Story:
Growing Big Fast: the spin-off that helped take a company from Good to Great

The trigger for innovation in the Wix case was the absolute need to maintain its unique startup spirit and company culture as it was growing, knowing full well that spirit was a crucial part of their innovative DNA. You see, Wix.com was always a maverick; it reinvented itself twice in face of a changing market, once from a flash based tool to an HTML based tool and the second time from a web only service to a cross-platform service enabling users to create web sites that perform perfectly on mobile too.

It also happens to be one of those companies sure to make it to the Best Companies to Work For list one day: it has a bring your dog to work policy, it throws huge bi-annual parties for its workers and their partners, it offers a free (!) Manhattan based co-working space in the heart of Silicon Alley called WIX Lounge, it holds open to all competitions for web designers and coders and it turned down a generous exit proposition, determined to prefer growth over a quick win. It is now on its path to an IPO – the first company in its field to do so.

Growing Pains

This company culture was something Wix was determined to preserve then, but as it was quickly growing from a 45 employee startup in Tel Aviv, Israel to a 450 employee company in 4 locations, including New York and San Francisco – this was getting harder to do.

As the company grew, things started to get more complex, and Wix started suffering from all sorts of growing pains, like losing the ease and transparency of its communication and mounting coordination problems.

In his ever relevant bestselling Good to Great, Jim Collins described why only "a few startups become great companies". According to Collins, this is in large due to the "wrong way" in which they respond to "growth and success". In a paragraph that's been resonating strongly with founders and investors alike for years, Collins described the entrepreneurial death spiral:

"Entrepreneurial success is fueled by creativity, imagination, bold moves into uncharted waters and visionary zeal. As a company grows and becomes more complex, it begins to trip over its own success – too many new people, too many new customers, too many new orders, too many new products. What was once fun becomes an unwieldy ball of disorganized stuff". 

Collins goes on to describe how problems start to surface on all fronts, and how professional MBA's are hired to turn the new chaos into order, transforming the egalitarian environment into hierarchy and introducing processes, procedures and checklists. He describes how the new order kills the creativity, burying it under heaps of forms to be filled and meetings to be held, making the most innovative people flee. 

"The exciting start-up transforms into just another company, with nothing special to recommend it". From there, it's all downhill.     

Keeping it Real

Wix founders knew they wanted to avoid that fate. They wanted to continue doing things their own way. Up to that moment, for example, when a new employee came on board, they were handed the company's credit card and sent to buy their own computer and keyboard of choice, no forms to fill no guidelines to abide by. 

When the company moved to its new Tel Aviv seaside offices, no offices were placed along the wall overlooking the sea; that view was for everyone. Wix wanted to maintain the spirit of a flat easy going company as it was growing and it was trying to figure out how.