Key Lessons From Base44’s Exit
Who says vibe-coded software’s a waste of time? Base44 creator built, scaled and sold his app to Wix for $80 million in six months…
- Speed matters. Base44 hit six figures in profit and hundreds of thousands of users in half a year.
- Transparency builds trust. Shlomo shared metrics, costs, and choices openly on social media, fueling word-of-mouth growth.
- Partnerships accelerate credibility. Deals with eToro, Similarweb, and AWS events positioned Base44 as a serious player quickly.
- Profitability is leverage. The company wasn’t just growing fast, it was already profitable — rare for AI startups.
- Know when to exit. Shlomo chose acquisition over scaling independently, trading control for resources.
The Numbers
- $80M cash acquisition by Wix
- $25M in retention bonuses for staff
- 6 months from launch to exit
- 250,000 users
- $189,000 monthly profit at peak
Shlomo called it a “crazy f***ing journey.” For the startup world, it’s another sign that the age of “solo unicorns” might not be far away.
Vibe-Coded Vibe Coding App Base44’s Insane Path To Acquisition By Wix
Base44 Went From Side Project to $80M Acquisition in 6 Months
An Israeli founder built, scaled, and sold his AI startup in record time.
The idea of a “solo unicorn”, a billion-dollar company built by one person with the help of AI, has been floating around the startup world for years.
It still hasn’t happened.
But one developer just came close enough to prove it’s not a fantasy.
Israeli programmer Maor Shlomo built his AI-powered vibe-coding platform Base44 in just six months.
By June 2024, he had sold it to Wix for $80 million in cash.
It wasn’t truly a one-man shop. Shlomo had a team of eight, who will share $25 million of the deal as retention bonuses.
Still, the pace of growth and the exit shocked the industry.
From Side Project to 250,000 Users
Shlomo began Base44 as a side project. The product fit into the emerging “vibe coding” space: AI tools that let users create entire applications by typing prompts.
When he launched in public, adoption was instant:
- 10,000 users in the first three weeks
- 250,000 users within six months
- $189,000 profit in May 2024, even after heavy LLM token costs
Base44 spread almost entirely through word of mouth.
Shlomo documented the journey on X and LinkedIn, where his transparent posts about infrastructure choices and costs drew a large following.
The Product
Base44 promised to let anyone, technical or not, build software with simple text prompts.
The platform automatically handled:
- Database and storage
- Authentication and analytics
- Integrations for email, SMS, and maps
- A roadmap for enterprise-grade security
Shlomo described it as “a moonshot experiment” designed to remove coding from the equation altogether.
The market was competitive — Adaptive Computer and other startups were building similar systems — but Base44’s growth speed set it apart.
Community and Partnerships
Shlomo wasn’t new to startups. He had previously co-founded Explorium, a data analytics company backed by Insight Partners.
His brother co-founded Token Security, which raised $20 million in 2024.
That network helped Base44 quickly line up partnerships with big Israeli tech names, including eToro and Similarweb.
When Shlomo publicly compared Anthropic’s Claude to OpenAI’s models, choosing Claude for cost-performance reasons, Amazon noticed.
They invited Base44 to demo at an AWS event in Tel Aviv, further boosting credibility.
Why Sell?
Despite profit and momentum, Shlomo said Base44 could not scale organically.
“The scale and volume we need is not something we can organically grow into,” he wrote on LinkedIn. “If we were able to get so far organically, bootstrapped, I’m excited to see our new pace now that we have all the resources in place.”
For Wix, the acquisition made strategic sense. The company’s no-code website builder already defined its brand.
Adding a profitable LLM-powered coding tool was a natural expansion.
By comparison, OpenAI had just paid $3 billion for Windsurf, a U.S. vibe-coding company founded in 2021.
Wix got Base44 at a fraction of the cost.
Moral of the story? If you can build something that people like and use, a big-ass company like Wix will almost certainly come sniffing around with a view to acquiring it.
Why not do their own? Because they’d have to market it, develop the user base, flesh out the build and development, and all that takes time.
If you have the cash, it makes more sense to just acquire an already developed asset that has a clear trajectory and growth potential.
