Maor - by Lenny Rachitsky - Lenny's Newsletter

Six months, you went from zero, basically nothing to selling this company for 80,000,000 plus dollars to Wix. The funny thing is that Base forty four for the first time in my life was not trying to build the biggest thing ever. Me and my girlfriend, we were on a plane. I told her, hey. You know what? If we get to 1,500,000.0 till the 2025, we're gonna buy a nice car, and we got there in, like, four weeks. I feel like the journey that you've been on over the last six months is kind of like the dream for a lot of founders. How long were you actually solo? The first person started a month and a half before the acquisition. So I think it's a different ballgame because even if you're solo, you're literally managing teams of AI's writing code. I don't think I've written a single line of HTML or JavaScript in the past three months. You're competing against very well funded companies, Lovable, Bolt, Replit, Vercel. How did you get your first 10 users? I started with three users, really close friends. I got them to sit down with me every other day around the table, and they would use the the tool. They will try to build something. It will break. I'll take a look and then just build it for them. I'm not gonna try and scale anything before I know that users enjoy it. And the best metric to to seeing them enjoying it is that they're starting to share it with someone. Today, my guest is Maior Shlomo. This is a unique episode because I almost never have conversations with early stage founders. I made an exception because Maior's journey is in many ways the dream for a lot of founders. Maior started a company called Base 44, which is essentially a more advanced wipe coding tool. Six months later, just a few weeks ago, he sold the company for $80,000,000 to Wix. He's a solo founder. It was just him for most of those six months. He never raised any money. He bootstrapped it and built it purely off profits. When he launched it on Product Hunt, he got so much love that the Product Hunt algorithm thought that it was bots, when it was really just people from all over the world wanting to support the product. In our conversation, Maurer shares exactly how he grew the product from zero to 10 to a 100 to hundreds of thousands of users, his tech stack that allowed him to move so fast, tools that he uses to be super productive as a sole founder with severe ADHD, also the super important insight that everyone needs to hear about how he came up with the idea and then refined the idea. Also, just a bunch of common growth tactics that he tried that didn't work for him. And some key advice for anyone looking to start their own bootstrap company. A big thank you to Noam Segal and Amir Klein for suggesting topics for this conversation. If you enjoy this podcast, don't forget to subscribe and follow it in your favorite podcasting app or YouTube. With that, I bring you Maior Shlomo. 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Design teams today are expected to move fast, but also to get it right. That's where D Scout comes in. D Scout is the all in one research platform built for modern product and design teams. Whether you're running usability tests, interviews, surveys, or in the wild field work, DCOT makes it easy to connect with real users and get real insights fast. You can even test your Figma prototypes directly inside the platform. No juggling tools. No chasing ghost participants. And with the industry's most trusted panel plus AI powered analysis, your team gets clarity and confidence to build better without slowing down. So if you're ready to streamline your research, speed up decisions, and design with impact, head to dscout.com to learn more. That's dscout.com. The answers you need to move confidently. Mayor, thank you so much for being here. Welcome to the podcast. I am so excited to do that. Thank you for having me, Lenny. It's my pleasure. I don't actually do conversations like this often with early stage founders, but I'm really excited to be doing this because I feel like the journey that you've been on over the last six months is kind of like the dream for a lot of founders, especially founders that don't wanna build massive teams, that don't wanna raise a ton of money. Basically, the journey you've been on is build a product. People loved it. It grew like crazy. You didn't raise any money. You sold it for $80,000,000. We'll talk about this, six months in. And I know it's not all rainbows and butterflies and this amazing, you know, happy moment to moment all day, but I know it's a lot of hard work. But this is just what a lot of people want to achieve when they start a company. And you're just in the thick of it right now. Like, you've just announced your acquisition. So I feel like this is a really unique point in time to extract as much wisdom out of your head as possible. Really that I timed you kinda like to flat back and, yeah. I think there's gonna be many more times. This is a a really unique time. Let's start with a couple of basics. Just what is Base 44 for folks that aren't super familiar with the product that you built? Base 44 is an AI app building platform, meaning that you are able to use natural language to describe what you wanna build, an app, a game, a website or something like that, and then have AI code it for you. We're not the first ones doing that. I think it's a very, crowded category. But I think Base 44 takes a very different approach, a very opinionated one, for and one that that users or users like to call it a batteries included approach, which means that for every app that you build in base 44, you already have built in included a database, integrations, user management, analytics, without connecting third party services Vibe coded application, to be very complex and very functional. And so, yeah, I think for most of the category nowadays, they're doing a fantastic job, one with building React web apps, like, front end web apps. And then when a user needs, some back end stuff, they have a great integration with Superbase. Superbase, I think, is the most common kinda, like, thing that that most competitors use. And, honestly, all of them are doing a great job with the integration, but as the nature of an integration, I think it's potentially slightly, less strong than building everything full stack built in. And once we did that and, actually, I engineered the the endpoints and the SDKs and whatever to work well with LLMs, I think Base 44 does a really good job with building very complex and functional real world applications. Okay. I wanna talk about the origin story of just, like, how you even realized that there was an opportunity here. Clearly, it worked out. But before we get there, let me just share a couple stats about this journey to give people a sense of just how crazy this is and add anything I'm missing. So in six months, you went from zero, basically nothing, to selling this company for 80,000,000 plus dollars to Wix. It took you three weeks to hit a million dollars ARR. You bootstrapped this business. I think you put in a few tens of thousands of shekels, not even US dollars. You have something like 400,000 users right now. You're a sole founder. There are two different wars involved in the journey. You're based in Israel, so you have to deal with that, and we're gonna talk about some of the stories. Any other stats that are worth sharing? Anything else that's important high level before we get into the origin story? No. I don't think so. I think, it it like, looking back, it sounds insane, but mostly, this is it. Okay. I love I love that perspective. Okay. So how did this start? There were two things I think that drove me to it. One, my girlfriend needed, like, a website to capture leads. She has, like, a small business. She's, like, an artist. And I tried building that with, like, one of the tools out there for website building, not an AI powered one. And it was such a pain trying to do that. One, kinda like designing with the drag and drop and everything, and then things get messed up in mobile and you try again. It's like and then how do you manage your data and so on? And and and in my previous company, we dealt a lot with LLMs. And when while I was doing that, I was like, it doesn't make any sense. I know models can write the code to do exactly what I'm trying to do right now. Like, build a website for my year or final, build, like, slightly more complicated than a website was actually a web app. I know others can do that. They just they don't have the right infrastructure to do that. So, like, if I set up an infrastructure for, like, hey. Here are the leads. Go to the database. Like, k. You can write React code, and it will serve it, and it will be great from an SEO perspective and so on. Then I noticed, like, it's gonna be super easy, and she can do it on on her own. And the other trigger, I was volunteering to help with the scouts organization here in Israel, with like everything that has to do with like, system and software and then back office systems that they needed. And back then, they're like, it's a huge organization, by the way, really huge, like tens of thousands of people. And they have many as as any other organization in the world that we're constantly living at, has many software needs. And so every time they needed to build something, they didn't have any internal devs, you know, any software engineers. So they'd reach out to other agencies, and agencies usually would quote them, like, a million bucks just to build something that they knew people could build. I was, and still, by the way, huge fan of tools like Retul for, like, the previous, wave of, like, no code, tools. But then those tools were really more of, like, low code tools. Right? You still needed to know some JavaScript, something to make them work to have the interruption. Right? And, again, also back then, I was like, I know for the software and systems that they wanna build. I know it could be done. It's just LLMs can write that, and we can really empower the organization to build all the different tools that they want. Just give it the right setting, right infrastructure so that the LLM has access to a database, maybe to another LLM to be, like, the the app on top of AI, to have some user management, to have all those kind of things that it needs, but it can translate the user needs to actual code. And so those two were triggers. Back then, I started a company seven years ago called Explorium. Very different than base forty four, very much like enterprise top down sales, in the data space, very capital heavy. We raised a $130,000,000. I was a CEO for seven years. Then when the October seventh war, broke out, I went to reserves for, like, almost a year. And then when I came out, I went to travel the world a bit just to to take some time off and wanted to do what I was, like, what I like the most, and I haven't had a chance because Exploam grew and grew, and haven't had a chance for a while to do, which is, coding. I just wanted to get back to building and get my hands dirty. And so I had those, like given those experiences both with my my partner, my girlfriend, and also with the scouts, I was like, let's take a shot at it and start the product that I know is going to be very, very fun to build. And I think when you're approaching it this way and like not the usual way of like, let's raise a ton of money and try to own the category. And I knew I'm always getting into a very crowded category. I also knew that I have, like, some some different angle and some different take on the category. But when you're approaching it this way, it's like there's not a lot to lose. I think it gives a lot of energy, and that's how Base 44 started. It definitely definitely didn't think it's gonna take off so fast, but, yep, that's been much about it. Okay. I like that you don't take good for the work you did to help it take off so fast. I'm excited to talk through that. Just first a few, maybe, takeaways from what you just shared of how this idea emerged for folks that are looking for ideas. One is, clearly, we're solving somebody's real problem, your own problem, helping your girlfriend build this this, website for her and then working with this, the scouts program in Israel, basically building them software. So so I think that's a really important takeaway. You weren't just like, hey. Maybe this will be useful to someone. It's I have a real problem, and you I wanna solve it. And nothing out there is good enough, so I'm gonna build it myself. The other is you said that you're having fun. Feels like that's an important element just like you should enjoy it. You shouldn't feel like it's, like, some kind of drag. You know what? I feel like in like, when I was a first timer, when I first, I started my my first company exploring myself, like, many smart people told me those two very important truth, is like, build something that that you would wanna use or that you'll actually use and make sure that throughout time you keep doing something that you really like. And so when you're first timer or at least for myself, when I heard those kind of things, I was like, yeah. Those are cliches. Businesses all is always important. Let's increase revenue. Like, let's close more deals. And I feel like like those are even though it sounds like a cliche, it's so much easier, one, building something that you'll actually use. So I actually tried solving both problems. Like, I was building the the product and at the same time developing those those two products for my girlfriend, for the scout, and later on also for other friends and family, and we'll get to that. That's how I got kinda, like, my first couple of users. But super important to build something that you'll use. You'll move forward so much faster, but also doing something that you love. I think I was the CEO of Exploring for seven years. It was such a fantastic experience. It had so many highs and lows, but at some point at some point, it grew. And it took me too much time to realize that what I really like doing is just building products and scaling products and not necessarily, like, being a CEO, managing sales, managing HR, managing all those kind of things. And I think that that gives a lot of power. Like, it's it's easier to work very hard, when you're doing something you really like. Let's follow that thread and talk about being a solo founder. I think this is something a lot of founders like, you know, it's hard to find a cofounder that out of the blue when you have an idea. YC famously doesn't like solo founders. So I think there's a lot of power in what you've achieved. So let me just ask you, first of all, any, I guess, lessons about being a solo founder that you think would be helpful for other feet people considering starting a company on their own? And, also, just how do you stay productive? How do you get stuff done as a solo founder using AI? One, solo founder and specifically boot stopping, it's not for like, I don't think it's suitable for every use case. Right? If you're building like a B2B company, especially if you're like doing a B2B enterprise company, like you'll need to hire a salesperson or sales team. Like, you'll need to, like, spend your money on marketing. It's gonna be very hard to try to sell to your company when you're on your own, and nobody knows if the product's gonna stay there tomorrow. So I don't think it's, like, the right setting for every company. I feel I feel like if you're building something that has the potential to be viral, or to target the masses, and so it doesn't really matter if you're, like, funded or not. You just, like, build a great product that people will share. If you're able to do that and you're able to get out of, like, the escape velocity of of getting to product market fit, then everything is better doing, solo bootstrap than than the other way around. One else, like, even from a pure cold angle of, like, the financial outcome, obviously, if you're able to bootstrap your business and and and, again, get out of, like, the escape velocity, be profitable to some degree, then you'll likely generate a financial outcome that's, I think, for most cases, way better than than any other any other thing. Second is so not specifically the solo, but the boot stopping thing. Less stressful. Like, you wake up in the morning as, like, you feel profitable and and just, like, I think there's, like, this term, default alive. It's so much easier. I've done both. And the weight of, raising so much fund even if your investors are great. And my investors were awesome, and they were always supportive and so on. But even so, I feel like, being boot stopped, like, no other money except of yours in the business and that the and the business is growing and and and profitable, I feel I can can keep the energies up. And I think they keep like, one thing that I've learned from my previous company is, like, energies are super important. Usually, it's a marathon. For me, it was a sprint. I thought it's gonna be a marathon, but you wanna do something that you like for years and years. And if you are if you're able to show up every day, then your your chances kinda, like, goes up immediately. But then there's, like, a lot of a lot of downside and a lot of stressful moments doing that. One, just keeping the self go up, keeping the servers up. When you're solo, you don't have a DevOps team, you don't have on call, you don't have anything, I think it's really tough. I had a few accidents that that really I'm I'm joking about that, but I was saying it to my friends, like, show them my life a bit with just, like, the stress. I had one funny now I look at it as a funny moment where, I was at my brother's wedding, and we were doing the photoshoots. And I was actually the one actually who was supposed to also do the ceremony. And then doing the photoshoots, I have a friend from MIT calls me up, and he's like, hey. Somebody hacked into Base 44. And it's like a crypto scam, and you've gotta take care of that because people are building apps on top of Base 44 and they're putting the data inside and so on. And I remember like hanging up the phone. I was like, okay, I'll take a look at it immediately. And I remember hanging up the phone and saying, I know why it's such it's it's karma. I know for a fact it's true. Somebody probably hacked into that because what are the are the chances that on the only night that I'm not able to open up a laptop and handle that? This is what happens. And so I I I threw out those some excuse and, like, I have to go and, like, practice towards the ceremony or something like that. Open up a laptop, spend two hours, two very scary hours of my life. It ended up being just the LLM. Tried using a package called cryptography, which is like an a Node JS, like a JavaScript package. Has nothing to do with crypto. But, obviously, the the user, not a technical user, saw this error of, like, hey. Something cryptography or something like that was sure that someone, like, a crypto scam hacked into into their app. And so you have a lot of those, like, moments that the whole thing is, like, you're not able to share it with anyone, share the burden even, or the stress, or put anyone on top of it and say, hey, you know what? I'm out for today. Like, you handle that. In my previous company, my two co founders, we were really good friends, like, great friends. And even if, one of us would mess up, then still would have someone to share it with and run jokes around and, like and and just be there with someone. So when you're solo, it's hard. And then brutal prioritization, which is something you have to do because you have to keep up the pace, of the product. And, obviously, nowadays with AI and, like, everyone can deal software, like, you have to go extremely fast on one side, and on the other side, figure out marketing along the way and and how to do that. And every time I remember that every time I had this, ceremony where I'd start a day and try to look inside and ask myself, what do I need to work on today, and what do I wanna work on today? So what I wanna wanna work on today, it was always like, I wanna code. Like, that's what I like to do. Let's improve the product. I know there's, like, a bug that that, makes, like, a noise sound to users. I know there's, like, the feature that that's in my head that I'm saying, oh, competition haven't thought about that. I have to build it. I have to put it out to be in front of everything. And then it's like, what do I have? Like, what do I have to do today? And so at many different stages on on base 40 four's journey, it was, I know I can, like, improve the product a lot, but I need to do some more marketing. Oh, I need to like, I know this is not the bottleneck. I know people are, like, converting well. They're growing. Retention is looking good. And it's all about just, like, increasing the audience even though I know, like, I need like, even though I want I didn't wanna work on the product. And so I think it is like this, context switching is hard. Yeah. And the last piece, obviously, is I was spending a lot of my time on making sure that my setup, like how I code, how I write content, and so on is optimized and everything is automated. And so I spent a lot of time thinking and agonizing about how to structure the code repository, for example, so that I can use, cancel for back end and base 44 for front end to write, like, code really fast. And this was, like, really important for me to keep kinda, like, trying to find out new ways of, like, how to automate and increase the pace of, like, building solo. Because if you're able to correct that, I feel like smaller teams with a lot of context nowadays can can move faster. And the same goes also for marketing is, like, and and for for other tools where you want to automate as much as you can, especially when you're solo because time is gonna be, like, the the thing that kills your business if if you're not managing it right. Okay. Let me follow that thread. That's a really interesting topic. So what is in your stack of productivity for yourself and then just that allowed you to build Base 44 just like the tech stack of Base 44? So you said Cursor, Base 44. What else did you use day to day that helped you be more efficient? So I have severe ADHD. And so it's it it can also be like a superpower, but then you have to, like, first the the first thing you wanna do is, like, make sure that your your walk day looks like, like that that you can be focused and that you get, like, a lot of, like, deep walk. And so I use a product called Rescue Time, which I really like, but I think there's, like, a bunch of other products, like, shuts down every access to Twitter and LinkedIn and so on. This was really hard because I was starting to, like, do this building public, which turned out to work pretty well for base 44. And so every time you wanna, like, take a look at your post or see kinda, like, how many likes and, like, impressions and so on. But then, like, you can't work on anything else. And so, I had this first setup that that really, like, allowed me a certain set of softwares, software tools that I can use to manage kinda like deep work. Causal has been awesome. Base 44 not only did, like, the work for the front end side, but also a lot of, like, the business apps that I used, were on top of Base 44. So where I'd manage users and give credits and and where I write content. And then, like, I had this app where I kinda, like, at the start of the week, would write, some, like, high level content ideas, And then the the base 44 app will take it and break it down just kinda like something that sounds more like me, for a LinkedIn post. And then I'd I'd approve that, and then it would break it down to, like, a Twitter post. And so I wrote things that were were, like, really customized to my process and what I wanted to do, which really helped. But I think you can do that not only with BaseBody four. Just you can vibe code your way into, like, productivity tools that really fits what you wanna do and and what kinda like the process for you looks like. And I had so, again, for example, for my, social post and so on, there's, like, a process that I would follow, and maybe no one else would would would follow that. And so VibeCode, the custom app for that was really was really helpful. Let me actually ask about that. That is super cool. So you built basically internal tools for yourself using Base 44. People can use other tools potentially. So you built one that's, like, help me craft a tweet. How does that actually look like? What is the input? That sounds really interesting. So the way that I I like to work is, like, I would have those, moments where I would have inspiration for, like, a piece of content. Right? So the way I go based 44, probably a different topic, but was a lot around building in public and growing an audience, and speaking to my audience where which were fellow builders. So it was really easy. So a lot of that was, like, around sharing on, like, the base 44 journey. And then I'll have a process that I'll follow. It's like a write down before that on a piece of paper, like, some ideas that I had for, like, post for throughout the week because because you wanna keep consistency and keep put putting, like, the things out there. And then my process before the app was, like, I'd go to Check Jupyter, write, like, a very vague kind of, like, structure or skeleton of a post and tell it, like, hey, fix my writing, improve my writing a bit, and then Check Jupyter will spit out something that was, like, too far off, too much like, too salesy, not my tone, and then I'll say, no. Keep closer to the original, and we'll fight about that. And then, like, remove the emojis. The hyphens look weird and so on. So, okay, I'll have now my my my LinkedIn post, and I'll need to generate an image for that. So I'll go to a different tool. And then I'll take this LinkedIn post, and now, okay, I need to, like, put it out also in my Twitter account. So, okay, let's break it down to a Twitter thread. Now you need to shorten the like, it's you need to make some adjustments to the content. And so I've taken this entire process, which I think was, like, what was working for me, and just vibe coded it up around it, to help me speed it up and then made sure that the LLM inside the app was using my own tone of voice and was saving the previous post to understand how it looks like. Like, what are the posts that I really like that I've written beforehand so that in the next post, it will speak just like me. This might be a good plug for Base 44. So, like, say someone were to go to base44.com and try this out. What would be a prompt you'd suggest? Like, how would they get started building a tool like this? Usually, what I'll do is I'll write down I think LMS nowadays do a very good job with, like, start vague. It's gonna build a skeleton for what you need, and base 44 does a good job with us, like, understanding at least the big pieces. Okay. There's gonna be an LLM writing the content. There's gonna be this and that. And so you don't have to, like, write the entire spec. It's just like something like, hey. I wanna build my own content generation AI powered tool. Here's my process currently, and my process is doing this. And then LinkedIn and then Twitter, write something to support that. And then from there, iterate. And also something that I really like with with the entire category, again, not only Base 44, I feel like there's tons of tools doing a a great job, but something I like in base 44 is that, like, you can because it's really easy to change the software, it's like you get this adaptive software. It's like, as you improve your processes or maybe your processes change, it's like you adapt it. So, like, basically, the four got acquired by Wix, two weeks ago. And so now the process of, like, putting content out there looks a bit different. And so with, like, just two prompts, like, you change it to support your new process, which is really fun. That's a cool phrase, adaptive software. I heard malleable software is another way to describe this. Let me I wanna talk about growth, but a couple more things real quick. This idea of bootstrapping. I'm curious. So, essentially, you're competing against very well funded companies, Lovable, Bolt, Replit, vzero, Oversell. Cursor raised, I don't know, bazillion dollars at this point. I know you're not competing with Cursor directly. If you weren't gonna be acquired by Wix, did you think did you plan on raising money? Do you think you had a chance staying bootstrapped competing against the folks that everyone's, you know, the more popular products today? Base 40 four was, like, fairly profitable, much more than than what I thought. So even if, like, even if I wasn't getting acquired, I thought, like, I can make good money out of it. It ended up, like I remember we I I had, like, a very failed product hunt launch at, like, mid January and then started writing some, like, started building in public at around February, and that's where it took off. And then started, like, I think, first dollar or, like, the the first 10 or $100 were towards, March. And then in May, I already did, close to 200 k in profit. And so I think, I think either way, there was, like, a room to compete. And even though it was small, I was seeing that the users that come to me stick, like, did come to Base 44, stick with Base 44, even though they're very familiar with, like, the rest of the competition. The challenge was obviously making as much noise as the other folks. So you can see, like, the other Vibe Coding tools doing, like, a million dollars, hackathons and so on and do doing an awesome job on the growth, really. But I didn't have the resources, so I tried finding ways to fight the fight. I think we had a very successful hackathon for good, which turned out to be a great growth engine And I also did good in the world, which, like, we had 3,000 teams just building some great, do good, apps. But, also, to be very honest, I think part of the reason to get acquired is because this market has been moving so fast, faster than anything I've seen, faster than what I've I've thought it's gonna move. And at some point, I feel it's gonna be, like, you see Base forty four grows and you start thinking, hey. This can really help people with their lives. Like, this this is, like, one of those soft tool categories that I'm saying that I'm very not objective, but I feel like it can really move the needle for a lot of people. I've been seeing people build, like, fantastic, awesome things. And so I was like, let's go for the, like, the big one. Let's try and and actually build some global scale, maybe lead the category, maybe win it. I felt like the best chances to do that is to, top them up with Wix. There's, like, plenty of reasons to do that. We can we can touch on that later, but it's, like, same DNA, same customer base. Like, they know what they're doing. They're seeing and and, obviously, like, very good connection with with the entire management team over there. And so I I feel like the acquisition again, being very honest, I felt like it's gonna be a financial success either way. But the acquisition is like taking a stance and saying, you know what? Let's let's let's play in the big league, and and and let's, punch down, not only punch up, when when fighting in this very crowded space. And that's part of the reason why to get acquired. That was really insightful. So part of the part of what I'm hearing is you could have stayed independent and made a really good income and built a really good business, at least for a while. Who knows what would have happened long term? But it if, as a solopreneur, as someone that's never raised money, you can make significant income doing something like this in a crowded space if you have something that people love that enough people love. So I think that's a really interesting insight. Like, it's okay if there's a bazillion dollars in funding going to competitors. There's a lot of there's a big market here. Yeah. I think it's a bit different ballgame right now. I was, like, I was scared many times. Like, I I thought, how how am I gonna go go into the fight? Those companies are, one, some of the fastest growing companies ever. Again, they're, like, great teams and very well funded and a lot of money being poured into. But then, like, for a time, I saw that I'm able to keep the pace if not even have the, like, a faster pace and have, like, a different angle. And and it's not changing over time, so, like, nobody's, like and so I think it's a different ball game because even, like, if you're various a very small team or even if you're solo, like, you're you're literally managing, like, teams of AIs, like, writing code. I don't think I've written a single line of, like, HTML or JavaScript in the past three months, but still, like, the base 44 font end changes a lot because, AI writes that. So, yeah, if you if you have an interesting angle and you're able to move fast, I feel like money and funding is not necessarily the the facto to win a category. And that's gonna be, like and and that's gonna change even more drastically in future. As LLMs get better, it's like people like, 10 x engineers would have way more impact. They're gonna be a 100 x engineers because they're able to manage ILMs, and it's not necessarily the team size nor the funding, that that would be able to win you a category. And what you just shared is amazing that you've haven't written any you said JavaScript or HTML in three months, which is half the lifetime of this company, which sold for $80,000,000 and and more potentially. It feels like now the big things you gotta get right is kind of like at the beginning of figuring out what problems to solve and being really good at understanding where the gaps are. And then it's distribution, marketing, getting people to be aware that you exist and give you a shot. Yeah. And even distribution, I'm still learning that. It's like it's a even distribution nowadays, it's very different. And and also in favor also in favor of, like, the solo not necessarily the solo, but it's, like, not necessarily that you're gonna pull a lot of money on paid campaigns. Like, base 44 goal with close to zero marketing budget. I spent, like, $2,000 on an influencer post that didn't really bring anything and then tried paid for, like, a couple of thousands of bucks. Didn't really work. And so everything was, like, organically and built in public. And so even distribution is is very different. But, yeah, if you have an interesting take on a domain, Base forty four's Phil Stiezer was one of my best friends. Like, we grew up together. And up to few months ago, he was a restaurant manager. And then he left and started, like, a SaaS company for managing invoices for restaurants. So this is a guy that has both distribution. Obviously, this is very local, like, software and company, but has distributions, like, has those connections, but has a very deep domain knowledge. And now that, like, the technical, he has no like, he human coding are, like, very different in they're very different places. And so I think if like domain knowledge become Or domain expertise and some, again, interesting take on a domain or a product or a category becomes like a key thing. And then distribution, yeah, that's a hard one to get, but also a world that's changing a lot. Yeah. And I love that you did it with no funding. The other thought here as you're talking is it feels like you could have kept doing this and made money and lived a great life, but there's this question of how ambitious do you wanna be? I've gone through this myself where I was like, oh, this newsletter is I'm making a living off this writing one email a week. I could do live really well just doing this. But then I'm like, oh, why not do a podcast? Why not do another podcast? Why not do some other stuff? And the reason I do that is it just, like, it's it's boring to do something the same way forever, and there's this opportunity that's out there. I'm like, I should do that. And I feel like some people are on it. I just don't need that. I'm good. I'm gonna live in, I don't know, Fiji and just code it, make $103,105 100 k a year from this thing. But I feel like folks like you, like, there's more ambition. And one way is raise a bunch of money, another sell to a company that has a platform they can build on. Yeah. I emphasize with this a lot, but the funny thing is that like Base forty four for the first time in my life was not trying to build the biggest thing ever. So I met like when I started exploring my previous company, I was so, like, so hung up on, like, let's raise the most amount of money in the least amount of time. I remember that I showed, like, remember that I looked kept looking, like, hey, Explodium raised a $100,000,000 before Snowflake. This is insane. This is amazing and so on. And I did that for seven years. And I think Base 44 is the first time that, like, I stopped and said, do you know what? I just wanna go back to do what I really love, which is just building a product. I don't care if it, like, if it wins the category or not. I don't care if it's gonna become really big or not. I remember when we when when me and my girlfriend got back from, like, the trip to Asia and we were on the plane, I told her, hey. You know what? If if we get to 1,500,000.0 I don't remember why I said exactly this number. Like, if we get to $1,500,000 in ARR, till the 2025, we're gonna buy a nice car. And we got there in, like, four weeks. And so it was the first time of, like, saying, let's not try and build the biggest thing. Let's just do something I really like, and let's just build a product that I'm going to enjoy building. But then at some point it got to be very, very successful. And the thing it comes with, like, once you've seen success and you've seen, like, true positive impact on people, then you're saying, Okay, you know what? Let's go for the, like, let's play the big league, and try to scale it. That, so aligns with my journey. I saw similarly, I'm like, I'm just going to do a newsletter. Life's going to be great. I'm not going to build. I'm not, I call it my anti empire. I don't wanna build anything big. I'm just gonna keep it chill. Project chill. Project before getting a real job. That's what I called it. And and I think that is a really big insight. Some of the best stuff comes from not putting a bunch of pressure on yourself trying to build something huge, and just following a poll, following your interest, following, just that insight you have ends up being some of the best ideas come out of that and the biggest ideas. I love it. I agree with that. Yeah. This episode is brought to you by ContentSquare, the analytics platform that helps companies build better digital experiences. Ever wonder why customers drop off before converting? Or why some pages perform better than others? ContentSquare takes the guesswork out of digital experiences, giving you real time insights into how users interact with your site or app. With AI powered analytics, automatic frustration detection, and clear visualizations, you'll know exactly what's working and what's holding your customers back. Whether you're optimizing an ecommerce checkout, refining a b to b lead flow, or improving a mobile app experience, ContentSquare pinpoints exactly what needs fixing and why. Content Square powers better customer journeys across 1,300,000 websites and apps. Discover the insights you've been missing at contentsquare.com/lenny. Let's talk about growth. So here's what I wanna do. I wanna talk through just how you got the first users of Base 44. So I'm thinking maybe how'd you get, like, the first 10 users? How'd you get the first 100 users? How'd you get the first thousand users? What are the the levers used there? What are the tactics? So let's start with 10. How'd you get your first 10 users? Just begging people close to me that I feel like that I have, that I have really good connections with, to use it. I feel like there's no other way. And maybe there are other ways, but, again, I was very new to, like, b to c, like, to consumer ish type of product. And so I grabbed well, I started with even three users. It's, like, really close friends. Two of them back at the time, I caught them in, like, a part of their life where they were unemployed. So I was like, hey. Why don't you try build a SaaS business or something like that? And so three really close friends, where somehow I got them to sit down with me every other day around the table, and they would use the the tool. They will try to build something. It will break. I'll take a look. I'll take a look at the logs. I'll go back to my computer, try to change it, push into production, and then just build it for them. I feel like, like, plenty of people are lucky to find maybe a method that consistently works for your, like, 10, a 100, a thousand, users and then from there. But I try to look at it as, like, milestones. And so first, I was like, I'm not gonna try and scale anything before I know that, users enjoy it. And and the best metric to to seeing them enjoying it or or at least making value out of it, even if they're not enjoying because of plenty of bugs and slowness and so on, is that they're starting to share it with with someone. So I haven't invested anything in marketing. Before, I felt like, okay. For the first three or five or 10 friends, at some point, they started sharing it with their friends. Like, well, like, you'd see, okay. There's, like, one new users today and then two new users today and so on. So once it started happening, even on very low percentages, because, Base 44 turned out later in its journey to be very viral. But back then, it was like an okay product. People loved it and and all liked it and started sharing it with that. And so once I started seeing that this works, and we got to like 10 users where all my friends and then the eleventh user or something like that, I started seeing people that don't really know me, that's why I knew, okay, now it's time to invest in marketing or try to launch this thing or try to, like, get more people to use it. Because if you try to do it beforehand, I feel like you're gonna waste a lot of time and resources on just, like, having a very evolving dome. Like, you get users in and out, you will not be able to to and unless you have, like, a lot of money to invest in paid so that, like, it makes sense, then then it's very hard. I knew that I'm not gonna do that. It's like a product that I'm building. I want it to be profitable from the get go and not feeling bad for investing too much money into your page and so on. And so I knew that it has to be viral. At some point, I started starting to look like it's viral. Then I did a very failed, very bad, product hunt launch. But also now looking back and saying, this is completely fine. I feel like people some sometimes treat their lunches, like, Product Launches, as, like, make it or break it for the company. This wasn't the case for me. I was like, this is a tool for me to get to my next 30 users, my next 50 users, and that's exactly what happened. And so first Product Hunt launch, we got, like, 50. I got, like, 15 new users. By the way, the second one broke Product Hunt. They thought that this is, like, plenty of bots. We won the first product of the day and the first product of the month of the week, but it's a different story. And so we got, like, 50 users, and we got the first user to pay. This was an insane an insane feeling because I'm, like, an entrepreneur coming for, like, the enterprise space. I was thinking that this is insane. Why would anyone pay for my product without meeting me, without, like, looking me dead in the eyes or trying to get a discount and so on? Obviously, this user churned in, like, a few hours. Forex wasn't good back then. But from there, I started seeing some very slow growth. So I got my first 50 and then 20 left and then the other 30 started sharing it with like other users that were really good. And then I tried a bunch of marketing things, didn't work, influencer post or paid or something like that. And then one of my friends, was also a founder in a different different space told me, Hey, you know what? I think it's really cool that you're building it on your own and that you're, like, you're trying to, like, take a very different approach than than the usual VC funded way. Why don't you share, like, content about that? Like, at the end of day, it's like you're gonna have the the same like, your audience or builders, they're trying to build their own products or or maybe even businesses, and it will likely resonate with them. And so I started sharing the journey on, LinkedIn. And I remember, like, seeing posts, like, okay, there's this nice concept of building public, and people get really interested. And I think here in Base forty four, I had, like, this really nice, synergy between the building public and also my audience was like builders. Right? If I was like building, I don't know, a product to attorneys and probably this wouldn't have made a lot of sense. Once I started like sharing, what I'm building in public and getting more users and improving their product tremendously, I was so lucky. Like, the the community around Base forty four is is nothing like I've ever seen. It's, like, so supportive. There's so much feedback. And so from the the loop of, like, improving the product, this is exactly, like, how how people say it should feel like. It's, like, people asking for features before you can actually build them. They're getting so excited about your product. They're writing the nicest things people have tried, like, started writing. Like, hey. You changed my life. I wanted to build. I had that, like, those ideas throughout my life. I didn't have a, like, an an ability to do that or resources or money to pay for developers. And then the other thing that I did, it worked really well, is I've noticed that people really like sharing what they're building, on top of Base 44. Like, they would write posts. I remember at some point a friend of mine reached out and he was like, dude, how much are you paying those people to, to, like, write posts about Base 44? I was like, I'm not paying anymore, honestly. And so what I did is I actually I I did this program inside Base 44 saying, hey. If you share just about the process of building the app or the app itself, it doesn't even have to be about Base 44. If you share it in social, you'll get extra credits to build. And so those two, like building public and giving up credits worked extremely well. And that's how we got growth going. Okay. Let's pause there. That was awesome. How many users do you have at this point of the journey roughly? I think there was like two weeks between No, a week between having Like being on a pace of like 20 users a day to seeing, 4,000 users coming to your product, like, new users a day, break the product, like, it was outscaling it. Also, there's, like, some things I needed to learn, while moving is like, oh, yeah. I wasn't a DevOps engineer. I don't know how to scale databases. I didn't know that a virtual CPU would literally come back at me when when trying to scale and so on. And, again, trying to be profitable. And so you try to use every free tier that you can, but then once you start scaling, it's good, bad. So, yeah, I think once I started sharing in public, it grew to a few thousands- Okay. A day. And then from there, the credit thing, like, did the rest. Okay. So this is kind of like the whole journey. I know there's a few other elements I wanna touch on, but let me point out a few things that stood out to me that I think might be helpful to folks. The first is right at the beginning, the coming back to a lesson you shared at the beginning, which is build for specific people. So initially, it was build for yourself, build for your girlfriend, build for the scouts program. And then it was built for these, like, three friends, just building it, sitting with them, building the things they need to use it, which is really interesting because a lot of times, the advice you get is look for look for pull, look for people with problems to solve. Like, you almost went the opposite. Like, you're like, use my product. I need you as a favor. Use my product and help me make it better. Absolutely. Also, like, I don't know though. I think maybe paradigms are changing, but there's some things that I don't believe in is like MVPs first and foremost is like, if you're building something that people will not be able to use or is not good enough, especially these days where it's so much easier to build software. So the attention span for people to actually try out new software products is getting shorter and shorter. So yeah, pick a bunch of people that, I don't know, owe you something or or have any reason to use your product when when it's bad. Build for them. Be there physically. Remember that even when we passed, 20 ks users, 50 ks users, and 100 ks users, it was still very tough to get the right feedback. So I would bring, like, twenty, thirty people to, like, a room together. It's like almost like a focus group or a small hackathon. I'll do that every other week, just to get feedback. And it was so much easier than any other thing. And it was the same thing that I tried developing when we were just, like, three users and five users. And so, yeah, build it for them. They can come from different backgrounds. Again, something else that I don't really empathize with or or deal with is, like, you have to have, like, a certain ICP. It's not a it's not necessarily about like the profile of a person, more of like what they're trying to do is like way more important. So you can have different types of people, but all trying to do the same thing. Right? They're trying to build a tool. I think some of this people should remember the tool you're building is a specific kind of tool that helps you build things. And so these lessons don't necessarily apply. In a lot of cases, you want us to be really specific with ICP because there's, like, one thing you accomplish with this thing versus this very horizontal product. I agree. But I think that's still very good to know because maybe for your product, you hear all this advice. You need a very narrow focus. You gotta have a very specific role and company size and all these things. You're like, okay. Maybe not. Maybe if your tool is something that a lot of people can use for a lot of different reasons, don't worry about that too much. Okay. So step one, shared it with friends, a few friends, like, forced them to use it. Please use this. I'm gonna watch you. Your point about being there physically, I think, is really interesting. Like, don't just send it to them over email and and ask them how it went. It's like, sit next to them and watch them use it and then keep making it better. Then you tried this Product Hunt launch, another great lesson. You may fail on Product Hunt. That's okay. You still gain, like you don't know. It sounds like you tripled Yeah. You quadrupled your user base from 10 to 30 in in a failed product launch product hunt launch. You also said you've tried paid, which didn't work. You tried influencer marketing, didn't work. So, basically, all the paid stuff didn't work. But that's great. Great lesson. I think people really don't wanna be doing that kind of stuff. The point you made about starting to share it in public, I think, is really interesting. A lot of people post stuff on LinkedIn, and every like, it's cringey. There's a lot of people building in public. Who cares? What are you building? I don't know. I don't care about what you're building. What is it you think stood out about the way you approached it that is it this tool you built that tells you how to post really viral stuff? What do you think you did that allowed that made people care? Is it, like, the small community you're already a part of in Israel in the tech scene? Like, is that a big part of why you think it worked? Is there anything else that might be helpful to folks that are thinking about building in public and being successful there? So first, a disclaimer. I feel like I had some very small not audience, but, like, I had plenty of, like, LinkedIn connections before. And so everything started from LinkedIn. Right? Is LinkedIn okay? Great. Yeah. So now that the acquisition story is is getting crazy all over the world. So getting a lot of followers from a a bunch of, like, different different, social media platforms. But I started with LinkedIn. I think the fact that I was, like, the CEO of this company, previously, like, had some people around me in my connections. So, again, you have to have, like if you're writing to, like, something that I told a friend few weeks ago, building public is great. Right? But but and and other other, like, other channels can really work. But at some point, you have to, like, take a bet on one channel that you see it's working. So, like, if you're writing posts week over week and you're, like, you get five likes, it's likely not gonna change drastically. So and, again, I tried a bunch of things. Influencer didn't work. Okay. I'll just put it aside for a second. Let's let's see if I can find a channel that works. And so, yeah, I in for the building public, I was trying to be as honest as I could and and just write the good, the bad. And I think the also the fact is, like, I wasn't a venture Like, I wasn't a a VC funded company. I didn't try looking the best or show, hey. Look at my amazing metrics. So, like, make everything looks, like, really pink and really great, and I'm the fastest going whatever bootstrapped company in the world. I think just writing really about the good, the bad, and the ugly, and just being very realistic and sharing the learnings along the way. Again, that this is specifically for my audience. Right? So my audience were builders, and so I'm not sure that it it it works to any other product category. But, yeah, just being very realistic and doing post from the deepest, like, technical tech stack and how I optimize the LLMs to just sharing some, some feelings or growth. People like to see numbers. People like to see charts. And also even there, even in the building public, like I would ask my friends beforehand that I knew that they were the target. Like, what do you think of this post? Is it interesting? Is it not? Like, do you get do you see value out of that? And it's like almost like a product that you're releasing out there. It's the same thing. Okay. This is really interesting. So being being honest, really effective. Feels like there's like this underdog element of being a sole founder, not VC funded, adds to it. Also, just sharing really interesting learnings, things you've learned yourself that, innately people find interesting because you didn't know this stuff. And also just, like, fun stats and graphs charts and things like that. Building a tool on base 44 that can help you make the suites better. Also, there I think it's important to know. You had a network ahead of this. Like, you had people. You had followers. You had connections. It wasn't, like, starting from zero. What's, like, a rough sense of just, like, I don't know how large your network was. What's, like, a way to think about that so folks are like, oh, wow. I'm nowhere near that. I don't think it was very big. I think it was, like, maybe a few thousand connections. Nowadays, it's few tens of thousands, but, like, you start seeing some engagement. And and once you do that, especially when you, like, say, okay. This is the channel that I'm gonna put all, like, all my weight on. Okay. That's a really important point too. It wasn't, like, put cross post to Twitter and Instagram, all these things. It's pick one and just nail that. Yeah. Till this day, I think that, like, posting for me, posting on Twitter was was a waste of time. I, at some point, like, okay. I just I saw LinkedIn succeed, and I was like, okay. Let's do the same thing on Twitter. Now I have, like, a better following on Twitter, but yeah, like, it was it didn't really work. So I was spending a lot of time where, like, from LinkedIn, I saw, like, the the the highest away. And it could be very different for different founders, for different products. It could be Reddit. It could be, like, opening opening up a Substack. Like, it could be very different things. For me, that's what worked. And, like, once you see something work, just double, triple down on that. Keep on, like, don't try to spray and play. It doesn't work at this stage. At least for me, no. That is really great advice. It aligns with what I often see with traditional growth engines. There's, like, SEO, there's pay, there's sales, there's virality, word-of-mouth. And usually, a company grows mostly through one. And Yeah. LinkedIn, interestingly, was your vector of growth. Also, just this incentives piece is really interesting, a really cool tactic. So the tactic here is incentivizing people to share what they built on base 44, and they get credit to build more. I've never heard of that before. How do you actually do that? Do they send screenshots or something? How do they get credit? They they literally, like, early on, they sent me emails, and I would tag them again with the with an app and an LLM. Like, there's there's support is a whole different topic that we can speak about. So how is, like, how do you run support when you're solo, which is a huge topic. But, like, they would send, I would say, hey. Write a post. Paste the link back. Send me an email with, like, the link, and and, like, and I'll give you credits. And so at some point, they automated that because they couldn't really manage, like, the the whole theme. But yeah. Because you couldn't really, like, connect to, like, the the social APIs and so on. It was hard. So I was like, just send me the post. I I know exactly what you mean with the support challenges of being a solo person with the newsletter of a million people. I get endless little things just come up. I I am really curious to hear you solve it. Let's not get into it. In terms of being solo, actually, I haven't asked this yet. How long were you actually solo? When did you actually hire your first first second person into the journey of the six months? So the Phil's person started two months ago, so a month and a half before the acquisition. So I was running mostly solo. I think, but, like, when when he started, I already knew that that it's headed there. To acquisition. Yeah. And also at some point, like, once I I, like, I, like, I saw that the chances chances of this happening are a glow. So, yeah, I hired, like, the best people I know because I know that, like, I have now this, few years, if not more, that, like, I wanna build an awesome like, I have to build this to be really big, and I need the right people around me. And it's not anymore about, like, let's try and be as profitable and as fun as possible. It's like, let's literally take a bigger bet. And that's where I started, like, bringing in people that I knew, the best people that I knew to kinda, like, help me build that. Also, like, the the way the deal is structured, not that I can share a lot of details on this. Like, okay. There's, like, the the 80 mil that got published, that's the initial payment, and then there's this error note piece, which is really interesting because I think they Wix structured the deal in a really win win situation. But then a lot of my compensation and a lot of, like, the upside is actually based on that, other than the ADMIL. And so I have both the financial interest, also the personal interest in, like, building this to be as big as possible. So in the month before the acquisition, I had the team starting to scale. But also, basically, for like, became more profitable that I could afford myself to bring in more people. The first hire, was that an engineer? What what did they do? Actually, a product person. Woah. Like a product manager? Yeah. Well, it's it's someone who was I've I've been working with a lot, and he's like a check of all trades. So he can go into, like, LLM logs and look at, like, mistakes and fix the pawns. He can write a Python script to analyze things that we do. He can start implementing analytics into the product. So, like, a very technical product person that could wear many hats. That's what you want when you were starting out. Like, at some point, I was like his name is Yoav. At some point, I was telling you, hey, Yoav. You take growth now. And he's like, I haven't done growth anywhere. Right? No. You take growth now. Like, try and and let's let's try new challenge. Let let's try those kind of things. So you wanna bring in someone that that is the field style that can do many different things. Okay. That's really interesting. Let's finish talking about growth, and let me share stuff you've shared already about what worked. And then there's a few more things I read that you did that I'm curious how big of a deal they were. So first, you just grabbed a bunch of friends, used this product, used that to learn what to build. You tried Product Hunt, sort of effective early stages. It was ended up being really effective. Then you had another launch that was, like, you said, broke with the Product Hunt algorithm. How many users did that drive? Did that was that, like, a huge inflection, that second Product Hunt launch? The thing is, like, things happen so fast that I didn't really implement any, like, data. It's like stuff like this. I don't really know how many how many users it bought, but I remember I remember it feels like the the community around Base four. So again, it's like one of the most incredible communities that I've seen. It's a very strong one and the the like, the whole entire like, the writing. So they they all were very excited about the product launch, and I was like, let's skyrocket, Base 44. And then I wake up and I see the weirdest things, like, Base 44 is not even in the top 10. And I was like, I know full of factors, like, a thousand people already voted by the time it was noon, and noon in Israel, right? Very early on. It's like, I see people, right? I see more posts on LinkedIn saying people should vote to base 44 and they actually see upvotes. And so till this day, I don't really know what happened. So I one of the community reached out to the support team, for Product Hunt, and saying, you guys should, like, check out your algorithm because something is not right. Like, just even look at LinkedIn, like, search for base 44 Product Hunt. Like, you'll see these many posts. I know, like, you know what? You're right. We fixed it, and then we jumped to, like, the first place. We were, like, 500 for uploads. In the delta was 500 uploads from the second place. Oh my god. Have you ever seen that? Yeah. So it was fun also seeing kind of like the community really, for this. Speaking of community, was that all in WhatsApp? Where'd you manage this community? WhatsApp is a surprisingly really good tool to get feedback from the community. Obviously, like, it's not a great deal for the like, the community is going so fast, so it blew past, like, a thousand or 2,000 or five. I don't even remember what's the limit on WhatsApp. But till this day, like, the WhatsApp community, which was, like, very early on is such a great place to get feedback. It's also even oddly enough, it was when when it still started out, it was my best place to find out if the product is up, if there's, like, slowness, if there's, like, bugs, because people write, like, really fast, and I can see that. But, obviously, at some point, we turn to, like, more scalable solutions like Discord, Reddit. Yeah, those things. And then just keep on sending product updates via email. Okay. There's another couple of others I've read about, and then I'm gonna move on to a different topic. One is this hackathon you mentioned that helped you grow and become more aware. The other is you did a bunch of partnerships, which is really rare for a company of your size. So just talk about those and what that did to the business. At one point, one of the things I really liked about building Base forty four is that I saw people doing, like, building apps that were really, like, incredibly positive and like doing really good in the world. And so, and then it's, I think something really interesting right now in Vibe Coding in general is like, once you actually scale software, you can also scale the impact the software does. So you can have, like, non profits build themselves tools. You can have people that, build apps for education and neglected domains that didn't really have budget because there was, like, no business or idle. And once you open this up and make it super cheap to create software, then it's becoming and so I wanted and this was, like, early on. Like, we were at the 5,000 ish, 10,000 ish users. And so I said, okay. Well, you know what? Let's do a hackathon, where we open up for everybody to build, like, apps that do good in the world. If ever I had no budget back then. So I was like, okay. This is gonna be a five k hackathon. Like, the price is gonna be 5 k. And it was your own money you were gonna give away? Yeah. It was like the profits that that something good base for for did. It's it's the same at that time. And then a lot of people started registering and and a lot of teams. It ended up being 3,000 teams. So like really big. I think like the largest I think it's the largest four good hackathon, so far. And then started getting, sponsor requests because it went all over social. And all of a sudden, I found myself with a very, like, nice, back then, like, smaller business, partnering up with Amazon, with Google, with MongoDB, with Deloitte, like, with really great companies, that that one after another, stood behind this, hackathon, which was so so fun. Like, those are awesome teams. Like, the ones that we partner up with, they opened up their offices at Copestoga to have, like, teams, be there, and and the prices went obviously very high. I think this is this will likely be one of the the top moments in my career. Was very, very empowering, but, like, people built a lot of, like, interesting things. I remember this person building a tool for a grandma who was in in Alzheimer, like, she has Alzheimer's. And and, like, building an an app, which is essentially a game to help the grandmother to memorize our family members with like photos and names and like so many interesting and great and impactful applications. I love that there's benefits to the hackathon route, which other Vibe Coding tools are taking. Not just growth, but also just good feelings and just building community and seeing what people are doing, like meeting people, excited about what you're building. Some so many side benefits. Okay. Before we move on from growth, is there anything else that's worth mentioning that worked really well or just, like, that you think that people think will work and just didn't work for you that you didn't already mention? The last piece, but people talk about that a lot, is that velocity eventually is a growth engine. So, like, part of, like, building in public is you wanna put content out there that people would like to see. And so we joked about it, but it's really true. Like, people like to see charts, and they like to see numbers. And it gets them attached to, like, this project if they're saying, oh, I wonder what's gonna be profit next week, or I wonder, like, how much money is he losing and how can he optimize and, like, that they get attached to that. And I think, also, velocity is to some degree the same thing because if your product evolves really fast and you're putting features out there, like, every other day, people get attached to that. And and people, like, like, it's I remember I remember people commenting on my post saying, you know what? Like, it's moving so fast. I have to try it now. And so this is part of this. Like, velocity solves so for so many things. Like, most of my thoughts, when and still are when still are, when running Base 44 is like, how do we increase velocity? How do we increase velocity? It's gonna solve every product problem you have or most of them. It's gonna solve some of your marketing challenges if you're smart about it and you're putting the content out there and you you're making everything like a mini launch, so I feel like that was also a great, growth tool. That is a really good point. Clearly, everyone in the space is has understands this as well. I wanna talk about the acquisition piece, but a couple quick questions that have been on my mind. One is just, what is the tech stack that you built on? Because I think a lot of founders are like, what the hell do I build on? How do I what will help me move fast? So get as geeky as you want. Just, like, what are the tools and infrastructure used to build Base forty four? Vendor.com. Oh my god. This is, I like the honestly, they're not paying me anything. I wish I would have invested or anything. I don't think I ever spoke to someone senior there. Holy, like, this is this was so much fun to work with and still is. Like, I mean, my previous company, we had like large teams of DevOps building processes for us to push to production. So wendell.com is like, how does it call like this? It's a cloud. I was like, yeah, it's like a very, like built on top of AWS. You have a bunch of, easy to manage processes, and easy to like start up web apps and scale them and so on. And it's just render. It's not like a fancy version of render. It's the wordrender.com. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I just looked that up. Okay. Cool. Yeah. So this is like everything that has to do with infrastructure and manage the both the website, the platform, and the applications itself because Basefort Basefort is like a complex ecosystem. You have that, user applications that have to be isolated and separated from the platform. It has to be isolated and separated from the websites, like, a whole a whole thing. MongoDB is really good when you're vibe coding, especially when you're building a vibe coding platform because, schemas change a lot, and it's not necessarily, like, users, LLMs don't always understand what the user is trying to send, so they keep changing the data schema. And I feel like this this has been the right choice. Obviously, Kelser, but, again, I was spending 30% of my time just optimizing for making the whole repository, LLM suitable. So, by the way, those are concepts that I also implemented in Base 44. But one thing that I kept doing is I tried making the LLM write as least code as possible. Like, when you're trying to implement a feature that that try to get to a place where it can implement the feature entirely without you writing code, but that the LLM would write least codes, as least codes as possible. Because then when the LLM try to like, when the AI tries to, like, implement the entire feature from scratch, there are more places where you can make mistakes or get confused. There are more things that it needs to save in the context when you ask it for a follow-up prompt or something like that. And so I built a very high level, very opinionated infrastructure, like, code infrastructure. Right? It takes care of, like, the entire thing. When you build a new feature, it takes care of, like, the entire like, the the CRUD, the authentication, the database, like, everything that has to do with that so that when you ask the LLM to implement a new theme, it writes very little code. And by the way, this is also true for Base 44 is, like, provide the LLM with a really good infrastructure and SDK and have the LLM, like, the LLM still has the flexibility to write the entire feature because it's code, but make it so that, that it doesn't need to just spit out too many tokens. And, obviously, everything that has to do with ruleset, there's one, controversial take, for me working with LLMs is, don't use TypeScript. Use plain JavaScript. Use JSX. It's easier for models to write code this way. So the font end for base 44 for the platform, I mean, is built in JSX, not TypeScript. And I feel like this has been working well, part of the reason why I haven't written a single line of, HTML or JavaScript in the past. Like, Jesse does this really well. And another thing that works really well working with AI is a lot like, try to push as much as possible in the same repository. Instead of, like, separating the front end and the back end, it's easier to give, like, the context to the AI of, like, both what's in the back end and what's in the front end. Besides that, so my stack is, like the back end is in Python. I feel like people can be very judgmental about that in terms of performance. I haven't gotten into performance issues, and there's, like, a lot of a lot of traffic to Base 44. And every now and then people try to DDoS Base 44 and steal the server holes. And so I feel like if you're building it the right way, Python is just a very great language to do that. And another maybe interesting take is, because because many of the the new apps and products are building are being built to some degree around LLMs. So one of the things that I use is for the LLM that actually writes code in base 44, you I use a mix of different models for different tasks. So Cloud four, for example, does a really nice job with first the initial prompt, like writing the app from scratch. Then everything that has to do with UI is just fantastic. Like, design is great. But then, for example, Gemini is really good when when you get to a very complex, you or or, like, very complex problem or we need to figure out an algorithm or closed forward got stuck in some bad loop, which happens a lot when you write code. So I have this pipeline that tries to figure out the user prompt and then, route it to the right LLM, which I feel like has been working pretty well. Wow. That was, extremely interesting. In this routing, does this is this what you do within cursor or you do this within base 44 based on what the person's working on? Base 44. Yeah. I don't think your cell has this. I wish they I think there's, like, maybe an an an auto option for a but in base 44, it was, like, when users ask. That's awesome. I feel try to analyze what they're asking and then figure out what's the right algorithm to use. That is so cool. So it's just Claude and Gemini. Those are the two they use for Base 44. Yeah. Well, all of those tools, Base 44, Kiaosu, all the vibe coding tools, I use the same, paradigm or I don't know if you call it or method, which is, like, you have the heavy guns, which is usually either Cloudflow or Gemini. And then Cloudflow and Gemini usually, create a high level solution or high level kinda like what changes do you wanna make to the files. So not writing all of the file from scratch every time. Kailsl does that based for the like and so writing, like, the only the chunk of code that needs to be implemented in high level, then you you get, like, smaller, faster models, like Flash or FauxMini from from OpenAI to implement to kinda, like, to patch the code inside the the file. Okay. One very tactical question and a completely different direction, product question. Activation, getting people to an moment feels like something that, is core to retention, something that comes up a lot on this podcast. Is there anything you learned about getting that right? Anything you did that was really successful in getting people to see the value of Base 44 really quickly and and in that, start sharing it, using it? Here's one interesting thing that that I learned that I think, was counterintuitive to me because you always, like, you always wanna build the best product out there for your users, but sometimes it contradicts the moment or how fast can you get users to do that. So first, when, when I, like, when a few months ago or more than that, when Base 44 started, before actually implementing your app, so you would say something like, Hey, create a task management app. And before implementing that, because a lot of times you get this, not super clear request from the user, I'd show the user, like, the LLM would first before even writing code, it would first generate, user flows. Like, almost like a PRD or, like, but something that's more digestible to folks who have like, are not coming from from the space. So it will generate user flows. It will show it to you, like, hey. You wanna create a a task? And then you could you could say, yeah. Yeah. So maybe I wanna add some files and stuff like that. So it will show you what it's gonna generate to make sure that it understands you. And then if you click okay, and then it will generate the app. This was actually something I ditched because too many users, even though it was good for them and it was the right product decision to do that because you'll, you'll create like better apps doing this way. But the conversions to like get to the moment, were not super high. And also, like, not super like, I think one of the the key to the moment in the vibe coding world or at least in base 44 is like, holy shit. Like, it actually understood me and you see the app. And if you have, like, a stage in the middle, it makes the surprise, like, slightly less surprising. And so I think I ditched that, and that was a nice lesson that that I don't know actually how to define the right way, but it's like, get your users as fast as possible to their moment. Sometimes there's a price to that. Make sure it's not too big. But sometimes there's a price to that because at least when you're building b to c, and it's all new to me because I'm not coming from this space, but at least when you're building B2C, like the attention span is so low, really. So you want to get there in like a minute or two or three, and then form there, okay, later on, ramp up the features that you wanna, you wanna actually put there so that it can be like the right product for for your users. That was an awesome insight. Thank you for sharing that. That's actually something that I think will help a lot of people. Okay. Final topic. I wanna talk about the acquisition process. Founders often look at this as, like, the dream. Oh my god. I can just hold my company millions of dollars, but I know it's always stressful and hectic and wild and, you know, the work only begins. You know? You know? You're not like, I'm off. You have to keep building this thing. So first of all, just how the acquisition conversation start? Wix reached out. I think back then, there's, like, a lot of folks from the community, were posting saying, hey. Wix should definitely buy base for this all before it gets too big or something like that. Even though, like, we're not playing or competing in the same category, but it was clear that it's gonna be Why were they recommending Wix? What was just the connection there? First, because of the Israeli, like, the Israeli ecosystem. Got it. But, also, folks were building websites with Base 44, and so it's kinda like the same the same thing. And, obviously, Wix is an yeah. Obviously, Wix is an incredible product, for building websites, but a different approach from from Elodemps is now is now definitely getting there. And so I got the the management team. Like, Wix's management team is so friendly, and and such great guys. And I remember sitting there in the first I think the first sentence that that was first thing that Avishai, the CEO, told me is like, hey. Everybody's been saying that we should buy you. Maybe at least it was worth the talk, and we're here to help. And I think early on, we've explored, like, at least in my mind, it's like, yeah, it seems like those are that that's that's a great team to work with. So definitely in the same space. There's a lot I can benefit from partnering up together. So it wasn't clearly an acquisition, like, on the acquisition path. And, Vishay, the CEO is, like, a very seasoned, very experienced, and helped a lot of entrepreneurs in the b two c space and specifically in Israel to to kinda go and succeed. And so I remember, meeting him for a few nights of, like, just, eating some steaks and just chatting about how to goal base 44 and just literally just getting there to get an advice. And so at some point, we saw first that we have great chemistry, both with him and and with the rest of the team, which I think is really, really crucial, especially if they're buying a solo. Like, this is a very unique case, but especially if they're buying, like, a small team, I think it's crucial for the buyer to make sure or to feel like they're gonna have really good connection and chemistry with the founders, with the key people. Because eventually, it's like, I remember, like, the key one of the key reasons where we were, like, debating together whether whether I should I should join Wix or not. It's like, one of the key things that we've put on the table is, oh, yeah. And it's gonna be a lot of fun working together. And I think also being a person that's going to be fun to work with is the key, especially if you're not, if you're not like a 500 people, company that someone's buying. If you're like a big company and it doesn't really matter. Like, you're buying the operations. You're buying the product. If you're a small company, they're just starting out and getting some great momentum, you have to be a person that people would love to, like, want to work with for the next few years, and so this was critical. I think the best, like, the best place, and this is not easy to get to to this position, but the best position to negotiate such a deal or or even to get there is to be also very fine with the other path of not getting acquired. In some ways, it's like it's weird, but it's like, it's like in dating. When you're when you're in the first couple of dates, you don't wanna show too much interest because then it's I think also I was in a position that I was saying, hey. If it works out, it's gonna be amazing. And if not, it's gonna be amazing. It's gonna be either either way fun. Obviously, I wanted it to work out. Yeah. And the last thing they think is, I don't know if it's suitable for everyone, but I'm very happy with the structure of the deal with the Aeronaut piece because I feel like it's still I still show up every day to work and and it's been only two weeks, but Suwak's gonna be like that for years. And, like, I have a a personal investment in the business and its success. So it's really I feel like it's better than just selling the business and, and just spending the the the next few years and wanting to disappear. I I love that part of the deal. You could be a billionaire if it does well enough. I I don't know the details, but in theory. Let me ask. So I know a part of the story also is that when you were signing the deal, the, the war with Iran basically broke out. Tell that story. So I was trying to not, I wasn't nervous throughout the process, but this is like this is like a huge deal for me. Right? It's gonna change my life, probably will change my kids' life. And when we kicked off the process, we wanted it to be fast. Also, it's like it's not like Base forty four was like a very old company with, like, a lot of baggage. Like, there's no legal. There's no like, it was very easy. The due diligence process was very fast. And I remember us saying to the to the loyals and to to our great kinda, like, two films that we work with, it's like, until until Thursday night, that's it. We're signing Thursday night. No no matter what we do, let's do it. Like, let's wrap it up and make sure that we're aligning to sign Thursday night. And we get to Thursday night. It's 2AM. We stopped fighting over, like, small details, and the lawyers have agreed to everything. And I was like, okay. Just send it out for signatures. We said Thursday night. And then lawyers was saying, yeah. We agreed on everything, but we need still need to kinda, like, change the wording and so on. And we're very tired. I was like, we're not gonna do it the right way. Let's wake up tomorrow morning and do that. And I remember last, like, I'm not going to sleep, and then 4AM was just like this announcement, like, hey. A woke woke up. We're doing the Iran and Nissan. I was like, again, this is so classic. I'm sure that the dealer will like, I'm not like, I wasn't sure. Like, I was I was like, holy I can't believe this is happening. It's such it's such an insane turn of events, but everything went fine from there. We woke up the next morning, and signed the papers. Yeah. It was, as I said before, it was definitely the least Boeing month that I had in my life. I was just thinking back to exactly that phrase that you shared. Oh, man. There's just so many parts of the story that are so interesting. It's a here a hero's journey, story in so many ways. Mayor, is there is there anything else that you want to leave listeners with? Anything that we didn't touch on? Maybe just last piece of a negative advice for founders that are trying to be on a start on this journey or on this journey that you think might be helpful to them? So first, before getting to the to the negative advice, if there's like, the only thing that I would say, really, if there's anyone from the base forty fours community that's actually listening to this, I am so grateful. Like, this community has been so supportive. And many times I'm saying, okay, maybe I did this right and that way, but I don't it's hard for me to think about what I did, so many things right to get, like, this community behind the product. And so I'm so grateful for the community. So if everyone's listening, really, I'm hoping to to serve everyone better. What not to do? Yeah, there's plenty. Don't Just make sure that at least 50% of your time, you work on the parts of you that you really like and that you're really good at. You know, there's like this plenty of ways of saying that and different diagrams that they show you is, like, what you're good at, what what you wanna do, what's fun for you, what's energizing, what's not. I think 50% of it should be in, like, this sweet spot of you were doing the thing that you're, genius at, like, your genius zone or whatever they call it. And they're so fun because that's what keeps you up, like, showing up every day, and it's unbelievably different than being a very talented person and a very skilled person, but doing things that you either don't like or and it's fine. Like, everybody does things that they don't like. And in every job, there's like those places. But keep yourself in the zone of genius. I think that's really crucial. And I feel like in the last few months, I've also met plenty of, like, really great and friendly CEOs, even from the Israeli ecosystem, like, for for public companies. Right? Wix and minded.com and Ito and so on. And they're all like, obviously, they have to do a lot of different things. And being CEOs of public companies, like, you have to, like, manage a lot of things, a lot of logistics and, I don't know, bureaucracy, but they all have not talked to like, major or to some degree, major part of their job is doing something that they really like and they're really good at. It's like whether it's, like, product design, whether it's like, building a marketing machine or something like that or think that's critical. Yeah. That's the biggest thing. And also it's like and you probably hear this nowadays on every podcast, but it's the best time to build, and it's gonna be a really life changing, just starting out something that you really like. Well, I feel like we're at the age at the start of an age is gonna be bigger than the the revolution that the Internet did. Obviously, I think now it's becoming clearer to anyone. And so just building what she wants, becoming so much easier. Just do it. Do something that you like. I think it's gonna be from a lot of chances, it's gonna be life changing. And if not, at least you'll have, very little regret in the future. Mara, I'm gonna skip the lightning round, but I'm gonna give you because it's approaching midnight your time. I wanna make sure you get some sleep. I'm gonna ask you one question. There's something I meant to ask you earlier, but I didn't. Base 44, what is what is that about? Why did you call it Base 44? This is the most, like, really the stupidest probably reason that you hear for, for a name behind a product. So again, Base 44, was not intended to be like a very large scale, like the the global phenomena that it's becoming right now. I wanted to have Base in the name because I felt like that's gonna be the base of where people's gonna start, build software or or solve their pains and so on. And, obviously, back then, base.com wasn't available, and I didn't have money to buy, like, a very fancy domain. So I started seeing, like I think it was Cloudflare. I don't remember even what domain, provider was that. It started showing me some numbers. My date of birth is February 2. And so, base 22 wasn't available. And I said, okay. Let's double it. And then base 44 is like, I like the sound of it. It's almost like base 64. And for for, the the was like, okay. Base 64 is one way to encode, data from from from one type to another. And it's like Base 44 is gonna do the same. It's like encode natural language into software. And I was like, okay. Clicks. Let's go with it. It's good that it's memorable, the the number in the name, but there's no real, like, very sophisticated, reason behind it. That is an amazing story. I love that I love that you like, base 64 was cool, but I guess, well, man, there's a reason 44 could be cool, and it's not even base 42. There's always, like, numbers around there that people know, and it's like, no. 44. Double my birthday. Sorta like '64. That's amazing. It worked. I guess I don't know. Maybe it shows you the power of how a name doesn't necessarily make a huge deal. Interestingly, a recent podcast episode was about how a name can make a big deal, so there's both sides to it. Mayor, this was incredible. Thank you so much for doing this. Congratulations on the outcome. I know this is just the beginning. I know the product is only gonna get better. What a fun place to be. Hope you get some sleep. Two final questions. Where can folks check out what you're building? Is it just base44.com? Anything else they should know? And how can listeners be useful to you? Just try it out. I think we're at a place where people really love the product. And for every user that we get, it turns out to be two or four later on because they're sharing it. So, just try it out, base44.com, and build something that you like. And if you have a bit more time, just leave feedback so that, we can make it better. Amazing. Meir, thank you so much for being here. Thank you, Lenny. Bye, everyone. Thank you so much for listening. If you found this valuable, you can subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Also, please consider giving us a rating or leaving a review as that really helps other listeners find the podcast. You can find all past episodes or learn more about the show at lenny'spodcast.com. See you in the next episode.