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Around the Desk: This is where we at Avory think out loud, challenge narratives, and look for signal through the noise. Each episode, the Avory & Co. team dives into what’s moving markets, how companies are performing, and where opportunities may be forming. We break down earnings, macro trends, and investor sentiment — all from the lens of a concentrated, high-conviction portfolio.
*** The views expressed on Avory Podcast: Around the Desk are those of the hosts and guests and do not constitute investment advice. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon to make investment decisions. All investments involve risk, including potential loss of capital. Avory & Co. may hold positions in the companies discussed.
Welcome to Avery's podcast.
Today we had a fireside chat with Mika
Kaufman, the founder, and CEO of Fiverr.
Please enjoy the conversation.
Okay.
Houston Hess: offer or recommendation for
the purchase or sell of any securities
or other financial products and services.
Discussed herein.
Certain statements contained herein may
be statements of future expectations,
opinions, and other forward looking
statements that are based on Avory's
current views and assumptions.
And involve known and unknown risks
and uncertainties that could cause
actual results, performance, or
events to differ materially from those
expressed or implied in such statements.
And with that, I'll turn
it back to you, Sean.
Sean Emory: Awesome.
Appreciate it.
Um, thanks.
You also here with, you
know, my co-founder.
You know, Luis here at Avory.
You know Micha great
to have you here today.
You know.
For those that didn't miss the intro.
'cause it, you know, we started
the recording a little late.
You know, we're here with Micha
Kaufman, founder, CEO of Fiverr.
I'll set the stage here for, you know,
60, 90 seconds and then, you know,
we'll get into some questions here.
But, you know, we have our investors
here at Avory that are joining or
listening in after this discussion.
You know, we had, you know, just
looking at some of the attendance,
uh, uh, in terms of signups,
you know, sell side buy side.
Analysts who signed up for this.
Again, they'll get it.
But you know, in general, you know,
at Avory our job is to, you know,
invest where the world is headed.
A big part of that is, is
understanding, you know, the platforms
that are reshaping, you know,
how people live, how people work,
how they create, how they build.
Uh, Fiverr for us has been one of
those platforms, a business that.
Consistently shows, you know, many
of the characteristics financially,
operationally, you know, the
individual running it, obviously.
Um, and you know, I think the shift
in work is, is somewhat undeniable.
It's becoming more digital, more
global, much more skill-based.
Uh, you know, companies want flexibility.
I think, uh, individuals that are
in the workforce want autonomy.
Uh, the infrastructure that connects.
Those two different aspects
is increasingly becoming more
and more technology based.
And Fiverr, I think, sits right at the
center of that, you know, that transition
that you know, is a decade plus in the
making with Micha now despite, you know,
some of these, you know, secular trends
that I, you know, uh, profess, you
know, the stock has been volatile over
the last few years, to say the least.
And the reasons behind that
have changed at the margins.
But I think there's ultimately
two main forces, uh, behind it.
You know, the first is.
One around the macro.
You know, when companies get
cautious or labor market tightens,
you know, the freelance economy
can feel that adjacent pressure.
Um, you know, hiring a
freelancer is essentially,
uh, hiring a partial employee.
So it's naturally that it would
move, you know, in terms of the
sentiment around the labor force.,
Alongside that though, I think,
you know, Fiverr's executed well,
some of the noise out there.
Has been loud, but I think
the underlying business has
been, you know, rather steady.
The second, and, you know, you could
argue the most important in terms of
noises, um, is ai, uh, you know, we're
in a moment where investors are asking,
you know, which companies are, you
know, remain essential in a world where.
More tasks can be automated.
Our view is, you know, simple
humans in the loop will be
critical, uh, in many areas.
Platforms that help orchestrate
that work, I think stand to benefit.
But those questions have,
, added I think another layer
of, , complexity to the story.,
As I wrap up, you know, I think
this conversation matters.
You know, beneath that volatility
I think is a foundation of.
Uh, record cash flows almost, you
know, record profitability, margins
expanding pretty much every year.
If I go back five, six years
ago, margins were negative.
Today they're at 20 or roughly
close to, they pulled forward.
They're, you know, farther out.
Medium term target of 25%
margins, uh, ahead by a full year.
Revenues, you know,
remain near record levels.
And yes, you know, there's some questions
about active buyers, but if you have
listened to Micha and the team, you
know, the upmarket strategy that seems
to be gaining ground, uh, continues.
You look at record spend per
buyer, continuing to go up into
the right as a function of, you
know, uh, viability of what you
know they have been talking about.
So today is unpacking all these
things, the foundation, the future
hearing directly from Micha, the
leadership, uh, of this team.
And again, we welcome you here today and,
and, uh, thanks for joining us, Micha.
Thanks Amar for having me.
I'm, I'm glad to be here.
Luis Alvarez: Micha, you know
Sean, it's Sean's birthday today.
He's 37.
Oh my God.
Happy birthday man.
We, we met when he was 25.
Oh God.
Amazing.
Congrat, he always throwing, uh.
Celebrations.
But, um, back to work, the, uh, look to
start out the first five minutes, not
even, you know, a couple minutes, just
I think everyone should hear from you,
you know, the origin story of, of Fiverr.
What was original insights of
Fiverr, you know, what were some
of those hard decisions you had
to make early on, you know, 10, 15
years ago to get where you're today?
Micha Kaufman: Yeah.
Um, so, so really the, the origin or the,
the, the insight that we had, uh, when
we created the company was that, that
people wanted to build and grow businesses
and they needed help succeeding.
And we wanted to help them do that, but
also help them help each other do that.
And what we realized was that the way
to find and engage with talent involved.
High friction inefficiency that could
be solved with the concept of service
as a product or the creation of a skew
system that would make finding qualified
talent in what became almost 800 different
categories as easy as ordering an Uber.
And, and this was, this
was really the epiphany.
And this, this was something that
was never done outside of e-commerce
before we've done it, and probably
for, for good reasons, because unlike
retail, where the SKU system is very
well defined and is universal, when you
think about services, digital services,
um, they're very hard to define.
There is no universal definition for it.
There is no universal SKU system.
Everything is nuanced.
Um, a lot of the services are very
subjective and they vary between people.
So the task of creating the SKU
system was highly complex, um,
and questionable Until we, we, we
were the first to, uh, to do it.
And I think that this was, this
was really the, the, the main
breakthrough at the beginning.
Um, but, but we also saw this opportunity
of creating an open, horizontal platform
with a very strong flywheel effect.
And actually the way we started it,
and, and this was all about, you know,
having a very smart and viral, uh,
flywheel effect was to start offering.
Uh, services for $5.
That, that was the, the basic economy
of, of Fiverr at the beginning.
And the purpose of that was to, to really
create something that would go super viral
without us having to invest money into it.
Actually, the company at
that point was bootstrapping.
Um, so we coded, you know,
we were two founders.
We coded the entire thing ourselves.
And that story of, of
making these microservices.
Um, for a, for a, a, a flat fee or a flat
price was the, the claim to fame at the
beginning, but it also allowed us to, um,
make many people intrigued about the idea.
People starting to make money,
people starting to see value
in engaging with other people.
And, and that was kind of the,
the start of the creation of
a whole economy around this.
So this was, this was
kind of the, the very.
Early stages, and I think that the,
the key decisions and, and maybe
learnings, um, were that we needed
to create a community based on trust.
And, and trust allowed us to scale
and become more than a one-time
solution for our customers.
Um, and, and, and so by providing not
just a matching service, but being
their partner and facilitating the
entire aspect of transaction from, from
contracting to NDAs, to payments, to
communication, to providing money back
guarantee to, to providing support, to
being involved was a, was a key, was a
key component of the, of the success.
When you think about all of, all of
these factors, these factors have been
taking us all the way to today, which
created a very resilient business in, in
a fast changing economy, um, since then.
Got it.
So, you know, people that are
listening in the, you run a marketplace
today, you have buyers on one side,
people buying services, right?
Very similar to the early days,
just the, the, the type of, you
know, jobs have changed over time.
I think that's important.
We can touch on that later.
Mm-hmm.
Um, but in general, like, you know,
if we started to break down, you
know, some of the key elements of,
you know, the business itself, so
people have a, a, you know, better
understanding of, you know, the supply
dynamics, you know who they are.
What do what, what do both sides
of you know, that supply look like?
You know, demand trends,
again, it doesn't have to be in
quarter or anything like that.
Again, this is, you know, um, everything
that you've said publicly, but you know
what's happening on the demand side,
the buyer behaviors, you know, going up
market repeat behavior again, which I
think shows a level of, um, satisfaction
with the, with the marketplace.
Yay or nay.
And you share stats about that.
Uh, but in, in general,
I'll go one by one.
Just if you could just supply
dynamics of the, of the
marketplace, you know, who are they?
Um, and just any context
that you can share.
Sure.
So you're right to call the fact
that it's a two-sided market base
where you have supply and demand.
Um, on the supply side you have, uh.
Freelancers that are individuals with a
few years of experience, all the way to
highly skilled individuals that have done
work for the largest brands in the world.
Um, all the way to mega agencies
that are doing, that are providing
tremendous amount of, of, uh, of,
uh, output for their customers.
Many of them are making multiple
million dollars a year on our platform.
Um, so you have a very wide variety.
And again, when you think about the
types of services that are being
listed on Fiverr, they start from
basic, somewhat simplistic types
of services and they go all the
way to very, very complex projects.
If, if we started from the $5.
Um, a price point today, you have
transactions that start at $5 and
end up at hundreds of thousands
of dollars per one transaction.
So obviously that correlates with the
type of supply that needs to tackle
these, these different types of services.
And it starts from very simple services.
And now you have very, very
complex, uh, services that have
to do with software creation.
Uh, publishing of it, uh, helping
our customers market their creations
and scaling it up so you have a very
wide variety on the demand side.
Again, since we started with microservices
at the beginning, it was mostly
discovered by micro businesses and SMBs.
And over the years as we've extended
the supply side or the skill side,
we've started to attract the more
large customers with more nuanced,
more complex types of needs.
So you can see you, you can find
any, any, any type of customer from
a individual that wants to start
a business and they're, they need
to create an app or a website or
promote their product all the way to.
The majority of Fortune 500 companies,
uh, that are doing much more complex
and, and, and higher scale types
of, of services on the platform.
Got it.
And I know you share a stat that, um,
that, uh, is around repeat behavior.
I think it's, you know,
60 ish to 70% of Correct.
Your buyers are repeat buyers.
If you could just elaborate
a little bit about, you know,
what, who, who these people are.
Like what kind of companies, agencies are
these that are driving this repeat demand?
Like what satisfaction are they
actually getting from this platform?
Sure.
Um, so, so when you look at the,
uh, at the makeup of, of Fiverr's
revenues, um, and you, you look at
the cohort behavior, as you've said,
more than 60% of our, uh, revenues
are coming from repeat businesses.
So these are businesses that have
came to Fiverr, had the great
experience, and started expanding
the type of work that they do.
As they build more confidence, and as
I said before, it's all about trust.
When you establish trust and when
you get a great experience, you allow
yourself to think about other things
that you can do with the platform, which
makes them expand what they're doing.
Some of these customers might be.
Agencies that have repeat work
and we support some of their
skill needs within the agency.
That could be very large companies
that have ongoing projects and they
constantly need to create more.
It's customers that started
building something with us.
But then as I've said, you build
something, you need to publish it.
You need to get audience for it, you
need to market it, you need to grow it.
You need to continue investing
in what you're doing in your
product, in your go-to market.
And we've been able through trust.
To drive them to do cross category
purchases over time and make Fiverr
their go-to place for anything
they need around digital services.
And you said that at the beginning
of the intro, what we've identified
over the past few years is that more
and more businesses are not just
relying on their full-time employees.
But they augment on that talent
with highly skilled individuals or
agencies that can tackle very specific
types of needs that some of them
are one time, or some of them are
multiple time, but they don't justify
hiring someone full-time for it.
So they use.
They use the platform because of its
convenience, um, and the fact that those
who care about work misclassification
and all of that, we support all of
that ecosystem, um, by allowing them
to maximize the benefits of working
with talent from all around the world.
Um, so we, we've seen, we've seen
that trend growing and actually
the fact that more than 60% of our
revenues are coming from repeat.
Goes back to the
predictability of the business.
I've been, I've been talking
about this since IPO, I mean, and,
and you called out this as well.
The profile of the company, um,
over the past six years since going
public has been very, very different.
You know, the company was, was
generating less than a hundred million
dollars in revenues with negative,
I think it was 16% EBITDA all the
way to more than $400 million.
And over 20% e be done 25 next year.
So, and, and, and, and, and printing about
a hundred million dollars free cash flow.
So it's a very different company that it
used to be, and the types of customers
have been, you know, growing with us.
Sure.
Sometimes because of economy
there's a little bit more pressure
on micro businesses because.
Cost of borrowing money
is slightly higher.
Larger businesses are taking advantage
and they reinvesting their capital
into growth and they're being
more prominent on the market base.
And this has been our strategy
in the past few years, investing
in these types of customers.
You've called out the fact that
there's some trends in how much
customers spend, and then there's
also trends in the active buyer count.
All of this is by design.
So we've, we've really refocused,
um, our energy and our investment
in more complex types of projects.
For larger customers that can be
retained for longer periods of
time, they have a larger wallet.
They appreciate the power of working
with, with remote and flexible talent,
and they make the most out of it.
It's not that we lost interest completely
in smaller businesses, but when you
want to create a very robust business
over time, you need to focus on those
customers that are not one timers, those
who can be retained, that they have the
spend capacity and where you can make
the most, the most influence and, and
help the most, create the most value.
Got it.
The, you know, speaking of the, the
platform more broadly, how many categories
do you have today so people can understand
the breadth and diversification of,
you know, what's on the platform?
Um, you know, the latest number
that I guess that you guys have.
It's, it's close to 800 different
categories and they fall under, uh,
big verticals in including everything
between, you know, design and
graphics to software development, um,
marketing, uh, video productions, uh,
writing services, uh, music, audio,
uh, business consultancy, finance.
Obviously AI related services,
um, um, data services.
I mean, the list goes on and on.
Anything you can imagine and actually.
When, when we look at those categories,
and sometimes people have this idea
of, of displacement, of specific
types of services, for us, this
has been the reality for 15 years.
Categories come and go and that's natural.
Um, we've seen categories that have popped
up have been exploding for a year, and
then, you know, they go out of favor.
That's not a new thing for us, but the
amount of categories, new categories
that we create is always larger
than those that are out of favor.
And, and so that dynamic is something
that, that is constantly happening.
And one of the strengths of Fiverr
is being a two-sided market base.
A horizontal market base is the ability
to identify trending services and needs.
Make sure that we feel the skill
side of it first, the talent side
of it first, and then we're able
to start transacting around those
new categories extremely fast.
Everything I, I describe right
now, identifying the need, getting
the right talent in, starting
to transact with customers.
Is a cycle that takes about two weeks.
So this is super, super fast.
And in peak quarters we've been
introducing, I don't know, 30
to 40 new categories a quarter.
So this depends on what we're seeing
on the trends, and we, we became
very, very efficient identifying
those trends, whether within Fiverr
or outside of Fiverr, and making
sure that we, we represent those
trends and those skills on, on the,
on the platform as soon as possible.
We've seen that over the years
where, you know, everything changes.
TikTok didn't, you know, exist at
one point, you know, tamu and all
these other things didn't exist.
And then, and they're still here.
Uh, and so, you know, people
are doing, you know, various
services on your platform.
Then you have, you know, something like,
you know, some of the, uh, the, you know.
NFTs, right.
Which was a flash in the, you know,
in the sun for a moment and then,
you know, came crashing down and
no one was essentially doing that.
So I'm assuming, you know, you saw
this demand shot and then, you know.
Some sort of, uh, you know, uh, Eiffel
Tower or pattern of, uh, demand.
Um, but that's fine.
I mean, when you think, when, when
you think about, this is not very
different than how Amazon runs their
business, their market-based business.
I mean, there's, there's, you know,
there's products that are trending
and in a quarter or two or maybe a
year or two, they're gonna disappear
or just, you know, go, go down to a,
to, to a smaller, to a smaller scale.
That's fine.
This is, you know, that's the idea
of running a marketplace, right?
Yeah.
For, for some of the, um, going to
the, the take rate, which, you know,
some of the more financial analysts
out there, um, have looked at and
said, you know, can this go higher?
What is it?
Why is it so high?
You know, that, so for,
for those listening, you
know, they have a take rate.
They take a.
Part of the transaction that
happens on the platform being a
two-sided marketplace, very similar
to any other marketplace, and
there's a percent attached to it.
And I think it's, you know,
somewhere around like 27 or something
right now on the marketplace.
And then you have additional services
and you, you guys did a good job of
separating, you know, the, the take rate
on the marketplace, meaning transactional.
And then kind of the other services
that are, uh, along that, the way we
frame it internally is that, you know,
if I'm a seller of anything in life,
um, I'm going to, uh, assign any sort
of marketing towards my business.
Is it 10%?
Is it 30%?
Is it 40%?
Depending on business you
are in, it's gonna be half.
It's gonna be, you know, 1%.
You know, if you're Chipotle, you
have, you know, 1%, you know, uh,
you know, uh, marketing budget.
Um, but if you're someone that is, you
know, a consumer related, uh, company,
then you're, you're likely higher.
Um, and the way we frame it is, you know,
that take rate is a margin budget or a
marketing budget for the sellers, and
then you guys are starting to attach,
uh, additional services on there where
you made a couple acquisitions here
and there to, you know, drive some,
uh, additional, you know, service.
Revenue from it.
Some of that is adjacent to not
necessarily directly, uh, tied
to the marketplace, but then
you have, you know, ads, right?
Similar to like what you mentioned,
Amazon having, uh, you know,
promoted listings on or, uh, you
know, advertising on on Amazon.
You, you do the same thing where you can
supercharge a good seller or a new seller,
um, that can get in front of, you know,
the others and, and kind of showcase their
product like any other marketplace does.
Um.
If you could, like, as you go up the
stack of a freelancer or somebody that
is a self single business, a JA agency,
like what are some of the lower hanging
fruit and like, how do you think of
that take rate as people maybe look
at it and say, Hey, it's too high.
But if you put in the context of
it's a marketing budget, you know, it
seems pretty right in line with, you
know, what other companies are doing.
Yeah.
Uh, you, you, you, you
called the numbers correct?
Um, so the transactional portion
of, of what we're taking is about
27%, out of which 20% is from
the, from the, uh, seller side.
Um, you, you can think about it
as, as marketing, as marketing.
Fee or expenses, which I would argue
and so do our sellers, um, that
it's not very high, um, in the sense
of compared to what they need to
spend in order to win a customer.
When you start as an agency or as a
freelancer, you invest 100% of your
time trying to get customers because
you don't have any, even if you do
have a few customers, there's time
until these customers, uh, become
happy and trusted customers and
they maybe talk to others that give
you some credibility in the market.
But this cycle is very, very slow and.
What we've identified, what we've
found out is that freelancers
and agencies are spending tens of
percentages of their time and their
resources in trying to win projects.
Now, when you think about it, some
people would, would say, great.
So if, if I wanna, you know,
if, if I'm trying to get.
You know, a hundred dollars transaction,
it's very different than $10,000.
Why do you get the same fee?
And, and the reason is a simplicity.
Two, winning a $10,000 transaction
outside of Fiverr is really, really hard.
That burden.
We take away from these talented people,
which by the way, not all of them like
to be marketers of their own practice.
They enjoy doing their own thing,
whether that is coding or designing.
It doesn't mean that they love being
salespeople and chase their customers
and then having issues with not getting
paid on time and sometimes not getting
paid at all for whatever reason.
And dealing with the minutia of the
legalities of putting a contract
and securing, you know, that
they, you know, get paid on time.
And if something goes wrong,
they have a safety net.
All of this is missing
outside of a platform.
Of our platform.
And so we sold for all of this.
And when you think about it, it allows
them to, since they named their own price,
they can, they set whatever they want.
They know that we're being partner only if
they succeed, only if they got a customer.
Only if that customer paid right.
So their win, their
success is our success.
It's as simple as that.
Now, the other services that we've
provided to sellers are optional.
They don't have to use them.
The only reason for people to pay for
these services is if they create value.
And the fact that it does, that's
the testament of, of, of the value
of these tools and their growth.
So you've mentioned things
like, uh, promoted listings
or what we call Fiverr ads.
Now, if Fiverr ads, if you invest a
dollar and you get half or nothing,
you would not use this tool.
It's optional.
The fact that this is ROI positive,
meaning you always get more than
what you invest makes sellers use it.
The others is, the other is a suite
of what we call the seller tools, um,
which are a suite of tools that provide
analytical tools and access to a success
manager within Fiverr that helps those
who want to grow their business, have
the right strategies on how to do this,
and can get more exposure in other
categories and get, you know, the best
practices that we learned from other
agencies on how they grew their business.
Again, you don't have to use it.
If it's not a creative, if it's not
creating value, people would not use it.
The fact that they do and the
retention of these tools is very
high, speaks for the value it creates.
I think that we're in a, in a good
place there in terms of the, the portion
that, that we get from the transaction.
Um, that said, there's a long
list of additional value.
Um, value creation tools that,
that we are providing over time.
And so as long as they create
more value than they cost,
it's a good deal for everyone.
Good wins.
Yeah.
So, pivoting to ai, I know you are,
you know, we were talking about this
earlier, you know, backstage, you're the
single largest shareholder of, of fiber.
Mm-hmm.
Um, and the question of AI has
been swirling around, you know.
Three years.
I think Chachi Tee's birthday
was this week, three years old.
Mm-hmm.
Um, and record revenues, near
record, record profits, um, spent
per buyer up into the right.
So like why is or why not is, you know,
Fiverr advantage in kind of a world of ai.
What's your defensibility, uh,
and kind of how are you thinking
about like roadmaps and such?
Yeah, so.
So I'll start by saying that
AI is creating more value
than it, it is destroying.
And what we've been seeing is that
mostly if you think about displacement
of specific skills, these are usually.
Low skills, which are associated
with smaller transactions.
So we, we've seen an, we, we've
actually gave, uh, we, we gave
some disclosure around this.
Um, and, and, and we said that the,
when you think about what we call
the simple versus complex types of,
of, of services that we have on the
marketplace, simple is less than 20%.
The complex services is around
40%, and the rest are neutral
over time, meaning that they don't
change, they don't go up or down.
AI has no impact on it, and so what we've
seen is a, as I've said, we're creating
more categories than we're removing
categories that are no longer relevant.
Two, the types of services
that are associated with ai.
Just being able to remove
the background from a photo.
Great.
So you don't need a person to do that.
That's a $5 service anyway.
Like, and it's a one time and whatever.
So that's great.
And by the way, our philosophy is.
If a machine can do the job of a
human being, human beings should
not do this job, period, like Right.
It's, it's, we're, we're not trying
to defense, you know, defend things
that computers can do on their own.
That's great because it frees
up people's time to find other
skills and develop these skills.
And we, we've seen, even when you
think about it as technology comes in.
And allows people to
build more on their own.
Let, let's take Vibe coding as an example.
What we've seen with vibe
coding, and that's incredible.
I mean, the fact that you can talk to
a machine and it creates all kinds of
funky stuff is great, but the reality is
that the vast, the overwhelming majority
of people that try to vibe, code, and
I'm not talking about like a birthday
invitation or whatever, they're trying
to create a, a full website or an app.
The vast majority, over 90% of these
people would not finish building.
Because at some point it just doesn't
do what it needs to do, or it asks
you questions that you can't answer.
It asks you to connect to a database and
run through security issues and what,
like it's Chinese for, you know, anyone
who doesn't know how to code, right?
So this is where people get.
So seemingly you can create more stuff,
but by the way, from a competitive
standpoint, so does everybody else,
like everybody has access to AI
and people are constantly looking
for a competitive advantage, and
at the end they come to experts.
Can you spend a month learning
to vibe code like a pro?
Maybe, but all of that one month to build
one website, just take a pro to do it.
It's, it's so much simple, and
this is why we've seen AI related
services, vibe coding is one of them.
They're exploding on Fiverr.
Or people that vibe coded something and
now they want to transform it to another
platform because they want to, they
don't need to develop anything more.
And so, so we've seen those, those
trends going up and actually this is
pushing customers to more complex types
of needs where the average transaction
is higher, where the opportunity to
retain those customers over time.
Has been going higher.
And for those who have listened to, to the
earning calls, I've, I've been, I've been
talking about this, you, you know, in, in
numbers, you know, and, and, and, and you
see, you know, uh, AI driving categories
like programming and technology, up 14%.
Right.
And, and you see, and you see this
across many other related, you know,
AI related, uh, categories and, and
so we're definitely benefiting more.
And actually the way we use AI
internally has been changing the
efficiency of, of the market base.
So when, when we think about ai,
there's probably three investments
that we're, that we're doing.
Um, one is investing in AI categories.
So categories that have to do with, you
know, um, AI, app development, mobile
development, uh, anything that has to
do with data relating to ai, machine
learning, analytics, visualization.
Anything that has to do with AI
artists, um, AI for businesses, either
consulting strategy, uh, teaching,
uh, people within organizations,
how to be more AI natives, AI video
productions, ai, audio, AI content.
There's tremendous amount of
categories being created around ai.
The second one is, is really around.
You know, how we, how we think
about, um, uh, using AI on our
own platform to make it better.
So how we use AI to power the marketplace
experience and make, uh, the matching
faster, more efficient, more nuanced.
And the third is AI In the
operational efficiency and how
we work as a team, how we code.
The platform, how we design, how do we
do marketing, how do we do customer care?
All of this has been introducing
incredible efficiencies, which
also allowed us to do things
like, you know, uh, shorten the
path to 25% EBITDA by a year.
Got it, got it.
I know we're running outta time here, but,
uh, obvi, you know, Fiverr has a hundred
million dollars buyback, uh, in place.
Um, you know, eile, you know, you're
generating roughly a hundred in,
in EBITDA a year of cash flow.
Um, you know, you don't have to ex
expand on that, but I definitely
wanted for the sake of, uh, you know,
the listeners to get to know you a
little bit more is just, you know, one
sentence rapid fire here to close out.
Um, and then I'll summarize and
then we can, you know, push past
to make sure, you know, you can
get on, uh, with your busy day.
But the, um, you know, number
one, I think, you know.
Again, talked about the, the, the
buyback in place, but I'll go through,
you know, five different questions.
You know, one habit, you know, that
makes you, uh, better as a founder,
um, spending a lot of time
reading and writing to the team.
Okay.
Uh, what's the most fun
part of being a CEO?
A lot of hard stuff, but no,
um, look, I consider myself.
An entrepreneur, even though it's
been, you know, 15 years since the,
the original, uh, creation of Fiverr, I
still look my, at myself as a builder.
So, so my, the, the funnest
part is building things
that change people's lives.
Cool.
What do you see as Fiverr's
biggest advantage today?
Um, it's definitely the passion
of our team to win the game.
Got it.
Cool.
Um, last two.
What will make Fiverr meaningfully
stronger two years from now?
Probably not letting the noise distract
us from fulfilling our mission of
changing how the world works together.
Now the big one.
Will Fiverr be an AI leader or loser?
100% leader.
Cool.
Well, look, uh, Micha,
thanks for joining us today.
Appreciate you, uh, always have
good conversations with you.
You know, look, obviously, you
know, our conclusion, we have
a stage in the game as well.
And, um, but again, every time, you know,
I get to talk to you, uh, you know, post
earnings, which is pretty much every
quarter, uh, seeing what's happening on
the marketplace versus what you're saying.
I think a lot of it is, you
know, translating into, you
know, bottom line results.
And ultimately, you know, if you
take a, a, you know, a chart on the.
S and P 500.
You go back a hundred years and you,
and you, you overlay, you know, earnings
per share or free cashflow per share.
They tend to move in lockstep other
than, you know, moments in time and
those moments in time or periods where,
you know, the world has changed, uh,
in one way or another, whether it's,
you know, the financial crisis, whether
it's, you know, you know, 2000, whether
it's, you know, the late eighties.
Um, but generally speaking, results tend
to lead to more results for shareholders.
And we appreciate you for coming on today.
Uh, and you know, good luck here at
the end of the year and you know,
we'll catch up uh, next quarter.
Thanks for having me and
thanks for the confidence.
Awesome.
Thanks Micha.