How Base44 was bootstrapped and sold for $80M in 9 months
Direct insights from a Reddit AMA where Maor Shlomo breaks down how he built Base44 from solo founder to acquisition.
Hey everybody! Hope you’re having a great Christmas time!
Today I wanted to breakdown one of the highlights of 2025: how Maor Shlomo built and sold for $80M Base44 in just 8 months.
Here’s what I go deep into this newsletter:
The Solo Founder Shift (2025 data)
Why solo founders are rising, raising later, and sometimes exiting faster
The Proof: Base44
One founder, ~6 months to 300K users and ~$3.5M ARR, then an ~$80M Wix acquisition
The Founder’s Reset
Why Maor Shlomo left the “traditional VC-backed company” path to build solo + fast
The 3-Pillar Playbook
Product: “batteries included” quality in a crowded market (no ugly MVP)
GTM: zero-budget distribution via build-in-public + one-channel mastery (LinkedIn)
AI leverage: internal automation + cost discipline = “invisible team”
What You Can Copy
A practical checklist to build, ship, grow, and stay lean as a solo founder
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The Solo Founder Revolution
The landscape of entrepreneurship is shifting. According to recent research by Carta, the share of US startups founded by solo founders reached 36.3% in the first half of 2025, with 37% of them building SaaS platforms.
The same analysis highlights another important signal. Solo founders are less likely to raise a pre-seed round within their first year. They raise less capital, and they raise it later. And in many cases, they reach an exit faster.
This happen because the environment they operate in today is fundamentally different from five years ago.
The enabling factor is clear. AI has dramatically compressed the cost of building, iterating, and experimenting. It has shifted the center of gravity from the organization to the individual.
Base44 is one of the clearest examples of this shift. In June 2025, Wix acquired the startup for roughly $80 million.
On its own, the deal would not be so remarkable. It becomes notable once you look at what sits underneath. Base44 was founded and scaled almost entirely by a single person. In six months, it surpassed 300,000 users and reached approximately $3.5 million in ARR. For most of its life, it was effectively a one-founder company.
That founder is Maor Shlomo.
Back to Basics: The founder’s Vision
In 2021, Maor Shlomo was the Co-founder and CTO of Explorium, a data company that followed the classic startup path. It raised over $130 million from big investors and grew into a large organization with many teams, strict rules, and slow processes. It was the “traditional” way of doing business.
That experience is exactly what pushed him to make a radical change. A few years later, Shlomo left Explorium to start again from zero.
He wanted to get back to writing code himself and moving fast. His goal was to prove that, thanks to AI, one person can now be more productive than an entire department of engineers.
The Blueprint for Success
This is how Shlomo started Base 44. Success followed quickly, but it wasn’t by chance. It was built on three main pillars that defined the startup’s journey.
Pillar 1: A Superior Product in a Crowded Market
Best Product on the Market
In a market full of well-funded competitors like Bolt or Lovable, Maor knew that a mediocre MVP (Minimum Viable Product) would not survive. To compete, he had to build something fundamentally better from day one.
The strategy was clear: find the first group of users and iterate aggressively based on their feedback.
Clear Competitive Advantage
The founder built a product with a clear "differentiation element." It was a complete solution that had everything a user needed.
Even the name of the startup, Base 44, reflected this vision of providing a solid and complete foundation:
The founder threw out the traditional playbook of launching fast. He spent months perfecting the product, ignoring the pressure to release a basic MVP. His reasoning was simple: in today’s crowded market, nobody cares about a product that feels half-finished
Pillar 2: A Pragmatic & Zero-Budget GTM
Find the First 10 Users
Maor started with his personal network such as friends and former colleagues. He wasn’t afraid to ask for honest (and sometimes uncomfortable) feedback.
Build in Public
The founder documented everything about his journey on LinkedIn and X such as the tools he used and even his revenues.
This transparency created a “viral loop.” Once the product clicked, the authenticity of his story made users want to share it.In particular, the founder focused heavily on LinkedIn, and his advice is simple: master one channel first.
Also, he used a two-part content strategy:
Value-driven posts: Sharing insights without trying to sell anything.
Product updates: Keeping the audience excited about new features.
His tip: If a channel isn’t working after a real effort, don’t be afraid to move to the next one.
Community Leverage
The founder discovered that small, high-intent communities are powerful. In his experience, WhatsApp groups worked incredibly well for direct engagement and building real relationships with his users.
As a matter of fact, the cycle was simple:
“First 10 users were slow. But once a few of them started building real stuff and sharing it, things picked up organically”.
Pillar 3: AI Leverage (The Invisible Employee)
Building Internal Tools with AI
Maor used Base 44 itself to build all his internal tools.
Instead of buying expensive software or building complex systems from scratch, he used his own product to automate his workflow.
As a matter of fact, he used Base 44 to to build a custom content creation machine, which revealed itself to be incredibly useful.
Radical Cost Efficiency
At the same time, keeping costs low was vital. AI pricing models are still changing and can get expensive quickly, so Maor focused on few tactics:
Finally, here is the complete stack he used to scale:
The Exit
In June 2025, Wix.com acquired Base 44 for $80 million in cash, plus performance earn-outs through 2029.
While Base 44 is celebrated as a one-man feat, the team evolved to 8 employees in the final 30 days before the sale. Maor made these strategic hires to ensure Wix had an organization capable of scaling immediately post-integration.
He sold the company because he wanted it to “survive for decades” and become a transformative piece of technology.
And now…
Key Takeaways
Here are the core principles that allowed a solo founder to achieve a massive exit without a traditional team or VC backing:
1. Speed Over Funding
No Fundraising: Shlomo intentionally avoided external investors to maintain total control and maximum execution speed.
Avoiding Bureaucracy: His past experience with a $130M raise taught him that heavy structures and complex governance often kill innovation. Remaining lean was his “unfair advantage.”
2. The “Batteries Included” Product
Sharp Differentiation: In a crowded market, he didn’t just launch a simple MVP. He built a “full-stack” solution with database, authentication, and hosting pre-integrated.
Quality is the Best Marketing: He spent 4 months perfecting the product before the public release. He rejected the “ugly MVP” myth, knowing that in a mature market, an unfinished product is simply ignored.
3. Zero-Budget Go-To-Market Strategy
Building in Public: By sharing his revenue, tools, and struggles on LinkedIn and X, he created an organic viral loop rooted in authenticity.
Channel Mastery: Instead of being everywhere, he dominated LinkedIn. He focused 100% of his energy on one platform to build a dense, engaged audience.
4. AI as the Invisible Workforce
Internal Automation: Maor used Base44 to build his own internal tools (CRM, Docs, Coupon management), operating with the efficiency of an entire corporate department.
Content Machine: As a matter of fact, he built AI apps to repurpose his posts into multiple social formats, drastically cutting down marketing time.
Obsessive Cost Efficiency: Being bootstrapped, he optimized every LLM call. By using prompt caching and a “model ensemble” (mixing Claude and Gemini), he kept margins high while scaling fast.
Hope this was valuable!
Best,
Guillermo
FAQs: How Maor Shlomo built (and sold) Base44 for ~$80M in ~8 months
1) What is Base44?
Base44 is an AI-powered “text-to-app” platform that helps you generate working software from plain-language prompts—built for founders and teams who want to ship without a full dev org.
2) What problem does Base44 solve?
It reduces the time and complexity of going from “I need an app that does X” to a usable product you can actually run and iterate on.
3) Who is Maor Shlomo?
Maor Shlomo is the founder of Base44 and previously built a traditional, venture-backed company—then reset to a solo, fast-building approach.
4) How fast did Base44 go from idea to acquisition?
Roughly 8 months end-to-end, with the majority of traction happening within about 6 months.
5) How much did Wix pay for Base44?
The deal is widely reported as around $80M, structured as cash plus additional performance-based earn-outs through 2029.
6) What traction did Base44 hit before the deal?
It’s reported to have surpassed 300K users and reached roughly $3.5M ARR within about six months.
7) Did Base44 raise venture capital?
The story is told as bootstrapped—built without traditional VC fundraising prior to the acquisition.
8) Why are solo founders rising in 2025?
AI compresses the cost of building and iterating, so individuals can reach “team-level” output much earlier than before.
9) What does the 2025 data say about solo founders?
Solo-founder startups are a growing share of new company formation, especially in software/SaaS.
10) Why do solo founders raise later (or not at all)?
Because they can validate faster with lower burn, which delays the need for capital and reduces the “fundraising as progress” trap.
11) What does “batteries included” mean here?
It means users get a complete experience (not a fragile demo): the product covers key needs end-to-end so people can ship real outcomes quickly.
12) How do you win in a crowded AI builder market?
By shipping a product that feels finished, choosing a clear user wedge, and iterating obsessively based on real usage—not hype.
13) What is “build in public” and why does it work?
It’s documenting the journey as you build. It compounds trust, distribution, and feedback—especially powerful for a solo founder.
14) Why focus on one channel (like LinkedIn) instead of many?
One channel mastered builds consistency, pattern recognition, and momentum. Spreading thin kills compounding.
15) How do you get the first 10 users as a solo founder?
Start with warm intros, offer a specific outcome, collect uncomfortable feedback, and tighten the wedge until users start sharing results.
16) Do small communities (WhatsApp/Slack groups) really move the needle?
Yes—because they concentrate high-intent users and create fast loops for product learning and early advocacy.
17) What is an “invisible team” in practice?
AI + automation replacing early hires across support, ops, content, and tooling—so one person can operate like a small organization.
18) What should solo founders automate first?
Support triage, onboarding, lead capture/CRM hygiene, billing/coupons/admin ops, and content repurposing.
19) How do you keep AI/LLM costs under control?
Track cost per action, cache/reuse outputs, route tasks to cheaper models when possible, and add guardrails to prevent runaway usage.
20) Was Base44 still a solo-founder company at the end?
It stayed founder-led and extremely lean, with a small team added close to the acquisition to support post-deal scaling.
21) Why sell instead of staying independent?
Acquisition can unlock distribution, durability, and scale—turning a fast-growing product into something that can survive for decades.
22) What should founders copy from this playbook this week?
Pick a wedge, make the product feel complete for that wedge, commit to one channel, and automate one internal workflow every week.