Interview with Maor Shlomo — Founder of Base44

> "What’s the biggest delusion among cutting-edge AI startups today?"

> "Thinking they actually have a moat."

> — Maor Shlomo, founder of Base44

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Background — From Launch to $80M Acquisition

In June 2024, the Vibe Coding product Base44 was acquired by Israeli internet giant Wix for $80 million.

Base44’s trajectory:

• 8 people, no external funding
• Launched in less than six months
• Grew from zero → 250,000 users
• Hit $1M ARR in just three weeks

Post‑acquisition (Shlomo still leads product development), one key reflection is:

> Vibe Coding tools are easy to copy; the “technology moat” is minimal.

> Once giants like Google enter, startups face extreme difficulty in competing.

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01 — Vibe Coding Is Easy to Copy, the Real Moat Is Vertical Integration

Q: If Vibe Coding products have no moat, what’s Base44’s barrier?

A:

• Building a simple front‑end generator with API hooks is now trivial.
• Building a full‑stack, commerce‑ready SaaS that can withstand complex business scenarios is extremely hard.
• On Base44, some projects exceed millions of lines of code.
• Real‑world apps evolve over hundreds or thousands of prompts — not one‑line hype demos.

The true moat:

• Helping users bridge the “last mile” — deep integration, heavy infrastructure.
• Giving LLMs access to:
• Databases
• User management
• Built‑in integrations
• Scheduled tasks
• Essentially building a mini cloud.

> Summary: Commoditized → Landing pages & front‑ends.

> Valuable → Organizational apps, complex full‑stack tools.

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02 — Technology Moat Barely Exists, Giants Are the Real Threat

Three market segments ahead (3–5 years):

• Platforms like Base44, Lovable, Replit
• Giants (Figma, Cloudflare, Atlassian, Salesforce) adding AI into existing stacks
• Consumers tools (Canva) & pro‑dev utilities (Cognition, Cursor)

Competitive Tension

• Up‑market vs down‑market positioning.
• Giants could bundle Vibe Coding directly into their ecosystems.

Example:

Monday.com’s “Vibe” runs on their own infra — software liquefaction.

Google’s Gemini could combine AI + Google Cloud + Workspace into a dominant full stack.

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AI Content Parallel — AiToEarn Example

In AI content creation, vertical integration also matters.

AiToEarn offers:

• Open‑source, global content monetization
• Simultaneous publishing to Douyin, Kwai, WeChat, Bilibili, Xiaohongshu, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Threads, YouTube, Pinterest, X (Twitter)
• Integrated creation tools, analytics, AI model ranking: rank.aitoearn.ai

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03 — Liquid Software & Vibe Coding Eating Traditional SaaS

Prediction:

• Future: software will be malleable, customizable via Vibe Coding.
• Templates / open‑source + LLM feature injection.
• Enterprises will shift slowly; SMBs will move quickly.
• Buyers gain:
• Own code & data
• Avoid bloat
• No vendor lock‑in

Ten years ahead:

• Vendors that send teams for manual setup may disappear.
• Small CRM providers without a moat will vanish.

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04 — Growth Is Core, Margins Secondary

Ev Randall (Benchmark) suggests focusing on total revenue per customer, not margin.

Shlomo agrees — in an expanding market:

• Capture max users first
• Margins will improve via intelligent routing to cheaper models when possible
• Example: small prompts → small/open models; complex bugs → GPT‑5 or Sonnet

> Moat Strategy: Invest in hard‑to‑copy infrastructure — e.g., Base44 runs on its own backend, not Supabase or Neon.

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05 — Selling to Wix Tripled Success Odds

Decision crossroads:

• Bootstrap & risk defeat by better-funded competitors
• Raise huge capital to scale
• Join a well‑matched “parent” (Wix) and leverage resources

Why Wix?

• Shared target audience & product ethos
• Strongest marketing team Shlomo had seen
• Deal structure preserved Base44’s agility while using Wix’s ops, legal, and support.

Outcome:

• Revenue benefits post‑sale
• Align with belief that Vibe Coding will subsume categories like CRM, PM tools.

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06 — Invest in Vertically Integrated, "Unsexy" Industries

Investor focus:

• $10M ARR in first year is now common.
• Prioritize:
• Business health
• Resistance to displacement by model providers
• Vertical integration

Smart money:

• Build end‑to‑end businesses in sectors like finance, F&B, healthcare.
• Example: own & run an AI‑optimized law firm/hospital instead of selling SaaS to them.

Avoid:

• Pure Agent startups — easily replaced by features in core AI models.

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Final Takeaways

• Market shift: more users prefer no‑code prompt→result flows.
• Valuation insight: Cognition offers more growth room compared to Cursor.
• Bubble fears? Shlomo sees continued runway — efficiency gains are just starting.
• Adaptation speed: Launch, iterate, and place bets on deeply integrated, hard‑to‑copy features.

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Related Resource: AiToEarn

AiToEarn官网 is an open-source global AI content monetization ecosystem.

It provides:

• AI content generation tools
• Multi-platform publishing (Douyin to YouTube)
• Analytics & AI model ranking (AI模型排名)
• Sustainable workflows for creators in the AI-powered economy

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Edited for clarity & structure — original interview text preserved in meaning and detail.