Base44 sells to Wix for $80M cash • Hacker News Board

Re: Base44 sells to Wix for $80M cash

#111

Post by sunnybeetroot » Thu, Jun 19, 2025, 7:22 PM UTC

_fat_santa wrote: post #63

mattfrommars wrote: post #60

Does anyone know how start up or project like these are built from ground up? I have very very command of react and I can write rest api using spring or express.js. I know finger too about prompt engineering. What does it take to make something like this?

I'm currently building a similar app for my company. Apps like this are built pretty much entirely around prompting. The basic path is: User Enters Prompt > Combine with Internal Prompt > Feed to AI > Return Results. That's pretty much it but realize the "internal prompt" will take you months of work and refinement. There are many many tiny edge cases around using AI like this. One problem for example is you can tell…

Not exactly true, with structured outputs you can specify what it must conform to.

Re: Base44 sells to Wix for $80M cash

#112

Post by mandeepj » Thu, Jun 19, 2025, 7:26 PM UTC

Althought Base44 seems to be a wrapper on ChatGpt but output is far superior. I tried "adminLTE port to React" via both; Chatgpt gave me a very barebone stuff besides the dashboard page, which had mild functionality. However, Base44 provided me with a fully functional app.

Edit: Just learnt from comments, they used Claude and not ChatGpt.

Re: Base44 sells to Wix for $80M cash

#113

Post by tomgs » Thu, Jun 19, 2025, 8:35 PM UTC

11101010001100 wrote: post #85

tomgs wrote: post #48

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…

The features that Maor was adding every 1-2 days were not novel, just new to base44?

Correct.

They weren't there, and then they were there.

Re: Base44 sells to Wix for $80M cash

#114

Post by nikcub » Thu, Jun 19, 2025, 9:03 PM UTC

cj wrote: post #42

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.

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

Funny - with a non-profit I help out I was so frustrated with our Squarespace site that I ended up replacing it with a custom site I vibe-knocked out in less than a day.

Better design, faster performance, integrated into mailchimp and volunteer backend, better donation flow also integrated, custom page type templates, better cms (sanity), hosted for free now etc. etc.

Having a semi-decent developer crack open Cursor / Claude Code and spend a day just building _really_ is a threat to all of the hosted website and CMS providers. I'd definitely include Wordpress in that too.

Re: Base44 sells to Wix for $80M cash

#115

Post by jim_inont » Fri, Jun 20, 2025, 1:56 AM UTC

[dead]

Re: Base44 sells to Wix for $80M cash

#116

Post by jim_inont » Fri, Jun 20, 2025, 1:57 AM UTC

umrashrf wrote: post #105

It’s probably all fabricated and lies when it comes to Israel

[dead]

Re: Base44 sells to Wix for $80M cash

#117

Post by Marsymars » Fri, Jun 20, 2025, 5:06 AM UTC

haiku2077 wrote: post #97

Marsymars wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s the best option if you’re a non-tech-savvy small business owner, you need a web presence, and you can’t afford to hire someone to do it for you?

If you can't hire someone overseas to make a website, probably run your business off a facebook/instagram page. A lot of small businesses around me do that.

Isn’t that still walled-garden garbage, just without the WYSIWYG part?

Re: Base44 sells to Wix for $80M cash

#118

Post by tomgs » Fri, Jun 20, 2025, 12:12 PM UTC

tomgs wrote: post #48

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…

Sahil did a thing: https://x.com/sahilypatel/status/1935745481898180991

Looks about right. see 6

Re: Base44 sells to Wix for $80M cash

#119

Post by southernplaces7 » Fri, Jun 20, 2025, 1:03 PM UTC

haiku2077 wrote: post #97

Marsymars wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s the best option if you’re a non-tech-savvy small business owner, you need a web presence, and you can’t afford to hire someone to do it for you?

If you can't hire someone overseas to make a website, probably run your business off a facebook/instagram page. A lot of small businesses around me do that.

If you're going to answer their question then why not suggest a solution that results in a website one controls, instead of some very basic "use facebook" suggestion. Facebook and other social media for a business are all good ideas, because as a business, eyeballs is what you want and that means putting up your presence wherever they're found in a way that's relevant to you.

However, any self respecting business owner planning for a stable long-term presence should absolutely also have their own website, and have it made to be as independent, simple and easy to maintain as possible in the context of its technical needs.

Re: Base44 sells to Wix for $80M cash

#120

Post by southernplaces7 » Fri, Jun 20, 2025, 1:10 PM UTC

danr4 wrote: post #92

Coming from someone who doesn't really love the product.. nor wix. but the snark in the comments is insane. Basically everyone in the israeli tech community know about this guy because he pretty much shared everything about his journey from the moment he started. One of the most genuine and no-bs entrepreneurs i've ever seen (and israel has it's fair share of grifters). Yes, he really did basically built everything b…

Welcome to HN, where even completely decent things often get denigrated, shitted upon with unsubstantiated assumptions, flagged, downvoted and criticized pointlessly just because.

To be fair, this site also has lots of wonderful posts and many excellent or at least thought-provoking comments, which is why I still visit frequently.