Company Visit at Wix.com

 

By Shira Lider

 

Westchester County. What does Westchester County have to do with our visit to Wix in Tel Aviv?

 

As part of the entrepreneurship program, first-year students in the Israeli and International tracks have the opportunity to visit companies and learn more in-depth about them. This time, we visited the Wix Campus. Wix.com is a website that helps people create websites without knowledge of coding - making website creations accessible to everyone. Wix’s mission is to have an online presence and to be a one-stop shop. Wix does this by having a website builder, designing and managing social media campaigns, creating and sending newsletters, CRM & visitor analytics, and more…

 

As we all go into the building, we realize how large it is, how easy to get lost in, and how dog-friendly Wix is to their employees.

 

We were led into a meeting room where Yoav talked about Wix’s history, its challenges, and The Wix Way.

 

During our visit, Yoav Cohen, Head of Training and Team Lead at Wix.com mentioned that his family and he were emissaries in Westchester County for a few years.
We connected the dots and realized he was the shaliach (emissary) in my community and that my family knew him while we were still in New York. What a small world!

 

In 2006, the idea of creating Wix started at a cafe in Tel Aviv by Avishai Abrahami, Nadav Abrahami, and Giora Kaplan. They had no connections to websites, HTML, etc... That same year Facebook became open to the general public and Google bought YouTube for $1.65 billion dollars. Originally, they had venture capitalists interested in a different idea and while trying to create a website for their idea, they realized that creating a website was a huge issue for them. So, they told the venture capitalists that they have a different idea which they liked and decided to invest in.

 

During Covid-19, online presence increased and Wix suddenly doubled their users and needed to hire more people to manage their company and clients. There also arose a desire by clients to have Zoom as a plug-in on clients’ websites. Wix was able to install it within 3 days.

 

When the Ukraine war started, Wix had offices in Ukraine and had to take action. They put business aside, closed their offices there, and offered their workers rescue flights and buses from the border. They offered them financial support and a place to sleep and host their families. That was a major challenge they had to navigate. One of the challenges that they have today is marketing their website through what is trending on popular social media platforms such as TikTok.

 


When a person gets hired by Wix, no matter what position, they all are taught The Wix Way. The Wix Way includes 12 commandments.

 

  1.  We work for our users’ success
  2.  We build the best products in the world
  3.  You own what you do
  4.  Be a Pro
  5.  We are transparent
  6.  We allow failures
  7.  Winning
  8.  We measure everything
  9.  We care about our people
  10.  Be direct
  11.  No assholes
  12.  Fun

 

A key takeaway:

 

“Be a user, not a loser” - Yoav Cohen.

 

This means that in order to be a Wix expert you need to be a Wix user. As simple as it sounds, you would be surprised how often this is overlooked. Avishai had done this with Wix. He realized that there is a problem with creating websites because he did not know how to code. Thus, through being a user he was able to come up with a solution to the program. Yoav also embodies this spirit by using Wix’s services himself. He has a website through Wix called pointofview.blog.

 

I would like to thank Yoav Cohen and the Wix team on behalf of Reichman University students for hosting us and providing valuable insights.