My guest for Ep171 of The Startup Playbook Podcast, was 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 pitch 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.

In this episode, Micha opens up on his journey, lessons and insights including:

• How his parents’ journey from Argentina to Israel, and his wife’s 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!

Timestamps 

• 5:20 – Lessons from his parents and upbringing 
• 9:30 – Supporting his wife through her battle with cancer, how that pushed him to transition from law to entrepreneurship
• 15:00 – Challenges and lessons from first three companies
• 18:25 – Using a “think tank” to create framework of how to think about ideas to work on
• 21:30 – Early concept of Fiverr
• 31:20 – Approaching the chicken and egg problem of launching a two sided marketplace
• 35:45 – Maintaining company culture as Fiverr scaled from a small startup to publicly listed company
• 43:00 – Advice to founders on navigating uncertain times ahead

Our partners

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Links Mentioned 

Micha’s links

• Fiverr
• Micha’s LinkedIn
• Micha on Twitter/X

People mentioned

• Ben Hensman (Portfolio Manager – Square Peg Capital)

Companies mentioned

• Uber
• Lyft
• Airbnb
• Amazon
• Etsy
• Square Peg Capital

Feedback/connect/say hello:

Rohit@startupplaybook.co
@RohitBhargava7 (Twitter)
/rohbhargava (LinkedIn)
@rohit_bhargava (Instagram)
My Youtube Channel

Credits:

Music: Paycheck

Other channels:

Find all of the links for the podcast on Linktree here

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