Congrats to the team, but the media coverage is a bit silly here.
"Solo unicorn.. well, ok it was $80M not $1B.. and, sure ok it wasn't 1 guy, he had a team of 8.." LOL.
Guy lists himself as an "angel investor" and "Forbes 30 under 30" on his Linkedin, so clearly not his first rodeo and has good connections, likely a stronger ingredients than the tech.
So you know, not bad money, and I'd certainly take it. But doesn't seem like any step function change in ROI for startup founders due to LLMs here.
As others have pointed out, Wix bought the leads/client list.. not the tech.
Also, Wix bought this guy with an impressive track record. There might be an earn-out that's not being discussed.
The article mentions that $25M is a retention bonus for those eight employees. (About $3M each — a nice bonus by any standard, but not insane for SV + AI. Presumably that's Wix stock, not cash.)
So the purchase price might be made up of components something like this:
- $30M for the client list
- $25M retention bonus to employees, with standard RSU vesting
- $25M for the founder, with earn-out goals over four years
To be an angel investor you can open a wefunder account and yolo some cash on some startups.
Forbes 30u30 is a PR thing that simply requires some cash and a bit of charisma.
Neither of these are signals :) It looks like there are much stronger different signals out there for this guy.
"Solo unicorn.. well, ok it was $80M not $1B.. and, sure ok it wasn't 1 guy, he had a team of 8.." LOL.
Guy lists himself as an "angel investor" and "Forbes 30 under 30" on his Linkedin, so clearly not his first rodeo and has good connections, likely a stronger ingredients than the tech.
So you know, not bad money, and I'd certainly take it. But doesn't seem like any step function change in ROI for startup founders due to LLMs here.
As others have pointed out, Wix bought the leads/client list.. not the tech.