5 lessons on building a $1B startup with Micha Kaufman (Co-founder & CEO of Fiverr) | Ep171
Key takeaways and lessons from Ep171 of The Startup Playbook Podcast
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A little history on Micha & Fiverr
After a brief hiatus with the podcast, Iām excited to be back doing weekly podcast episodes and have a cracking guest on for Ep171 of The Startup Playbook Podcast
For this episode I sat down with Micha Kaufman, the Co-founder & CEO of Fiverr
Micha Kaufman and Shai Wininger launched Fiverr in 2010 as a marketplace to connect freelancers to people and businesses. The idea was simple, you could hire people for tasks around the world for $5 or less.
Like many ideas ahead of its time, Micha was laughed at by the first 20 people he pitched Fiverr to, which only made him more convinced about the idea!
Fast forward to today and Fiverr employs hundreds of employees serving millions of users around the world. The company went public in 2019 and currently has a market cap over $1B.
This interview was jam packed with insights on lessons, frameworks and the journey that Micha used to build Fiverr from an idea into a billion dollar company.
Here are 5 key takeaways from my conversation with Micha Kaufman
1. Escaping the āgolden cageā
One of the most challenging hurdles many of us have to face in pursuing our passion is escaping the āgolden cageā aka the comfort and stability of a well paying job.
Micha had a successful legal career and despite always knowing he wanted to start a business, it wasnāt until his wife went through an extremely difficult health battle that he had the push he needed to start his first company.
2. Frameworks for generating $1B ideas
There is a line of thinking that the best ideas just spontaneously happen in the shower or at your friends bbq. But what if there was a systematic framework to help you identify the right business and market to go after?
Thatās exactly what Micha did to come up with the idea for Fiverr. He went through the exercise of going through a retrospect of his previous businesses and using a simple 3 step framework to come up with idea behind Fiverr
3. How to create viral growth
Building initial momentum and user growth for an unknown company can be very difficult.
Micha built in viral growth for Fiverr from by offering the āgimmickā of offering services for $5.
They used the tagline of āthe things people do for $5ā which initially spread and went viral, allowing them to build the momentum and metrics they needed to grow the business and raise their seed funding round.
4. Solving the chicken and egg problem of marketplaces
One of the most common questions for marketplace startups is determining whether they focus and solve for the supply or the demand side of the problem.
Here are Michaās thoughts on this:
5. Scaling company culture
As Micha mentions in this interview, creating company culture is relatively easy at the early stages because the culture is often based on just the founder.
But how do you scale, share and impart the DNA of the early team members when you grow to hundreds of employees around the world?
In this clip from the podcast, Micha shares his tips on scaling company culture
In the full episode, Micha opens up on his journey, lessons and insights including:
How his parentsā journey from Argentina to Israel, and his wifeās battle with cancer shaped his worldview and appetite for risk.
His transition from practising lawyer to founder and lessons from first three companies before Fiverr.
The framework for assessing ideas he created that helped him land on the idea for Fiverr.
Launching and growing a double sided marketplace
Maintaining culture as you scale a company
and much more!.
You can find the full podcast episode on all of your favourite podcasting apps by searching for āThe Startup Playbook Podcastā or you can find all of the links here:
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