'll never have to close the company and this is going to be successful. Because I did this calculation, I'm like, this amount of money we have, this is the amount of money in the bank, this is how it goes down. If we cut a little bit, if we need to, we can actually last forever.
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Nathan Chan50:52
What daily habit makes you better at work?
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Avishai Abrahami50:55
Actually, taking a lot of time to think on things at night. I think that is probably the number one thing that I managed to be useful because of that.
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Nathan Chan51:07
If you could have dinner with any entrepreneur, dead or alive, who would it be and why?
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Avishai Abrahami51:13
So I don't know. And the reason is that most of the time that I met my heroes, it was not a great experience. I was like, no way. And there are some exceptions. Marc Benioff is one of them, and Reed Hastings is another one. So but I would say Elon Musk. I think he's the most impressive entrepreneur over our century.
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Nathan Chan51:38
What are you excited for next? And that's my last question.
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Avishai Abrahami51:43
I think at Wix, we're launching a few really cool products. We're doing a lot to work with professional agencies now. We built a product of Wix Studio and seeing the success of that product. So for me, it's so much fun. You know, we had this dream, or we started to do things, we did it terribly, we're getting better and better at that. We're starting to get it right, and then we're seeing the rewards from that. And this is like, for me, this is the best experience we can have as a CEO, to getting that product that you work so hard on, seeing how it faces the market, fixing that, and getting that to a place that it's great. I just love that.
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Nathan Chan52:20
Thank you for sharing. Well, Avishai, thank you so much for your time. This was a really fun, interesting, fascinating interview. Appreciate all your openness, honesty, and just being extremely candid about your journey thus far as a founder. And I also appreciate your humility. So congratulations on all of your success thus far with Wix and all of your future ventures. And thank you so much for your time. This is really going to help our community.
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Avishai Abrahami52:45
My pleasure. It was fun. Cheers.
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Nathan Chan52:47
Hey guys, if you love this episode, you've got to check out my interview with Davey Fogarty on how he finds trends in undercapitalized markets and turns them into multi-million dollar businesses.
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Davey Fogarty52:58
I'm generally looking for trends globally. We find trends that haven't been kind of capitalized in certain markets or in certain marketing channels. Yes. And then we also obviously add our flare to it. You need to differentiate your product.