Leap Academy with Ilana Golan - From Skype to Wix: Mark Tluszcz’s Formula for Turning Bold Bets into Billion-Dollar Successes | E163

Episode Date: June 16, 2026

Mark Tluszcz had the career most people would chase: a top consulting job, rapid success, and a clear path forward. But eight years in, he made a move very few would dare to make. He left his high-paying job to start his own firm, faced hundreds of rejections while raising capital, and built Mangrove Capital from scratch. That same contrarian mindset led him to back companies others overlooked, becoming an early investor in Skype and later Chairman of Wix. In this episode, Mark joins Ilana to share how he invested early in Skype, spotted Wix before it became a global company, and why he turned down a $400 million acquisition offer. He also breaks down how to build conviction, embrace rejection, and find opportunities where others see risk. Mark Tluszcz is the co-founder and CEO of Mangrove Capital Partners and chairman of Wix, one of the world's leading website-building platforms. He is widely regarded as one of Europe's most influential venture capitalists, known for his early investments in Skype and Wix. In this episode, Ilana and Mark will discuss: (00:00) Introduction (05:36) Growing Up Across Multiple Cultures (09:09) Leaving Corporate Consulting to Build His Own Firm (13:58) Building Mangrove Capital During the Internet Boom (20:54) How to Keep Going After Hundreds of Nos (27:25) How Skype Evolved Beyond Music (36:47) Staying Humble After a Massive Win (43:08) Discovering Wix and Rethinking Venture Capital (50:33) Turning Down a $400M Deal: The Wix Story (57:41) Building Resilience Through Honest Conversations (01:01:14) Spotting the Next Wave of AI Opportunity (01:10:57) The Founder Mindset That Actually Lasts Mark Tluszcz is the co-founder and CEO of Mangrove Capital Partners, a Luxembourg-based venture capital firm he built from the ground up after leaving Arthur Andersen in 2000. He was one of the first investors in Skype, where Mangrove’s $2 million investment reportedly returned $200 million, and he has served as chairman of Wix, where an $8 million investment reportedly yielded $700 million. Connect with Mark: X: x.com/marktluszcz  Mark’s Instagram:  instagram.com/marktluszcz/  Mark’s LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/mark-tluszcz-a024b51  Mark’s Blog: https://www.daretodreambeyond.com/  Leap Academy: Ready to make the LEAP in your career? There is a NEW WAY for professionals to fast-track their careers and leap to bigger opportunities.  Check out our free training today at https://bit.ly/leap--free-training

Bar none, everybody thought this was the dumbest thing I was doing in my life. They were like, you're nuts. Why are you doing this? Everything is crushing down. Everybody's running away from tech, and you're actually moving towards this. So I gave up this really great job, well-paying job, and all of a sudden, the internet bursts. Today we get to talk to a person who said no to $400 million offer for Wix when everybody thought that was crazy. He is also the first investor in Skype, a survivor of the dot-com bubble, and a venture capitalist who isn't afraid to call out the fake in Silicon Valley.

Welcome Mark Tush, the co-founder of Mangrove Capital, Chairman of Wix. Everything I do is about being contrarian. AI has turned us all into superhumans. It also turns a lot of us into idiots because we just repeat what it says. You need to be reading between 20 and 30 books per year. The first thing is, and I try to apply this to every situation in my life, is... So today we get to talk to a person who said no to $400 million offer for Wix when everybody thought that was crazy.

He is also the first investor in Skype, a survivor of the dot-com bubble. Oh, we're going to talk about that. That's going to be so cool. And a venture capitalist who isn't afraid to call out the fake in Silicon Valley. So we're going to have so much fun. welcome Mark Tush, the co-founder of Mangrove Capital, chairman of Wix. I personally been using Wix. I just told him way over a decade.

So I'm so excited to take you behind the scenes. Mark, thank you for being on the show. Ilana, thank you for having me. It's an absolute pleasure to be here today. And I look forward to a very engaging conversation, right? It's going to be so, so fun. And I also going to remind listeners, one more thing. Remember, every week I select a question from our YouTube

channel, Leap Academy with Ilana Golan, and I answer it after this conversation. I answer it live. It's going to be so cool. So today Margie asked about how to land your first client when you don't have experience. What a great question. So stay tuned until the end. We're going to answer it. So Mark, I can't wait for this conversation. You have such an eclectic background. And if that's okay, I want to actually take you back in time because you as a kid were kind of roaming around different places before you landed in the U.S. for college. Can you take me back there a little bit? Who was Mark? Yeah, so I was very fortunate that my parents, my father was American. My mother was South African from Zimbabwe, right? And I grew up in Africa most of my life as a child. So I went to the

U.S. for the first time when I was 18. But before that, I had the real privilege of living in the Congo, living in Egypt, living in Zimbabwe, and, and and living in Belgium. And all of this really, I think, created something in me that was very different. I didn't have a traditional upbringing. I lived in countries that were not my countries by predilection and really got to experience various cultures and various things. And I think what it really gave me as a gift beyond, I'd love to travel, I speak multiple languages, it just gave me the idea that, you know, everybody is different. And that's fine. And I'm good with that. And as long as I can understand those differences I can really really engage with them and build things and it really has gone a long

way to serve me in my professional career there's so many times in my life that I have to look back and say you know what that may not be for me but it doesn't mean it can't be great right and I think that's that multiculturalism that you get living in all of these you know arguably goofy countries and then all of a sudden showing up you know in the U.S. when I was 18 for the first time and my father telling me it's time you're being a bit American and I was like wow man I grew up and you know in all these all these all these other countries and so that was probably the biggest challenge for me is going from you know I was living probably from the age of 12 to 18 in Cairo in Egypt and then put on an airplane and shipped off to go learn American and go to an American high school and I think all of that just

creates in an individual different things that are important to them mark was that frustrating or was it were you grateful at the time, or is it only something that you can look back and say, now I'm grateful? I think, you know, it was just my life. And perhaps as you're growing up, teenager and beyond, you know, you are the environment that you're in and you're in the family that you're in. And for me, that's what that was normalcy. It only came to me later that it really wasn't how everybody else was living their lives, you know. And I remember showing up to an American high school for the first time and just feeling oh my lord where have I landed here you know and so so different so I think all of that yeah no it was my normalcy it wasn't I realized it after but

but I think it's the gift of not knowing that makes it whatever it is and and at the end now of course I can look back and say god I'm so happy my parents gave me that they forced me to go to french schools so we were English speakers at home French at school and it just made it that all also you were multicultural, multilingual, very, very young. And that just made, I think, who I was and helped me in the early parts of my career. I love that because you can already tie some strings to why you invested in like Estonian company, whatever. Like, we'll go there for a second. But, but before that, so you spent 10 years in Arthur Ederson, right? And so take me there a little bit, because eventually you decide to leave. But take me a little bit into this experience. It was,

I think I was a proto, you know, I went to university. I did a history and business degree. And, you know, I was a prototypical kid who wanted to be in business. And, you know, you had an option. You'd go work at a consulting firm or you'd try and become an investment banker. I still think many, many university grads today, those are their first paths, right? I'm going to go do that. And that becomes, you know, that's greatness because I could do there. And I was very fortunate. I got a job in his great company. I had a number. of mentors that mentored me along the way. But it really was, I think it's I didn't know any better when I started. It's like everybody thought, oh, he works for, you know, Anderson consulting. That's so awesome. I was like, yeah, it sounds pretty cool to me. And I spent 10 years there really just developing as a professional. And it's an experience I would, I'd encourage, you know, for a lot of people, because you learn how to work in those large organizations. There's a lot to be said about a working methodology and a discipline of work that you get out of an environment. that is so strict and at the same time so demanding right i think you have to be in these demanding places

very early on in your life because it sets the tone for who you will become later you know we're not all born with this insatiable hunger to be successful we're not all born with all the brains in the world you know and we we start off in our professional career and i do think sometimes you know you can have false starts and bad starts and i happen to have a very lucky start to my professional career by being there, by being surrounded by great bosses and mentors who just over a 10-year period ultimately made me who I was in that first part of my career. But in retrospect, I said, working at a consulting firm today, I don't, you know, I wouldn't encourage my kids to do it.

But I do think I know a lot of kids their age, that's their number one goal, consulting or investment banking. And I think for a few years, extremely useful because of the work habits that you develop and just the intellectual way of thinking, right? It's hard. It's hard. They're harsh environments to learn in. I think my son still wants it.

My son still wants it. So we'll let them. There's a glory. Yeah, there's a glory. There's a glory associated, at least in the minds of young people, right? Oh, I'm going to go work in those things. It's so awesome. You're like, no, it's great.

You know, there's so much more to do in life than to be in those organizations. I agree. So, Mark, is there like a certain moment in time when, because you're right. Like in the beginning, I think all of these organizations, you can learn a lot, right? Like, I think there's a lot that we don't know. But was there, like, a certain moment where you're like, okay, this is it. Like, I need to do something different. Yeah. For me, you know, I spent, I ended up spending 10 years there, you know, being very fortunate to, to really go up that corporate ladder quite fast. But I'd say, you know, about after eight years, I started questioning, not so much

was I enjoying it. It was more, you know, I don't see how this is going to fundamentally change for the next 30 years. And that started scaring me quite quickly. So the first thing is, you know, and I try to apply this to every situation in my life is, you know, every day open your eyes and tell yourself, do I like where I am? Am I really enjoying what I'm doing? And, you know, we all go through some ups and downs and situations. But after a period of time, you only got one life and enjoyed as much as you can. And yes, a job is a job is a job. So for me, after, you know, eight years I heard of questioning that that fortunately for me it coincided though it coincided with the early kind of internet explosion of 96 98th time frame and so all of a sudden in that eight year period

not only was i having doubts around kind of my long-termness in this organization but i started seeing this thing called the everything is happening yes and i'm like i'm like i can see the world changing and yet here i'm stuck you know doing this profession i've been doing for eight years and and i just thought it was time to make a change and you know when you spend so long in those organizations leaving is very difficult because they pay you unbelievably well to stay when you're very successful in his consulting and banking environments and so it's hard to leave because you know all of a sudden you're downgrading and i left to start my own firm and so all of a sudden i went from having a business card that said Anderson consulting which that was supposedly awesome to you know mangrove capital partners that

nobody knew and you know that takes a bit of it takes a bit of adjusting i think too is it well. Takes a lot. So I want to go there for a second. First of all, did people think that this is like a really dumb move or did people think, oh my God, Mark, this is amazing? I'd say, bar none. Everybody thought this was the dumbest thing I was doing in my life, you know, which again, you know, experience has told me that should have been a positive signal, right? Because they weren't thinking out of the box. But yeah, they were like, you're nuts. Why are you doing this? And my mentors in that organization felt betrayed by me and and you know and all of that but but at the end again you got to take control of your life as long as you do it in a in a professional and good manner you know it really is about you and

where you want to take your life and and i thought it was time to take a to take a shot on on this internet thing and i'll tell you a funny story you know i was because i was stuck in this consulting environment i i um you know the internet kind of crept up on me i i didn't just embrace it it just kind of crept up on me. And I have a friend of mine, she's a movie director in the U.S. And at the time, she called me up and said, there's this thing called the internet. It's going to awesome. And I'm like, what are you talking about? You know? And think about what I'm doing now. And she's like, oh, no, you don't understand. This is amazing. And she's a very forward-thinking person. And every time she says something, I said, okay, ooh, now she said something

serious. I had to read up on this. And she just opened my eyes to what the internet was happening. To be fair, I was living in Europe. The Internet was much more of a U.S. phenomenon at the time as well. And so she saw a lot of that happening in the U.S., which we weren't seeing in Europe. But really, she pushed me over the edge. And she knows this, and I'm forever thankful to her about doing that. So you get inspiration from different places in life. And that was one of the inspirations I got, which is, hey, open your eyes.

The world's going by you. And you could be part of it. Or if you wait too long, you'll miss the boat. So that was kind of my impetus into the Internet. Oh, and I love that. And again, you decide there's a big difference between starting a small business and trying to launch a VC firm from scratch. Yeah. Right.

So take me a little bit towards that moment when you were saying, you know what? I actually going to invest in other companies because this is like everything is so new. Like venture capital was not that popular. It wasn't like, you know, so take me there to that decision. I had been an apprentice investor for a number of years with. the bonuses I was getting from my consulting gig. And I had fortunately backed my younger brother. He had built a microbrewery in the U.S.

And I had helped fund that microbrewery. And it turned out to be quite a successful story for him and, of course, financially for me as well. You know, when I decided to leave Accenture, I said, I really want to build my last company. In the sense of I said, I'm really going to put everything I have into this. And I need to focus on building something that I'm going to still be doing. 25, 30 years later.

And that was my goal, whether I could do it or not, but I was very, and from day one, I decided, I don't want to, you know, I'm not raising a fund, I'm building a firm. Like, and so everything has to be associated. I had to have the brand of the firm, I had to have the partners I wanted in my firm, I had to have the culture in my, in my firm.

And, you know, the culture was a culture of innocence, of course, because we arguably didn't know very much, but we were able to raise a first fund on the story that, hey, the internet bubble, bubble burst in the U.S., but not here in Europe, you know, as if that should have made a difference. But we got a, we got, we got the community of, I was, you know, I live in, I live in, I live in Luxembourg and, and the whole, the Luxembourg ecosystem really gave us the money to start our first fund in the firm. And I want to go there. I want to go there. I want to go there. Yeah, they gave

you a shot in one of the hardest times ever. So take me there for a second because the year is 2000 to 2002 or somewhere around that ballpark, right? Everything is crushing down. Everybody's running away from tech. There's a lot of things that exploded because they promised the world and it was like just exploding in everybody's face. And you're somehow not fleeting the heck out of this. You're actually moving towards this and you're able to get people to believe in your vision. Tell me how, Yeah, so I resigned in, I think, January 2020, right? So I gave up this really great job, well-paying job, and all of a sudden the Internet bursts, right? Then I'm like, oh, Jesus, now what? And fortunately, small countries, if you're from Israel, you know this, Luxembourg's, of course,

much smaller than Israel, but small countries, you know a lot of people and things like that. And I'd been talking to them about this, and they were saying, you know, we really want to give a shot at this tech thing. And I don't think a lot of them believe that, you know, the implosion of the U.S. would naturally flow into Europe. And so that that moment that they had of, you know, not really understanding the market gave me the opportunity to quickly close my fund, right? And so we're able to very quickly convince them, hey, you know, yeah, you're hearing noise in the U.S., but, you know, there's still opportunities here. And we think we can develop something here. And look, we're three smart guys, you know, we're going to go do. this. And and I think it was innocence that allowed those investors to back us.

How many nose? How many nose did you need to go through? Oh, I'd say, I'd say we ended up having about 25 investors. And I think I probably went through every single capital of Europe visited at least 30 or 40 investors in each of those cities. So, you know, it's in the hundreds of nose for 25 yeses. I mean, look, when we, we, we started this. off, I remember sharing hotel rooms with my partners. We would drive down to Geneva, the three of us in one bedroom, you know, just to save enough money to be able to go on that next trip. And by the way, that's exactly how I think early stage should be, whether it's a firm, a company or whatever. You've got to hustle, man, and money doesn't grow on trees. And you just, it's like put it all in.

And for me, that was one of the lessons of my early childhood was, if you want to do something, my father said, just do it right and force yourself to go all in. And that's how we started, Maghra. It was like, we're all in. We're going to penny pinch as much as we can. We're going to get this fun going, you know. And then we woke up kind of in the summer of 2020. And I went, shit, the market has exploded in the U.S.

It is coming to Europe. And, okay, now, you know, we have to figure out a way to make some investments and be successful. And we'll go there, Mark. But what I love about it, and I want the listeners to hear this, because sometimes we hear five nose and we're like, okay, this is a bad idea, let me pivot. And the truth is a lot of it is about being all in. It is about the resilience.

It is about building that conviction. But take me there and take our listeners there. How do you build conviction when there's so many knows? Yeah, well, you have to have, first of all, self-belief, right, that this is the right thing that you're going to do because the nose come in different formats and from different people. and sometimes having to call your wife and tell you got another no, that's almost harder than somebody telling me, right?

Because the last thing you want is your family to start going, are you sure you really want to do this, right? So there's all that pressure that builds up in those moments. But, you know, we were three, three founders, and so it was easy to huddle together. So I always like to tell people, I love to have started my company with at least one or two founders. You have a crutch, right?

When you're down, they may not be dead. and vice versa. And you know, when you get a lot of no matter what you think, you're gonna have some down moments because, you know, you go home and you go, God, another one, you know, or you were so close and then they said no and things like this, which is, you know, that's true for anybody starting any company. And it's, whether it's in tech or any other places, it's, you just gotta be impervious to the no. And you're gonna get

hundreds of them and you're gonna get just enough yeses to start. And that's how lucky we got. And it ended up being from people frankly who knew us before. You know, yes, in a different profession, in a different environment. And they were like, yeah, you know, the markets may be weird, but you know, you guys are good guys and, you know,

we're gonna give you a shot. And so we ended up having, you know, the government of Luxembourg invest in us, the biggest insurance company of Luxembourg invest us. And, you know, smaller countries, that may be a little easier, although I would argue that there's not that many investors either in smaller countries.

So, you know, you figure that out. But yeah, the resilience to the no, The amount of tech companies I haven't been involved in who've succeeded kind of on their second pivot is quite remarkable, right? And so those are the type of people you want to be involved with. It's like your idea may be good today. Your execution may be not so great and your business model may be dodgy, but in a couple years, you know, and that really, yeah, this resilience really gave me the courage to do things

that probably otherwise I wouldn't have done. Yeah. You know, like invest in Skype. I know. We'll talk about it. Yeah. We'll definitely go there. There were competitive products already on the market from Google and Apple, you know, and people are like, you're completely a nut job to be funding those guys, you know. So I think you just have to think out of the box constantly. And that's really the world I try to operate in is I don't want to be in the box. Everything I do is about being contrarian.

You know, we want us, we want to think. You want to zig when others were zagging and you want to just be very different and have different perspectives. And I think that's what allowed us, you know, really just to hold hands in tough times. You know, I think a few months into our fundraising, I just remember we were in Geneva, a very big insurance company had said no to us. Here we are three stuck in a shitty little Movan Peak hotel, you know, for 120 bucks for the night. And we're like, oh, God, now we have to drive back to Luxembourg and just tell everybody that, again,

we come back empty-handed. But look, that's what makes memories great, right? In retrospect. So, okay, so you raise the fund, but then you realize, oh, my God, before we get to Skype, but you get to, you realize like, oh, my God, like, this is really happening. What do you do? How do we recover? How do you sleep at night? Like, I don't know. I always feel like I'm going to get a heart attack in a second. So I'm just like, oh, shit. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think luckily we had a bit of experience and we understood that, you know, this market would take time to develop. And so what we did is we said to ourselves, let's not invest our fund too quickly. Let's be slow.

Despite getting a lot of pressure from our investors, we're like, you know, be calm. It's a bit like if you started the fund in 2020 or 21, you know, the advice I give to these young fund managers, hey, if you have to take six or seven years to invest it. Yeah, but no, I'm like, no, no, no, you'll thank me later when the market tanks. you know, and it's tough. So we learned that lesson. It's like, take a long time to invest. We were also on a very steep learning curve, right? Oh, yeah. I mean, none of us, none of us had been venture capitalists before. You know, we had to, there was no, nothing like an LLN today to give you a term sheet. It was none of that, right? So we have to invent how to write a term sheet, how to do this, how to do that, you know. It's all new, yeah. Yeah, it's all new.

And we did, we made a few things, I think we did a few smart things early on, right? One is we, We resisted a temptation to not do it in our home country of Luxembourg. We, you know, initially, well, it's a small market. There's not a lot of stuff happening. And I think we naively said we can be successful here. But what it forced us is it forced us to travel three days a week. Like we couldn't just sit at our office and have the, you know, the entrepreneurs come and visit us. We were, you know, the rule of the firm was, and which it still is today, you have to be three days on the road a week.

You have to have at least two nights in a hotel somewhere. And when you're in one of those cities, you're not having lunch with a friend or dinner with a friend. You know, you're socializing with people that can advance our business agenda. So you put those rules in and I think that that was really something we did very, very well, which just force that down the throat of a very young organization. And this, you know, often, you know, we'll probably talk about Wix a little later, but, you know, often what I like about what they do at Wix is they just have a very specific culture, right? And I think that's one thing that can make your company very successful as if at the beginning you say,

here are the five things that matter to me and my partners. And we are simply not going to sacrifice on those things, period, right? And that was one of them, right? You are going to travel. You are going to go be social because that's what's going to get us that next great deal, right? That's tremendous. And I can totally see, you know, like what a shift that creates. And so take me then, you know, to Skype.

So 2003, you know, you. You find a company in a country that, you know, I needed to look up the map the first time I heard they're from Estonia, if I'm being really honest. And they had all these things against them. Take me through that moment. You find this thing. Why do you even bet on it? And by the way, my husband worked in Skype a little bit. So I'm like, so I know it from pretty close by.

Yeah. So, you know, we knew, we knew that technology was. coming down the path to be able to allow us to use IP to make phone calls. So we kind of knew this as technologists. And we were all frankly tired of the traditional telco gouging us, right, to make a phone call based on distance. When, you know, yeah, that may have been true when you had to lay a copper cable under the Atlantic to go to the US.

but nobody was doing that anymore, yet their pricing models were still the same. And so, you know, we did a bit of research and said, okay, we think there's an opportunity to change the way communication is sold and priced and everything like that. And so this is one of the, you know, one of the other things we did very well is every so often we come up with like this thesis, which we, it takes about 18 months to write it out. And then it becomes the marching orders, right, for the partnership. Go find companies that do this. And that's a bit what happened, right? is we said IP is going to change the world. We think there's this going to happen and so on and so forth.

And there's a huge opportunity because the telcos are gouging us. And so what could you do? Kind of at the same time, I met a friend of mine who was working for a very famous American venture capitalist called Bill Draper. His son is very famous called Tim Draper, who's also a friend. We just had him on the show, by the way. Yeah. Tim Draper. He's just a, yeah, you know, and I'll tell you a little.

I learned so much from him through this experience. But, you know, I met the guy that was running his father's family office outside of the U.S. And we became friends, you know, one of those, you got to have dinner with people when you travel, you got to socialize and things. And then we kind of both said, hey, we've heard that there's these guys who did Kazaa. And, you know, this was this music, swapping, file swapping business. And we're like, that seems to be like the most successful European company ever. And we got to meet these guys, right?

And so, you know, we tried to figure out a way to meet them and us are of our separate ways and a lot of things. And ultimately ended up meeting them and going, holy crap, these guys have just amazing vision of what they want to build. They have just product clarity. They have product genius in what they're trying to build. And, you know, they ended up being three people, a Swedish, a Swedish guy, a Danish guy and an American guy. The American guy was their business development guy. And the two other guys were the techie. One was, you know, another business guy, and the other one was just a product genius.

And we just said, you know, we're in when we met them. And sometimes you get that feeling. You meet a team, you're like, man, they're going to make something big, you know. And, you know, my partners originally were like, hmm, you know, doesn't Google have a product like that? Doesn't Apple have a product like this? And I'm like, yeah, yeah, but you know what? These guys, they understand how to get rid of friction. And then it went, in our partners, they all went, bingo, you know.

And it was hard back then. You had to configure your security settings on your, it was just like miserable. You know, today, of course, all that is forgotten. But so they just, that was our view on Skype. We were like in and then Tim invested after that. Tim Draper invested after that. And, you know, I got to see as a European,

I got to hang out with Tim for two or three years. You know, he is such an eclectic and such a smart guy. You know, again, always thinking out of the box. You see, you might see some things that I've gleaned from him, always thinking out of the box, zinging when others is zagging. And he was 15 years, my elder, and became an inspiration for, you know, how we built and how we thought about building companies. Because, you know, Americans believe that there is no limit to what you can achieve.

And Tim is in that camp, right? And so everything we talked about, everything he always said was like, this thing is going to be big for sure. We're going to take it public for sure. Dada, da, da, da, da. You know, and it's infectious. And I think that's another one of the great lessons for us around Skype, but that we really embedded it in our firm's DNA is,

you've got to think out of the box. There's no sense in investing where others are. And when you're there, man, oh man, be the best cheerleader you can for that business and just go, go, go for it. And that I thanked him, whenever I see him, I said, man, I learned all that from you. And you have to be big enough to say these things, right? like, you know, God didn't come down and make me a great venture capitalist. God gave me a lot of things, right, that I use.

But that particular thing I thanked Tim Draper for because it was like, he just had this belief that you could do anything. And that's what made the Skype so successful. That's incredible. I need to like cut this and ship it to Tim. He would love to see this. This is so cool. Yeah, yeah.

But take me there. And I agree. Like these mentors are really, really important. And they're definitely a big part of every, every. single person's life, right? And I love that you're also knowing how to give credit when credit is due. And take me, though, to Skype because you could see that they're incredible founders, but they needed to shift from the music industry. They were starting to be sued. They needed to, like, pivot. And we talked about, like, how, like, founders, uh, when they know how to cope with

challenges and how to cope with these kind of feels like near-death experiences, they actually become stronger. Take me there for a second. Yeah, I mean, but the CEO of Skype at the time, the founder Nicholas Zentrum, he had worked in the telecom world quite a bit. And so he understood the problem of telecom world. But their original vision, you see, what was interesting is, you know, we, we early on when we initially funded before they launched the product, right? So we didn't know what the product would look like. Their original product was slightly different than the ultimate product that you have seen as a success. Their product originally was Wi-Fi is coming everywhere. and we want to create a telco that will use Wi-Fi hubs around the city and everywhere as the network of choice.

And so the vision was you could walk down your street and you would be handed off from one Wi-Fi network to another, right? And that would be the network of choice for them. And they'd build this telco business like that. The infrastructure around Wi-Fi was not quite developed enough at the time. And so their very smart decision was, well, you know, we exist here. Let's throw a product out there that could work in that configuration, but let's get a bunch of users and then we'll be able to upsell them to something else. And, of course, the minute they launched Skype, as you know it, it just went up and tens of millions of users. And that initial vision got put kind of in the back and they just focused on building this, you know, desktop first product.

But it was just that, again, that vision was so strong and so powerful that you knew from the beginning that they would figure out a way to make it happen. And it was just, oh, let's throw this little product out there and see how, you know, if we get a bunch of users, you know, they could be test users and cities and things like that. Ended up being, yeah, that never happened. And we ended up just going like this. A lot of challenges, how you recruited people, how, you know, all of that. But, but look, it was also quite short. We invested in 2003, early 2003 sold in late 2005. So an unusual deal, it's an unusual deal in venture capital.

And probably in that respect, a bad lesson for us because, you know, we were like, oh, this is what venture capital is about. You know, you invest at $3 million and you sell that $3 billion after two years, you know. And they're like, not quite. Of course, of course, that's not what venture capital turned out to be, right? Everything is much longer, but every so often you get lucky enough to have something like that. But that was our first big success. And everything, including that, became the basis of our DNA, right?

Like, this is this magic. And it's a bit like, you know, it's a bit like a drug, unfortunately. Once you've had the taste of that success, you know, you are empty until you find the next one. Because you just feel like, and, you know, my kids, you know, until Wix became very successful, right? Skype was my big success. And after a number of years, my kids are like, yo, bro, you know, that's all you can talk about is Skype. You ain't got anything else, you know?

So your harshest critics are at home, you know, about, yeah, come on, dad. You got something better for me now, you know, so. Wow. So take me there for a second. Because I think, you know, I think you talked a little bit about this, you know, in the music industry, we hear it, the one-hit wonder, right? It's like, there's like this fear. of like, this can't be the only thing, right?

And then you put a lot of pressure on yourself to frantically find the next one. Where is it catching you, Mark, at that point? And it sounds like your family is already taking you there. But so how was it? Yeah, I would tell you that, you know, when we sold Skype, the sensation it gave me and my partners was a sensation of just ultimate joy.

And we were, we would be undefeated. you know and and and but the problem with that is the problem with that is you should enjoy it right and move on quickly and and you know you could see how early on it would it began in weeks right after it was announced and we sold and we were all basking it a bit in the glory of having been involved with that you know you could see it popping up in in various places in our own firm about people being a little too arrogant around it, right? And so after, and I said to myself, look, we're going to let this joy be pure joy and there'll be a bit of arrogance probably that comes with that.

But after a month, this has to stop, right? So after a month, we sat down as a partnership and said, okay, Skype's done, you know. Let's go be hungry again. Now you've got to go find something else. And by the way, lucky us, we have the brand of Skype behind us now. So it should make things easier and so on. But it's like at the end, humility. is one of the greatest skills that you should have in life.

And for me, it was about that is we could be very successful, but we need to be super humble in everything we do going forward because there was also a lot of luck in Skype for us, right? We were lucky. We found them. We were lucky. They wanted us to be part of the journey. We were lucky, lucky, lucky. So while you make your own luck, sometimes you've got to say, hey, luck comes around and let's make sure next time,

you know, we begin to have pattern recognition and all of that. But as an organization, I think we like, learned from that moment that just be a nice guy, be a humble person. You know, I didn't, you know, I didn't build Skype. I was part of it, but, you know, I didn't do it on my own. And so I don't have a right to be like this. And so, so that was, but yeah, you know, after the joy, and you wake up a bit like if you have a hangover after a month, and you go, oops, oops. You know, now what? And yeah, well, while you're, while you're encouraged that you know how to do it, the truth the matter you're reminded by everybody that you're either a band with one hit or you're a one book

wonder author right there's a lot of those out there we need to pause for a super brief break and while we do take a moment and share this episode with every single person who may be inspired by this because this information can truly change your life and theirs now i want to check in with you yes you are you driven but maybe feeling stuck in your career or a fraction of who you know you could be Do you secretly feel you should have been further along in your income, influence, or impact? Do you ever wonder how to create not just a paycheck, but the life you want was a paycheck? The thought leadership, the legacy, the freedom. Because that was me, and that's exactly why I created the Leap Academy program, which already changed thousands of careers in lives.

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And the difficulty is, and all we could do, right, is say we're going to continue down the path of doing the same thing. We need to make sure that we have enough, we're taking enough risk. These are things that matter in our business. And so, you know, we operate a business that unless we fail 50% of the time, I don't think we're taking enough risk. And so we, we track this very methodically. And because, you know, when you start getting a little more gun shy, a little more comfortable, you just don't do deals like Skype. You just don't.

And for us, it was important to maintain that really high level of risk tolerance. And at the same time, keep everybody very hungry. Look, the partnership, you know, our investors and the partnership made a lot of money and that was fantastic, you know, but that's yesterday's news. Right. You know, there's tomorrow's news and we wanted to make tomorrow's, yeah, yeah, very important. But tell me, tell me there. let's lean into this a little bit.

I think some of the listeners don't realize, and maybe you'll correct me here, but venture capital is, you know, there's a few things. First of all, you're going to say a lot of knows, like in just a general sense. It's going to take a lot longer,

on average, to know if you're even good at this or not, right? So there's like, unlike the startup world or the business world where relatively quickly, you can kind of see here, sometimes you need patience of, years. So take me there a little bit. Like, how do you maintain the hunger? How do you maintain staff that is hungry? Take me there for a second. Yeah, I mean, look, we are very fortunate that our first fund was the Skype fund. And so, you know, we're able to demonstrate to ourselves, our employees and everybody that,

hey, you know, there's a lot of money been made here. Not theoretical. It has been made. And, you know, if you just follow this, this playbook, we should be able to do it again, right? You know, I, the idea that it takes a long time. I'd say it probably takes a venture, any person that we might bring in now or anybody else. I'd say, it's probably a 10-year journey to decide whether you're good at this, right? Whether you ultimately decide or if you were working at Mangrove, I would decide for you, right? But it is an 8 to 10-year journey because you've got to hustle like hell, you got to push yourself into deals. Sometimes you have to beg, I mean, you know, I'm not beyond begging to get into a deal. now even, you know, like that's just what you have to do to get in. And so it takes time, but I think

you then very quickly have to realize either you're good or you're not, right? I mean, there's a moment, somewhere in that six to ten year journey, it's pretty clear that either you are or you're not. And, you know, we have to constantly keep the best. And so, you know, you do rotate at that level, not a lot, but you do have to do it for the betterment of your own shareholders who, you know, they're looking just to make money. That's the only reason why we exist for our shareholders is to make money for them, right? And you have to accept that responsibility as well. But yeah, it takes much longer than, of course, starting a startup.

But on the other hand, it's a lot more comfortable, right? I mean, you have a salary, you get well paid. You know, you're stressed. People give you tolerance for stress because, of course, it takes time to become a venture capitalist, you know. So you don't have the same level of stress as you would in a startup at all, at all. Interesting. Okay, that's fascinating. Okay, so then suddenly you run into Wix.

And I wanted to tell me that story of how did you create that pattern and said, you know what? I want to bet on this Wix thing. Yeah. So, you know, Wix was, I met Wix in 2006, 7 in that, in that timeframe. And I had, this is a rather long story to get to my point, but I think we have time to tell it. I had funded a French, I had funded a French, entrepreneur a few years before. And I lost all my money with his one of those 50% that didn't work out.

But he did his Aliyah. So he immigrated to Israel, right? And in 2007, he called me up and he said, hey, you know, I really want to say, sorry for having lost your money. I'm like, well, don't worry about it. This is the business we're in. He says, if I want to make it up to you, I want, you to see the Israeli tech ecosystem. And so he says, come, I'll host you for three days. And so, you know, I packed my bags and off I went to Tel Aviv. I had been, by the way, to Tel Aviv when I was 18 for the first time. I had taken the first flight from Cairo to Tel Aviv after the peace of course were signed. Yeah. And then, you know, so then I went back in 2007 and of course everything had changed and everything. But, you know, I immediately went, holy smokes, you know,

four hour flight from Europe, we have probably after Silicon Valley, the second most dense tech ecosystem of the world, right? And I look, I'm looking around going, man, and it's a pretty virgin market in the sense of investors, right? So there's an opportunity and how can I leverage my reputation as the Skype guy, you know, and these things. And everybody loves Skype in Israel. Everybody loves it. Yeah.

So you start going, I can do this and so on, so forth. And, you know, and then serendipity led me, you know, to meet the founders of Wix. And, you know, I met them and I said they just, again, it was a group of three guys. when I met them, I knew it just went thick. I said, these guys are going to make it. No matter what they do, right? These guys could do websites or anything else. I'd be like, I'm in, you know?

But of course, they had a number of arguments that got me over the edge. But it was just like that initial, you know, that initial romance. You go, man, I'm in love now, you know? And I was like, yeah, these guys, boom, you know. So that's kind of why. And it was, yeah, and I think the way I'm describing this to you now is exactly how I felt with, you know, with the. Skype guys, with most of our other successful companies, it's like you just, it clicks right away.

It can take you weeks and months after to close the deal if that's what happens. But, you know, me, I'm very much a people person. And I'd say 50, 60, 70% of my due diligence, right, is the people. I love them, I don't love them. Yeah. And so then I have to come back to my partners. And, you know, I have a few partners who are less people, more data driven. And so now I have to make my case.

But that moment was just that moment it clicked. And I was like, man, I need to be part of this. And just like when Skype figured out that they could kill the telcos, back then, building a website cost you $25,000 to $30,000, you know, because you have to have somebody come and coded and everything. And, you know, I had learned, look, I had learned from Skype the concept of free. And that was the greatest school that I ever went to, right? It's like, there nothing beats free.

And so if I can give my product away, then, there is no friction for people to use it if it's free. And I learned that at Skype. And then the Wix guy said to me, you know, we're going to give these websites away for free. And then I said, okay, fine, how do we ultimately make money? And he said exactly what I was hoping, he said, was, I don't know, but we'll figure it out, right? But we're going to build this amazing platform that everybody's going to use. And it was revolutionary at the time, you know, that they could build this amazing website so easy and everything.

and that we'd figure out a way to make money. And luckily, I had done special, I wasn't worried about making money, meaning their business model, I didn't care about it. Now, that is very counter cyclical, even till today in the venture community, right? A lot of venture firms are focused on unit economics. By the way, all these are very important, right?

I'm not debating them, but there's a moment where you see greatness and you know that if they can make such a great process, It might take us a long time to figure out how to get paid, but eventually they'll get us there, right? And that's what happened. That's what happened. And it's a decision between conquering the market or getting immediate revenue, right? I mean, and the VC's world, many times you need to conquer the market. And, you know, that's what both of these.

Yeah, I mean, you know, fondly enough, we're living something similar in, in AI right now, except they're burning cash like drunken sailors. You know, back then, back in 2007, of course, there was not so much capital on the market. And you had to figure out a way to do stuff that was not about burning cash. And so these guys, you know, they built up this great tech team. They had a great CMO that started off with them. And they understood that if I give something great away for free, I'm going to have loyalty for a long time from my user base, right?

And you see, that initial DNA that they have, Ad exists in Wix today, 20 years later, right? It's all about product greatness and how do they make it so that you will love the product. You're not always successful. You're not always successful. Sometimes you come out with a crappy product, right? But inherent to your organization is about product brilliance, you know, gets me loyalty, and then I have to figure out how to make money.

And so we're on that journey across many, many of these things. And like I said in the beginning, like we are sure. huge fans of Wix. I mean, we're still using it, even though there's a ton of other things on the market. I still think it's the easiest by far. It's the most beautiful by far. But for me, and now I'll just kind of like say maybe a short story is I remember raising capital for my first company. And one of the investors said, well, like, we want to invest in you, but I don't see anything on your Google and I don't see anything on your LinkedIn. And like you don't have, you're not known to anybody. Like, and I was just like, I didn't realize I need to be known to anybody, like,

except for my own story. And that was the first time I realized I needed a website and, you know, I looked at Wix and it, like I said in the beginning, I think today, every single person needs to have their own identity and their own economy and their own portfolio career. And it's going to be on something like Wix. Like, so I, anyway, so that's a shout out a little bit to you guys. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And we're happy to hear you're a continued happy user of our products as they continue to evolve. And of course, as we move into the AI world with the acquisition we made of Base 44, as you know, last year, it's been so far, it's been terrific. So anyway, that's a bit, you know, the answer around Wix.

I love that. So take me for a second, because you did tell Wix founders to turn down a $400 million. I mean, that's a scary decision. Take me there for a second. Yeah. It's a scary decision. for everybody, right? I mean, this was a, we had an offer. It was, I think, let me think about it. Yeah, late, late 11, 12, something like that. And we had an American company called Vista Print, who made an offer to buy, to buy Wix. And very generous offer, by the way, at the time, it would have made, you know, the founders very rich. Certainly our firms and other investors would have been very happy. But, you know, it occurred to me, looking at what they had built and how they had really thought through monetization.

And, you know, it just, I opened a parenthood. It took them 26 different tries to get to their business model, you know, trying different things. And, and ultimately, on try number 27, they didn't have a lot of hope that that would work. And, and it did. And, you know, it was the dumbest of all business models, which is you can publish your website for free at Wix, but it'll have Wix in a URL. I take it away. You pay me.

And that's how ultimately it's brilliant. Like it's like so classic now in retrospect. And that's so good. In retrospect, right? Back then, people like, that's never going to work or whatever. But I remember going, and they built such an amazing product. They just had, they just hung on to the idea that we're going to make money. They figured it out.

And, you know, 400 million seemed low. Now, I remember we had sold Skype a few years before for $3 billion. 400 seemed mentally not quite there. And I remember getting on an airplane and flying to Tel Aviv because I wanted to convince the guys not to sell, you know? And, and I went there and I said, look, you guys can be so much more. You can be so much bigger. You have so much potential. I said, you know, we could build one of Israel's greatest companies ever built together. And I said, you know, I don't think you should sell. I said, however, I will respect whatever decision you make because, you know, the money is

important. I said, but I'm here really to argue why I don't think you should sell. And And I remember after, you know, a lot of conversations and probably a few glasses of wine and, you know, saying, saying to the CEO, the founder, Abishaia Amami, I remember saying to him, okay, so what do you want to do? He says, well, look, of course, I want to think about this. He says, but, you know, if anybody else had come here and told me this, I would have told them to go away. But you have proven you've done it with Skype. So I believe in that. And so I have faith that it's doable, right? And then he said, and oh, by the way, if we do that, and we walk away from this offer now,

probably our only path is to go public at the point thereafter. And he said to me, he said, and if we do that, you have to promise to stay on my board as long as I ask you. Now, you know, I didn't want him to sell. So arguably, I was willing to say yes to anything at that time, you know, because I was so convinced he shouldn't sell. But of course, I said yes, and as you know, I'm still on the board of Wix today. So, you know, it's one of those moments where you make a deal and that deal was that deal. And, of course, I'm extremely happy to still be on and to chair the company and all of that. But that was one of those moments, right?

These companies have just a few left or right decisions they have to make in life. Not many, just a few. But boy, do you have to make the right one when it comes your way. And that, I think, was just the right one. We've built an amazing company with amazing people. people, you know, we, we, they, you know, one of the underlying values that allowed them to grow is that they, you know, the founders believe that stock options were very important for growing a business. And, you know, we have several hundred millionaires out of Wix. And that's if you, if, if, if, if I were to sit down

with, with, with the CEO and talk about what are some of the things we're proud of, that would be one of the things that we would both go, that's one of the proudest moments for us, is you know, we were able to give that opportunity to so many people. It's all their hard work, right? But we created that opportunity when we said no, you know, to Vistoprint. We created that opportunity for others. And so that that has become, that's become for my firm now, you know, one of the number one things we look at is generosity around stock option programs for people.

Like that's, we think is so key to success. Yeah. Well, I want to put a mirror for a second because I think you're specifically talking about the people in Wix or that invested in Wix, I actually going to put a mirror a thing because, I mean, I'm sure I'm not, you know, there's a lot of founders on Wix. We happen to be multiple, multiple, multiple million dollar company and one of the fastest going private companies and it's all enabled because of Wix. So I also want to put a little bit of that, right? So I think the ripple effect of what Wix has created is a platform to allow us to service our communities in a lot easier way and for all of us

to create just this massive ripple effect on, I don't know, millions, billions of people. So I think that's what's beautiful about it. So a little bit of mirror here. Yeah. Yeah. No, thank you for saying that. And, you know, we take a lot of satisfaction as being, you know, one of the enabling companies. There are many others, of course.

But, you know, we think that, you know, we think that what we've accomplished for the ecosystem is important in Israel. I think what we've done outside of it is also important. And, you know, this is born out of wanting everybody to just take advantage of the opportunities that their life gives them. And it's like, if you use our platform, great. We have other tools you can use Base 44 now is helping other people do different things. It's like we just want, you know, our goal is to enable every Internet user. to be able to build the company, the dream, the thing that he or she wants to do, right? And we have a very broad suite of products.

People simplify which is just a website building company, you know. A website is a landing page, but it's also a fully functional, you know, business processing product, which is complicated and everything. And, you know, we just think that's why we exist. And we exist to multiply that and give people every chance to be best. We have competitors and they're all great. love them. You know, we love to compete against these tech companies and we think that we're well positioned. But, you know, the mindset of the CEO, the mindset of the founders, the mindset of the

board is all about how do you build this business? How do you produce the best tools, the best products, right, so that you can continue to exist? I love that. And I will ask you a few questions then, maybe just a few more. First of all, you are kind of known as being very contrarian, although I didn't feel it in this conversation. You're somehow known for it, but you've been so awesome. But I do want to hear a little bit, like sometimes when you say the truth, you also need a very, you need thick skin to cope with, you know, with everything that comes your way.

Yeah, how do you build that thick skin? I think I need sometimes an extra, like I need to buy extra thick skin somehow. Yeah, yeah. I think, look, I have thick, thin because, first of all, we do. You know, we look at 2,000 investments per year, and we make five investments. Amazing. So the first thing is, unfortunately, I say no a lot. And so that helps me understand.

I fully understand what the no means, right? I got a lot of them when I started, but we have to do that a lot. We then have a 50% failure rate by design, right, from seed to A rounds, 50%. And so that's where the skin gets very thick because whether it's me or my other partners, we know in every two companies we're going to invest, one is going to tank and we're not going to give them any more money. And so I think you do that. And the third part is, you know, if you don't want to be opinionated publicly, then you have to be

careful because you will get criticized, right? But for me, I use it as a tool to, you know, I don't just make comments passing like that. I'm very careful how I think through this. And usually I'll develop a thesis that I want to argue, right? So I might say, oh, I think, you know, stock options matter for X, Y, Z reasons. Or I might think, you know, I might have a bash at a company for a period of time. But I do it always with a thesis in mind that says, here's my logic why I'm saying this. And of course, I often get people say, you're a lot of.

an idiot and this and that, but that's just the natural presence of being in your job, right, which is you're meeting people and we all have opinions. And I don't think my opinions are that important. They're important to my business and my shareholders for everything else. I try to stay out of politics generally. I try to focus on, you know, what I think are great messages for people to start businesses and do those things. But yeah, thick skin is part of where we have to be. If you can't, if you can't take it, don't dish it out is the other true lesson here. I think somebody told me on this show, if you don't have haters, you're irrelevant. And I was like, great.

I feel very relevant sometimes. A little too relevant sometimes. I mean, the world, the world is a very busy place, right? And so the question is, is how do you pop above the frayed? How do you have a voice that people want to listen to? You know, I have friends for whom they have hundreds of friends. I have a few friends, but a lot of business acquaintances, and those things are different to me. But I'm very involved with my good business acquaintances because fundamentally they are my multiplier of my business.

And so, you know, you have to decide what game you're playing. There's popularity is useless, right? It doesn't advance you in any way, shape, or form. So I don't look for it. You know, I want to be known as somebody who is fair, who is just, who is a good, you know, a good partner to do business with. and somebody who WIC says, I want you to be on my board forever with me. That says more to me than I would say anything else would be around this.

Oh, I agree. So tell me what's coming. So when you're looking at kind of, I mean, you see, like you said, thousands of thousands of companies a year. The pace of change is something that we've never witnessed even close to it. How can you even make investment?

Like nobody knows what's going to happen tomorrow, let alone, you know, and then AI exploded all the valuations. Like, how do we even, so first of all, where are we heading? What do you see, Mark? Tell us a little bit. Well, look, I mean, AI has turned us all into superhumans, right? And that's just a fact that we have to be thankful for that, right? Yeah.

Now, now, it also turns a lot of us into idiots because we just repeat what it says. and these ZLMs make a lot of mistakes, and there's example after example that I can give you there. But there's no question that it's changing how I look at a wine card when I go to a restaurant. It's changing how I build applications. It's changing how doctors are going to diagnose you in the future, right? So the revolution is boom and it's early.

And so how do we as investors think about to take advantage of it? Well, we're looking down two paths very concretely around the AI, right? One is verticalization. Right now, these generic LLMs are good at everything, but they're not great at anything, you see, because they're generalists. And so they're usually about 80% right, rough or take. And so you can't be 80% right if you're running a bank. You can't be 80% right if you're a doctor, right?

That just doesn't work. And so people have to build, you know, AI companies that will use some components, some components of these LLMs, but not only. You have to build your own tech stack as well. You know, you can't just be a wrapper for OpenAI or GROC or those guys. And then you build something that has true, in my opinion, business logic in the case of healthcare, which is a big space we're involved in, right? We think AI is going to fundamentally change the way hospitals are run and doctors do their work. work and and all this not to replace them we have no desire to replace doctors but what we want is we want that experience to be better for the person who's ill and sometimes it means meeting a human

sometimes it's about just convenience right let me do a diagnostic using an app and things like that and so i think verticalization is one and then the whole enterprise gig is the other one it's like how do you crack the enterprise because they're having up and again i think it's through specialization and verticalization and things like that. So that's one area that I look at when I take out my crystal ball and say, where do I want to go? Of course, then there's sub-sectors, right? So, you know, we're invested in an American-Israeli company, which is really one of the big leaders of healthcare called K-Health.

That's a really big one. They work with major hospitals in America. So, you know, they're powering, you know, Mass General, which is the Harvard Hospital. They're, you know, and a bunch of other hospitals. And so you see, you just, you can see inside how the user-examines. experience is better, how the hospital is better, and how the doctor's life is better. So you're like, it's win, win, win, win for everybody. But we're not replacing anybody, you know. So, and then AI kind of just gets into everything now. So, you know, on Wix, if I want to build a website, I remember when I was

building websites a few years ago, I'd be like stumped on the colors or on the copy. Like what would I write on my website? Well, nowadays, you know, you don't have to be worried because Wix does it all for you, so it's much easier. But so I think. AI is going to be a big area that we focus on, of course, but the verticalization piece matters really a lot. And, you know, it'll then take over insurance. It'll take over all of these sub-sectors. There's going to be just a bonanza of specialized AI companies in those areas, you know, and whether ultimately they put out of business great companies, they probably will, because those great companies will become incumbents themselves. And, you know, Wix today is viewed as

an incumbent, right? Oh, my God, who would have thought of that? when we started. But, so you have to reinvent yourself a lot and these tech cycles, you know, what they do is they separate those companies that can reinvent themselves and those that can't. The other area we look around is, you know, one of the problems with the internet

and not the AI, just generally with internet and online is everything, is it dehumanizes a little bit the relationships among people, right? Because you could walk into your house and your two kids would be on their iPads watching a different TV series, your husband might be working at

another one and so on. So we think there's a whole area that you should be looking at as an investor around entertainment, things that bring humans together, right? And that could be, you know, concerts, sports, all these type of things. And, you know, we're invested in a company called Project B. They want to kind of do basketball around the world in a different type of settings and things like this. And so, but for me, it's just all about how do you make people spend more time together to combat this problem called the internet and the online? It just makes it so that we don't spend any time. You've probably been in meetings where half people in the meeting are sitting on their phones.

And you're like, you know, that's not cool. Like either we're hanging out together or we're not. So look, me, I'm guilty of that myself. And so that if I go out to dinner with my family, I don't take my phone with me. Just because I cannot keep off my phone. Like it's a drug for me, right? So those are the areas that I think one should be focused on and things. And, you know, and by the way, with all these.

tools, including, you know, Base 44 now, you can build anything you want. Now, you know, you can imagine it. You can build it. You don't necessarily have to code it. But it has limit. They all have limitations, right? I mean, you know, building software is not just building the original product, but there's a lot of things. There's always a back end. Yeah, but it's incredible. There's always, yeah. It's just the power that's being given to us, right? By these, by these, by these, by these, by these companies. It's just, truly, truly remarkable, right? I mean, we bought Base 44 last year and we have a tremendous founder there and the company's growing like gangbusters and but you know, they're building again, a la Wix because for us,

they're part of Wix now, you know, and they're building very much in that same mindset as Wix. Great products, great infrastructure, one-stop shop and over time, you know, we're going to over time the view is build your website if that's what you want, build your identity if that's what you want, build apps if you want, build agents if you want. It's just making the creation process easier. And I think that's the key. It's the creation process. Exactly. Because I think to download an idea and what you want to do into the reality, right? And I think that's what it makes it a lot easier. And for us, it's interesting. We've seen AI in different things in Leap Academy. One is to create your own personal brand, basically creating, how do you create a category of one

in the fastest way possible without like, Brazilian assessment and Brazilian things. Like, it's so easy to do now. And the other thing that we've seen with enterprises is how fast we can shrink the sales and marketing arena because it's still so old, right? Like you do the marketing and you meet again and then you do a demo and then you do it. And it's amazing how you can shrink all of that and just shrink the cycle. So, you know, I think it's an incredible time.

Yeah. Yeah. Now, I would say, I would say, and this is where I'll be probably contrarian here a little bit, is that, you know, it's all fine to be drinking the Kool-Aid of Open AI and Anthropic and those guys. But the truth of the matter is you still have to be willing, you still have to know how to sell your product. You still have to be able to serve customers. You still have to be able to deliver. And so, you know, it's a part of building your business. It is not the part of building your business, despite what they want us to believe, right? And so, You know, I tend to mute the conversations that come out of those. By the way, both are partners of Wix, fantastic tech partners. But, you know, when you listen to them talk, don't forget they're drinking their own Kool-Aid. And the reality is that AI adoption is going to come in different speeds and different flavors and different organizations. It's not one-size-fits-all, like most tech trends, that will take time before it gets absorbed, right? and by the general population and things like that.

But boy, can you dream things like you could never before for sure. I just hope more people jump on the bandwagon of saying, my Lord, you know, I don't have to know how to code anymore. I could go to Base 44 and just create something absolutely stunning and perfect. You know, and I could go and build my business or, you know, we see the amount of people who've used Luick's websites to build e-commerce businesses, big e-commerce businesses. And when you speak to them at conferences and things like this,

you know, they're just grateful for you having given them the tools to express their identity, their individuality, and building businesses. And that's super rewarding for us. And why we think across our platform, that's the mindset that we have to drive forward every single day in everything that we do. And that's why I like that you called it superhumans, right?

You can just become a superhuman and you can just create whatever it is, that you want to dream and I love that. So maybe Mark, one final question. Like if you just kind of like met yourself many years ago, maybe in one of those dark moments for you, what would you wish somebody told you or what would you say to your younger self or to somebody listen to this call and saying, God, Mark, I want more out of my life. I don't know what it looks like. I either got laid off or I'm trying to figure out what's next and I'm seeing all the changes. What would you wish somebody told you? somebody had told me that your life is and is all about how much content you personally have right so that your ability to express thoughts and ideas are what makes you interesting or not interesting

and so the one way you can do that that depends only on you is by absorbing as much knowledge as possible. In the old days, you would say that goes through reading books, right? Read a bunch of books, become smarter. You know, maybe today you could go to Gemini from Google. They actually have a product that gives you, you say, I want to learn about stem cells, and it'll lay out a set of lessons for you to do that. But I would say invest in your knowledge base. Be the smartest person you can be so that when you're in a group, when you're thinking with people, or when you're just trying to promote yourself, you have content. Because a lot of people are shallow and have no content. So that would be my advice to myself. Like, invest in yourself. Like, there's no excuse, right?

Yeah, you can't find a job and it's rainy and, you know, there's this. Fine. What you can do is read Right. Every single day, for sure, one hour. So the advice I give to every single analyst that joins Mangrove is you need to be reading between 20 and 30 books per year. It shows you what the rhythm is. And, you know, that's a book every two weeks. That means you got to read, give one hour a day. And I say to them, it doesn't have to be after work.

Do it at work because the smarter you become, the smarter we become, right? As an organization. And so and just read a lot of stuff. And I think what I'm expressing here is probably my education in liberal arts where my passion was history. It wasn't tech, it wasn't any of that. I was really passionate about history. And I think today that has served me really, really, just being intellectually curious all the time. And recognizing that if we're in a group of 10, how do you pop above all others?

Well, you pop because you have more content, more value, you're more interesting. And that's what I would say, invest in yourself more than anything, right? I can give 10 other lessons, but if you ask me for one, that's like the one that matter. The one. I love that. And I wish I understood earlier how much I, it's important to invest in yourself and your own knowledge. And because again, I, you know, I think this is such a great, great, great feedback.

Thank you, Mark. This was so good. I appreciate the conversation. Where can they find you? Yeah, where can they find you? Very easy, easy, easy, easy. Everybody can find me who takes two minutes to look. I'm very findable.

Okay, perfect. So we'll have some links in the show nuts. That was awesome. I appreciate you, Mark. All right, cool. Thanks again. I appreciate the time. And thank God we finally got together.

Hey, so I hope you enjoyed the conversation. I know I did. And I want to now go to the question of the week. And remember that it's all on our YouTube channel. So go to Leap Academy with Ilana Golan on your YouTube and make sure to ask your questions. I pick a, you know, a person every single week. Sometimes it will bring them live. It's going to be so cool.

But really, like right now, I found an incredible question from Margie. Thank you, Margie. And she asks a beautiful question about how do you land your first client when you don't have experience? And what a tremendous question because you're right. you run into this chicken and egg. So the best way by far to land your first client when you don't have an experience, whether it's individual clients or corporate clients, is to do a research. And what I mean by this is reach out to people that are relevant.

They're going to be in your network initially. It's people that you know. And in order to be more comfortable doing this, instead of a sales call, you're inviting them to a research call. What this means is something along the lines. It can't be a copy paste, right? This is personal. Like you're reaching out to a friend, to a peer, to an employer, to somebody you know.

Could have, maybe they have the problem that you have that you're solving. Maybe they don't. But you want to start having collect information and collect a lingo, right? And so you're going to reach out to somebody. So if you're helping people with losing weight or you're helping people with their careers or you're helping people with, or companies with adopting AI, whatever it is, you're going to write, hey, like, so great seeing you after a long time. Like, I love following your journey or whatever.

I say something personal. And they'd say, hey, you know, I'm passionate about helping driven professionals or whatever it is, reinvent and leap their career after doing this for myself and doing this for a few people. Like, I'm just like really, really on a mission to hope more people succeed. And I actually would love your input. Can we get on a quick call? That is it. That's how you get people to have a quick phone call with you. Now, the beautiful thing is on the phone call, this is not a sales call. This is a research call, right? Which makes it so much easier. And in that case, you just kind of ask

them, hey, thanks for being on the call with me. You know, for someone who, you know, wants to lose weight or somebody who feels stuck in their career, or somebody that wants to adopt AI or whatever it is, right? like whatever it is that you want to solve and help them. For someone who wants to solve this big pain in their career, what do you think is their biggest paypoint, right? And then they're going to hear that they feel stuck or they feel a fraction of who they can be, or they're not sure what's next for them,

or they've been unemployed or they've been, you know, laid off or they want to start a business, but they don't know how, right? That's our biggest pain point, the pain point that Leap Academy solves. Right. Now you're going to ask them, hey, what's the biggest thing that you think they're facing? How is it showing up in their life? Do you think it's impacts their sleep? Do you think it's impact their health, their livelihood, right? And just start getting information. And you can also say about their dreams, right? And what do you think they actually want? Right? What are they trying to do?

And at the end of the conversation, you basically say, hey, do you know someone, I'm a passionate to help people reinvent leap their careers? Do you know someone that this can work for? So first of all, they might just say, hey, me, right? Or, you know. they might say actually maybe I know somebody. And that's by far the best way to start getting your first clients. So put, you know, again, there's no pressure. It's not a sales call. It's just a research call. So get, do your homework. Find at least 10 people that you can have conversation with. And let's go. I can't wait Margie to hear your wins in our YouTube channel. I hope this is helpful. Cheers. More episode that you're going to love are right around the corner.

so definitely make sure to click the like button and subscribe to our channel. Also, who in your life should see this today? Do share this with them. This will inspire and help those you care about and helps us continue to bring amazing guests. And I will see you there.