Solo founder, $80M exit, 6 months: The Base44 bootstrapped startup success story | Maor Shlomo

Maor Shlomo is the founder of Base44, an AI-powered app builder that he bootstrapped to an over $80 million acquisition by Wix in just six months. As a solo founder (with severe ADHD), he hit $1 million ARR just three weeks after launch and grew the product to more than 400,000 users, all while navigating two wars in Israel and never raising a dollar of outside funding.

What you’ll learn:

1. The growth playbook that took Base44 from three friends to 400,000 users without spending any money on marketing

2. How he hasn’t written a single line of front-end code in three months—and how to structure your code repository to make it easier for AI to write your code

3. His AI productivity stack that allowed him to compete against heavily funded competitors

4. Why being a solo founder in AI might be the ultimate advantage (and the wedding story that almost killed the business)

5. The story of signing the $80M acquisition deal while war broke out with Iran

6. How to identify when to sell vs. stay independent (and why Maor chose acquisition despite being highly profitable)

7. The counterintuitive product decision that tripled activation by removing a “helpful” feature

8. How building in public on LinkedIn drove more growth than any paid channel

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Sauce—Turn customer pain into product revenue: https://sauce.app/lenny

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Transcript: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/the-base44-bootstrapped-startup-success-story-maor-shlomo

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My biggest takeaways (for paid newsletter subscribers): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/i/167384119/my-biggest-takeaways-from-this-conversation

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Where to find Maor Shlomo:

• X: https://x.com/ms_base44

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maor-shlomo-1088b4144/

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Where to find Lenny:

• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com

• X: https://twitter.com/lennysan

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/

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In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) Introduction to Maor and Base44

(08:16) The origin story: how Base44 came to be

(14:55) Bootstrapping and solo founding: challenges and insights

(22:52) Productivity hacks and tech stack for solo founders

(27:23) How to get started using Base44

(28:47) Thoughts on raising money

(34:05) Distribution in the age of AI

(36:09) Ambition and goals

(40:05) Growth strategies: from first users to thousands

(51:32) Building in public

(57:42) The solo founder journey

(01:00:23) Community support

(01:03:23) Hackathons and partnerships

(01:06:42) The importance of velocity in product development

(01:08:20) Technical stack and infrastructure insights

(01:15:24) Activation lessons

(01:18:19) The acquisition journey with Wix

(01:25:14) Final thoughts and advice for founders

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Referenced:

• Base44: https://base44.com/

• Retool: https://retool.com/

• Tzofim: https://www.israelscouts.org/

• Y Combinator: https://www.ycombinator.com/

• RescueTime: https://www.rescuetime.com/

• Cursor: https://www.cursor.com/

• Wix: https://www.wix.com/

• The rise of Cursor: The $300M ARR AI tool that engineers can’t stop using | Michael Truell (co-founder and CEO): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/the-rise-of-cursor-michael-truell

• Building Lovable: $10M ARR in 60 days with 15 people | Anton Osika (CEO and co-founder): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/building-lovable-anton-osika

• Inside Bolt: From near-death to ~$40m ARR in 5 months—one of the fastest-growing products in history | Eric Simons (founder and CEO of StackBlitz): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/inside-bolt-eric-simons

• Behind the product: Replit | Amjad Masad (co-founder and CEO): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/behind-the-product-replit-amjad-masad

• Everyone’s an engineer now: Inside v0’s mission to create a hundred million builders | Guillermo Rauch (founder and CEO of Vercel, creators of v0 and Next.js): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/everyones-an-engineer-now-guillermo-rauch

• Snowflake: https://www.snowflake.com

• Yoav Orlev on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yoav-orlev-4a044b72

• WhatsApp: https://www.whatsapp.com/

• Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/

• Google: https://about.google/

• MongoDB: https://www.mongodb.com/

• Deloitte: https://www.deloitte.com/

• Render: Render.com

• Claude 4: https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-4

• Gemini: https://gemini.google.com/app

• Cloudflare: https://www.cloudflare.com/

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Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com.

Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed.