10 lessons from Base44's meteoric acquisition

Base44, a vibecoding tool, sold to Wix for $80mm, allegedly 6 months after starting. Making this story even more amazing, Maor Shlomo was a solo-founder operating it solo for the first ~4 of those months.

I haven’t spoken with him, but I was curious so I dug around. Lenny did a podcast on it which is maybe worth a listen (on 1.3x). Those are the facts that are out in public. I have doubts, or at least questions, but let’s just say that it’s all true and Maor really did bootstrap a company to an $80mm outcome in 6 months pretty much all by himself. What can we learn–and what conclusions would be dangerous and probably wrong?

What we can learn (aka What we already knew that Base44 helps “prove”)

1. One person can build a company to multi-million ARR.

2. Big markets mean there’s lots of room for success. Bolt, Replit, Cursor were all direct competitors. They’ve raised tons of money. But there’s also tons of demand.

3. Knowing your customers is crucial. Maor spent the first weeks at a desk with 3 friends watching them use the app and then fixing stuff.

4. The faster you get bacon (what you want) after you push the button (sign up) the better. Maor talked about removing a “review” feature because even though it led to better code it reduced conversion because it put an extra step in the path of getting the “aha moment” (his words)–or, bacon.

5. The economics of selling without any VCs (or anyone else) in your cap table are amazing.

6. Running a profitable business gives you a lot of options.

7. Just because the “big guys” are running $1mm hackathons (insert any big-budget marketing ploy here) you can compete with a $5k hackathon “for good” (insert any targeted, narrowly focused and well executed marketing ploy).

8. The hardest thing is figuring out the go to market.

9. You have to spend time on go to market, even if you’d rather be coding/shipping features/doing something more fun.

10. Automating your own workflows using vibecoding can dramatically increase efficiency and the output of any one person, in almost any discipline (marketing, ops, engineering, product, etc.).

What would be dangerous to conclude

1. One person building a company is the best strategy.

2. Not raising VC in a big market is the best strategy.

3. You or anyone else can actually achieve this kind of success in 6 months.

4. Being acquired early on a hypergrowth trajectory is a good long-term strategy.

5. Their main growth path, building in public via LinkedIn, will work for you or anyone else. (Maor happened to be selling building so building in public appealed directly to his audience).

The most important conclusion

What is abundantly clear is that Maor found something that a certain set of people wanted, built it (quickly, apparently) and they became massive advocates for it. And, of course, paid for it. So many founders–bootstrapped, well funded, across the spectrum–forget this part. You’ve got to build something people value.

I was reminded that setting yourself apart is critical. Having a different looking website, language, messaging, the rest of it is important. But more important is standing for something different–something customers care about. In Base44’s case that is “batteries included”: backend built already, not with AI but in a deterministic way that works for sure and is well architected (and hosted by them, not third parties). If you’ve ever vibe coded, these are real frustrations and a real problem worth solving. Apparently Maor solved it.

Echoes of a past miracle conversation

Around 2010 I met the founders of Braintree, the Stripe competitor PayPal acquired for $800mm back in 2013. When I asked how they got started, they said they were just a bunch of people (40, to be precise) working on payments tech in an office in Chicago. And it “just took off”.

Bullshit.

Maybe if you were 3 or 4 college roommates, I’d believe you. But 40 people? That kind of accident doesn’t just happen.

I get a whiff of that here. Not the 40 people–just the incredulity. I would love to believe Maor built this all in 6 months, start to finish, working by himself for most of it. But it just sounds like such perfect, amazing, zeitgeist-aligned PR that I have questions. Doubts.

That doesn’t detract from the achievement–I just think it may be a disservice to the rest of us who, what, fire our teams and login to Base44 to build everything themselves–and market it?