20Growth: How Wix Built a $100M Marketing Machine | Why LTV is BS and Why Time Return On Investment is the Most Important Metric | How to 10x Your Growth: What is the Next Great Channel with Omer Shai, CMO @ Wix

marketing is investment. I never use lifetime value. When you're doing 10 things, you can be amazingly well in three things. Another three you're going to be okay. And in four, you're going to fail. We need to go back to the roots of bringing people with zero knowledge about marketing. I paid half a million dollars for the voiceover. It was fucking stupid idea that I had. This is 20 growth with me Harry Stevens. Now in the episode today, we have a legend of the growth world. CMO at Wix for the last 18 years. Omashai is one of the OGs. I learned more from this episode of 20 growth than almost any other episode of 20 growth, including why time return on investment is the most important metric for growth leaders today and how he manages as granular as possible. His $100 million marketing budget at Wix today. This was an incredible show. Get your notebooks out. Ready to take some notes. But before we dive into the show today, if you're looking for a way to transform your customer service, let me introduce you to Finn, baby. Finn is the number one AI agent for customer service, resolving up to 93% of customer queries automatically. There is no other agent that can do that, not 93% of customer queries. No other agent can do that. So why choose Finn? Finn is the best performing AI agent for CS. Finn doesn't just answer questions. It takes actions. It automates the most complex customer queries like refunds, transaction disputes, technical troubleshooting with speed and reliability. I wish my team with speedy and reliable beats every competitor in every head to head Bake Off completely configurable and code optional setup. My word, I mean, the benefits just go on and on. It's easy and efficient implementation. It works on any help desk with no tedious migration needs. It's trusted by over 6,000 customer service leaders, including top AI companies like Anthropic, Lovable, Synthesia, Clay, Vanta. So if you're ready to transform your customer service team, scale your support and give team members time to focus on the really high level strategic work, learn more about Finn at fin.ai/20Vc. While fit scales your support without losing speed, ReForge shows you how to translate that scale into durable product led growth. Everyone's shipping faster than ever. Curse, claw code, codex. AI is making code and writing code faster than ever. But here's the problem. Speed means nothing if nobody uses what you ship. That's where ReForge comes in. ReForge is building a product discovery engine that sits upstream of your coding agents. Not another prototyping tool, research, repo or AI interviewer, but a product that will number one, ingest your customer data. Number two, generate variations of product solutions. Number three, validate the solutions before code is written. And number four, hand off winning directions to your team. ReForge kills product debt before it starts because every unused feature you ship isn't just wasted and genaering time. It's a maintenance burden, complexity tax and surface area that you cannot shrink. Used by product teams at companies like Toast, Vimeo, Klavio and many more, ReForge helps team ship more features that actually get used. Try ReForge at ReForge.com/build and use the code 20Vc. That's 20Vc for one month free of pro. While ReForge helps teams level up their growth craft, perk helps you reward the people doing the work. This episode is brought to you by perk. The intelligent platform for travel and spend. Every successful founder remembers their breakthroughs, those moments in the journey that changed their trajectory, whether it was going from burning cash to building leverage or from head count growth to operational scale. Breakthroughs don't come from spending hours buried in spreadsheets, booking and rebooking travel or chasing their teams for last quarter's coffee receipts. That's Shadowwork and that's what perk was built for. One recent study found Shadowwork costs companies over 1.7 trillion every year as employees waste hour off to hour on manual, time-consuming work instead of the jobs they were hired to do. perk's AI is purpose built to automate Shadowwork so teams can focus on real work with real impact. Don't let anything get in the way of your next breakthrough. Leave the travel and spend to perk. Visit perk.com/20Vctd. perk powering real work. You have now arrived at your destination. Oma, I'm excited for this, dude. Listen, I stored the shit out of you with Michael Eisenberg, with Mayo, with many of your board. So thank you so much for joining me, stay, dude. Thank you very much. Really happy to be here. I'm a fan of your show. Dude, flattery will get you everywhere. One thing that I want to start with is I hear that you've got some news. And so can you tell me what the news is and go back a little bit to a time last year when that idea originated? So the news is that we are going to do two Super Bowl as sports this year. One is four weeks and it's going to be the sixth one that we're doing for the amazing company that I'm part of it in the last 18 years. And in addition to that, we're going to have Super Bowl spot for base 44 as well. I think that we are the youngest company ever that going to have Super Bowl commercial. Another interesting story to tell is the timeline of the decision to go and to purchase the spot. So we announced that we are buying base 44 around the mid-June 2025. I have on record message that I sent on WhatsApp to friend of mine, Mark Zaminer, who is buying the Super Bowl spot for me in the last six or 10 years actually. It was the TV and radio and on July 2nd, I sent him a message that I would like to buy a spot for base 44 and how much it's going to cost me. So it took me let's say 12 days. I was a bit slow to solve some amazing indication from community for people who love the product, how they're using the product, the intent, user behavior, the acquisition that we can have and we went and purchased the spot that we are just announcing. So from speaking to so many friends of yours, they also had to speak about the historical Super Bowl investments that you've made. Can you help me understand the rationale behind doing Super Bowl? Obviously it's a huge platform and brand marketing wise it's amazing. But for you as a CMO, why do you think it's such a good investment to do Super Bowl? The way that I'm thinking on brand activities is that it's not an empty. Okay, it's not only brand and when I'm doing a acquisition, I'm not doing just a acquisition market. So when I'm doing brand marketing, I'm thinking the balance between brand and acquisition and when I'm doing acquisition, I'm thinking about the balance between acquisition and brand and the beauty about Super Bowl. I'm saying it a lot of times that in the day or after the Oscar, everyone are talking about who's less what. And the only day that people are focusing on commercials is around the Super Bowl and the day after people are keep talking about what was the ad of who. And all the year we are keep thinking about technology and how to skip and buy in a premiums in order that we won't listen to commercial on Super Bowl. We are talking about the commercial and you know, I'm a youth sport fan and I'm a youth NFL fan and I understand them. It's not only sports NFL and Super Bowl particular is like a celebration and especially in the US, but it's became more and more famous globally. And just to be part of that is to be there and I'm keep saying about it. You know, product is the main of file companies. We are nothing without products. But to trust the product to trust what our users are doing and to be in the Super Bowl is a message. You said about the balance between brand and acquisition and how Super Bowl can replace into that. When you do a Super Bowl, do you see acquisition skyrocket? Like what is the impact of Super Bowl direct on acquisition? Yeah. So definitely, you can see impact on like the spike at the day of the spot. But you need to be smarter in the way you to measure. I believe that our tons of opportunities at the two weeks before the game day to do a lot of marketing activities around the creative around the PR around the 60s, the 30s, what kind of activities you allow to do around the spot. So eventually the way again that I believe in brand and the balance between brand and acquisition that sometime and it's okay that it's not today. It's okay that it's not tomorrow. Eventually, I would like to see spike in the traffic to our site. That means that if we don't see people coming relevant users, okay, I will add the word relevant relevant audiences who are coming to a site. If we didn't do so, we don't need to invest at the marketing activity that we're doing. And marketing is investment and not as a span. And eventually you would like to see the return on your investment. And for us, return on investment is users who are coming to a site, users who are using the product and eventually convert and telling others. our amazing product. How much was the first Super Bowl that you bought the spot for? 4.8 at 8 max spend. When you're buying a Super Bowl commercial, you are paying for the airtime of doing the Super Bowl and the addition of max spend that you need to invest during the year on the network that has the right for the Super Bowl. Wow, so wait a minute, you have to like coastband so you have to commit to spend on the network to get the spot in Super Bowl. Correct, there are some balancing and of course negotiation and there are some companies who invest a lot on TVS through the years so for them it's easier. We through the years there are some times that we are on air in TV and there are some times that we are not so it's up to negotiation but more or less it was 4.8. What is the latest price to do Super Bowl? Unfortunately I cannot say right now, it's more than that but it worth it. Do you see ROI on performance alone or do you believe in the long tail that the brand marketing will override that in the time? I believe in the balance, okay. So for example in the last two years for weeks, not for base, okay, currently I'm talking about weeks. There are some investment, having investment on the brand, on activity that we're doing, a lot of videos without users on YouTube, social activities, some competitions that we're doing and we're measuring eventually everything that we're doing and what we decided this year to allocate some of this money to the Super Bowl commercial and in our spots this year the product is going to be in the central, okay, so we are not going to have celebrity, we are not going to have a lot of full-ha special, we are going to have a product and you are going to see how other people using the product. It's almost like a direct response spot that we bought on the Super Bowl and the winner for that that we believed that the product was the worst being the Super Bowl. This is the reason that we decided to go at weeks in the Super Bowl. In terms of base, it was a statement of a new thing that happened in the world, the vibe coding, the democratization of creation in general, of real application, mobile application. The nice thing about being me and the challenge about being me now is people kind of hear about what we do and then set me suggestions. One of the competitors to base 44 seemingly heard about our show and asked a question which was, "You're outspending all of us on aid marketing. Is this a game now where capital is the differentiator between winners and losers?" You know what is my effective market in Randre right now? Yes. Without super money, 150? Not bad. So I'm above 100 and it was above 100, like a month after we bought base 44. It took me I think six or seven years in weeks to do what we didn't base in like months and a half and two months. It's not just to throw money, it's to invest money smartly. You need to think about the marketing department of base right now. It's more than 50 people. Marketing for bases more than 50 people. Yeah. Think about all the things that we need to do. Product marketing, community, PR, education. We have a lot of effort to implement base in a higher education in universities globally. If we split that 100 million up and you don't have to be precise, I'm just so interested. What's the split between like performance versus brown marketing fee? I'm not doing the separation. I'm doing activities that the goal is, we are calling it TRI. People used to call it use of a lifetime value, right? Do you remember? Yeah. I hated this term. I bought it so much. Because how do you know what is the lifetime value? What is the lifetime value? How many years now? You're not realistically. Look at it. You look at a cohort of customers and you say, okay, 87% last four years. And so we'll take the LTV and say it's four years. And that's a good enough proxy to give us an LTV that we can work back towards a CAC and then figure out from there. What was the quality of Gemini six months ago? Okay. This is an interesting question. Does CAC 12 TV fade in importance in a world of average transit technology? I believe since I joined Wix, that I never used the lifetime value. So I'm using different them. I'm using a TRI. It's time to return on investment. It was 2012. We are poor company before IPO and Facebook is a bad then launch. I think they call it a page aid or something like that. And we measure everything. And I remember a conversation that I had with Avishai and I moved with this new advertised format. I did five X in one day because I saw the result that I'm seeing from that. So I believe in building the shorted cohorts for me to move as fast as I can to impact the result of the company. And lifetime value, it's much slower than metrics that currently I have. So I have one day cohort, seven day, 14 days, cohort and 28 days cohort. It eventually gives me meaning indication about when my TRI is going to be one. Do you worry that that concentrates your attention towards the shortest term TRI and not necessarily the biggest invest in the long term? No. So to go back, so we did five X and Avishai told me, even though you're getting the money like we close after four months, I don't have enough money to invest in those four months. Okay. So you need to slow a bit down. What he did after that, he went and purchased Facebook stocks. He didn't tell me and he didn't buy me a song. He's not a friend. Avishai is not a friend. Buy what I love about Israelis. You guys are money makers. But the way that is comfortable, you're comfortable with. So for example, we as a company that now I'm talking about base. Okay. So we as the weeks corporation are comfortable. For example, in TRI Y of 11 months of 12 months or something like that. And the beauty bit about TRI Y that is measure every traffic source and the blended traffic is one. So I know every source the TRI Y that I have and I have TRI of everything as a mix. And we're saying, okay, we are comfortable and TRI Y of let's say 11 months or 12 months, something like that. And if I'm keeping the TRI Y on 11 months, I have unlimited budgets. Help me understand that why is 11 months the sign that you have unlimited budget? Because it's something that you're comfortable with as a company. Because you're taking some consideration retention of the users and users who are doing upgrades and use them that moving to more expensive packages and churn inside. So you think that needs to compress in a world where an anthropic model opus 4.5 changes the game for so many. And you know, we've seen it. Claude code has cannibalized a lot of curses business overnight. And everyone's canceling cursa does that TRI time to return on investment again for people does that need to compress with this technology cycle. It depends how comfortable are you in the product? It depends what are the traffic sources and what is the risk and the way that you're managing your risk, right? Let's say if I have very balanced traffic sources of 10 traffic sources, let's say and every one of them bring it 10% of the collection or all the RR of the company. It will take me some time to be on a risk when a new company jumping in and offering a product. While when I have just the one traffic sources, let's say LinkedIn post by CEOs or something like that, that you can be more like a trendy product and then the risk of a new company of a new product that come into the same audiences with the same techniques put you on the risk. So the way I'm thinking about it all the time that I would like to have as many traffic sources that I can have in order to build a business for the long term. I get here, but is it not a game of 80-20 when 20% of the traffic sources drive 80% of the outcomes? It's all the time. It's a tricky one because I saw some come let's say about more, okay, that when we bought him almost all of the traffic came from social, everything, okay, it was linking posts, it was let's say some posts and some community efforts. What we are doing, we are bringing the multiples, okay, this is the reason that I need a lot of people in my department to do a lot of things. So I'm doing social and I'm doing education and I'm doing YouTube and I'm doing Facebook ads and I'm doing TikTok and I'm doing Twitter and I'm doing search and I'm doing SEO activities. I'm doing a lot a lot a lot of things eventually because this is how I I believe that you need to build a business in a mature way. to reduce the risk and to find arbitrage all the time. I would like to find the arbitrage of tomorrow. Let's get to the arbitrage of tomorrow because I do want to talk about that. But if we think about it being like a relatively early stage founder, how do you advise them when you have a channel that's working? Do you just double down, keep going, don't worry about diversifying against your point there, don't build the traffic sources that are diverse, just double down, or be expansive and have a portfolio of channels from an earlier time. I think that you should do both. I think that you need to do 10x of the things that are working for you, but all the time to open in your areas. Because you don't know what's going to be tomorrow. That means that I talk with someone and I shared with them that we're doing super well spot for base. And he told me or that we increased the budget in aggressive way. And the first thing that he thought is that he told me, he said, "Why are you doing it? Are you afraid of?" And I lifted him, "Man, I'm not afraid of anything." Okay, I have a opportunity and I'm trying to optimize any opportunity that I have in order to build sustainable business. Let's play a thought experiment though. What if we took the budget that you're now putting into SEO, into performance? And we said social is what's so well for mayor and base. Let's own social. Let's do UGC like never before. Let's am see double down on mayor's brand. And let's just suck the air out of the room on social. Why would that be a worse strategy than the diversification? Because and it's like projects. Okay. Let's think about projects. And again, this is something that is part of the way that I'm the methodological of the way that I'm thinking and working in the last 18 years. When you are doing one thing and you are doing it tremendously well, there is only one thing that you can be successful in. Let's say another three you are going to be okay. In the math that I know three is bigger than one. I'm a venture capitalist, but I would agree with that statement. So three is bigger than one. Again, when you're going all in on only one things, a lot of time you are playing, you are talking with the same audiences. Let's say you are very good at acts. Okay. I'm doing an amazing job and acts, but the audiences and acts eventually on Twitter, there are only specific users with specific intent, specific behavior. And what about the other users in the world? You don't want to talk with them. They're different, but they're very good at. It's like going after conversion late as a matrix. Think how stupid it is to go after conversion late. Why? Because 10% conversion rate is a good or bad. Depends on how many people are in the funnel. Exactly. So if you are not paying for the next one million users, and they cost you, let's say, nothing, and their conversion rate is just one percent, compared to the 10% that you had before. Is it good or bad? Again, depends on the top of funnel. It's good if it's the large top of funnel, a million or one percent. Yeah. No, it's amazing. Okay, because you didn't pay for them and it didn't cost you nothing, and it cost you nothing. So you don't really care about the conversion of those users. You care about the conversion rate on specific users that came yesterday on those users you would like to improve. I will explain what I'm saying. Okay. Because I'm not sure that I'm clear. Let's say that I'm bringing traffic to weeks from New York, users who search for website builder of those users, I would like those users to convert on a better way on a daily basis. I would like my brother to be better, the messaging to be better, everything to be better in order to increase those user conversion. In general, I don't really care of the overall conversion of the company. But what you care about is your day to conversion to paid. Correct. I care about the TRII of the company. I optimize the TRII of the company. That means I have a goal of TRII of eight months. And my job is to bring as many as much money collection for the company in the TRII that we agreed on. That means that if my brand improved and I have more users who are coming to me, that I not need to pay for them, it gives me opportunity that I can decide if I would like to increase the TRII of the user time thing. And I can decide about it with my partners. If it's a right thing to do or it's not a right thing to do. How do you think about the divergence in TRII or the contrast in TRIOI between Wix, where you've got, I would imagine, more retained users, more small businesses, which is stickier versus base 44, where people are also using Rapplid and Lovable and Gemini, and they're much more promiscuous. How does the TRII vary between the two? So the TRII, it saves me from that. Okay. Because in the matrix of TRIOI, the churn of those users, the users who are moving from one product to another, it's already calculated. Because again, those 50 people that currently are part of the marketing department of base, except to three, all of them came with me from Wix. So I brought everyone those 50 people from activity that they did to Wix, in Wix, to base. And they have all the experience in terms of measurements. And we know exactly the right way to measure things. So we imagine it differently. But the philosophy is the same. How are you measuring it differently? For example, the percentage of monthly users, for example, the percentage of users who are playing us more. The packages that base are more expensive than the package of them Wix. So TRII, why calculate everything inside? Can I just go back to the 10 channel conversation? Because I hear that so in season three work, four, three don't work. What are your biggest lessons on how to know when to cut a channel? When do you stop spending on a channel that isn't working? It's horrible to work with me. Because a lot of time, when we have a success, I saw the success before the team. I know that we are successful here. Okay, let's move on. Okay, let's be more aggressive, for example. And when we don't have a success, I'm asking the team, and today the methodological, that the team is asking themself on the daily basis, are we investing enough, doing it to cut or doing it to invest more? So a lot of measurement, a lot of data inside that we are using, and a lot of tests. For example, one of our products, we weren't sure that the YouTube activity that we're doing is effective. So we replaced this product commercial with other products commercial to see the impact. And we saw that the incremental impact is very low or doesn't exist. And we modified the amount of budgets that we're investing. So we are keep challenging yourself on a daily basis. How do you think about channels like content, which obviously I do, where the ROI is very long, often you have to build an audience over a year or two, quite a lot of budget actually to build that. But when it works, it really works. How do you think about that in a world of TROI? Confidence? Experience. I'm very experienced. I think that I am like the most experienced CMO in every public company in our technologies fair. OK. So I saw a lot. And I have no problem to fail. I have trust with my partners. And I'm sharing a lot, a lot of information with my partners. I'm sharing a lot about the things that we are doing and I'm doing. And eventually if you are doing some things, and the numbers are not popping up from the data, you need to do as yourself. Do I need to do it or need to change the way that I'm thinking? So I have to share with you. So there is some philosophy that I preach for for, I don't know, I think eight to nine years. And I did some tests with my team that I saw different indications for something that I preach for nine years. And I changed the way that we are measuring everything in three days after I saw the authentication. What did you see that caused that change? I saw incremental impact of some search activities that we did. What does that mean? Can you unpack that? Yeah. So, so for example, I don't see search as an impact on brand. So compared to other activities, search is something that I'm measuring specifically by TRI that I'm comfortable in. Compared to let's say a YouTube or social or LinkedIn or different other social activities that we did, search is specific. And we measure search for a long time in different in one way. And when we did the test, I think it was, I think it was September seven. And in September 11, I asked for everyone to come to all hands. I explained the different way that currently we're start working and we implement it two days after. And you don't need to be afraid to preach to something else when the data is showing something differently or something new that you didn't know before. Everyone is talking about the death of SEO. Hans, your investment in SEO changed over time down in the world of AI. Not down, actually, up because there are so many more things that need to be done today. A lot of the AI appearance currently impact with similar activities of SEO. But you need to be smarter and the way that you are doing it. Again, for companies that the market in budget is more than $100 million. When you're seeing a lot of investment is in percentage wise, it may be not a lot. So it's more about the way that you're thinking, the challenge that you have, the head content that you have. So actually, today I have to say that I need to invest more on SEO related AI search method. So I need to need to invest more or not less. Are you investing in AI search today in terms of how you appear in LLM rankings? If I go to Chatchee, PT and say, what's the best website builder? Are you investing to make sure that you show up in the top three? Yeah, definitely. Although the percentage is very low and again, what's happening the last two, three months that I feel that Google changed again the way that we are using AI using search. And again, in general, when you are looking at most of the traffic, the relevant traffic in the world, it's still on Google. Okay, it's still on Google. So yes, the more early adopters already moved from the regular traditional search. Tons of users, regular users are still using it in a regular way. And we need to do both right now. We need to be relevant for the AI search and we need to be relevant for Google search. And not only that for our users, we need to teach them both. Okay, we need to teach them to do SEO and we need to teach them how to be relevant for for MLN searches as well. So once you're in bass performing channel today, brand people who are coming to weeks because they know that we have amazing product that are going to help them achieve their goals. It's so funny. I had a net from Revolut on the show and he said, my number one lesson that I wish I knew when I started was how important brand and brand marketing was for years I ignored it. And it's the most important thing. So not surprised here that what channel did not work when you thought it would. And what did you learn? I think TikTok didn't work for me yet. I think that sports endorsement in some kind of way didn't work for me as I expected it to work. I know today much more things about sport endorsement from a lot of work that I did. But TikTok man, I don't know. I believe that I need to solve it. I know that I will eventually and I need to crack it down. Also LinkedIn. I think LinkedIn potential is enormous. The arbitrage again is if there the targeting is not perfect and other solution yet. But I believe that those two are having tons of opportunity for us. When you look at channel composition across the team, do you break channels down to specific people and allocate three to ask you for the YouTube three to take talk or do you have a blended across to make it a more cohesive unit. Today it's much easier to keep cohesive messaging because the AI tools, you know, helping us. And I remember the time where I was browsing and was seeing something that it's not our brand and doing like screen service and sending it to some people angry. How can it be that we're doing such a crappy work? So it's a mix. Okay. So for example, the team with buying traffic. They are buying from one centralized team on all the channels. The people who are managing communities. They're doing it maybe to one challenge or two talent. The people are doing SEO just doing SEO MLM. So it's very depends about the skill of the people, the channel that we are working and the things that we are doing on this channel. When you look at the makeup of your channels today, what would you most like to change? I would like to crack TikTok and LinkedIn. Again, why? Do you not just accept that it's in the three that don't work? I interview some of the best growth and CMOs and CEOs as well. Very few have had success with TikTok. Do you not just say, okay, it's a bad channel. Fuck it. Let's focus on SEO again, AI search and leave it aside. I don't know. I just. That's not how you work. No, it's not the things that buy them. Yeah, the things that they're not good at. Not the things that they're good at. If I gave you 100 million more in your marketing budget, what would you do? I will give it to Leo back because I have all the money that I need to stay in the healthy path of the way that I believe that I need to run the business and the marketing of the company that I'm responsible. I'm investing my money, our money, and not spending it. How do you think about the people in your team? I spoke to Michael Eisenberg and he said about the Oma Shai DS Bora, the talent that you've built around you. One thing that's striking when I speak to you, Oma, and we didn't know each other before this, is bluntly how scientific you are in a lot of ways. You fundamentally are so attached to money and the flow of capital throughout your business, which isn't always common in all Siamos. What non-obvious traits do you look for in the people that join your marketing or your growth teams? First, I more couldn't care about my users than money. I don't agree with you. The first thing that pushed me is to listen to our customers and to bring more of the users who are happy and the users that are not happy to help them to be happy in the product and to bring more like them. Every time that we are talking about the marketing department at Wix, I'm saying that we are okay department in a product company. We are not a marketing company. It's different approach because it helps us to push the product and to be part of making the product better. This is first. The second, I don't believe that we are building rocket science. It just needs the people with a ton of passion, smart, talented, that maybe no one else is given the chance. Today, I talk with Shai, who is running the marketing of base 44. We talked about the talents that we would like to bring in to the department and we would like people who are AI savvy to think about AI. We said we need to go back to the roots of bringing people with zero knowledge about marketing. We need people with passion to AI, just and currently students, universities or just graduate from university because we can teach them marketing. We cannot teach them passion. We cannot teach them to be AI first. It's something that all you have at all you don't. Marketing, I can teach them. I can teach them to be a good listener. I can teach them how to tell a story. Passion about being the best in the world. Something that I cannot teach. What do most people get wrong about storytelling today? You said that I can teach you how to tell a good story. What do most people get wrong about how to tell a good story today? They are afraid to put the product in the center. There are so many emotions or funny. In general, it's tricky to tell a story right now in the world and not to hurt someone. Let's be honest, the world is so divided that you are really afraid to tell any story because someone can be offended or to understand it in a wrong way. But in general, people will go down on you because you put the product in the center and you didn't say something bigger than that. Why? Eventually, people are coming to you to use the product. To use the product is our team created for you to enjoy and eventually to fulfill something that you imagine. So put the product in the center. How do you feel? It's super interesting. How do you feel about them? The Simon Sinek, who's a very famous speaker and has said before about selling the Y, not the what? Apple are brilliant because they sell the creativity that their products allow the ability to paint beautiful pictures on an iPad and what's unlocked by it, not a quantum processor and the what? How do you feel about selling the Y, not the what, given the products that you said there? How many apples are in the world? Apple is one. It's a company, right? And we can talk about let's say 10 more, not in the level of of Apple that can tell a story like that. And all the others and other and eventually I remember a launch of a product that we have. We launch a product. We move from flash. You know that weeks used to be a flash based platform from 2008 to 2012. And in 2012 we moved from HTML 5 to flash and I worked on this launch for months. Eventually I wanted to say it's very clear. I use the key smith technology to keep it simple stupid. HTML 5 is now on weeks and I had a lot of plan and everything like I back then used to have tons of media buying deals. And I replaced all the spots that I had in one second. All of them were manually by the way by my team. And I replaced every spot that you had from creator free flash website to HTML 5 is now on weeks. And when I showed the spot. Thanks for watching. it wasn't a spot, it was just you know static 300 to 50 and 7 to 8 on something like that, the dimension of the banners. I saw this division that I had to one of my board member and I saw how upset he was. Then he opened the announcement of Apple on the iPhone and I told him, "We are not Apple." Okay and the product that we are currently giving to the world, it's not iPhone, we just would like them to know that we used to be flesh and now we are HTML5. That all, this is what I need the people to know. I don't have the money that Apple has, I don't have the media attention, I don't have the user attention, I just need the users that think about us as maybe going to be not relevant because of flesh, they need to know that I'm relevant because currently I'm HTML5 and I need to shout it for everyone. So eventually, it's been humble in the world and understand that Apple there is only one. Maybe you know open AI code, there are tens but all the others need to play different game ball. I think even too is really in your story telling my friend. I think you win when you sell what someone can be. Nike, Arab Brilliant example where they teach you that everyone can be an athlete, everyone can be an athlete no matter what shape, size, you put on some Nike trainers and you can be an athlete. If I was pitching on your team today for that Super Bowl ad, I would do a story which shows a very early child at the doctors. I would show that child at three years old at the doctors at six years old on holiday at nine years old opening presence at 12 years old going to a new school and I'd say wix the company that powers families throughout all ages and it's the business that gives you those opportunities. Hell story, fuck HTML5 or Flash, no one cares. You don't remember back then of 2012, you're too young for that. Okay. All the stories was about the world between Apple to Adobe, about the support or not support of Flash and our iPhones and how Steve Jobs blocks macromedia and Adobe from implement and install Flash on iPhone devices. But all the things that currently you mentioned, I have those spots. Okay. They were on TV. I'm telling them on a daily basis every day because eventually I'm telling how you are building, for example, I have one of my most successful spots. We are currently debakery and there is a one person a kid actually who is in his parents' kitchen doing flower full of flowers and eventually are we open a restaurant. Okay. And everything happened in inside the wix website. Harry, I have so many spots and I proud that you call me Israeli, but at the same time, if you will ask Americans or British, by the way, where do they think wix headquarters are, they will tell you New York or San Francisco. They never think about us as Israelis in the way that we are telling the stories. Never. By the way, Michael Eisenberg that you talked with, he had blog posts at 2013. It was on February or January, something like that. When he talked about two companies back then, it was conduit and wix that has problems in the way that they are building the brand and telling the story. And part of that, that we don't have the talent in Israel. Do you remember the answer that I gave you? What is the most efficient traffic source that I have to wix? Is the brand that I think that we did a pretty good job through the years. I think you've done a great job through the years. I'm getting into some interesting energy. How do you then feel when you have rap, raising at nine billion dollars, lovable, raising at six point six billion dollars. And then you have wix with a market cap of like four and a half. I'm like, what the fuck? I really don't care. I care only about one thing. I just would like to do my best job and to see growth. Okay, I'm freak about growth. I don't care about any of competitors. It's not that I don't care. I respect them. I respect everyone about what they're doing, the messaging, the valuation. I don't really care. I respect what they're doing, the telling good story to investors. I just would like to build more than 100 million efficient marketing budgets to my companies. I would like to build to sell in more than two billion dollars at wix. And eventually people will understand the story. I just care about goals. I'm a goals person. Which can pass from a growth engine perspective to your respect the most. I respect everyone. I respect like Anton at Lovable is very good at social. I respect the way that he's built brand around his personal social. He's doing amazing job. I would like to do on social is good as they are doing. I really cherish the way that they're building their own persona online. This is something that I'm crappy on. Okay. I am better in watching numbers. I'm better in turning stories in commercials. I think that I'm horrible in my personal brand. For example, not a lot of people had the chance to do podcasts with me. I'm not investing in that. Why are you not pushing mail to do more? I've met mail and had him on the show. Amazing dude. He could do a lot more. If I'm you, I'm like Anton is eating your lunch on personal brand. Mail or you've got great personality. Fucking get out there. Tell the story about hires, about new products, about what you're excited about. You're right. I would like to. And it's going to happen. You're right. There are so many things that I'm doing a crappy way, but the 18 years in a position, you're not doing much in a crappy way. No, no, no. I think that there is a one spot that I wrote in LinkedIn that so much just mentioned it to me two days ago. I consider myself as an undrafted NFL player. Okay. That I'm waking up in the morning and think about how I should do better in order to join the squad. And I need to work better. I need to look better. I need to do better social. I know all the things that need to be done. But at the same time, you know, what we did in the last five months since we bought base 44, I don't think there are a lot of marketing department that achieved something like that. The amount of content, the success that we had, the amount of study and learning that that we had, the collections that we got, the ARR that we are building, the maturity of the channels that we are working on. So many things that are put in this in a great position for 20, 20, 6 and above. And when you're talking about us not doing social good enough with more, I 100% agree with you and happy that I agree with you, because I see potential. Every time the dicey potential, I'm happy. I agree. I always ask people whenever I do things like talks, which is more and more now. And say, hey, how many people have heard of 20 VC? Quite often there'll be like 20 or 30 that haven't. And I'll be like thrilled. And I want that number to be quite large, because it's like great. I have more listeners to get. There is a market that I don't have that I can get. How does growth and marketing change in a world of AI? Wow, execution, telling stories, think about the thinking process and execution process of two, three years ago, how tedious it was like to tell something that I would like something. Then they are going and trying to understand what exactly you wanted. And they're coming back three weeks later with 11 different ideas. And think about the amount of feedback that they gave to them yourself on those three weeks. And they're coming to you and you hate all of them. You may be so so opportunity and one of them and they went again and they came back to you three weeks later or two weeks later with some development of those two projects. And eventually in six months, you will be happy with what you got today. For example, for me, I can be so much clear in the way that I'm sharing my thinking with with my team. Okay, I can write something and bring almost like I'm talking about football, like almost to the 60 60 yard of ideas that I have. I'm okay to be challenged. I'm okay. Like that they will bring something. But the time frame is became days or they came hours. Okay, okay, you don't agree with me on something? Go. You have four hours. Bring me something better. I think that first in the ideation, second in time of the execution, the timeframe to create something is getting shorter and shorter and shorter without hurting the results. So you still see some, you know, AI spots that you wish could be better, especially when you implement human inside. But in four, five months in a year before my de-action to execution. to AP tests, to go back to a Dacia, we are talking almost like days. And this is the reason that the people that I think are going to be major key players, A-plus-plus players in my team are going to be AI first people. You worry about older people in the economy, in the labor market. And what I mean by that is, you mentioned that, like, young people out of university, trash AI first, Sam Altman said that young people use AI as an operating system for life, and that older people use it as a replacement for Google. I think that's probably true and we see it a lot. Honestly, if you are in your 40s, it doesn't look great for you, plus. Do you worry about that? I think there are a lot of changes that are going to be to the worksphere. I do worry of a increase in unemployment rate. I think the government need to think how to solve it. But as a person who is part of that, the only thing that I can shout on everyone is stop thinking about your title and start thinking about thinking differently. Because this is how I measure myself and how I believe others should do. And definitely people who are not going to be AI first in term, I can talk just about marketing for now. Again, I'm trying to be humble and not to preach about anything else. People who can dock AI with me and take the ideation to execution and A/B test. Fast. Those are the people that eventually are going to be my A-plers. Dude, I could talk to you all day. I do want to do a quick fire round with you. Otherwise, I'm going to take up all day. If we start on what do you think is the most underappreciated growth channel today? Brent. What was the best brand marketing activity you did and what was the worst? To think about intent and take every ad inventory that I can get back then and to show beautiful commercial to relevant audiences was the best arbitrage that I did back then in 2008, 2009 and 10. And again, it's the balance between execution, acquisition and brand. The worst? Oh, there are so many. I don't remember. There is like, I don't remember failing. OK, so I'm failing. I analyze it on the spot. I implement the things that I learn from that, but I don't remember that. What's the most expensive one? Good or bad? Bad. I did some horrible style projects in New York that I took some park and decided that people will look to the sky and they have, will have a star that eventually they will create something like bullshit, mumbo jumbo like that. It was the first. And second, I had a very good spot that cost me very low to execute with my team in a beautiful way. And I hired someone really famous to do voiceover. And I paid way too much for this voiceover. How much did you pay for the voiceover? If you want, I'll do a voiceover for half a million dollars for you. If you want. That is very famous one. And you can identify him to the spot. It was more like comprehensive thinking, horrible call, horrible call. The big celebrity payments, they never work out well. I've been in so many companies. On the just like 5 million bucks to like Ronaldo to do an Instagram post, I promise you it does not work the way you think it will. And it's part and we talked about to be smart in endorsement of celebrities because you will never believe that Ronaldo is will build a website for himself. Okay. When I started doing sport advertisement, I put Kunagrero. Do you know Kunagrero? Yeah. I'm not going to go on. Yeah. Yeah. So Kunagrero was sitting in front of computer and created a website for himself. That was part of the thing, stupid thing that I did. I think it was 2014 or something like that. How much did you pay for that? So it's not a lot because it was part of the partnership that I have with the city. So part of the part is that you have in city, you can use the player as a player as resources and you are doing some activities with them. And there are a lot of amazing things that you can do in this player. Today we're doing with much as a city. Brilliant things, welcome without customers, with users combined between the strengths. But we don't put them in front of computer and telling them to build a website. Does that just not do well as a campaign? No, it's not it. What is the hardest part about your job today with Wix? My job is not hard. I don't think about my job as hard. I love to have the ball in the last seconds when we are minus two. I love pressure. Are you more scared of losing or more excited by winning? Excited by winning. Do you have children over? Yeah. You seem like a very wise guy. What's your biggest parenting advice given that many years you have now parenting? I have a gift. My gift is eventually. I know that there are some research that show differently, but I'm a very good multitasker. I think that one of my biggest compliments that my daughter, now she's 18 years old, gave it, gave me was how involved I am. I am in her life and her sibling life. Even though I'm working as CMO for 18 years and you know it's like I said thank you. It's such an amazing compliment. I know I'm not good in getting compliment. I'm not good in that. But when she told me that I got like goose mop and eventually you know if you can be up because of numbers or because you would like to watch sports and 3 a.m. It's easy for you to be up at 3 a.m. for your kids when you need to feed them. So part of the agreement that my wife and I had before and she bought our kids to life was the only one who's going to feed them at night. And it's created an amazing bonding between me and everyone of them. Again it's the gift of multitasking and I can live happily with not a lot of hours of sleep. Wow. I'm very impressed by the way with you doing night time feeds in that way. Jesus Christ. But final one for you. What do you know now that you wish you had known when you started as CMO weeks 18 years ago? You can call yourself up the night before and say, "Oma, you should know this." What would you say? You are going to win because you think differently. I had so many good things and I wasn't sure where to take this show. You know, I have all these notes and the joy of what we do is like natural conversation is the most exciting part of it. You've been amazing. So thank you so much for being so brilliant. Thank you very much. It was true pleasure to talk with you here today. But before we leave you today, if you're looking for a way to transform your customer service, let me introduce you to Finn, baby. So why choose Finn? It takes actions. It automates the most complex customer queries, like refunds, transaction disputes, technical troubleshooting, with speed and reliability. I wish my team was speedy and reliable. Beats every competitor in every head to head Bake Off, completely configurable and code optional setup. It's trusted by over 6,000 customer service leaders, including top AI companies like Anthropic, Lovable, Synthesia, Clay, Vanter. Cursor, claw code, codex. Rewardage is building the product discovery engine that sits upstream of your coding agents. Rewardage kills product debt before it starts because every unused feature you ship isn't just wasted and genaering time. Reforged by product teams at companies like Toast, Vimeo, Klavio and many more, Reforged helps teams ship more features than actually get used. Try Reforged at reforge.com, forward slash build and use the code 20VC, that's 20VC for one month free of pro. While Reforged helps teams level up their growth craft, PURK helps you reward the people doing the work. This episode is brought to you by PURK, the intelligent platform for travel and spend. Breakthroughs don't come from spending hours buried in spreadsheets, booking and re-booking travel or chasing their teams for last quarter's coffee receipts. That's Shadow Work and that's what PURK was built for. One recent study found Shadow Work cost companies over 1.7 trillion every year as employees waste hour after hour on manual time-consuming work instead of the jobs they were hired to do. PURK's AI is purpose-built to automate Shadow Work so teams can focus on real work with real impact. Leave the travel and spend to PURK. Visit PURK.com/20VC today. Puck, powering real work.