Pod Insights The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch 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 About this episode Omer Shai serves as the CMO at Wix. Shai leads a team of over 400 people and is responsible for the company's global online and offline marketing activity, which boasts an incredible growth of approximately 3 million new users every month. Under Shai, the marketing department has executed hundreds of worldwide campaigns for television and social including 5 Super Bowl commercials, creative videos, podcasts and more. AGENDA: 00:00 — The AI Agent Revolution: 93% Automation? 03:55 — Why I'm Buying TWO Super Bowl Ads This Year 08:58 — The $100M Marketing Secret: Brand vs. Performance 13:28 — Why LTV is Bullshit (and What You Should Use Instead) 18:52 — 10x Your Growth: How to Find Tomorrow's Arbitrage 27:10 — SEO is Dying? Why I'm Increasing My Ad Spend Anyway 31:14 — The TikTok Fail: Why Even Big Brands Can't Crack It 36:11 — Stop Selling the "Why": Put the Product in the Center 47:57 — Will AI Make You Unemployed? A Warning for Marketers 52:27 — Why Celebrity Endorsements Never Work
Transcript 10,341 words · 4 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Speaker 00 Marketing is investment. I never used lifetime value. When you're doing 10 things, you can be amazingly well in three things, another three you're going to be okay, and in four, you're going to fail. We need to go back to the roots of bringing people with zero knowledge about marketing. I paid half a million dollar for the voiceover. It was fucking stupid idea that I had.
0:26 Harry Stebbings? This is 20 Growth with me, Harry Stebbings. Now, in the episode today, we have a legend of the growth world, CMO at Wix for the last 18 years. Omer Shai is one of the OGs. I learnt more from this episode of 20 Growth than almost any other episode of 20 Growth, including why time return on investment is the most important metric for growth leaders today, and how he manages as granular as possible his $100 million marketing budget at Wix today. This was an incredible show. Get your notebooks out, ready to take some notes. But before we dive into the show today, if you're looking for a way to transform your customer service,
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4:29 Harry Stebbings? Perk's AI is purpose-built to automate shadow work so teams can focus on real work with real impact. Don't let anything get in the way of your next breakthrough. Leave the travel and spend to Perk. Visit perk.com/20vc today. Perk, powering real work. You have now arrived at your destination. Omar, I'm excited for this, dude. Listen, I stored the shit out of you with Michael Eisenberg, with Mayor, with many of your board. So thank you so much for joining me today, dude.
5:02 Speaker 00 Thank you very much. Really happy to be here. You know, I'm a fan of your show.
5:06 Harry Stebbings? Dude, flattery will get you everywhere. One thing that I want to start with is I hear that you've got some news. And so can you tell me what the news is and go back a little bit to a time last year when that idea originated?
5:18 Speaker 00 So the news that that we are going to do two Super Bowl spots this year. One is for weeks and it's going to be the sixth one that we're doing for the amazing company that I'm part of it in the last 18 years. And in addition to that, we are going to have Super Bowl spots for for Base 44 as well. I think that we are the youngest company ever that going to have Super Bowl commercial. Another interesting story to tell is the timeline of the decision to go and to purchase the spot. So we announced that we are buying Base 44 around mid-June 2025. I have on record message that I sent on WhatsApp to a friend
6:00 Speaker 00 of mine, Mark Zaminar, who is buying the Super Bowl spots for me in the last six or 10 years, actually. It was the TV and radio. And on July 2, I sent him a message that I would like to buy a spot for Base 44 and how much it's going to cost me. So it took me, let's say, twelve days. I was a bit slow to solve some amazing indication from community, from people who love the product, how they're using the product, the intent, user behavior, the acquisition that we can have. And we went and purchased the spot that we are just announcing.
6:41 Harry Stebbings? So 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 Super Bowl? Obviously, it's a huge platform and brand marketing wise, it's amazing. But for you as a CMO, why do you think it's such a good investment to do Super Bowl?
7:00 Speaker 00 The way that I'm thinking on brand activities is that it's not an empty, okay? It's not only brand. And when I'm doing acquisition, I'm not doing just acquisition marketing. So when I'm doing brand marketing, I'm thinking the balance between brand and acquisition. And when I'm doing acquisition, I'm thinking about the balance between acquisition and brand. And the beauty about Super Bowl, I'm saying it a lot of times, that in the day after the Oscar, everyone are talking about who dressed what. And the only day that people are focusing on commercials is around the Super Bowl. And the day after, people are keep talking about what was the ad of who?
7:43 Speaker 00 And all the years, we are keep thinking about technology and how to skip and buying premiums in order that we won't listen to commercial. On Super Bowl, we are talking about the commercial. And you know, I'm a huge sport fan and I'm a huge NFL fan and I understand them. It's not only sports, NFL and Super Bowl in particular is like a celebration in the, especially in the US, but it's became more and more famous globally. And just to be part of that is to be there. And I keep saying about it, you know, product is the main of companies. We are nothing without products.
8:23 Speaker 00 But to trust a product, to trust what our users are doing and to be in the Super Bowl is a message.
8:29 Harry Stebbings? You said about the balance there between brand and acquisition and how a Super Bowl kind of plays into that. When you do a Super Bowl, do you see acquisitions skyrocket? Like, what is the impact of Super Bowl direct on acquisition?
8:42 Speaker 00 Yeah, so definitely you can see impact on like the spike at the day of the spot. But you need to be smarter in the way you measure. I believe that there were tons of opportunities at the two weeks before the game day to do a lot of marketing activities around the creative, around the PR, around the 60 seconds, the 30 seconds, what kind of activities you're allowed to do around the spot. So eventually, the way again that I believe in brand and the balance between brand and acquisition, that sometime, and it's okay that it's not today, it's okay that it's not tomorrow, eventually I would like to see spike in the traffic to our site.
9:26 Speaker 00 That mean that if we don't see people coming, relevant users, okay, I will add the word relevant, relevant audiences who are coming to our site. If we didn't do so, we don't need to invest at the marketing activity that we're doing. And marketing is investment and not as a spend. And eventually you would like to see the return on your investment. And for us, return on investment is users who are coming to our site, users who are using the product and eventually convert and telling other how amazing our product are.
10:02 Harry Stebbings? How much was the first Super Bowl that you bought the spot for?
10:06 Speaker 00 4.8. At eight max spends, when you are buying a Super Bowl commercial, you are paying for the airtime of during the Super Bowl, an addition of max spends that you need to invest during the year on the network that has the rights for the Super Bowl.
10:26 Harry Stebbings? Wow, so wait a minute, you have to like co-spend. So you have to commit to spend on the network to get the spot in Super Bowl?
10:33 Speaker 00 Correct. There are some balancing and of course negotiation. And there are some companies who invest a lot on TV ads through the years. So for them, it's easier. We, through the years, there are some times that we are on air in TV and there are some times that we are not. So it's up to negotiation, but more or less it was four point eight.
10:55 Harry Stebbings? What is the latest price to do Super Bowl?
10:59 Speaker 00 Unfortunately, I cannot say right now. It's more than that, but it's worth it.
11:04 Harry Stebbings? Do you see ROI on performance alone? Or do you believe in the long tail that the brand marketing will override that in the time?
11:13 Speaker 00 I believe in the balance, okay? So for example, in the last two years, for Wix, not for Base, okay? Currently, I'm talking about Wix. There are some investment, heavy investment on the brand, on activity that we're doing, a lot of videos with our users on YouTube, social activities, some competitions that we're doing. And we are measuring eventually everything that we're doing. And what we decided this year to allocate some of this money to the Super Bowl commercial. And in our spots this year, the product is going to be in the central. Okay, so we are not going to have celebrity. We are not going to have a lot of hoo-ha special. We are going to have our product and you are going to see how other people using the product.
11:58 Speaker 00 It's almost like a direct response spots that we bought on the Super Bowl. And the reason for that is that we believed that the product was worth being the Super Bowl. This is the reason that we decided to go at Wix in the Super Bowl. In terms of Base, it was a statement of a new thing that happened in the world. The vibe coding, the democratization of creation in general, of web application, mobile application.
12:26 Harry Stebbings? The nice thing about being me and the challenge about being me now is people kind of 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, which was, you're outspending all of us on paid marketing.
12:42 Speaker 00 Yeah.
12:42 Harry Stebbings? Is this a game now where capital is the differentiator between winners and losers?
12:48 Speaker 00 You know what is my effective marketing run rate right now? Guess, without super money.
12:54 Harry Stebbings? A hundred and fifty?
12:55 Speaker 00 Not bad. So I'm above one hundred and it was above one hundred like a month after we bought Base44. It took me, I think, six or seven years in weeks to do what we did in Base in like months and a half, in two months. It's not just to throw money, it's to invest money smartly. You need to think about the marketing department of Base right now, it's more than fifty people.
13:22 Harry Stebbings? Marketing for Base is more than fifty people?
13:24 Speaker 00 Yeah. Think about all the things that we need to do. Product marketing, community, PR, education. We have a lot of effort to implement Base in a higher education in universities globally.
13:40 Harry Stebbings? If we split that hundred million up, and you don't have to be precise, I'm just so interested, what's the split between like performance versus brand marketing for you?
13:48 Speaker 00 I'm not doing the separation. I'm doing activities that the goal is, we are calling it ROI. People used to call it use of a lifetime value, right? You remember?
14:00 Harry Stebbings? Yeah.
14:00 Speaker 00 I hated this term. I hated it so much. Because how do you know what is the lifetime value? What is the lifetime value? How many years now?
14:09 Harry Stebbings? Do you not realistically look at it? You look at a cohort of customers and you say, okay, eighty-seven percent last for four years, and so we'll take the LTV and say it's four years. And that's a good enough proxy to give us an LTV that we can work back towards a CAC and then figure out from there.
14:26 Speaker 00 What was the quality of Gemini? Six months ago.
14:30 Harry Stebbings? Okay, this is an interesting question. Does cat to LTV fade in importance in a world of ever transcended technology?
14:37 Speaker 00 I believe since I joined WEX, that I never used lifetime value. So I'm using different term. I'm using a T R O I. It's time to return on investment. It was 2012. We are poor company before IPO and Facebook that then and launch. I think they call it a page aid or something like that. And we measure everything. And I remember a conversation that I had with Avishai. And I moved with this new advertising format. I did five acts in one day. Because I saw the result that I'm seeing from that. So I believe in building the shorter cohorts for me to move as fast as I can to impact the result of the company.
15:22 Speaker 00 And lifetime value, it's much slower than metrics that currently I have. So I have one day cohort, seven day cohort, 14 days cohort and 28 days cohort. It is eventually giving me indication about when my T R O I is going to be one.
15:39 Harry Stebbings? Do you worry that that concentrates your attention towards the shortest term T R O I? And not necessarily the biggest and best in the long term?
15:49 Speaker 00 No. So to go back, so we did five acts and Avishai told me, even though you are getting the money like we close after four months, I don't have enough money to invent in those four months. Okay, so you need to slow a bit down. What he did after that, he went and purchased Facebook stocks. But he didn't tell me and he didn't buy me song. He's not a friend. Avishai is not a friend.
16:17 Harry Stebbings? You know what I love about Israelis? You guys are moneymakers.
16:21 Speaker 00 But the way that is comfortable, you're comfortable with, so for example, we as a company that now, now I'm talking about base, okay. So we as the weeks cooperation are comfortable, for example, in T R O I of eleven months of twelve months or something like that. And the beauty be about T R O I that is measure every traffic source and the blended traffic as one. So I know every source, the T R O I that I have, and I have T R O I of everything as a mix. And we are saying, okay, we are comfortable and T R O I of, let's say, eleven months or twelve months,
17:03 Speaker 00 something like that. And if I'm keeping the T R O I on eleven months, I have unlimited budgets.
17:11 Harry Stebbings? Help me understand that. Why is eleven months the sign that you have unlimited budgets?
17:16 Speaker 00 Because it's something that you're comfortable with as a company. Because you're taking into consideration retention of the users and users who are doing upgrades and do use them that moving to more expensive packages and churn inside.
17:32 Harry Stebbings? Do you think that needs to compress in a world where an anthropic model, Opus four point five, changes the game for so many? And, you know, we've seen it. Claude Code has cannibalized a lot of Cursa's business overnight and everyone's cancelling Cursa. Does that T R O I, time to return on investment again for people? Does that need to compress with this technology cycle?
17:57 Speaker 00 It depends how comfortable are you in the product. It depends what are the traffic sources and what is the risk and the way that you're managing your risk, right? Let's say if I have very balanced traffic sources of ten traffic sources, let's say, and every one of them bring in ten percent of the collection or the A R R of the company, it will take me some time to be on a risk when a new company jumping in and offering a product. While when I have Have just a one traffic sources, let's say LinkedIn post by CEOs or something like that. That you can be more like a trendy product.
18:42 Speaker 00 And then the risk of a new company of a new product that coming to the same audiences. With the same techniques, put you on a risk. So the way I'm thinking about it all the time. That I would like to have as many traffic sources. That I can have in order to build a business for the long term.
19:05 Harry Stebbings? I get you, but is it not a game of eighty twenty? Where twenty percent of the traffic sources drive eighty percent of the outcomes?
19:13 Speaker 00 It's all the time. It's a tricky one because I saw some, let's say about more. Okay, that when we bought him, almost all of his traffic came from social, everything. Okay, it was LinkedIn posts. It was, let's say, some posts and some community efforts. What we are doing, we are bringing the multiples. Okay, this is the reason that I need a lot of people in my department to do a lot of things. So I'm doing social and I'm doing education and I'm doing YouTube. And I'm doing Facebook ads and I'm doing TikTok and I'm doing Twitter. And I'm doing search and I'm doing SEO activities. I'm doing a lot, a lot, a lot of things.
19:53 Speaker 00 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.
20:07 Harry Stebbings? Let's get to the arbitrage of tomorrow because I do want to talk about that. But if we think about it being like 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, don't worry about diversifying? Against your point there, don't build the traffic sources that are diverse, just double down. Or be expansive and have a portfolio of channels from an earlier time.
20:29 Speaker 00 I think that you should do both. I think that you need to do ten X of the things that are working for you. But all the time to open in your areas. Because you don't know what's going to be tomorrow. Tomorrow, that means that I talked with someone and I shared with them that we are doing Super Bowl spot for for base. And he told me, or that we increased the budget in aggressive way. And the first thing that he thought is that he told me, he said, why are you doing it? Are you afraid of? And I looked at him, man, I'm not afraid of anything, okay? I have opportunity and I'm trying to optimize any opportunities that I have in order to build sustainable business.
21:12 Harry Stebbings? Let's play a thought experiment, though. What if we took the budget that you're now putting into S E O, into performance? And we said, social has worked so well for Mayo and Base, let's own social. Let's do U G C like never before. Let's absolutely double down on Mayo's brand and let's just suck the air out of the room on social. Why would that be a worse strategy than the diversification?
21:35 Speaker 00 Because, and it's it's like projects, okay? Let's think about project, and again, this is something that is is part of the the way that I'm the methodologic of of the way that I'm thinking and working in the last eighteen years. When you are doing one thing and you're doing it tremendously well, there is only one thing that you can be successful in. When you're doing ten things, you can be amazingly well in three things. Let's say another three you're going to be okay, and in four, you're going to fail. In the math that I know, three is bigger than one.
22:09 Harry Stebbings? I'm a venture capitalist, but I I would agree with that statement.
22:13 Speaker 00 So three is bigger than one. Again, when you're going all in on only one things, a lot of time you are playing, you are talking with the same audiences. Let's say you are very good at X. Okay, I'm doing amazing job at X, but the audiences and where in and X eventually on Twitter, there are only specific users with specific intent, specific behavior. And what about the other users in the world? You don't want to talk with them, they're different, but they're very good at. It it's like going after conversion rate as a metrics. Think how stupid it is to go after conversion rate.
22:53 Harry Stebbings? Why?
22:54 Speaker 00 Because ten percent conversion rate, is it good or bad?
22:58 Harry Stebbings? Depends on how many people are in the funnel.
23:00 Speaker 00 Exactly. So if you are not paying for the next one million users, and they cost you, let's say, nothing, and their conversion rate is just one percent, compared to the ten percent that you had before, is it good or bad?
23:13 Harry Stebbings? Again, depends on the top of funnel. It's good if it's a large top of funnel, a million on one percent, yeah.
23:18 Speaker 00 No, it's amazing, okay, because you didn't pay for them and they didn't cost you nothing, 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, because I'm not sure that I'm clear. 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 on a better way 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 user conversion.
24:03 Speaker 00 In general, I don't really care of the overall conversion of the company.
24:09 Harry Stebbings? But what you care about is your day two conversion to paid, correct?
24:14 Speaker 00 I care about the T R O I of the company. I optimize the T R O I of the company. That mean I have a goal of T R O I of eight months. And my job is to bring as many, as much money collection for the company in the T R O I that we agreed on. That mean that if my brand improved and I have more users who are coming to me that I not need to pay for them, it gives me opportunity that I can decide if I would like to increase the T R O I of the users that I'm paying. And 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.
24:58 Harry Stebbings? How do you think about the divergence in T R I or the contrast in T R? O I between Wix, where you've got, I would imagine, more retained users, more small businesses, which is stickier versus Base44, where people are also using Rappler and Loveable and Gemini, and they're much more promiscuous. How does the T R I vary between the two?
25:22 Speaker 00 So the T R I, it saves me from that, okay? Because in the matrix of T R O I, the churn of those users, the users who are moving from one product to another, it's already calculated. Because, again, those fifty people that currently are part of the marketing department of Base, except to three, all of them came with me from Wix. So I brought everyone, those fifty people, from activities that they did in Wix to Base, and they have all the experience in terms of measurement, and we know exactly the right way to measure things. So we imagine it differently, but the philosophy is the same.
26:05 Harry Stebbings? How are you measuring it differently?
26:07 Speaker 00 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 in Wix. So T R O I calculate everything inside.
26:24 Harry Stebbings? Can I just go back to the ten-channel conversation, because I think that's so interesting. You said three work, four, three 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?
26:38 Speaker 00 It's horrible to work with me, okay? Because a lot of time, when we have a success, I saw the success before the team. I know that we are successful here, okay? Let's move on, okay? Let's be more aggressive, for example. And when we don't have a success, I'm asking the team, and today, the methodology that the team is asking themselves on a daily basis, are we investing enough? Do we need to cut, or do we need to invest more? So a lot, a lot of measurement. A lot of data insight that we are using and a lot of tests. For example, one of our product, we weren't sure that the YouTube activity that we're doing is effective.
27:21 Speaker 00 So we replaced this product commercial with other products commercial to see the impact. And we saw that the incremental impact is very low or doesn't exist. And we modified the amount of budget that we're investing. So we are keep challenging ourselves on a daily basis.
27:37 Harry Stebbings? 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 a year or two, 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 T R O I?
27:55 Speaker 00 Confidence, experience, I'm very experienced. I I think that I am like the most experienced CMO in every public company in our technology sphere. Okay, so I saw a lot and I have no problem to fail. And I have trust with my partners and I'm sharing a lot, a lot of information with my partners. I'm sharing a lot about the things that we are doing and I'm doing. And eventually, if you are doing some things and the numbers are not popping up from the data, you need to ask yourself, do I need to do it or I need to change the way that I'm thinking? So I have to share with you.
28:37 Speaker 00 So there is some philosophy that I preach for, for, I don't know, I think eight to nine years. And I did some tests with my team that I saw different indication for something that I preached for nine years. And I changed the way that we are measuring everything in three days after I saw those indication.
29:00 Harry Stebbings? What did you see that caused that change?
29:02 Speaker 00 I saw incremental impact of some search activities that we did.
29:08 Harry Stebbings? What does that mean? Can you unpack that?
29:10 Speaker 00 Yeah, so so for example, I don't see search as impact on brands. So compared to other activities, search is something that I'm measuring specifically by T R I's that I'm comfortable in. Compared to, let's say, YouTube or social or LinkedIn or different other social activities that we're there. Search is specific and we measured search for a long time in different in one way. And when we did the test, I think it was, I think it was September seven. And in September eleven, I asked for everyone to come to all hands. I explained the different way that currently we're start working and we implemented two days after.
29:53 Speaker 00 And you don't need to be afraid to preach to something else when the data are showing you something differently or something new that you didn't know before.
30:04 Harry Stebbings? Everyone is talking about the death of S E O. Has your investment in S E O changed over time down in a world of A I?
30:12 Speaker 00 Not down, actually up, because there are so many more things that need to be done today. A lot of the A I appearance currently impact with similar activities of S E O. But you need to be smarter in the way that you are doing it. Again, for companies where the the marketing budget is more than one hundred million dollar. When you're saying a lot of investment is in percentage wise, it 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 that you have. So actually, today I have to say that I need to invest more on S E O related A I search methods.
30:56 Speaker 00 So I need to invest more and not less.
30:58 Harry Stebbings? Are you investing in A I search today in terms of how you appear in L L M rankings? If I go to Chat G P T and say, what's the best, you know, website builder? Are you investing to make sure that you show up in the top three?
31:10 Speaker 00 Yeah, definitely. Although it's the percentage is very low and and and again, what's happened in the last two, three months that I think that Google changed. Again, the way that we are using AI, using search. And again, in general, when you are looking at most of the traffic, the relevant traffic in the world, it's still on Google. Okay, it's still on Google. So yes, the more early adopters already moved from the 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 the AI search and we need to be relevant for Google search.
31:52 Speaker 00 And not only that, for our users, we need to teach them both. Okay, we need to teach them to do SEO and we need to teach them how to be relevant for for MLM searches as well, so.
32:03 Harry Stebbings? What's your best performing channel today?
32:06 Speaker 00 Brand. People who are coming to Wix because they know that we have amazing product that are going to help them achieve their goals.
32:15 Harry Stebbings? It's so funny. I had Nick from Revolut on the show. And he said, my number one 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 not surprised to hear that. What channel did not work when you thought it would? And what did you learn?
32:33 Speaker 00 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 today much more things about sport endorsement from a lot of work that I did. 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 down. Also LinkedIn, I think LinkedIn potential is enormous. The arbitrage again is there. The targeting is not perfect and other solution yet. But I I believe that those two are having tons of opportunity for us.
33:15 Harry Stebbings? When you look at channel composition across the team, do you break channels down to specific people and allocate three to SEO, four to YouTube, three to TikTok? Or do you have a blended across to make it a more cohesive unit?
33:28 Speaker 00 Today, it's much easier. To keep cohesive messaging because the AI tools, you know, helping us. And I remember the time where I was browsing and was seeing something that it's not our brand and doing like screen service and sending it to some people angry. How can it be that we're doing such a crappy work? So it's a mix. Okay, so for example, the team we're buying traffic, they are buying from one centralized team on all the channels. The people who are managing communities, they're doing it maybe to one channel or two talent. The people who are doing SEO, just doing SEO MLM.
34:07 Speaker 00 So it's very depends about the skill of the people, the channel that we are working and the things that we are doing on this channel.
34:16 Harry Stebbings? When you look at the makeup of your channels today, what would you most like to change?
34:21 Speaker 00 I would like to crack TikTok and LinkedIn.
34:23 Harry Stebbings? Again, why? Do you not just accept that it's in the three that don't work? I I I interviewed some of the best growth and CMOs and CEOs of 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.
34:40 Speaker 00 I don't know, I just.
34:42 Harry Stebbings? That's not how you work.
34:43 Speaker 00 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.
34:48 Harry Stebbings? If I gave you a hundred million more in your marketing budget, what would you do?
34:52 Speaker 00 I will give it to Lior back because I have all the money that I need to stay in the healthy path of the way that I believe that I need to run the business and the marketing of the company that I'm responsible. I'm investing my money, our money, I'm not spending it.
35:10 Harry Stebbings? How do you think about the people in your team? I spoke to Michael Eisenberg and he said about the Oma Shai Diaspora, the talent that you've built around you. One thing that's striking when I speak to you, Oma, and we didn't know each other before this, is bluntly how how scientific you are in a lot of ways. Like you fundamentally are so attached 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 that join your marketing or your growth teams?
35:42 Speaker 00 First, I'm more concerned about my users than money. So I don't agree with you, okay? The first thing that pushed me is to listen to our customers and to bring more of the users who are happy and the users that are not happy, to help them to be happy in the product and to bring more like them. Every time that we are talking about the marketing department at Wix, I'm saying that we are okay department in a product company. We are not a marketing company, okay? And it's different approach because it help us to push the product and to be part of making the product better. So this is first. The second, I don't believe that we are building rocket science.
36:22 Speaker 00 And you just need the people with ton of passion, smart, talented, that maybe no one else is giving, are giving them chance. Today I talk with Shai, okay? Who is running the marketing of Base44. And we talked about the talents that we would like to bring into the department. And we would like people who are AI savvy, that think about AI. And we said, we need to go back to the roots of bringing people with zero knowledge about marketing. We need people with passion to AI, just currently students, universities, or just graduate from university, because we can teach them marketing, we cannot teach them passion.
37:06 Speaker 00 We cannot teach them to be AI first, okay? It's something that, oh, you have it or you don't. Marketing, I can teach them. I can teach them to be a good listener. I can teach them how to tell a story. Passion about being the best in the world, something that I cannot teach.
37:23 Harry Stebbings? What do most people get wrong about storytelling today? You said there, I can teach you how to tell a good story. What do most people get wrong about how to tell a good story today?
37:31 Speaker 00 They're afraid to put the product in the center. There are so many emotion or funny and, you know, in general, it's tricky to tell a story right now in the world and not to hurt someone, you know? Let's be, let's be honest, the world is so divided that you're really afraid to tell any story because someone can be offended or to understand it in a wrong way. But in general, people will go down on you because you put the product in the center and you didn't say something bigger than that. Why? Eventually, people are coming to you to use the product. Okay? To use the product that our team created for you to enjoy and eventually to fulfill something
38:16 Speaker 00 that you imagine. So put the product in the central.
38:19 Harry Stebbings? How do you feel? That's super interesting. How do you feel about then? Like the Simon Sinek, who's a very famous speaker and has said before about selling the why, not the what. Apple are brilliant because they sell the creativity that their 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's interesting that you said there?
38:49 Speaker 00 How many Apples are in the world? Apple is one as a company, right? And we can talk about, let's say, ten more, not in the level of of Apple that can tell a story like that. And all the others and other, and eventually I remember a launch of a product that we had, okay? We launch a product, we move from Flash, you know that Wix used to be a Flash-based platform, from two thousand eight to two thousand twelve. And in two thousand twelve, we moved from HTML five to Flash. And I worked on this launch for months. Eventually, I wanted to say it's very clear. I used the KISS methodology, the keep it simple, stupid. HTML five is now on Wix.
39:34 Speaker 00 And I had a lot of plans and everything, like I back then used to have tons of media buying deals and I replaced all the spots that I had in one second. All of them were manually, by the way, by my team. And I replaced every spot that you had from Creative Free Flash website to HTML five is now on Wix. And when I showed the spot, back then it wasn't a spot, it was just, you know, static three hundred and two fifty and seven to eight on something like that, the dimension of of the banners. I saw this division that I had to one of my board member. And I saw how upset he was.
40:18 Speaker 00 Then he opened the announcement of Apple on on the iPhone. And I told him, we are not Apple, okay? And the product that we are that we are currently giving to the world, it's not iPhone. We just would like them to know that we used to be Flash and now we are HTML five. That all. This is what I need the 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 the users that think about us as maybe going to be lost, not relevant because of Flash. They need to know that I'm relevant because currently I'm HTML five and I need to shout it for everyone.
41:02 Speaker 00 So eventually, it's been humble in the world and understand that Apple, there is only one. Maybe, you know, OpenAI, Claude, there are tens, but all the others need to play a different game ball.
41:15 Harry Stebbings? I think you're too Israeli in your storytelling, my friend. I think you win when you sell what someone can be. Nike are a brilliant example where they teach you that everyone can be an athlete. Everyone can be an athlete, no matter what shape, size, you put on some Nike trainers and you can be an athlete. If I was pitching on your team today for that Super Bowl ad, I would do a story which shows a very early child at the doctors. I would show that child at three years old at the doctors, at six years old on holiday, at nine years old opening presents, at twelve years old going to a new school. And I'd say Wix, the company that powers families throughout all ages. And it's the business that gives you those opportunities.
41:59 Harry Stebbings? Tell the story. Fuck HTML five or Flash. No one cares.
42:04 Speaker 00 You don't remember back then of two thousand and twelve? You're too young for that, okay?
42:09 Harry Stebbings? Yeah, I was like fifteen.
42:11 Speaker 00 All the stories was about the work between Apple to Adobe, about the support or not support of Flash and on iPhones. And how Steve Jobs blocks Macromedia and Adobe from implement and install Flash on iPhone devices. But all the things that currently you mention, I have those spots, okay? They were on TV. I'm telling them on a daily basis, every day. Because eventually, I'm telling how you are building. For example, I have one of my most successful spots. We are calling it the bakery.
42:52 Speaker 00 And there is a one person, a kid actually, who is in his parents' kitchen, doing flower full of flowers and eventually how we open a restaurant, okay? And everything happened in the inside the Wix website. Harry, I have so many spots. And I'm proud that you call me Israeli. But at the same time, if you will ask Americans, or British by the way, where do they think Wix headquarters are? They will tell you New York or San Francisco. They never think about us as Israelis in the way that we are telling the stories. Never.
43:33 Speaker 00 By the way, Michael Eisenberg, that you talked about, he had blog post. In 2013, it was in February or January, something like that. When he talked about two companies, back then it was Conduit and Wix, that has problem in the way that they are building the brand and telling the story. And part of that, that we don'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 to Wix? Is the brand. So I think that we did a pretty good job through the years.
44:10 Harry Stebbings? 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 Raplin raising at nine billion dollars? Loveable raising at six point six billion dollars? And then you have Wix with a market cap of like four and a half. I'm like, what the fuck?
44:30 Speaker 00 I really don't care. I care only about one thing. I just would like to do my best job and to see growth. Okay, I'm freak about growth. I don't care about any of competitors. It's not that I don't care, I respect them. I respect everyone about what they're doing, the messaging, the valuation, I don't really care. I respect what they're doing, they're telling good story to investors. I just would like to build more than one hundred million efficient marketing budgets to my companies. I would like to build to sell in more than two billion dollar at Wix. And eventually, people will understand the story. I just care about growth. I'm a growth person.
45:13 Harry Stebbings? Which competitor from a growth engine perspective, do you respect the most?
45:17 Speaker 00 I respect everyone.
45:18 Harry Stebbings? I respect like Anton at Loveable is very good at social. I respect the way that he's built brand around his personal social.
45:27 Speaker 00 He's doing amazing job. He's doing amazing job. I would like to do on social as good as they are doing. I really cherish the way that they are building their own persona online. This is something that I'm crappy on, okay? I am better in watching numbers. I'm better in telling stories in commercials. I think that I'm horrible in my personal brand, for example. Not a lot of people had the chance to do podcasts with me. I'm not investing in that.
45:58 Harry Stebbings? Why are you not pushing Mayo to do more? Like, I've met Mayo 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. Mayo, you've got great personality. Fucking get out there. Tell the story about hires, about new products, about what you're excited about.
46:19 Speaker 00 I I would like to and it's going to happen. You you're right, there are so many things that I'm doing in a crappy way, but.
46:27 Harry Stebbings? Dude, after eighteen years in a position, you're not doing much in a crappy way.
46:31 Speaker 00 No, no, there are some, no, I I think that there is a one spot that I wrote in LinkedIn that someone just mentioned it to me two days ago. I consider myself as an undrafted NFL player. Okay, that I'm waking up in the morning and think about how I should do better in order to join the squad. And I need to work better, I need to look better, I need to do better social. I know all the things that need to be done, but at the same time, you know, what we did in the last five months since we bought Base Forty Four, I don't think there are a lot of marketing department that achieve something like that.
47:12 Speaker 00 The amount of content, the success that we had, the the amount of study and learning that that we had, the collections that we got, the ARR that we are building, the maturity of the channels that we are working on. So many things that are putting us in a great position for twenty twenty six and above. And when you're talking about us not doing social good enough with more, I one hundred percent agree with you and happy that I agree with you, we know because I see potential. Every time that I see potential, I'm happy.
47:47 Harry Stebbings? I agree. I always ask people, whenever I do like talks, which is more and more now, I say, hey, how many people have heard of twenty VC? Quite often, there'll be like twenty or thirty that haven't. And I'll be like thrilled and 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 does growth and marketing change in a world of AI?
48:11 Speaker 00 Wow, execution, telling stories. Think about the thinking process and execution process of two, three years ago. How tedious it was like to tell something that I would like something. Then they are going and trying to understand what exactly you want. And they're coming back three weeks later with eleven different ideas. And think about the amount of feedback that they gave to themselves on those three weeks. And they're coming to you and you hate all of them. You maybe saw some opportunity in one of them and they went again. And they came back to you three weeks later or two weeks later with some development of those two projects.
48:55 Speaker 00 And eventually, in six months, you will be happy with what you got. Today, for example, for me, I can be so much clearer in the ways that I'm sharing my thinking with with my team. Okay, I can write something and bring almost like, I'm talking about football, like almost to the sixty sixty yard of ideas that I have, I I I'm okay to be challenging that, I okay, like that they will bring something. But the timeframe is became days or they came hours, okay? Okay, you don't agree with me on something? Go, you have four hours, bring me something better. I think that first in the ideation, second in time of the execution.
49:38 Speaker 00 The timeframe to create something is getting shorter and shorter and shorter without hurting the results. So you still see some, you know, AI spots that you wish could be better, especially with when you implement human inside. But in four, five months, in a year, from ideation to execution to A B test, to go back to ideation, we are talking almost like days. And this is the reason that the people that I think are going to be major key players, A players, A plus plus players in my team are going to be AI first people.
50:18 Harry Stebbings? You worry about older people in the economy, in the labor market. And what I mean by that is, you you mentioned there that, 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 are in your forties, it doesn't look great for you. Plus, do you worry about that?
50:42 Speaker 00 I think there are a lot of of changes that are going to be to the work sphere. I do worry of a increase in the unemployment rate. I think government need to think how to solve it. But as a person who is part of that, I the only thing that I can shout on everyone is stop thinking about your title and start thinking about thinking differently. Okay, because this is how I measure myself and how I believe others should do. And definitely people who are not going to be AI first in term. I can talk just about marketing for now. Okay. Again, I'm trying to be humble and not to preach about anything else.
51:25 Speaker 00 People who can dock AI with me and take the ideation to execution and A B test fast. Those are the people that eventually are going to be my A players.
51:37 Harry Stebbings? Dude, I could talk to you all day. I do wanna do a quick fire round with you. Okay, otherwise I'm gonna take up all day. If we start on what do you think is the most underappreciated growth channel today?
51:47 Speaker 00 Brand.
51:48 Harry Stebbings? What was the best brand marketing activity you did and what was the worst?
51:52 Speaker 00 To think about intent and take every ad inventory that I can get back then and to show beautiful commercial to relevant audiences was the best arbitrage that I did back then in two thousand eight, nine and ten. And again, it's the balance between execution acquisition and and brand. The worst, ah, there are so many and I don't remember. There is like, I don't remember fail failing. Okay, so I'm failing. I analyze it on the spot. I implement the things that I learned from that, but I don't remember that.
52:36 Harry Stebbings? What's the most expansive one?
52:37 Speaker 00 Good or bad?
52:39 Harry Stebbings? Bad.
52:40 Speaker 00 I did some horrible style project in the in New York.
52:47 Speaker 00 That I took some park and decided that people will look to the to the sky and they have will have a star that eventually they will create something like bullshit mumbo jumbo like that. It was the first. And second, I had a very good spot that cost me very low to execute with my team in a beautiful way. And I hired someone really famous to do voiceover and I paid way too much for this voiceover.
53:24 Harry Stebbings? How much did you pay for the voiceover?
53:26 Speaker 00 I paid half a million dollar for the voiceover. It was fucking stupid idea that I had.
53:32 Harry Stebbings? If you want, I'll I'll do a voiceover for half a million dollars for you, if you want.
53:36 Speaker 00 Then he's very famous one and and you can identify him to the spot. It was more like comprehensive thinking. Horrible call, horrible call.
53:48 Harry Stebbings? The big celebrity payments, they they never work out well. I've been in so many companies where honestly, just like five million bucks to like Ronaldo to do an Instagram post. I promise you, it does not work the way you think it will.
54:00 Speaker 00 And it's part and we talked about to be smart in endorsement of of celebrities because you will never believe that Ronaldo is will build a website for himself, okay?
54:14 Speaker 00 When I start doing sport advertisement, I put Kun Agüero. Do you know Kun Agüero?
54:20 Harry Stebbings? Yeah, of course I do. I'm a Google fan. Yeah, yeah.
54:22 Speaker 00 Yeah, yeah. So Kun Agüero was sitting in front of computer and created a website for himself. That was part of the thing, stupid thing that I did. I think it was twenty fourteen or something like that.
54:35 Harry Stebbings? Gee, how much did you pay for that?
54:37 Speaker 00 So it's not a lot because it was part of the partnership that I have with the city. So part of the partnership that you have in city, you can use the player as players as resources. And you are doing some activities with them. And there are a lot of amazing things that you can do with player. Today, we are doing with Manchester City. Brilliant things, working with our customers, with users, combined between the strengths. But we don't put them in front of computer and telling them to build a website.
55:05 Harry Stebbings? Did that just not do well as a campaign?
55:07 Speaker 00 No, it's not it.
55:09 Harry Stebbings? What is the hardest part about your job today with Wigs?
55:12 Speaker 00 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 are minus two. I love pressure.
55:21 Harry Stebbings? Are you more scared of losing or more excited by winning?
55:26 Speaker 00 Excited by winning.
55:27 Harry Stebbings? Do you have children, Omar?
55:29 Speaker 00 Yeah.
55:29 Harry Stebbings? You seem like a very wise guy. What was your biggest parenting advice, given the many years you have now parenting?
55:37 Speaker 00 I have a gift. My gift is eventually, I know that there are some researchers that show differently. But I'm a very good multitasker. I think that one of my, the biggest compliment that my daughter, now she's eighteen years old, gave it, gave me, was how involved I am, I am in her life and her sibling's life. Even though I'm working as CMO for eighteen years. And, and you know, it's like, I said, thank you, it's such an amazing compliment. I know, I'm not good in getting compliment, I'm not good in that. But when she told me that, I got like goosebumps.
56:18 Speaker 00 And eventually, you know, if you can be up because of numbers or because you would like to watch sports in three A M. It's easy for you to be up at three A M for your kids when you need to feed them. So part of the agreement that my wife and I had before, and she brought our kids to life, was that I'm the only one who going to feed them at night. And it created an amazing bonding between of me of any, every one of them. Again, it's the gift of multitasking and I can live happily with not a lot of hour of sleep. Those sort of that I have, yeah.
57:01 Harry Stebbings? I'm very impressed, by the way, with you doing 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 CMA Wicks 18 years ago? You can call yourself up the night before and say, Omar, 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. And, you know, I have all these notes and, you know, the joys of what we do is like 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 true pleasure to talk with you here today.
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Previous 20VC: Brex Acquired for $5.15BN | a16z Companies are 2/3 AI Revenues | Anthropic Inference Costs Skyrocket | OpenEvidence Raises at $12BN Valuation | The IPO Market: EquipmentShare, Wealthfront and Ethos Insurance Next 20VC: 50% of Funds Will Go Out of Business | Why Growth Expectations Today are BS and Will Not Last | Why Oren Zeev Takes $0 Management Fees But 30% Carry | Why GPs Should Not Tell LPs Their Strategy Page updated September 29, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated
