Lessons - Fiverr Almost Died Three Times. This Is How He Saved It. | Micha Kaufman - Fiverr Co-Founder & CEO

➡️ Like The Podcast? Leave A Rating: https://ratethispodcast.com/successstory In this "Lessons" episode, Micha Kaufman, Fiverr Co-Founder & CEO, shares the lessons he has learned from building and repeatedly reinventing one of the world's leading freelance marketplaces. He explains why companies must challenge their own strategies and disrupt themselves before someone else does, how staying curious and embracing new waves of innovation can prevent complacency, and why even successful businesses need to continually evolve. Micha also discusses his approach to failure, emphasizing the importance of learning quickly, recovering from mistakes, and turning setbacks into lessons that strengthen both entrepreneurs and teams. ➡️ Show Links https://successstorypodcast.com YouTube: https://youtu.be/RIKj0QnDDjE Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/micha-kaufman-co-founder-ceo-of-fiverr-how-one-man/id1484783544 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/4nhTO8jEW4eMNdcQnuuz2h ➡️ Watch the Podcast on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/c/scottdclary

• 0:00Speaker 00

  In this lessons episode, discover why companies must reinvent themselves before disruption forces change, understand how challenging strategy and embracing innovation can prevent complacency, explore why failure should become a system for learning, and uncover how quickly recovering from mistakes builds stronger entrepreneurs and teams.

• 0:23Speaker 00

  So the question is really, as somebody who's, I would have thought Fiverr is a first mover, but I'm not in the space and I don't know the history, obviously, as well as you. But the question really is, how do you build a company that is, that is undisruptable? And you're gonna say it's impossible to make it undisruptable, but you, as a founder, CEO, you built a massive company, how do you not become an eBay? I know you're not gonna become a Blockbuster, because again, Blockbuster was like an analog to a digital solution. But then eBay was disrupted by Amazon because they took a different perspective. So as a founder, what do you do to future-proof?

• 1:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a, it's a, it's a great question. And it, there's no easy answer to it. This idea of reinventing yourself, you know, some of the things that we're doing as we're thinking about this, you know, when you start a company, you do the, I mean, everybody probably, your listeners have read, you know, Crossing the Cosm, you know, these, this idea of going through a J curve, where in the bottom, you know, end of the J's, what's, what's being fueled by VCs and/or investors, private investors. And then at some point, hopefully, you grow.

• 1:45Speaker 01

  In companies, what happens is, as, as years go by, you need to, if you don't disrupt your own model, someone else will. And so you, you need to keep this, you know, very fresh approach where you, you challenge everything you do. And, and you keep questioning your strategy. And you keep thinking about the next ways of innovation, because nothing, nothing is static. Everything moves. There's ways of transformation, some of them are cultural, some of them have to do with generations.

• 2:26Speaker 01

  And in our case, 2010 millennials got into the workforce, then Gen Z'ers. It's, it's changing the fabric of the, of the workforce. Technology have changed. The App Store has become super popular and that created this massive opportunity, cloud computing. Then now recently you have AI. So, so there's, there's multiple things that change constantly. You need to continue challenging yourself. And, and one of the things that are really hard as an existing company is that you need to do additional J curves, but now you are the VC.

• 3:07Speaker 01

  And every bone in your body, every, you know, every aspect, every person around you tells you, don't do it. Because, because it's going to come at the expense of your profitability, at the expense of your growth, at the expense of being able to laser focus on just one thing. But you need to do it. You need to reinvent yourself. You need to do the next wave of transformation. Because if you, if you fail to do it, you end up like many companies that we know, like BlackBerry and Kodak and whatever. I mean, the, unfortunately, the corporate, you know, you know, trash bin is, is full of incredible.

• 3:51Speaker 00

  Extensive and big names that you know.

• 3:54Speaker 01

  Blockbuster was a $6 billion revenue a year company. This is like, you can't stop a company that size. Remember Yahoo at its greatest times. These, it seemed to be impossible to destroy. But there's very few companies that are actually able to survive. And when you think about it on a, on a, on a personal level, there's very few managements, founders, managers, that are able to go through this entire thing. I, I have, you know, as a, as a founder, CEO, I have a, like, I have a ritual, a yearly

• 4:35Speaker 01

  ritual, where I, I take a couple of days to actually do an introspect and ask myself, am I the right person to continue leading this company in next year? And I think that this is like, and, and we do the same for the way we're structured and organized. And we keep challenging this, because if you don't, then you, you, you, you become, you become complacent. And, and this is where, this is where companies start falling. And I, you know, and I, you know, if you, if you, if you listen to the Netflix story

• 5:12Speaker 01

  called by Netflix, you know that Blockbuster was really, really close to, to being able to beat Netflix at its own game? Because they had the advantage of doing physical distribution and doing online or via mail distribution. And then the move to digital was, was not such a big deal. Right? But, but because of management changes, they, they lost it.

• 5:44Speaker 00

  And they, they lost an acquisition opportunity too?

• 5:47Speaker 01

  Correct. For, I don't remember what it was, 15 or 50 million.

• 5:52Speaker 00

  It was like pennies. It was ridiculous.

• 5:54Speaker 01

  It was, it was crazy. But, but the, again, the corporate history is full of these stories. And it's, it's, it's tough not to become one of them. You know, it, you need to be, you need to be very aware that you can be, you, I mean, if, if you become complacent, if you, if you don't disrupt your own business, someone else will, because you've just proven that it's a great business, which makes you, you know, which makes.

• 6:21Speaker 00

  Target.

• 6:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:23Speaker 00

  When you look back at, like, I want people, because people know what Fiverr is. We can talk about, we can talk about the future of work all day, but I think it's also important to understand sort of what you've experienced in your journey and your come up. If you look back, because you, you, this is not your first rodeo, you've done other companies. Talk to me about even before Fiverr, biggest failure or biggest lesson that you've, that you've experienced over your career, like a shit hitting the fan moment that at the time felt like, you know, this is not going so well.

• 6:58Speaker 01

  Yeah. Oh, man. I, I don't, I wouldn't know where to start. There, I mean, there, there is a, yeah, I, I've, I've, I've done my share of podcasts. I should have had a pre, pre-ready answer for this. But the reality is that there's, it, it just, what happens between companies as you evolve as a, as a, as an entrepreneur is that just your miss rate is, is getting a little bit lower. Meaning if, if to begin with, then you're unexperienced, 80% of what you do is wrong,

• 7:38Speaker 01

  then by the time you're an excellent entrepreneur, you're probably doing 70%. You know, error. You're not gonna, I mean, I, I think, I think what's changing in many ways is just, is just the, the size of the cycle of recovering from a, from a failure or, or a mistake. And, you know, having, having a system to quickly learn, overcome, not dwell on it, and just move on, and just, and just take anything you've done wrong is a great lesson and promise yourself that you're not gonna make it again, because if you do, you're just stupid.

• 8:22Speaker 01

  And, and by the way, this is something that I've, that I've applied to the company as well. Like, there's, it's the same principle. I mean, it's okay to make mistakes, as long as you make them in good faith, not by negligence. As long as it's not the same mistake again. Like, if you do it, you probably shouldn't be here, because you don't care enough. But if you made a mistake, even sometimes it's costly mistakes, but you've done it with, with passion and not out of negligence, and, and you were, you were on top of it, and you found it, and you fixed it, that's a great lesson. If you can spread it, if you can share it with the rest of the team. So I've done mistakes in, in how I picked co-founders.

• 9:07Speaker 01

  I've done mistakes in, in hiring people, or not being very good at hiring people. I've done mistakes in, in running boards and investors.

• 9:21Speaker 01

  There's, I, I wasn't aggressive enough. I, I didn't realize that I was, that I was not good enough at doing marketing or sales myself and not bringing the right people fast enough. There's, I mean, there's such, I mean, in, in your, when you grow up as, as an entrepreneur, there's so many mistakes that you do. It's just, I, it's very hard to pick one. But, but there, and if, if you think about shit shows, in, in, I mean, Fiverr started as a shit show, when you think about it. And funny enough, it was, it was not because it was, it was not going well, it was because it was going extremely well.

• 10:03Speaker 01

  So when, so, so sometimes, sometimes you, you succeed and it, it feels like it's the end of it. Because, because when you succeed too fast, so many things start falling apart.

• 10:20Speaker 01

  And again, I'm happy, happy to talk into anecdotal, you know, stories. You know, most of what we do, we're, we're a very iterative company. We're religiously testing stuff. So by definition, most of the things that you test will fail. Like, you, you, you fail, the mentality of failure, of like, getting comfortable failing is something that you, you have to, to be super rooted in your, in your company's DNA.

• 10:49Speaker 00

  Thanks for tuning in. If you found this valuable, don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode. And if you want to dive deeper into this conversation, check out the links in the description to watch the full episode. See you in the next one.