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Base44 sells to Wix for $80M cash

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Re: Base44 sells to Wix for $80M cash

#41

Post by dr_dshiv »

soco wrote: post #24
andybak wrote: post #12

It's a wrapper for Claude. What's the moat here? Why this and not one of a dozen similar products? Why not reproduce from scratch? $80M would buy you a decent development team and it doesn't seem like these kind of apps are hard to make. Is there something especially good about Base44? Or are they paying for the user base or the time to market advantage?

For us in the back, what is a vibe coding platform anyway? I know and use Claude, if that helps anchoring.

It’s a tool that lets anyone create and deploy functional software (usually web-based) by writing prompts in plain English. Usually they are UI “wrappers” for leading AI models (usually Claude). The platforms also usually include online development environments and integrations (for databases, etc).

Examples include Bolt.new, lovable, mgx.dev, google AI studio... Vercel and Replit also have popular platforms. Google AI studio also counts, here. There are probably dozens more.

Re: Base44 sells to Wix for $80M cash

#42

Post by cj »

fidotron wrote: post #31

Anyone remotely familiar with Wix should not be surprised by this, or be happy that they are familiar with Wix. The maintainability of the output of your average vibe coder is going to enormously exceed that of your average Wix site. LLMs are a massive threat to their whole model which relies on increasing levels of esotericism.

I think the implication here is that the Wix platform sets the bar so low, that even a vibing LLM can surpass it.

Companies like Squarespace set the bar much higher. Wix has always been a nightmare to use and customize.

Re: Base44 sells to Wix for $80M cash

#43

Post by simion314 »

glimshe wrote: post #13
noosphr wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading the actual article reminds me of the old soviet joke: Q: Is it true that Ivan Ivanovich Ivanov from Moscow won a car in a lottery? A: In principle yes, but: 1). it wasn't Ivan Ivanovich Ivanov but Aleksander Aleksandrovich Aleksandrov; 2). he is not from Moscow but from Odessa; 3). it was not a car but a bicycle; 4). he didn't win it, but it was stolen from him.

Genius. Tell us a couple more old soviet jokes! It might be against the HN rules but maybe they will let it slide given the fascination for the Soviet Union here.

In Romania, a pig gave birth to two piglets. The farmer was disappointed and worried (since 2 is a very low number; a good number from a farmer's perspective would be between 8 and 12). So, he reported to his superior that there were 4 piglets. This superior also thought the number was not good enough, so he reported 6 to his superior. That person then reported 8 to his superior, and finally, the dictator Ceaușescu received the final number as 10. He decided that 2 of them would be exported, and the remaining 8 would be used to feed the people.

Re: Base44 sells to Wix for $80M cash

#44

Post by palmfacehn »

andybak wrote: post #12

It's a wrapper for Claude. What's the moat here? Why this and not one of a dozen similar products? Why not reproduce from scratch? $80M would buy you a decent development team and it doesn't seem like these kind of apps are hard to make. Is there something especially good about Base44? Or are they paying for the user base or the time to market advantage?

How the deal was brokered is not mentioned. Nor are any personal connections.

Re: Base44 sells to Wix for $80M cash

#45

Post by hennell »

soco wrote: post #24
andybak wrote: post #12

It's a wrapper for Claude. What's the moat here? Why this and not one of a dozen similar products? Why not reproduce from scratch? $80M would buy you a decent development team and it doesn't seem like these kind of apps are hard to make. Is there something especially good about Base44? Or are they paying for the user base or the time to market advantage?

For us in the back, what is a vibe coding platform anyway? I know and use Claude, if that helps anchoring.

I think it's sort of like those no-code style things like powerautomate and wsiwyg editors - it removes the pesky syntax and understanding bits of code while still giving you a custom app result. Except here it replaces drag and drop or flow diagram style editing with 'ai prompts' and then the AI does the code - making it more powerful (although with less control).

I'd guess in a platform they probably pre-prompt it with a context and rules on top of that so users don't have to say things like 'make sure AWS keys are not in the code' and 'users should be authorised for only their data' etc, and give it tools to use to make standard features.

No idea what the end result of the finished apps is though.

Re: Base44 sells to Wix for $80M cash

#46

Post by rasz »

d--b wrote: post #17
andybak wrote: post #12

It's a wrapper for Claude. What's the moat here? Why this and not one of a dozen similar products? Why not reproduce from scratch? $80M would buy you a decent development team and it doesn't seem like these kind of apps are hard to make. Is there something especially good about Base44? Or are they paying for the user base or the time to market advantage?

Probably a bit of everything. It’s good enough, it’s got a growing user base, it’s already there. It is likely profitable. And probably wix can afford it. Also the founder possibly spent a bunch of his own money it. I mean he hired 7 people already.

>It is likely profitable

/s

Re: Base44 sells to Wix for $80M cash

#47

Post by edanm »

v5v3 wrote: post #5

Reading that, a successful serial entrepreneur with the money to boot strap a start up, did so. Good luck to him but the 'vibe coded' angle is just his expensive PR team at work I would say.

You misunderstood I think, the product is a vibe coding platform.

Re: Base44 sells to Wix for $80M cash

#48

Post by tomgs »

I helped out in their recent hackathon - https://base4good.com/ - mentoring folks on the app, and I also admin one of the user groups.

I am not a paid member of the team, just an admirer who wanted to get closer to the action. This felt right to me from the first moment, and I'm happy I had a small part in the journey.

I met Maor (the founder of base44) and team and had beers with them. Good people.

--

Let me clarify a few things:

1. I don't know exactly how much vibe coding went into building base44 itself. I can attest that Maor's rate of releasing features was absolutely insane - I'm talking major updates every 1-2 days. I assume he's good with Cursor and the like. He's also very, very decisive on what to build and what not to build. Aggressive, even, I would say.

2. Maor had, for the majority of the life of this, no team. The employees joined way after base had customers. Most of what Base is was built by Maor, with 1-2 close friends helping cut out everything that wasn't relevant or wasn't great (so I'm told).

3. It's a different take on lovable/bolt etc. No one argues this.

4. Maor opted to include the db within the platform, rather than enable persistence externally. This really made the output great, and made fixing cross-application things very easy.

5. To me, base44 is PHP. It's a bit ugly, but it works, easy to explain to people, and once you get a hang of it it's a great hammer. It's not going to win the space race anytime soon, but it'll build you a house.

6. Base has resolve with AI functionality, which is far superior to anything I've seen outside of an IDE. It just works.

--

To folks trying to win the AI race by building exceptional technology on the bleeding edge, good on you. I don't think Base is that.

I think Maor symbolizes something different: we're in the fast-grab era.

Big cos are not able to build killer AI apps at the rate they're expected to, which means they're circling around looking for what they can snatch with money/equity.

My take?

Build AI things that just work for a specific use case. Release them fast. Make people fall in love with them because they "do AI" for the use case.

Some bigco is flying close by, trying to build it but failing. Be there for the purchase.

Re: Base44 sells to Wix for $80M cash

#49

Post by tomgs »

bmiekre wrote: post #23

The reality is they paid for the subscribers, not the code. 250,000 sign ups is a lot. Sounds like they hit a real pocket, I would guess on LinkedIn ads/content. I can imagine a ton of non engineers who doom scroll LinkedIn would easily have signed up for a free account.

I can say, at least from looking at it from up close, that it doesn't seem like paid ads did the trick here. It was a community play, all along.

Don't have proof, but the discord community and the WhatsApp groups tell a decent story.

See my other comment in this thread for more comments.

Re: Base44 sells to Wix for $80M cash

#50

Post by bmacho »

simion314 wrote: post #43
glimshe wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Genius. Tell us a couple more old soviet jokes! It might be against the HN rules but maybe they will let it slide given the fascination for the Soviet Union here.

In Romania, a pig gave birth to two piglets. The farmer was disappointed and worried (since 2 is a very low number; a good number from a farmer's perspective would be between 8 and 12). So, he reported to his superior that there were 4 piglets. This superior also thought the number was not good enough, so he reported 6 to his superior. That person then reported 8 to his superior, and finally, the dictator Ceaușescu r…

The joke is that in reality Ceaușescu had decided to export 4, and the farmer got jailed/executed for hiding his piglets
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