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

Omer, I'm excited for this, dude. Listen, I stalked the shit out of you with Michael Eisenberg, with Maor, and with many of your board members. Thank you so much for joining me today, dude.

Thank you very much. I'm 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 that I hear you've got some news. Can you tell me what the news is and go back a little bit to when that idea originated last year?

The news is that we're going to do 2 Super Bowl spots this year. One is for Wix, and it's going to be the 6th one that we're doing for the amazing company that I've been part of for the last 18 years. In addition to that, we're going to have a Super Bowl spot for Base44 as well. I think we're the youngest company ever that's going to have a Super Bowl commercial.

Another interesting story to tell is the timeline of the decision to purchase the spot. We announced that we were buying Base44 around mid-June 2025. I have a message on record that I sent on WhatsApp to a friend of mine, Mark Zamer, who has been buying the Super Bowl spots for me for the last 6 or 10 years, actually. It was for TV and radio. On July 2nd, I sent him a message saying that I would like to buy a spot for Base44 and asking how much it was going to cost me.

It took me, let's say, 12 days—I was a bit slow—to see some amazing indications from the community and from people who loved the product: how they were using the product, the intent, the user behavior, and the acquisition that we could have. We went and purchased the spot that we're just announcing.

From speaking to so many friends of yours, they all said that I had to speak about the historical Super Bowl investments that you've made. Can you help me understand the rationale behind doing the Super Bowl? Obviously, it's a huge platform, and from a brand-marketing perspective, it's amazing. But for you as a CMO, why do you think it's such a good investment?

1. Super Bowl Spots Drive Growth

The way that I'm thinking about brand activities is that it's not an either-or. It's not only brand. When I'm doing acquisition, I'm not doing just acquisition marketing. When I'm doing brand marketing, I'm thinking about the balance between brand and acquisition, and when I'm doing acquisition, I'm thinking about the balance between acquisition and brand.

The beauty of the Super Bowl—I'm saying this a lot—is that the day after the Oscars, everyone is talking about who wore what. The only day that people are focusing on commercials is around the Super Bowl, and the day after, people keep talking about whose ad was what. All year, we're thinking about technology and how to skip commercials, and we're buying premium services so that we won't have to listen to them. On the Super Bowl, we're talking about the commercials.

I'm a huge sports fan and a huge NFL fan, and I understand that it's not only sports. The NFL, and the Super Bowl in particular, is a celebration, especially in the US, but it's becoming more and more famous globally. Just to be part of that is to be there.

I keep saying that the product is the main thing in our companies. We're nothing without the product. But to trust a product, to trust what our users are doing, and to be in the Super Bowl is a message.

You talked about the balance between brand and acquisition and how the Super Bowl plays into that. When you do a Super Bowl, do you see acquisition skyrocket? What is the direct impact of the Super Bowl on acquisition?

Yes. You can definitely see an impact, like a spike on the day of the spot, but you need to be smarter in the way you measure. I believe there are tons of opportunities in the 2 weeks before game day to do a lot of marketing activities around the creative, around the PR, around the 60-second and 30-second spots, and around what kind of activities you're allowed to do around the spot.

Eventually, the way that I believe in brand and the balance between brand and acquisition is that sometimes—and it's okay if it's not today, it's okay if it's not tomorrow—eventually, I would like to see a spike in the traffic to our site. That means that if we don't see relevant users coming to our site—I'll add the word “relevant”—relevant audiences who are coming to our site, if we didn't do so, we don't need to invest in the marketing activity that we're doing.

Marketing is an investment, not a spend. Eventually, you would like to see a return on your investment. For us, return on investment is users who are coming to our site, users who are using the product, and eventually converting and telling others how amazing our product is.

How much was the first Super Bowl spot that you bought?

$4.8 million, with an $8 million maximum spend. When you're buying a Super Bowl commercial, you're paying for the airtime during the Super Bowl, and in addition, there's a maximum spend that you need to invest during the year on the network that has the rights to the Super Bowl.

Wow. So wait a minute. You have to co-spend? You have to commit to spending on the network to get the spot in the Super Bowl?

Correct. There is some balancing and, of course, negotiation. There are some companies that invest a lot in TV ads throughout the years, so for them, it's easier. Over the years, there have been some times when we're on air on TV, and there have been some times when we're not.

So it's up to negotiation. More or less, it was $4.8 million.

What is the latest price to do the Super Bowl?

Unfortunately, I cannot say right now. It's more than that, but it's worth it.

Do you see ROI on performance alone, or do you believe in the long tail, where brand marketing will override that over time?

I believe in the balance. For example, in the last 2 years for Wix—not for Base44, currently I'm talking about Wix—there has been heavy investment in the brand and in the activities that we're doing: a lot of videos with our users on YouTube, social activity, and some competitions that we're running. We measure everything that we're doing.

What we decided this year was to allocate some of this money to the Super Bowl commercial. In our spot this year, the product is going to be at the center. We are not going to have a celebrity or a lot of hoo-ha or anything special. We are going to have the product, and you are going to see how other people are using it. It's almost like a direct-response spot that we bought on the Super Bowl.

The reason for that is that we believed the product was worth being in the Super Bowl. This is the reason that we decided to have Wix in the Super Bowl. In terms of Base44, it was a statement about new things that happened in the world: vibe coding and the democratization of creation in general, including web applications and mobile applications.

The nice thing about being me, and the challenge about being me now, is that people hear about what we do and then send me suggestions. One of the competitors to Base44 seemingly heard about our show and asked a question: “You're outspending all of us on paid marketing.”

Yeah.

“Is this a game now where capital is the differentiator between winners and losers?”

You know what my effective marketing run rate is right now? Guess—without the Super Bowl.

$150 million?

Not bad. So I'm above $100 million, and it was above $100 million about a month after we bought Base44. It took me, I think, 6 or 7 years at Wix to do what we did at Base44 in a month and a half, or 2 months.

It's not just about throwing money. It's about investing money smartly. You need to think about the marketing department at Base44 right now. It's more than 50 people.

Marketing for Base44 is more than 50 people?

Yeah. Think about all the things that we need to do: product marketing, community, PR, and education. We have a lot of effort going into implementing Base44 in higher education and 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 performance and brand marketing for you?

2. TROI Replaces LTV

I'm not doing the separation. I'm doing activities where the goal is—we call it TROI. People used to call it LTV, or lifetime value. Do you remember?

Yeah.

I hated this term. I hated it so much, because how do you know what the lifetime value is? What is the lifetime value? How many years is it?

Do you not realistically look at it? You look at a cohort of customers and say, “Okay, 87% last for 4 years, and so we'll take the LTV and say it's 4 years.” That's a good-enough proxy to give us an LTV that we can work back toward a CAC with, and then figure it out from there.

What was the quality of Gemini 6 months ago?

Okay, this is an interesting question. Does CAC-to-LTV fade in importance in a world of ever-transient technology?

I believe that since I joined Wix, I have never used lifetime value. I'm using a different term: TROI, or time return on investment.

It was 2012. We were a poor company before the IPO, and Facebook launched—I think they called it Page Aid or something like that—and we measured everything. I remember a conversation that I had with Avishai, and I moved to this new advertising format. I did 5X in 1 day because I saw the results that I was getting from it.

I believe in building the shortest cohort for me to move as fast as I can to impact the results of the company. Lifetime value is much slower than the metrics that I currently have. So I have 1-day cohorts, 7-day cohorts, 14-day cohorts, and 28-day cohorts. It eventually gives me an indication of when my TROI is going to be 1.

Do you worry that that concentrates your attention on the shortest-term TROI and not necessarily the biggest and best outcome in the long term?

No. To go back, we did 5X, and Avishai told me, “Even though you are getting the money, we close after 4 months, and I don't have enough money to invest during those 4 months. So you need to slow down a bit.”

What he did after that was go and purchase Facebook stock, but he didn't tell me, and he didn't buy me any. He's not a friend. Avishai is not a friend.

You know what I love about Israelis? You guys are money makers.

The way that you're comfortable with it—for example, we as a company now, and now I'm talking about Base44—we as the Wix Corporation are comfortable with a TROI of 11 or 12 months, or something like that.

The beauty about TROI is that it measures every traffic source and the blended traffic as one. I know the TROI for every source, and I have the TROI of everything as a mix. We're saying, “Okay, we are comfortable with a TROI of, let's say, 11 or 12 months,” something like that. If I'm keeping the TROI at 11 months, I have an unlimited budget.

Help me understand that. Why is 11 months the sign that you have an unlimited budget?

Because it's something that you're comfortable with as a company. You take into consideration user retention, users who are upgrading, users who are moving to more expensive packages, and churn inside.

Do you think that needs to compress in a world where an Anthropic model, Opus 4.5, changes the game for so many? We've seen it: Claude Code has cannibalized a lot of Cursor's business overnight, and everyone's canceling Cursor. Does that TROI—time return on investment—need to compress for people with this technology cycle?

It depends on how comfortable you are with the product. It depends on what the traffic sources are, what the risk is, and how you're managing your risk.

Let's say I have very balanced traffic sources—10 traffic sources, and every one of them brings in 10% of the collection, or of the ARR, of the company. It will take me some time to be at risk when a new company jumps in and offers a product. When I have just 1 traffic source—let's say LinkedIn posts by CEOs or something like that—you can be more of a trendy product. Then the risk of a new company or a new product coming to the same audiences with the same techniques puts you at risk.

The way that I'm thinking about it all the time is that I would like to have as many traffic sources as I can in order to build a business for the long term.

I get you. But is it not a game of 80/20, where 20% of the traffic sources drive 80% of the outcomes?

It's all the time. It's a tricky one, because I saw some companies—let's talk about Maor, okay? When we bought him, almost all of his traffic came from social. Everything. It was LinkedIn posts, some other posts, and some community efforts.

What we're doing is bringing the multiples. This is the reason that I need a lot of people in my department to do a lot of things. I'm doing social, education, YouTube, Facebook ads, TikTok, Twitter, search, and SEO activities. I'm doing a lot, a lot, a lot of things, eventually, because this is how 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 being 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, and don't worry about diversifying against your point there? Don't build diverse traffic sources; just double down. Or should you be expansive and have a portfolio of channels from an earlier time?

3. Diversification Beats Concentration

I think that you should do both. You need to 10X the things that are working for you, but all the time, open up new areas.

Okay.

Because you don't know what's going to happen tomorrow. I talked with someone and shared with them that we were doing a Super Bowl spot for Base44, and that we had increased the budget aggressively. The first thing he thought was—he asked me, “Why are you doing it? Are you afraid of...?”

And I looked at him. “Man, I'm not afraid of anything. I have an opportunity, and I'm trying to optimize every opportunity that I have in order to build a sustainable business.”

Let's play a thought experiment, though. What if we took the budget that you're now putting into SEO and performance, and said, “Social has worked so well for Maor and Base44. Let's own social. Let's do UGC like never before. Let's absolutely double down on Maor's brand, and let's just suck the air out of the room on social.” Why would that be a worse strategy than diversification?

Because it's like projects. Let's think about a project. Again, this is something that's part of the way that I'm thinking and working—the methodology of the way that I've been thinking and working over the last 18 years.

When you are doing 1 thing and doing it tremendously well, there is only 1 thing you can be successful in. When you are doing 10 things, you can do 3 things amazingly well. Let’s say another 3 you’re going to be okay, and in 4 you’re going to fail. In the math that I know, 3 is bigger than 1.

I’m a venture capitalist, but I would agree with that statement.

So 3 is bigger than 1. Again, when you’re going all in on only 1 thing, a lot of the time you’re playing and talking with the same audiences. Let’s say you are very good at X. Okay, I’m doing an amazing job in X. But the audiences who are in X, eventually on Twitter, are only specific users with specific intent and specific behavior. What about the other users in the world? You don’t want to talk with them? They’re different.

It’s like going after conversion rate as a metric. Think how stupid it is to go after conversion rate.

Why?

Because a 10% conversion rate—is it good or bad?

It depends on how many people are in the funnel.

Exactly. So if you are not paying for the next 1 million users, and they cost you nothing, and their conversion rate is just 1% compared to the 10% that you had before, is it good or bad?

Again, it depends on the top of funnel. It’s good if it’s a large top of funnel. A million at 1%? Yeah.

No, it’s amazing, okay, because you didn’t pay for them, and they 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, and on those users you would like to improve. I will explain what I’m saying, okay?

Yeah.

Let’s say that I’m bringing traffic to Wix from New York—users who search for “website builder.” Of those users, I would like those users to convert better on a daily basis. I would like my product to be better, the messaging to be better, everything to be better in order to increase those users’ conversion. In general, I don’t really care about the overall conversion of the company.

But what you care about is your day-2 conversion to paid. Correct?

I care about the TROI of the company. I optimize the TROI of the company. That means I have a goal of a TROI of 8 months, and my job is to bring as much money collection for the company within the TROI that we agreed on.

That means that if my brand improved and I have more users who are coming to me that I don’t need to pay for, it gives me the opportunity to decide if I would like to increase the TROI of the users that I’m paying for. I can decide about it with my partners, if it’s the right thing to do or it’s not the right thing to do.

How do you think about the divergence in TROI, or the contrast in TROI, between Wix, where you’ve got, I would imagine, more retained users and more small businesses, which are stickier, versus Base44, where people are also using Replit, Lovable, and Gemini, and they’re much more promiscuous? How does the TROI vary between the two?

So the TROI probably saves me from that, okay? Because in the metrics of TROI, the churn of those users—the users who are moving from 1 product to another—is already calculated. Again, those 50 people who currently are part of the marketing department of Base, except for 3, all of them came with me from Wix.

So I brought all 50 people from the activities that they did at Wix to Base, and they have all the experience in terms of measurement. We know exactly the right way to measure things.

How?

We’re measuring 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 paying us more. The packages at Base are more expensive than the packages at Wix, so TROI calculates everything inside.

Can I ask, going back to the 10-channel conversation, because I think that’s so interesting? You said 3 work and 4 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, okay? A lot of the time, when we have a success, I see the success before the team. I know that we are successful here. Let’s move on. Let’s be more aggressive, for example.

When we don’t have a success, I’m asking the team. Today, the methodology is that the team asks themselves on a daily basis, “Are we investing enough? Do we need to cut, or do we need to invest more?” There’s a lot of measurement, a lot of data that we’re using, and a lot of tests.

For example, with 1 of our products, we weren’t sure that the YouTube activity we were doing was effective. So we replaced this product commercial with another product commercial to see the impact, and we saw that the incremental impact was very low or didn’t exist. We modified the amount of budget that we were investing. So we keep challenging ourselves 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 1 or 2 years, with 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’m the most experienced CMO in every public company in our technology sphere, okay? So I saw a lot, and I have no problem failing. I have trust with my partners, and I’m sharing a lot of information with my partners. I’m sharing a lot about the things that we are doing and that I’m doing.

Eventually, if you are doing things and the numbers are not popping up in the data, you need to ask yourself, “Do I need to do it, or do I need to change the way that I’m thinking?”

So I have to share with you: there’s a philosophy that I’ve been preaching for, I don’t know, I think 8 to 9 years. I did some tests with my team and saw a different indication for something that I had been preaching for 9 years, and I changed the way that we were measuring everything within 3 days after I saw those indications.

What did you see that caused that change?

I saw the incremental impact of some search activities that we did.

What does that mean? Can you unpack that?

For example, I don’t see search as an impact on brands. Compared to other activities, search is something that I’m measuring specifically by TROI, which I’m comfortable with. Compared to, let’s say, YouTube, social, LinkedIn, or different other social activities that we do, search is specific.

We had measured search for a long time in 1 way. When we did the test—I think it was September 7—and on September 11, I asked everyone to come to an all-hands. I explained the different way that we were going to start working, and we implemented it 2 days after.

You don’t need to be afraid to preach something else when the data are showing you something different, or something new that you didn’t know before.

Everyone is talking about the death of SEO. Has your investment in SEO changed over time, down in a 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 appearances currently involve activities similar to SEO, but you need to be smarter in the way that you’re doing it.

Again, for companies where the marketing budget is more than $100 million, when you’re seeing a lot of investment, percentage-wise, it’s maybe not a lot. So it’s more about the way that you’re thinking, the challenge that you have, and the headcount that you have.

Actually, today I have to say that I need to invest more in SEO-related AI search methods. I need to invest more, not less.

Are you investing in AI search today in terms of how you appear in LLM rankings? If I go to ChatGPT and say, “What’s the best website builder?” are you investing to make sure that you show up in the top 3?

Definitely, although the percentage is very low. Again, what’s happened in the last 2 or 3 months is that I think Google changed the way that we are using AI in Search.

In general, when you’re looking at most of the relevant traffic in the world, it’s still on Google. It’s still on Google. So, yes, the early adopters have already moved away from regular, traditional search. Tons of users—the regular users—are still using it in a regular way, and we need to do both right now.

We need to be relevant for AI search, and we need to be relevant for Google Search. And not only that: for our users, we need to teach them both. We need to teach them to do SEO, and we need to teach them how to be relevant for MLM searches as well.

What’s your best-performing channel today?

Brand. People who are coming to Wix because they know that we have an amazing product that is going to help them achieve their goals.

It’s so funny. I had Nick from Revolut on the show, and he said, “My number 1 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 I’m not surprised to hear 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 much more today about sports endorsements from a lot of work that I’ve done. 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. LinkedIn, too. I think LinkedIn’s potential is enormous. The arbitrage is there again. The targeting isn’t as perfect as other solutions yet, but I believe that those two channels have tons of opportunity for us.

When you look at channel composition across the team, do you break channels down to specific people and allocate 3 to SEO, 4 to YouTube, and 3 to TikTok? Or do you have it blended across the team to make it a more cohesive unit?

Today, it’s much easier to keep cohesive messaging because the AI tools are helping us. I remember a time when I was browsing and saw something that wasn’t our brand, and I was taking screenshots and sending them to people angrily. I would ask, “How can it be that we’re doing such crappy work?”

So it’s a mix. For example, the team that’s buying traffic is buying from one centralized team across all the channels. The people who are managing communities are doing it across maybe 1 or 2 channels. The people who are doing SEO are just doing SEO and MLM. It very much depends on the skills of the people, the channels that we’re working on, and the things that we’re doing on those channels.

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 they’re 2 of the 3 that don’t work? I’ve interviewed some of the best growth leaders, CMOs, and CEOs in the world. 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 bother me are the things that I’m not good at, not the things that I’m good at.

If I gave you $100 million more in your marketing budget, what would you do?

I would give it back to Lior, because I have all the money that I need to stay on the healthy path, in the way that I believe I need to run the business and the marketing of the company that I’m responsible for. I’m investing my money, our money. I’m not spending it.

How do you think about the people on your team? I spoke to Michael Eisenberg, and he talked about the Omer Shai diaspora, the talent that you’ve built around you. One thing that’s striking when I speak to you, Omer—and we didn’t know each other before this—is, bluntly, how scientific you are in a lot of ways, and how fundamentally attached you are to money and the flow of capital throughout your business, which isn’t always common in all CMOs.

What non-obvious traits do you look for in the people who join your marketing or growth teams?

4. Product Comes First

First, I care more about my users than money, so I don’t agree with you. The first thing that pushes me is listening to our customers, bringing in more users who are happy, and helping the users who aren’t happy to be happy with the product and bringing in more people like them.

Every time we talk about the marketing department at Wix, I say that we’re an okay department in a product company. We’re not a marketing company. It’s a different approach because it helps us push the product and be part of making the product better. So that’s the first thing.

The second is that I don’t believe we’re building rocket science. You just need people with tons of passion who are smart and talented, people whom maybe no one else has given a chance. Today, I talked with Shai, who is running the marketing of Base44, and we talked about the talent we’d like to bring into the department.

We’d like people who are AI-savvy and think about AI. We said we need to go back to the root of bringing in people with zero knowledge about marketing. We need people who are passionate about AI—current university students or people who have just graduated 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 either you have or you don’t. I can teach them marketing. I can teach them to be good listeners. I can teach them how to tell a story. Passion for being the best in the world at something is something I cannot teach.

What do most people get wrong about storytelling today? You said, “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’re afraid to put the product at the center. There are so many emotional or funny things, and in general, it’s tricky to tell a story right now in the world without hurting someone. Let’s be honest: the world is so divided that you’re really afraid to tell any story because someone can be offended or understand it in the wrong way.

But in general, people will go down on you because you put the product at the center and didn’t say something bigger than that. Why? Eventually, people are coming to you to use the product, to use the product that our team created for you to enjoy, and eventually to fulfill something that you imagined. So put the product at the center.

How do you feel about Simon Sinek, who’s a very famous speaker and has said before that you should sell the why, not the what? Apple is brilliant because it sells the creativity that its 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 why, not the what, given the product centricity that you described?

How many Apples are there in the world? Apple is 1 company, right? We can talk about 10 more that can tell a story like that, although not at the level of Apple. All the others are different.

Eventually, I remember a product launch that we had. We launched a product and moved from Flash to HTML5. You know that Wix used to be a Flash-based platform from 2008 to 2012. In 2012, we moved from Flash to HTML5.

I worked on this launch for months. Eventually, I wanted to say it very clearly. I used the KISS methodology: “Keep it simple, stupid.” HTML5 is now on Wix. I had a lot of plans and everything. Back then, I used to have tons of media-buying deals, and I replaced all the spots that I had in 1 second. All of them were manual, by the way, by my team. I replaced every spot that you had from “Create a free Flash website” to “HTML5 is now on Wix.”

When I showed the spot—back then, it wasn’t a spot; it was just static 300-by-250 and 728-by-90 banners, something like that—the dimensions of the banners, I showed the vision that I had to 1 of my board members, and I saw how upset he was. Then he opened Apple’s announcement of the iPhone, and I told him, “We are not Apple.”

The product that we’re currently giving to the world isn’t an iPhone. We just want people to know that we used to be Flash and now we’re HTML5. That’s all. This is what I need 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 users to think about us as maybe going to be lost and no longer relevant because of Flash. They need to know that we’re relevant because we’re now HTML5, and I need to shout it to everyone. Eventually, it’s about being humble in the world and understanding that Apple is 1 of 1. Maybe OpenAI and Claude have tens of competitors, but all the others need to play a different ball game.

I think you’re too Israeli in your storytelling, my friend. I think you win when you sell what someone can be. Nike is a brilliant example: they teach you that everyone can be an athlete. Everyone can be an athlete, no matter what shape or size. You put on some Nike trainers, and you can be an athlete.

If I were pitching for your team today for that Super Bowl ad, I would tell a story that shows a very young child at the doctor’s office. I would show that child at 3 years old at the doctor’s, at 6 years old on holiday, at 9 years old opening presents, and at 12 years old going to a new school. I’d say, “Wix, the company that powers families throughout all ages, is the business that gives you those opportunities.” Tell the story. Fuck HTML5 or Flash. No one cares.

You don’t remember back in 2012? You’re too young for that, okay?

Yeah, I was, like, 15.

All the stories were about the war between Apple and Adobe, about whether to support Flash on iPhones, and how Steve Jobs blocked Macromedia and Adobe from implementing and installing Flash on iPhone devices.

But everything that you currently mentioned, I have those spots. They were on TV. I’m telling those stories every day because, ultimately, I’m telling how you are building. For example, I have 1 of my most successful spots. We call it “The Bakery,” and there’s 1 person—a kid, actually—who is in his parents’ kitchen working with flour, covered in flour, and eventually opens a restaurant. Everything happens inside a Wix website.

Harry, I have so many spots, and I’m proud that you call me Israeli. At the same time, if you ask Americans or British people, by the way, where they think Wix’s headquarters are, they’ll tell you New York or San Francisco. They never think of us as Israeli in the way that we’re telling the stories. Never. By the way, Michael Eisenberg, whom you talked with, had a blog post in 2013.

It was in February or January, something like that, when he talked about 2 companies back then, Conduit and Wix, that had problems with the way they were building the brand and telling the story. Part of that was that we didn'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 for Wix?

Yeah, yeah.

It's the brand. So 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 territory. How do you then feel when you have Replit raising at $9 billion, Lovable raising at $6.6 billion, and then you have Wix with a market cap of around $4.5 billion? I'm like, "What the fuck?"

I really don't care. I care only about one thing. I would just like to do my best job and see growth. I'm a freak about growth. I don't care about any of my competitors. It's not that I don't care—I respect them. I respect everyone for what they are doing and the messaging they are creating. The valuation, I don't really care about. I respect what they are doing, and they are telling a good story to investors.

I would just like to build more than $100 million in efficient marketing budgets for my companies. I would like to sell more than $2 billion at Wix, and eventually people will understand the story. I just care about growth. I'm a growth person.

Which competitor, from a growth-engine perspective, do you respect the most?

I respect everyone.

I respect Anton at Lovable. He's very good at social, and I respect the way that he's built a brand around his personal social presence.

He's doing an amazing job. I would like to do as well on social as they are doing. I really cherish the way that they are building their own persona online. This is something that I'm crappy at. I'm better at watching numbers. I'm better at telling stories in commercials. I think that I'm horrible at my personal brand, for example. Not a lot of people have had the chance to do a podcast with me. I'm not investing in that.

Why are you not pushing Maor to do more? I've met Maor 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. Maor, you've got a great personality. 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 in a crappy way, but—

Dude, after 18 years in a position, you're not doing much in a crappy way. Let's just be clear.

No, no, there are some things. I think that there is one post that I wrote on LinkedIn that someone just mentioned to me 2 days ago. I consider myself an undrafted NFL player. I wake up in the morning and think about how I should do better in order to join the squad. I need to work better, I need to look better, and I need to do better on social.

I know all the things that need to be done, but at the same time, what we did in the last 5 months since we bought Base44—I don't think there are a lot of marketing departments that have achieved something like that. The amount of content, the success that we had, the amount of study and learning that we had, the connections that we got, the ARR that we are building, and the maturity of the channels that we are working on—so many things are putting us in a great position for 2026 and beyond.

When you're talking about us not doing social well enough with Maor, I 100% agree with you, and I'm happy that I agree with you because I see potential. Every time that I see potential, I'm happy.

I agree. I always ask people whenever I do talks, which is happening more and more now, "Hey, how many people have heard of 20VC?" Quite often, there will be 20 or 30 people who haven't, and I'll be thrilled. 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 do growth and marketing change in a world of AI?

5. AI Changes Marketing Execution

Wow. Execution. Telling stories. Think about the thinking process and execution process of 2 or 3 years ago, and how tedious it was to tell someone that I wanted something. Then they would go and try to understand exactly what you wanted, and they would come back 3 weeks later with 11 different ideas. Think about the amount of feedback they gave themselves over those 3 weeks. They would come to you, and you would hate all of them.

You might have seen some opportunity in one of them, and they would go again and come back to you 3 weeks later or 2 weeks later with some development of those 2 projects. Eventually, in 6 months, you would be happy with what you got.

Today, for example, I can be so much clearer in the way that I'm sharing my thinking with my team. I can write something and bring it almost to the 60-yard line of ideas that I have—I'm talking about football—that I'm okay to be challenged on. I'm okay with them bringing me something. But the timeframe has become days or hours. You don't agree with me on something? Go. You have 4 hours. Bring me something better.

I think that, first, in ideation, and second, in the time of execution, the timeframe to create something is getting shorter and shorter and shorter without hurting the results.

Mm.

So you still see some AI spots that you wish could be better, especially when you implement human insight. But in 5 months or a year, from ideation to execution to A/B tests and back to ideation, we are talking about almost days. This is the reason that the people who I think are going to be major key players—A players, A++ players—on my team are going to be AI-first people.

Do you worry about older people in the economy, in the labor market? What I mean by that is, you mentioned there, "Hey, we want young people out of university, fresh, 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're in your 40s, it doesn't look great for you. Do you worry about that?

I think there are a lot of changes that are going to happen in the work sphere. I do worry about an increase in the unemployment rate. I think governments need to think about how to solve it.

The only thing that I can shout to everyone is: stop thinking about your title and start thinking about thinking differently. This is how I measure myself and how I believe others should measure themselves. Definitely, people who are not going to be AI-first—in marketing, at least. Again, I'm trying to be humble and not preach about anything else.

People who can talk AI with me, take the ideation to execution, and A/B-test fast—those are the people who are eventually going to be my A players.

Dude, I could talk to you all day. I do want to do a quick-fire round with you, okay? Otherwise, I'm going to take up all day. If we start with what you think is the most underappreciated growth channel today?

Brand.

What was the best brand-marketing activity you did, and what was the worst?

Thinking about intent, taking every ad inventory that I could get back then, and showing a beautiful commercial to relevant audiences was the best arbitrage that I did back then, in 2008, 2009, and 2010. Again, it's the balance between execution, acquisition, and brand.

The worst? There are so many, and I don't remember. I don't remember failing. Okay, so I'm failing: I analyze it on the spot. I implement the things that I learn from it, but I don't remember that.

What's the most expensive one?

Good or bad?

Bad.

I did some horrible stunt project in New York. I took a park and decided that people would look to the sky, and they would have a star that eventually they would create something—some bullshit mumbo jumbo like that. That was the first.

Second, I had a very good spot that cost me very little to execute with my team in a beautiful way, and I hired someone really famous to do the voice-over. I paid way too much for that voice-over.

How much did you pay for the voice-over?

I paid half a million dollars for the voice-over. It was a fucking stupid idea that I had.

If you want, I'll do a voice-over for half a million dollars for you.

Thank you. He's a very famous one, and you can identify him from the spot. It was more about comprehensive thinking. Horrible call. Horrible call.

The big celebrity payments never work out well. I've been in so many companies where, honestly, it was just like $5 million to Ronaldo to do an Instagram post. I promise you, it does not work the way you think it will.

It's part of what we talked about: being smart in the endorsement of celebrities, because you will never believe that Ronaldo is going to build a website for himself. For example, when I started doing sports advertising, I put Kun Agüero in it. Do you know Kun Agüero?

Yeah, of course I do. I'm a 101. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah. Kun Agüero was sitting in front of a computer and created a website for himself. That was part of the stupid thing that I did. I think it was 2014 or something like that.

How much did you pay for that?

It wasn't a lot because it was part of the partnership that I had with the City.

Part of the partnership that you have with Manchester City is that you can use the players as resources, and you do activities with them. There are a lot of amazing things that you can do with players. Today, we’re doing brilliant things with Manchester City, working with our customers and users and combining our strengths. But we don’t put them in front of a computer and tell them to build a website.

Did that just not do well as a campaign?

No, it’s not that.

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’re 2–0 down. I love pressure.

Are you more scared of losing or more excited by winning?

Excited by winning.

Do you have children, Omer?

Yeah.

You seem like a very wise guy. What is your biggest parenting advice, given the many years you’ve spent parenting?

I have a gift. My gift is that, eventually—I know there are some researchers who show otherwise—but I’m a very good multitasker. One of the biggest compliments my daughter, who is now 18 years old, gave me was how involved I am in her life and her siblings’ lives, even though I’ve been working as CMO for 18 years.

I said, “Thank you. It’s such an amazing compliment.” I know I’m not good at receiving compliments. I’m not good at that. But when she told me that, I got goosebumps.

Eventually, if you can stay up because of numbers or because you’d like to watch sports at 3:00 a.m., it’s easy for you to be up at 3:00 a.m. for your kids when you need to feed them. Part of the agreement my wife and I had before she brought our kids into the world was that I would be the only one who fed them at night. It created an amazing bond between me and every one of them.

Again, it’s the gift of multitasking, and I can live happily with not a lot of hours of sleep. Those are the gifts that I have.

Wow.

Yeah.

I’m very impressed, by the way, that you did the nighttime 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 at Wix 18 years ago? You can call yourself up the night before and say, “Omer, you should know this.” What would you say?

You are going to win because you think differently.

Dude, I had so many good things, and I wasn’t sure where to take this show. I have all these notes, and the joy of what we do is that 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 a true pleasure to talk with you, Harry, today.