The concept behind the 3.8 billion dollar company was the brainchild of veteran entrepreneurs Avishai Abrahami, Nadav Abrahami and Giora Kaplan. Ironically, they were working on the establishment of a completely different start-up at the time.
When trying to build a website for that start-up, they found that the process was expensive, complex, cumbersome and tedious.
It was 2006. While the internet was already an integral part of life, website building was an overwhelming undertaking for those who were unversed in design, website building, and writing code – and for people who were unable to pay professionals to do it for them. This encounter led the entrepreneurs to found the concept of Wix: a platform offering users the ability to create professional, inviting websites for free or for a low price. The three entrepreneurs founded the company that same year. Initially, the product set its sights on small and mediumsized companies interested in establishing an online presence.
In the following years, Wix developed products suited for online stores, restaurants and hotels, and professionals such as photographers, musicians, etc. The platform was recently expanded, and users can now use it to run both their site and their business. Users can choose a template and appearance for their website, which they can fill with personal content: text, images and video.
In recent years, Wix has made great strides with the addition of two new features: Wix ADI allows users to create websites within a matter of minutes using AI (Artificial Intelligence);
and Wix Code is the first-ever platform offering the option of creating added components using external code. These features substantially expand Wix’s target audience to include both users who have no affinity for design or technology, as well as developers and designers.
Wix has been traded on the NASDAQ since 2013. It has 120 million customers in 190 countries and annual revenues of 426 million dollars. Its headquarters are located in Tel Aviv; it has a development center in Be’er Sheva, and centers located across Europe and the US. In 2017, 2,000 of its employees, mostly located in Israel, chose Wix as one of the ten best software companies to work for in the world.
