Solo founder, $80M exit, 6 months: The Base44 bootstrapped startup success story | Maor Shlomo | Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth

In six months, you went from zero, basically nothing, to selling this company for $80 million plus to Wix.

The funny thing is that Base44, for the first time in my life, was not trying to build the biggest thing ever.

Me and my girlfriend, we were on the plane.

I told her, hey, you know what?

If we get to $1 .5 million until the end of 2025, we're going to 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.

I think it's a different ball game because even if you're solo, you're literally managing teams of EIs, 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'd 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 on the table.

And they would use 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 going to try and scale anything before I know that users enjoy it.

And the best metrics to seeing them enjoying it is that they're starting to share it with someone.

Today my guest is Mayor Shlomo.

This is a unique episode because I almost never have conversations with early stage founders.

I made an exception because Mayor's journey is in many ways the dream for a lot of founders.

Mayor started a company called Base44, which is essentially a more advanced vibe -coding tool.

Six months later, just a few weeks ago, he sold the company for 80 million dollars to Wix.

He's a sole 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, it 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, Mayores shares exactly how he grew the product from 0 to 10 to 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 solo 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 Sehgal 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 Mayor Shlomo.

sales calls, support tickets, churn reasons, and lost deal, surfacing the biggest product issues and opportunities in real time.

It then routes them to the right teams to turn signals into PRDs, prototypes, and even code that drives revenue retention and adoption.

That's why Whatnot, Linktree, Incident .io, and ZIP use Sauce.

One enterprise uncovered a product gap that unlocked $16 million ARR.

Another caught a spiking issue and prevented millions in churn.

You can too at Sauce .app slash Lenny.

Sauce built for AI product teams. Don't get left behind.

This episode is brought to you by D -Scout.

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, D -Scout 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 of decisions, and design with impact, head to dscout .com to learn more.

That's d -s -c -o -u -t dot 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 want to build massive teams that don't want to raise a ton kind 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 million.

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 the right time to kind of like reflect back.

Yeah, I think there's gonna be many more times, but this is a really unique time.

Let's start with a couple of basics.

Just what is Base44 for folks that aren't super familiar with the product that you built?

Base44 is an AI app building platform, meaning that you're able to use natural language to describe what you want to build, an app, a game, a website or something like that.

and then have AI code it for you.

One of the first ones doing that, I think it's a very crowded category, but I think Base44 takes a very different approach, a very opinionated one, and one that users or users like to call it a batteries included approach, which means that for every app that you build in Base44, you already have built -in included a database, integrations, user management, analytics, without connecting third -party services or bringing your API keys and so on.

And I think it helps a lot when you're trying to scale a 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 backend stuff, stuff.

They have a great integration with Superbase.

Superbase I think is the most common kind of like thing 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 endpoints and the SDKs and whatever to work well with LLMs, I think Base44 does a really good job with building very complex and functional real -world applications.

Okay. I want to talk about the origin story of just 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 million plus to Wix.

It took you three weeks to hit $1 million 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 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 going to talk about some of those stories.

Any other stats that are worth sharing?

Anything else that's important high level before we get into the origin story you know i don't think so i think uh it it like looking back it sounds uh 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 leaves she has like a small business uh 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 kind of like designing with the drag and drop

and everything and then things get messed up in mobile and you try again it's like then how do you manage your data and so on and and in my previous company we dealt a lot with lms 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 girlfriend or build, like, slightly more complicated than a website was actually a web app.

I know models can do that, they just 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, you can write React code and it will serve it and it will be great from an SEO perspective and so on, then I'll notice like, it's going to be super easy and she can do it on her own.

And the And the other trigger, I was volunteering to help with the Scouts organization here in Israel with everything that has to do with system, and software, and 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 any other organization in the world that we're constantly living has many software needs.

And so every time they needed to build something, they didn't have any internal devs, 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, a huge fan of tools like Retool 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 interaction right.

And again, also back then I was like, I know for the software and systems that you want to 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, the right infrastructure, so that LLM has access to a database, maybe to another LLM to build like the app on top of ai uh 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 um and so those two were triggers back then i started a company seven years ago called explorium very different than base44 very much like enterprise top -down sales uh in the data space uh very capital heavy we raised 130 30 million dollars.

I was a CEO for seven years.

Then when the October 7th wall broke out, I went to Reselves for almost a year and then when I came out, I went to travel the world a bit just to take some time off and wanted to do what I like the most and I haven't had a chance, because exploring grew and grew, and haven't had a chance for a while to do, which is coding, wanted to get Get back to building and get my hands dirty.

And so I had those, like, given those experiences, both with my partner and 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 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 was getting into a very crowded category.

I also knew that I have some different angle and some different take on the category, but when you're approaching it this way, there's not a lot to lose.

I think it gives a lot of energy, and that's how Base44 started.

I definitely didn't think it's going to take off so fast, but yep, that's pretty much about it.

Okay. I like that you don't take credit for the work you did to help it take off so fast. I'm excited to talk through that.

Matt, 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 you were solving somebody's real problem, your own problem, helping your girlfriend build this website for her, and then working with the Scouts program in Israel, basically building them software.

So I think that's a really important takeaway.

You weren't just like, hey, maybe this will be useful to someone.

I have a real problem and I want to solve it and nothing out there is good enough, so I'm going to build it myself.

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 some kind of drag.

You know what? I feel like when I was a first timer, when I started my first company, exploring myself, many smart people told me those two very important truths.

Build something that you would want to 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 business is always always important let's increase revenue like let's close more deals um 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 product and And at the same time, developing

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 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 Experian for seven years.

It was such a fantastic experience.

It had so many highs and lows.

but 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 scanning products and not necessarily like being a CEO managing sales, managing HR managing all those kind of things and I think that gives a lot of power like 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 hard to find a co -founder 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 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 bootstrapping it's not for like i don't think it's suitable for every

use case but if you're building like a b2b company especially if you're like doing a b2 enterprise company like you'll need to hire a salesperson or sales team like you need to like spend your money on marketing it's going to be very hard to try to sell to a company when you're on your own and nobody knows if the products are going to stay there tomorrow so i don't think it's like a the right setting for for every company, 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 getting to product market fit, then everything is better doing a solo bootstrap than the other way around.

And while like even from a pure cold angle of like the financial outcome, obviously, if you're able to bootstrap your business 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 any other thing.

thing second is so not specifically the solo but the bootstrapping thing less stressful like you wake up in the morning as like if you're profitable and and there's like i think there's like this term default alive it's so much easier i've done both and the weight of uh 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 uh being bootstrapped like no other money except of yours in the business and the end the business is growing and and profitable i feel like can can keep the energies up and i think

i 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 going to be a marathon but you want to do something that you like for years and years and if you're able to show up every day, then your chances kind of, like, goes up immediately.

But then there's, like, a lot of downside and a lot of stressful moments doing that.

One, just keeping the self -core 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 is really tough.

off. I had a few accidents that really, I'm joking about that, but I was saying to my friends, like, shorten my life a bit with just like the stress.

I had the one funny, now I look at it as a funny moment where I was at my brother's wedding and we were doing the photo shoots and I was actually the one actually was supposed to also do the ceremony.

And then doing the photo shoots, I have a friend from MIT calls me up and he's like hey somebody hacked into Base44 and it's like a crypto scam and you've got to take care of that because people are building apps on top of Base44 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 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 other 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 threw out there some excuse and like I have 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 no js like a javascript package has nothing to do with crypto but obviously the user not a technical user saw this error of like hey something cryptography or or something like that was sure that someone like a crypto scam hacked into their app.

And so you have a lot of those 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 handled 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 just beat it 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 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 the day and try to look inside and ask myself

what do i need to work on today and what do i want to work on today so what i want to work on today it was always like i want to code like that's what i like to do let's improve the product.

I know there's like a bug that makes like annoy some of the users.

I know there's like the feature 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 there 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 Base44's journey, it was, I know I can like improve the product a lot, but I need to do 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 want to work on the product and so i think it's like this context switching is hard yeah and the last piece is 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 and use Cursor for backend and Base44 for frontend to write code really fast. And this was really important for me to keep trying to find out new ways of how to automate and increase the pace of building solo because if you're able to collect that, smaller teams with a lot of context nowadays can move faster.

And the same goes also for marketing and for other tools.

Where you want to automate as much as you can, especially when you're solo, because time is going to be like the thing that kills your business 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 Base44, just like the tech stack of Base44?

So you said Cursor, Base44.

What else did you use day to day that helped you be more efficient?

So I have severe ADHD.

And so it can also be, like, a superpower.

But then you have to, like, first, the first thing you want to do is, like, make sure that your workday looks like, like, that you can be focused and that you get, like, a lot of, like, deep work.

And so I have 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 do this building public which turned out to work pretty well for Base44 and so every time you want to take a look at your post or see how many likes and impressions and so on but then you can't work on anything else and so I had this first setup that really allowed me a certain set of software tools that I can use to manage deep work um cursor 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 well on top of base 44 so where I'd manage users and give credits and and where right

content and then like I had this app where I kind of like at the start of the week would write uh some like high level content ideas and then the base 44 app will take it and break it down to kind of like something that sounds more like me for a LinkedIn post and then 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 right I think you can do that not only with Baseball Default just you can vibe code your way into like productivity tools that really fits what you

want to do and and what kind of like the process for you looks like and I had so again for example for my uh uh social posts and so on there's like a process that I would follow and maybe no one else would would follow that and so vibe code the custom art 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 like what is the input that sounds really interesting so the way that i i like

to work is like i would have those uh moments where i would have inspiration for like a piece of content right so the way i grew base44 probably a different topic but was a lot around building in public and growing an audience um and speaking to my audience were which were fellow builders so it was really easy so a lot of that was like around sharing on like the base44 journey um and then i'll have a process that i'll follow is like i'll 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 want to keep consistency and keep

putting like good things out there and then my process before the app was like i'd go to ched gpt i'll write like a very vague kind of like a structural skeleton of a post and tell it like hey fix my writing improve my writing a bit and then chat .gpt 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 linkedin post and i'll need to generate an image for that i'll go to a different tool and then

i'll take this linkedin post and now okay i need to like I put it out also in my Twitter account.

So, okay, let's break it down to a Twitter thread.

Now you need to shorten there.

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 posts to understand how it looks 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 Base44.

So say someone were to go to Base44 .com and try this out, what would be a prompt you'd suggest?

How would they get started building a tool like this?

Usually what I'll do is I'll write down...

I think LLMs nowadays do a very good job with start vague.

It's going to build the skeleton for what you need.

And Base44 does a good job with that, like understanding at least the big pieces.

Okay, there's going to be an LLM writing the content.

There's going to be this and that.

And so you don't have to like write the entire spec.

It's just like something like, hey, I want to 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 the entire category, again, not only Base44, I feel like there's tons of tools doing a great job, but something I like in Base44 is that you can, because it's really easy to change the software.

You get this adaptive software as you improve your processes or maybe your processes change, it's like you adapt it.

So Base44 got acquired two weeks ago.

And so now the process of putting content out there looks a bit different.

And so with just two prompts, 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.

I want to 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, Vercel.

Cursor raises, I don't know, a bazillion dollars at this point.

I know you're not competing with Cursor directly.

If you weren't going to be acquired by Wix, did you plan on raising money?

Do you think you had a chance staying bootstrapped, up competing against the folks that everyone's you know the more popular products today base44 was like very 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 that it ended up like i remember we i i had like a very failed product on launch at like mid -january and then started writing some building in public at around the start of February and that's where it took off and then started I think first dollar or the first 10 or 100 bucks were towards March and then in May I

already did close to 200k in profit and so 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 that come to Base44, stick with Base44, 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 doing an awesome job on 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 also did good in the world, which is 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, especially in what i thought it's going to move and at some point i feel it's going to be like you see base 44 grows and you start thinking hey this can really help people with their lives like this this is like one of those software categories that i'm saying that i'm very not objective but i feel like can really move the needle for a lot of people i've been seeing people be like fantastic awesome things and so i was like let's go for the like

the big one let's try trying and actually build some global scale, maybe lead the category, maybe win it.

And I felt like the best chances to do that is to partner up with Wix.

There's like plenty of reasons to do that.

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 obviously like very good connection with the entire management team over there.

And so I feel like the acquisition, again, being very honest, I felt like it's going to be a financial success either way, but the acquisition is like taking a stance and saying, you know what, let's play in the big league and let's punch down, not only punch up 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 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 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.

It's okay if there's a bazillion dollars in funding going to competitors.

There's a big market here.

yeah i think it's a bit different ball game right now i was like i was scared many times like i thought how how am i gonna 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 um but then like throughout 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 the time so like nobody's like and so i think it's a different ball game because even like if you're very a very small team or even

if you're solo like you're you're literally managing like teams of ai's 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 front end changes a lot because uh ai writes that so yeah if you if you have an interesting angle and you're able to move fast i feel like Like money and funding is not necessarily the factor to win a category.

And that's going to change even more drastically in the future.

As LLMs get better, 10x engineers would have way more impact.

There are going to be 100x engineers because they're able to manage LLMs. And it's not necessarily the team size nor the funding that will be able to win you a category.

What you just shared is amazing that you haven't written any, you said JavaScript or HTML in three months, which is half the lifetime of this company, which sold for $80 million and more potentially.

It feels like now the big things you got to 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.

And even distribution, I'm still learning that.

Even distribution nowadays, it's very different.

And also in favor of the solo.

Not necessarily the solo, but not necessarily that you're going to pull a lot of money on paid campaigns.

Like Base44 grew with close to zero marketing budget.

They 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 very different but yeah, if you have an interesting take on a domain Base44's first user was one of my best friends like we grew up together and up to a 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 uh 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 did human coding are like very different in very different places um 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 It 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 want to be?

I've gone through this myself, where I was like, oh, this newsletter, I'm making a living off this writing one email a week.

I could live really well just doing this.

But then I'm like, oh, why not do a podcast?

why not do another podcast when i do some other stuff and the reason i do that is just like it keeps boring to do something the same way forever and there's this opportunity that's out there i'm like i should do that uh and i feel like some people are on i just don't need that i'm good i'm gonna live in i don't know fiji and just code and make 100 300 500k 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 that you can build on yeah i emphasize with this a lot but the funny thing is that like

base44 for the first time in my life was not trying to build the biggest thing ever so i remember 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 I remember that I kept looking like, hey, Explorium raised $100 million before Snowflake.

This is insane. This is amazing and so on.

And I did that for seven years.

And I think Base44 is the first time that I stopped and said, you know what, I just want to go back to do what I really love, which is just building a product.

I don't care if it wins the category or not.

I don't care if it's going to become really big or not.

Um, 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 .5 million, I don't remember why I said exactly this number.

If we get to $1 .5 million in ARR, uh, till the end of 2025, uh, we're going to buy a nice car.

And we got there in like four weeks.

And so it was the first time 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.

I think it comes with like once you see success and you're seeing like true positive impact on people, then you're saying, OK, you know what?

Let's go for that. 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, I called it my anti -empire.

I don't want to build anything big.

I'm just going to keep it chill, project, chill project before getting a real job.

That's what I called it.

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 interests, 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 content square 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 content square 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 e -commerce checkout, refining a B2B lead flow, or improving a mobile app experience, ContentSquare pinpoints exactly what needs fixing and why.

ContentSquare powers better customer journeys across 1 .3 million websites and apps.

Discover the insights you've been missing at ContentSquare .com slash Lenny.

Let's talk about growth.

So here's what I want to do.

I want to talk through just how you got the first users of Base44.

So I'm thinking maybe, how'd you get the first 10 users?

How'd you get the first 100 users?

How'd you get the first 1 ,000 users?

What are 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 really good connections with to use it.

I feel like there's no other way.

and maybe there are other ways but um again i was very new to like b2c like to consumerish type of product and so i grabbed well i started with even three users like really close friends two of them back at the time i caught them in like a part of their life when they were unemployed so i was like hey why don't you try build a sas business or something like that and so three really close friends um well somehow i got them to sit down with me every other day around the table and they would use 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 plenty of people are lucky to find find maybe a method that consistently works for your like 10, 100, 1000 users and then from there but I tried to look at it as like milestones and so first I was like I'm not going to try and scale anything before I know that users enjoy it and the best metric to seeing them enjoying it or at least making value out of it even if they're not enjoying because there are plenty of bugs and and slowness, and so on, is that they're starting to share it with someone.

So I haven't invested anything in marketing before I felt like, okay, for the first three or five or ten friends, at some point, they started sharing it with their friends.

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, advantages because Base44 turned out later in its journey to be very viral.

But back then it was like an okay product.

People loved it 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 11th user or something like this starts 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 going to waste a lot of time and resources on just having a very revolving door.

You get users in and users out, you will not be able to.

And unless you have a lot of money to invest in paid, so that it makes sense, then it's very hard. I knew that I'm not going to do that.

It's 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 paid and so on.

And so I knew that it has to be viable.

At some point, I saw that it's starting to look like it's viral.

Then I did a very failed, very bad product launch. But also now looking back, I'm saying this is completely fine.

I feel like people sometimes treat their launches, 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 there was like plenty of bots.

We won the first product of the day and the first product 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 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 Because the product 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 a 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 the usual VC funded way why don't you share like content about that like the end of the day it's like you're gonna have this the same like your audience are builders they're trying to build their own products or maybe even businesses and it will likely resonate with them and so i started sharing the journey on 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 44 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 community around Base44 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 there'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 ability to do that or or resources, or money to pay for developers.

And then the other thing that I did that worked really well is I've noticed that people really like sharing what they're building on top of Base44.

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 write posts about Base44?

I was like, I'm not paying anyone, honestly.

And so what I did is I actually, I did this program inside Base44 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 Base44.

If you share it in social, you'll get extra credits to build.

And so those two, like building public and giving out 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 come into your product, like new users a day, break the product.

Like it was hard scaling it.

Also, there's like some things I needed to learn while moving.

It's like, oh yeah, I wasn't a DevOps engineer.

I don't know how to scale databases.

basis I didn't know that a virtual CPU would really come back at me 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 really bad so yeah I think once I started sharing in public it grew to a few thousands 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 want to to 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

that coming back to a lesson you shared at the beginning which is build for specific people so initially it was built for yourself built for your girlfriend built 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 way 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 spent for people to actually 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 have any reason to use your product when it's bad.

Build for them. Be there physically.

I remember that even when we passed 20K users, 50K users, and 100K users, it was still very tough to get the right feedback.

So I would bring like 20, 30 people to like a room together.

others 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 agree 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 they're all trying to do the same thing, like 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 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 still very good to know because maybe for your product you hear all this advice you need a very narrow focus you got to have a very specific role and company size and all these things you're like okay maybe not maybe 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 the friends a few friends like forced them to use it please use this i'm gonna watch you you're pointed by 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 And keep making it better.

Then you tried this product launch. Another great lesson.

You may fail on product hunt.

That's okay. You still gain like, you know, it sounds like you tripled, quadrupled your user base from 10 to 30 -ish 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 generally don't want to 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 everyone like it's cringy.

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?

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 part of in Israel and the tech scene?

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 okay great yeah so now that acquisition story is getting crazy all over the world so getting a lot of followers from a bunch of like different different uh social media platforms but started with LinkedIn I think the fact that I was like 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 a 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 if you're writing posts week over week and you get five likes, it's likely not going to change drastically.

And again, I tried a bunch of things.

Influencer didn't work.

Okay, just put it aside for a second.

Let's see if I can find a channel that works.

And so, yeah, for the building public, I was trying to be as honest as I could and just write the good, the bad.

And I think also the fact that I wasn't a VC -funded company.

I didn't try looking the best or show, hey, look at my amazing metrics or make everything look really pink and really great and I'm the fastest growing 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, this is specifically for my audience.

right so my audience were builders and so i'm not sure that 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 their limbs to just sharing some uh some feelings or growth people like to see numbers people like to see charts and also even there even in the building in public, I would ask my friends beforehand that they knew that they were the target.

What do you think of this post?

Is it interesting? Is it not?

Do you see value out of that?

It's almost like a product that you're releasing out there.

It's the same thing.

Okay. This is really interesting.

Being honest, really effective.

It feels like there's 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 know the stuff uh and also just like fun stats and grand charts and things like that building a tool on base 44 that can help you make these tweets 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 maybe a few thousand connections.

Nowadays it's tens of thousands, but you start seeing some engagement, and once you do that, especially when you say, okay, this is the channel that I'm going to put all my weight on.

Okay, that's a really important point, too.

It wasn't like cross -post to Twitter and Instagram, all these things.

It's pick one and just nail that.

Yeah, until this day, I think that posting So for me, posting on Twitter was a waste of time.

At some point, I saw LinkedIn succeed and I was like, okay, let's do the same thing on Twitter.

Now I have a better following on Twitter.

But yeah, it didn't really work.

So I was spending a lot of time where from LinkedIn, I saw the highest ROI.

And it could be very different for different founders, for different products.

It could be Reddit.

It could be opening up a sub stack.

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 pray.

It doesn't work at this stage.

This 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 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 Base44 and they get credit to build more.

I've never heard of that before.

How do they actually do that?

Do they send screenshots or something?

How do they get credit?

They literally, like early on, they sent me emails and I would tag them again with an app and an LLM.

Support is a whole different topic that we can speak about for hours.

Like how do you run support when you're solo, which is a huge topic but like they would send um I would say hey write a post um 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 I automated that because I couldn't really manage like the the whole thing uh but yeah because you couldn't really like connect it like the the social APIs and so it was hard so it's like send me the post I know exactly what you mean with the support challenges as being a solo person with a newsletter of a million people, I get endless little things just

come up. 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, second person into the journey of the six months?

The first person started two months ago, so a month and a half before the acquisition.

I was running mostly solo.

I think when he started, I already knew 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 right grow so yeah i hired like the best people i know because i knew that like i have now these um few years if not more that like i want to 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 more about like let's try and be as profitable and as fun as possible like let's literally take a bigger bet um that's where i started like bringing in people that i knew um the best people that i knew to kind of like help

me build that also like the the way the deal is structured not that i can share a lot of details around it's like okay there's like the 80 mil that got published that's the initial payment and then there's this air note piece which is really interesting because I think we structured the deal in a really win -win situation.

But then a lot of my compensation and a lot of the upside is actually based on that other than the 80 mil.

And so I have both the financial interest, also the personal interest in building this to be as big as possible.

So the month before the acquisition, I had the team starting to scale, but also basically it became more profitable that I could afford myself to bring in more people.

The first hire, was that an engineer?

What did they do? Actually a product person.

Whoa, like a product manager?

Yeah, well, it's someone I've been working with a lot and he's like a jack -of -all -trades so he can go into like LLM logs and look at like mistakes and fix the prompts.

He can write Python scripts 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.

At some point I was like, his name is Yoav.

At some point I was telling him, hey, Yoav you take growth now.

And he's like, I haven't done growth anywhere, right?

No, you take growth now, try and let's try new challenge.

Let's try this kind of thing.

So you want to bring in someone that at least the fuel cell that can do many different things.

Okay. 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, use this product, use that to learn what to build.

You tried Product Hunt, sort of effective early stages.

It ended up being really effective.

Then you had another launch that was like, you said it broke the Product Hunt algorithm.

How many users did that drive?

Was that like a huge inflection, that second Product Hunt launch?

The thing is like things happened so fast that I didn't really implement any like data and stuff like this.

I don't really know how many users is but I remember at first like the community around Base44 again is like one of the most incredible communities I've seen.

It's a very strong one and so that they all were very excited about the product and launch, lunch 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 for a fact there's like a thousand people already voted by the time it was noon and noon in Israel right very early on it was like I see people right I see more posts on LinkedIn saying people should vote to base 44 than 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 uh for product hunt and saying you guys should like check out your algorithm because something is not right like just even look at linkedin's like search for base44 product hunt like you'll see these many posts and they're 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 uh the delta was 500 uploads from the second place oh my god i've never seen that yeah so it was it was fun also seeing kind of like the the community rally uh for for this speaking community was that all in whatsapp where do you manage this community whatsapp

is 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 two thousand or five thousand, 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 it first started out, it was my best place to find out if the product is up, if there's like like slowness, if there's like bugs, because people write like really fast and they

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 levers I've read about and then I'm going to move on to a different topic.

One is this hackathon you mentioned that helped you grow and become more aware uh 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 and what that did to the business at one point one of the things i really liked about building base 44 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 they didn't really have budget because there was like no business 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 ,000ish, 10 ,000ish users.

And so I said, okay, 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 I remember, I had no budget back then.

So I was like, okay, this is going to be a 5K hackathon. Like the price is going to be 5K.

And it was your own money you were going to give away.

Yeah, it was like the profits that, I think it was Base44 did at that time.

And then a lot of people started registering and a lot of teams, it ended up being 3000 teams. I said like really big.

I think it's the largest for 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 nice, back then smaller business partnering up up with Amazon, with Google, with MongoDB, with Deloitte, like with really great companies that one after another stood behind this hackathon, which was so fun.

Like those are awesome teams, like the ones that we partnered up with.

They opened up their offices at Corpus Globe to have like teams be there 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 build a lot of like interesting things I remember this person building a tool for grandmas and and 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.

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 they 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 want to put content out there that people really 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 are saying, oh i wonder what's going to be perfect next week or i wonder like how much money is losing how can you optimize and like that they get attached to that um 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, it's moving so fast, I have to

try it now. And so this is part of it.

Velocity solves for so many things.

Most of my thoughts are, and still are, when running Base44, is how do we increase velocity?

How do we increase velocity?

It's going to solve for every product problem we have, or most of them.

It's going to solve some of your marketing challenges if you're smart about it and you're putting the content out there and 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 understands this as well.

I want to talk about the acquisition piece, but a couple of 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 Base44?

render .com oh my god this is uh i liked 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 though um holy like this is this was so much fun to work with and still is like uh i remember i mean my previous company we had like large teams of devops building processes for us to push to product.

So render .com is like, how does it call like this?

Um, it's a cloud. It's like a very like built on top of AWS, you have a bunch of easy, easy to manage processes, and easy to like, startup web apps and, and scale them and so on.

It's just render, it's not like a fancy version of render.

It's the word render .com.

Oh yeah. Just looked it up.

Okay, cool. Cool. Yeah.

So this is like everything that has to do with infrastructure.

I manage both the website, the platform, and the applications itself because Base44 is like a complex ecosystem.

You have the user applications that have to be isolated and separated from the platform, that has to be isolated and separated from the website.

It's like 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 has been the right choice.

Obviously, Kelser, but again, I was spending 20, 30 % of my time just optimizing for making the whole repository LLM -suitable.

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 try to get to a place where it can implement the feature entirely without you writing code, but that the LLM would write as least code 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 it can make mistakes takes 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 the entire thing.

When you build a new feature, it takes care of the entire CRUD, the authentication, the database, everything that has to do with that, so that when you ask the LLM to implement a new thing, it writes very little code.

And by the way, this is also true for Base44.

Provide the LLM with a really good infrastructure and SDK and have the LLM.

The LLM still has the flexibility to write the entire feature because it's code, but make it so that it doesn't need to spit out too many tokens.

And obviously, everything that has to do with rule set.

There's one 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 front end for Base44 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. It just does this really well.

And another thing that works really well working with AI is try to push as much as possible in the same repository.

Instead of separating the front -end and the back -end, it's easier to give the context to the AI of both what's in the back -end and what's in the front -end.

besides that so my stack is like the backend 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 base44 and every now and then people try to de -dose base44 and steal the server holes 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 many of the new apps and products 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 Base44, I use a mix of different models for different tasks.

So Cloud4, 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 you get a very complex problem or we need to figure out an algorithm or Cloud4 got stuck in some bug loop, which happens a lot when you bytecode.

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, is this what you do within Cursor or you do this within Base44 based on what the person's working on?

Base44, yeah. I don't think Cursor has this.

I think there's maybe an auto option for it, but in Base44, it's like when users ask, I first try to analyze what they're asking and then figure out what's the right LLM to use.

That is so cool. So it's just Claude and Gemini.

Those are the two they use for Base44.

Yeah, well, all of those tools, Base44, Cursor, all the vibe coding tools, I use the same paradigm or I don't know if you call it a method, which is like you have the heavy guns, which is usually either Claude4 or Gemini.

Then Claude4 and Gemini usually create a high -level solution or high -level, kind of like what changes do you want make to the file.

So not writing all of the file from scratch every time.

Kersers does that based on like, so writing only the chunk of code that needs to be implemented, and high level, then you get like smaller, faster models, like Flash or 4 .0 Mini from OpenAI to implement to patch the code inside the file.

Okay. One very tactical question in a completely different direction.

Product question. Activation, getting people to an aha 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 base44 really quickly and in that start sharing it using it here's one interesting thing that I learned that I think was counter intuitive to me because you always like you always want to build the best product out there for your users but sometimes it contradicts the aha moment or how fast can you get users

to do that so first when a few months ago more than that, when Base44 started before actually implementing your app so you'd 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 DLLM would first before even writing code, it would first generate user flows.

Like almost like a PRD, 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 want to create a task, and then you could say, yeah.

So maybe I want to add some files and stuff like that.

So it will show you what it's going to generate to make sure that it understands you.

And then you click OK, and then it will will generate the app this was actually something i ditched because too many users um 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 aha moment uh were not super high and also like not super like i think one of the the key to the aha moment in the vibe coding world or at least in base44 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 the arm movement, 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 b2c, and it's all new to me, because I'm not coming from the 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 from there, okay, later on,

ramp up the features that you want to, you want to actually put there, so that it can be, like, the right product 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 want to talk about the acquisition process.

Founders often look at this as, like, the dream.

Oh, my God, I sold 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're not, like, I'm off.

You have to keep building this thing.

So first of all, just how did the acquisition conversation start?

Wix reached out. I think back then, there was a lot of folks from the community were posting, saying, hey, Wix should definitely buy Base44 before it gets too big or something like that.

Even though we're not playing or competing in the same category, but it was clear that it was going to be...

Why were they recommending Wix?

What was just the connection there?

First, because of the Israeli ecosystem.

Got it. But also, folks were building websites with Base44.

And so it's kind of like the same thing.

Got it. Makes sense.

Yeah. Obviously, Wix is an incredible product for building websites, but a different approach from LLM.

It's now definitely getting there.

And so I got there.

The management team, like Wix's management team is so friendly and such great guys.

And I remember sitting there and I think the first sentence that the first thing that Avishai, the CEO, told me is like, Like, hey, everybody's been saying that we should buy you.

Maybe it's worth the talk and we're here to help.

And I think early on we explored, like, at least in my mind, like, yeah, it seems like that's a great team to work with.

They're 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 Avishai the CEO is like a very seasoned very experienced and helped a lot of entrepreneurs in the B2C space and specifically in Israel to kind of 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 go base44 and just literally just getting there to get an advice vice um and so at some point we saw first that we have great chemistry both with him 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 um i think it's crucial for the buyer to make sure or to feel like they're going to have really good connection in chemistry with the founders with the key people because eventually it's like 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 going to be a lot of fun working together and I think also being a person is going to be fun to work with is a key especially if you're a lot if you're not like a 500 people company

that someone's buying it 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 even to get there is to you 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 uh it's like in dating when you're when you're in the first couple of dates you don't want to show too much interest because then it's uh i think also i was in a position that i was saying hey if it works out it's going to be amazing and if not it's going to be amazing it's going to be either either way fine obviously i wanted it to work out yeah and the last thing they think is um i don't know if it's suitable for everyone but i'm very happy with the structure of the deal with the air node 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 i feel like it's gonna be like that for years and like i have a personal investment in the business and its success so it's really i feel I feel like it's better than just selling the business and just spending the next few years and wanting to disappear.

I love that part of the deal.

You could be a billionaire if it does well enough.

I don't know the deals, but in theory.

Let me ask. So I know a part of the story also is that when you were signing the deal, the war with Iran basically broke out.

Tell that story. sorry so i was trying to not uh i wasn't nervous throughout the process but this like this is like a huge deal for me right it's going to change my life probably will change my kid's life um and when we kicked off the process uh we wanted it to be fast also it's like it's not like base 44 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 i was saying to the to to the lawyers and to our great two firms that we work with is like until Thursday night that's it we're

signing Thursday night 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 were saying yeah we agreed on everything but we need still need to kind of change the wording and so on and we're very tired like we're not going to do it the right way let's wake up tomorrow morning and do that and I remember us like I'm not going

to sleep and then 4 a .m working after this like this announcement like hey a war broke out between Iran and Israel and I was like again this is so classic I'm sure that the deal will like I'm not I wasn't sure, I was like, holy, I can't believe this is happening.

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 boring 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 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 um maybe just last piece of negative advice for founders that are trying to be on this start on this journey are on this journey that you think might be helpful to them so first before getting to the to the negative advice if it does like the only thing that i would say really if there's anyone from the base 44s community that's actually listening to this i am so grateful like this community has been so supportive um and many times i'm saying

okay maybe i did this right in that way but i don't it's hard for me to think about what i did uh 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 sell the one better what not to do yeah there's plenty 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 you want to 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're doing the thing that you're a genius at like you're a 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 very skilled person but doing things that you either don't like 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 public companies, right?

Wix and Minded .com and eToro and so on.

And they're all like, obviously they have to do a lot of different things and being CEOs of public companies, is like uh you have to like manage a lot of things a lot of logistics and i don't know bureaucracy but they all have a not tactic like a 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 uh whether it's like um building a marketing machine or something like that or think that's critical um yeah that's the biggest thing um and also it's like and you probably hear this nowadays on every

podcast but it's the best time to build um and it can be a really life -changing just starting out something that you really like where i feel like we're at the age at the start of an age is going to 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 going to be from a lot of chances going to be life -changing and if not at least you'll have uh very little regret in the future maire i'm going to skip the lighting round but i'm going

to give you because it's approaching midnight your time i want to make sure you get some sleep i'm going to ask you one question there's something i meant to ask you here but i didn't uh base 44 what is what is that that about why did you call it base 44 this is the most like really the stupidest probably reason that you hear for uh for a name behind a product so again base 44 uh was not intended to be like a very large scale like the global phenomena that it's becoming right now i wanted to have base in the name because i felt like that's going to be the base of where people's going to start

um build software or software paints 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 started showing me some numbers my date of birth is february 2nd and so uh base 22 wasn't available and say okay let's double it and then base44 is like i like the sound of it it's almost like base64 and for for uh that nerd in me it was like okay base64 is one way to encode uh data from from one type to another and it's like base44 is going

to do the same it's like encode natural language into software and i was like okay clicks let's go with it um it's good that it's memorable the the number in the name name but there's no real like very sophisticated reason behind it that is an amazing story i love i love that you like base 64 was cool but i guess well may there's a reason 44 could be cool and it's not even base 42 there's all these like numbers around there that people know and it's like no 44 double my birthday sort of like 64 uh that's amazing uh it worked i guess i don't know maybe shows you the power of how a name doesn't

necessarily make a huge deal uh interestingly a A recent podcast episode was about how 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 going to 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.

you as that really helps other listeners find the podcast. You can find all past episodes or learn more about the show at lennyspodcast .com.

See you in the next episode!

[From Zero to $80 Million: The Rapid Rise and Acquisition of Base44]-[Solo founder, $80M exit, 6 months: The Base44 bootstrapped startup success story | Maor Shlomo]

📋 Summary

The Blueprint of a $80 Million Exit: Lessons from Base44

The Origin: Solving Personal Pain Points

The Solo Founder Advantage

Growth Tactics: From 0 to 400,000 Users

The Acquisition by Wix

Key Takeaway

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript