Wix, a leading cloud-based website builder platform, plans to work with software engineers in Kiev, Ukraine. Founded in 2006, the Israeli startup offers a solution that empowers users to create a fully personalized web presence.
Wix platform helps non-techies to build professionally-looking websites
Wix was founded in 2006 by Avishai Abrahami, Nadav Abrahami and Giora Kaplan. The three had already had some successful IT-projects under their belt. While creating a website for their new startup they understood that even for them the process was too complicated. So, guys decided to set up a project that would make website building simple and easy-to-understand. Wix launched a flash web editor in 2008, and a year later had 1 million users. At the moment the company is the world leader among web development platforms with 1,200 employees and more than 88 million users in 190 countries. Now the company’s aim is to reach the 100M users milestone.
Initially, the startup was backed by Bessemer Venture Partners, Mangrove Venture Partners, Benchmark Capital, and Insight Venture Partners. In 2013 Wix raised $127M, at $765M valuation, in an IPO on NASDAQ. It was the record for an Israeli firm on NASDAQ. Its current market capitalization reaches $1.3B and attributes to Wix the status of a Unicorn.
According to Boaz Inbal, General Manager of Wix development centers in Eastern Europe, the company is going to employ a large team of professionals to work on various projects. Wix considered another Ukrainian city - Lviv - as an alternative location for its dev center. But eventually, they chose Kiev. As Inbal says, the Ukrainian capital has got a lot more of talented software engineers, that’s why it will be easy to recruit first-class specialists. Wix plans to hire first front-end developers, and then other professionals, if necessary.
Kiev is the second Ukrainian city where the company chose to build a development team. They employ more than 60 engineers in Dnipro (formerly Dnepropetrovsk). Also, the company has one more dev center in Eastern Europe, located in Vilnius, Lithuania.
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