"Wix wanted to buy us but missed the chance"

• Date: 09 December 2020
• Published date: 09 December 2020
• Publication title: Globes (Rishon LeZion, Israel)

"Those are amazing amounts for someone just starting out, and it could be that the right decision was to sell and take a trip from coast to coast," laughs Luksenberg. "But on the other hand, we felt we could make more of an impact, we wanted to solve the pain we'd experienced as frustrated webmasters, and we could take it to the max. It was a difficult decision, but fun to see what we've managed to do since then."

This wasn't the first time Elementor had received a takeover bid. Luksenberg reveals that Wix.com Ltd. (Nasdaq: WIX), the Israeli website building company, had also been interested in acquiring them. "They wanted to buy, but it was too early and too little," Luxsenberg says. "They missed their chance, and today it's no longer relevant."

Regarding the Wix purchase offer, he claims, the decision to respond in the negative was actually easy. "Just a blink, nothing more," he defines it, and is quick to make clear the difference between the two companies. "Wix does a great job, but it appeals to a do-it-yourself audience, while we appeal to professional webmasters and designers."

Instead of selling, Elementor decided to grow. They raised $15 million last year from Lightspeed Venture Partners, the company's first significant fundraiser, after an initial $850,000 seed investment from an angel investor which was used to quickly expand the company. "It wasn't a big funding round, because we didn't really need money to breathe, but we got amazing partners who taught us how to build a company, look at opportunities and plan ahead," Luxenberg says.

Elementor employs 200 people in large, lavish offices, spread over 3,000 square meters on the 15th and 16th floors of the Sapir Tower in the Ramat Gan diamond exchange. There are currently 6.8 million active sites on the Internet built by Elementor, and the company has hundreds of thousands of users paying $49-149 per month for premium versions of the company's design tools, and its annual revenue has tripled, to about $30 million (in ARR terms).

The Photoshop of web development

If Israeli startups were to compete based on their founders' background stories, Elementor would probably rank very high. Luksenberg and Klikstein, graduates of ultra-Orthodox Jewish Bnei Brak yeshivas, were raised far away from the classic roots of Israeli high-tech entrepreneurship. Both studied their professions independently, Luksenberg learned graphic design and Klikstein, web development. In 2010, matched through a mutual...