Most of my liquid capital is spent on philanthropy.”
Micha Kaufman has been flying mild plane for the previous 30 years. He has tried his hand at most kinds of aviation: helicopters, Cessna planes, Piper planes, and difficult ultralight plane. He says that he will get a sense of freedom and optimism in each flying and entrepreneurship, along with fixed focus and application for what would possibly go fallacious.
This intensive pastime, nevertheless, additionally provides him a perspective of Israel. “From excessive above,” he tells “Globes” in an unique interview, “The nation is not divided into tribes. The large cities, the small villages, and the Druze communities are positioned shut to 1 one other. You notice all the things beneath is a really small factor that behaves as if it had been many issues.”
Kaufman, 55, is the founding father of tech firm Fiverr (NYSE: FVRR), which he has managed for 16 years, and he’s nonetheless working on full throttle. It generally seems that he’s conducting a frenetic battle to show one thing. The veteran CEO, a pioneer of the Israeli web trade, is in the midst of a multi-year battle to revive buyers’ confidence within the firm whose share has misplaced nearly half of its worth this 12 months.
With one hand, he’s searching for a secure place for Fiverr within the AI storm that has overtaken the software program market and with the opposite, he’s waging a marketing campaign to remodel the Israeli firm.
Over the previous 4 years, he has personally invested tens of millions of {dollars} in these affected by fight stress response (CSR), equipping troopers on reserve responsibility, the battle to free Israeli hostages, Holocaust survivors, and the tech protest towards judicial reform.
He says that the set off for his awakening was the skits making enjoyable of excessive tech on the Eretz Nehederet satirical TV present. “I used to be invited to an evening assembly of tech executives. They mentioned that they had been being ridiculed. Individuals got here to the assembly with a sense that they had been being victimized. I listened after which mentioned, ‘We totally deserve all these jokes. Attempt to clarify that your organization supplies 20 flavors of ice cream as a result of Google supplies 30 flavors. No one needs to listen to about that.’
“What I noticed was a sector representing lower than 15% of the job market that generates over half of the taxes paid in Israel and Israel’s industrial exports. Its wealth is concentrated in a number of arms. Some individuals take pleasure in wealth with no limitations, however what about the remaining?”
Change the schooling system
One of many issues that Kaufman did out of the need to result in change when the time comes is prone to exchange the schooling system, or so he guarantees. Along with Wix president Nir Zohar, his associate in these social initiatives, and educators Shirley Rimon Bracha and Liza Ben Hamo, he based the Subsequent Technology Basis. They had been joined by fellow tech protestors Meta Israel CEO Adi Soffer Teeni and Tal Barnoach, a common associate within the Disruptive AI fund (they joined forces with buyers thought to be conservative, resembling PICO Enterprise Companions fund cofounder Elie Wurtman).
RELATED ARTICLES
What’s concerned is a sequence of youth villages designed for youngsters beginning at age 15 and persevering with till army draft age from the geographically and social periphery. These younger persons are housed in glamping tents. Six-week mechinot (instructional preparatory packages) are carried out in these villages together with instructional experiences reflecting liberal values, a connection to Judaism, crucial considering, and Zionism.
“There’s a downside with instructional preparatory packages in Israel,” Kaufman says. “At most, one in all each 200 kids who need to take part is accepted – and only a few if any of them are from the periphery. I needed to vary this.
“In such a small nation, why is there such a factor as a periphery? Individuals have been speaking about these gaps for 70 years and so they had 60 years to treatment the scenario. So what’s the downside? It is a query of priorities. Perpetuating poverty appears to be the straightforward factor to do.”
He says that after 20 pilot packages, “We arrived at a profitable formulation – quick privately funded preparatory packages that require neither postponement of army service nor spending by the state or the Ministry of Protection.”
Kaufman needs to accommodate a minimum of 17,000 younger individuals a 12 months in every village. The primary such village was based at Aaronsohn Farm in Atlit. The fund is now planning to ascertain villages in northern Israel, the Maalei Jerusalem space, and southern Israel. Every village can price as a lot as $10 million a 12 months, most of which comes from his personal cash and that of his companions within the enterprise.
“Our solely likelihood of placing issues proper is thru the youthful era. That’s the reason I am making my largest funding right this moment in schooling. An nearly absolute majority of my liquid capital is being spent on philanthropy.”
The Subsequent Technology Basis is planning to increase its instructional initiatives to ages 3 to 30 and supply frameworks of technological schooling blended with Zionism and values. “That is the most important instructional challenge in Israel in a decade,” Kaufman provides.
“Globes”: A few of the kids coming to the village bear in mind you as a key determine within the demonstration. A few of their mother and father name you a Kaplanist (a demonstrator on Kaplan St. in Tel Aviv). What do you need to say to them?
Kaufman: “What does being a Kaplanist imply? That is nothing however empty spin and rhetoric. Do they need to discuss? Do they need to ask what I used to be doing on Kaplan St. with an Israeli flag? Why I fought? I will be glad to reply.
Most of those younger individuals come from the event cities, are fashionable Orthodox, or are haredim. You are attempting to coach them in liberal values.
“That is what they’re acquainted with from house. A part of the concept, nevertheless, is to place the woman from the spiritual faculty in Jerusalem along with the boy from Lod and the kibbutz child from the north, in order that they perceive that they’re actually the identical factor. They’ve completely different opinions, all proper, however how do you make the completely different components of the puzzle right into a single image?
“If I had to decide on one factor that younger individuals would take with them from the village, it could be crucial considering. The younger individuals have misplaced it. They get all the things from TikTok in ten-second parcels and settle for these messages as information. I inform them, ‘Assume twice who’s speaking to you, who this individual is, what’s behind him, what the ideological thought is.’
“Everybody talks very equally about protection and makes the identical errors. Take a look at October 7, 2023, have a look at what they mentioned in regards to the elimination of the Iranian nuclear program and Hezbollah. However the place is the elemental dialogue in regards to the periphery, the price of residing, schooling, governance, true reform of the judicial system?
“The high-tech persons are the most important reformers in Israeli society. We’re always reforming our enterprise, however let’s speak about reform in schooling, the police, slicing the variety of authorities ministries by two thirds, and common service – army, civilian, or nationwide. Let’s speak about rights and obligations, the rule of regulation, the flexibility of younger ladies to go round at evening with out concern. Let’s speak about previous individuals, about Holocaust survivors.”
You’re Nir Zohar’s associate in lots of enterprises. Why did not you be a part of his initiative to amass Channel 13?
“I acquired no such proposal and the reality is that I’ve little interest in proudly owning a part of a TV channel. Nir and I are companions not as a result of he’s a part of the high-tech marketing campaign, however as a result of he’s a really shut pal and my largest associate in philanthropy. Fiverr, Wix, monday.com (and in addition Wiz) are firms whose executives arrange foundations and determined to take a position tens of millions of their very own cash in philanthropy. They’ve superb social achievements to their credit score and it is making me optimistic.”
Satisfied that the market is just too pessimistic
Kaufman was born in 1971 on Kibbutz HaHotrim and grew up in a collective kids’s home “which explains fairly a little bit of my character,” he jokes. Within the military he was a deputy commander of a Dvora-class quick patrol boat within the common military and in reserve responsibility.
His first profession was as an mental property lawyer specializing in patents, emblems, and funding transactions. Then he crossed the strains and based three startups in several sectors: information safety, on-line buying, and medical tools. “I regard them as tuition – the locations the place I discovered from my errors.”
He based Fiverr 16 years in the past and has managed it ever since. He now faces a problem there – the conflict with Wall Avenue buyers. Fiverr makes a revenue and has a powerful pile of money. Till just lately, it was elevating income forecasts each quarter. The buyers, nevertheless, had bother accepting its place in an period by which Claude, Google, and Open AI are incessantly releasing software program able to consigning veteran firms to the wastebasket.
Fiverr was born and prospered as a digital market for freelancers. In a market by which AI can do all the things, some imagine that the necessity for programmers, animators, and paid broadcasters will decline.
Kaufman, who based the corporate after the 2008 banking disaster, when many younger individuals had been thrown on the gig market after being fired, is assured that the corporate is much more related to the present period. “What excites me – and that’s not simple after 16 years – is the flexibility to consider what the subsequent decade, the subsequent 50 years, and even the subsequent century will appear to be. Firms shall be smaller, however there shall be many extra of them. As an alternative of absolutely the standing of a full-time or part-time worker or a freelancer, the job mannequin shall be way more fluid. I believe that freelancers may also get shares or choices and that wages shall be paid by the duty or the consequence, not essentially by the hour.”
He maps the professionals on the head of Fiverr’s platform: AI installers in organizations, AI-based video specialists, chat engines promoting consultants, and vibe coding specialists for rent, primarily programmers educated in utilizing platforms such because the Israeli Base44 or Swedish Lovable.
“Even within the period of instruments that allow individuals and small organizations to do easy issues by themselves, once you attempt to construct one thing complicated with out technological, product, or design knowhow, the chance that you’ll end the challenge is lower than 10%. Even should you managed to construct 60% or 70% of the product utilizing an AI engine, you want professionals to launch it to the general public, let it to develop, add makes use of and capabilities, and particularly to be sure that it will likely be secure with no safety breaches.
“Simply attempt as soon as to provide by your self a video on the stage of TV or Superbowl promoting. Attaining that stage would require spending a whole bunch of hours working with AI and that’s solely the premise. That you must perceive creativity, audiences, and learn how to assemble scenes that may generate emotion and seize individuals by the intestine. That you must perceive shade, composition, the place. Briefly, you want individuals who actually perceive.
“Proper now, there are possibly 100 specialists on the planet who know learn how to produce such a video and I believe that about 15 of them are already in Fiverr. These aren’t any extra $5 jobs like they had been in 2010. These initiatives begin at $5,000 and the typical price is $20,000-$30,000.”
For Kaufman, AI will not be a risk. Quite the opposite – it directs the worker and the supervisor to a very powerful factor – strategic and significant considering. “I did not actually see a occupation disappearing, however I actually noticed sure kinds of experience disappearing. If we take content material writing, design, or nearly any digital occupation, the mediocre individuals had been pushed out a very long time in the past. Anybody who is nice has to attempt a lot more durable and those that are actually good are those who keep round. The occupation itself is not disappearing, however its entry threshold has risen sharply.
“Freelancers are those who’re surviving this comparatively properly. They’re extra agile and adaptive as a result of they need to always combat to outlive. They study rapidly, introduce automation, work fewer hours on the identical job, cost the identical worth and earn more money.”
In keeping with Kaufman, if the worldwide area for freelancers grows, Fiverr may have a future within the new period: “Certainly one of our large benefits is that for 16 years, we’ve got collected billions of interactions between prospects and abilities with tens of tens of millions of offers in additional than 700 classes. Nobody else on the planet has this information and that’s what we’re constructing our fashions on.”
The way to flip AI right into a aggressive edge
Kaufman is kind of persuasive, however the market is transferring in its personal route. About two months in the past in its 2025 monetary outcomes, Fiverr reported excessive working effectivity, a revenue margin that outperformed expectations, and spectacular development in common spending per buyer. The variety of patrons who spent over $10,000 on the platform elevated by 7%.
Nonetheless, the corporate failed to fulfill income steerage and offered a detrimental forecast for 2026. Fiverr’s income, which was $430 million final 12 months, is now projected to succeed in $380-$420 million.
The buyers responded by pushing the corporate’s market cap all the way down to an all-time low of $370 million, 97% beneath its 2021 peak and down 48% for the reason that begin of the 12 months. The Oppenheimer funding home lowered its goal worth for the share from $30 to $15 due to concern in regards to the rise of AI.
The multiples are additionally particularly low – the corporate’s share is being traded at a 2.2 a number of on earnings earlier than curiosity, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA). The share of competitor Upwork has fallen at an analogous charge, however the iShares Expanded Tech-Software program Sector ETF index (IGV) has dropped solely 30% for the reason that starting of the 12 months.
How irritating do you discover the buyers’ failure to understand the corporate’s potential?
“I am not annoyed as a result of I can not management this. The market is just like the climate. You possibly can have a look at it, however you’ll be able to’t handle it. What’s ruling the market now could be anxiousness, a deep existential concern at the concept in one other few years, there’ll not be a job market resembling the one we all know. I imagine it is a mistake. Individuals’s have to work with individuals won’t vanish. We’re merely nonetheless unable to think about the professions that can emerge.
“The one means to deal with concern is outcomes, to point out that we’re reaching development, not changing into extinct. When the market sees this, it can relax and possibly even go too far within the different route like throughout Covid, when the corporate was traded at an $11 billion market cap, I mentioned that it was inflated and over-optimistic. Now it is over-pessimistic, but when among the shareholders behave a bit of like a flock of sheep and the market is contaminated by concern, there’s nothing I can do about it. I say this as the corporate’s largest shareholder.”
Put the buyers apart for a minute. Take an AI big like Anthropic, which is launching a brand new replace each week. The concern is that sooner or later, all of the software program shall be purchased from it, not from dozens of software program suppliers.
“I am going to say truthfully that I do not know the place it can lead, but when there’s a seen course of, it’s self-cannibalization of AI firms, whether or not it is Anthropic, OpenAI, or Gemini. These firms are driving their very own worth all the way down to near-zero costs.
“OpenAI is dropping billions of {dollars} a 12 months. In keeping with research, Anthropic is dropping $200 on each license bought for $20 and $2,000 on each $200 license. This trade is in a mad sprint to the underside. Whereas it’s supposedly destroying different industries, it’s burning itself up from inside. The beneficiaries proper now are the {hardware} gamers as a result of the infrastructure for all this should be constructed.”
Kaufman will not be oblivious to the modifications that AI has wrought for the corporate that he manages. “On the organizational stage, it has compelled us to do a reset. A few of the illnesses of companies even earlier than this period had been that they grew to become too large with too many government layers.”
As early as September, Kaufman initiated a reorganization that included an overhaul of departments and 250 layoffs. “We did not do it as a result of everybody was speaking about AI. We did it as a result of it is the one option to keep aggressive in an surroundings by which all the things strikes rapidly and nobody actually is aware of what the longer term shall be like.
“Chopping the workers by 30% was horrible on a private stage. It was not finished out of misery; the corporate is making a revenue and has some huge cash within the financial institution. We determined to streamline the construction, efficiency, and profitability. On the time, it was perceived as radical, however six months later, it is clear that everybody is transferring on this route.”
What does Fiverr’s restoration plan truly include and the way lengthy will it take?
“The brand new scenario requires fewer individuals and extra expertise with individuals within the loop. We determined to give attention to expertise able to utilizing this expertise in a extra excessive means. On the similar time, we flattened the organizational construction, together with the elimination of three managerial ranges, which is quite a bit.
“As well as, the intention is to place the highlight on a gaggle of individuals with nice experience that’s exhibiting a historic double-digit share improve in Fiverr of almost 20%. 2026 shall be a turnaround 12 months and we’ll begin rising once more in 2027-2028. Once they see that this vital half is main the corporate upwards, the share will rise as soon as once more.”
Like his colleagues in firms resembling Wix and monday.com, Kaufman admits that the coding occupation is present process profound modifications following the introduction of AI-based code mills. “While you boil it down, individuals and companies are on the lookout for a aggressive edge. Right now, everybody has entry to the identical instruments, so the query is what distinguishes me from them. The reply is experience, expertise, and the potential that I’ve developed over time.
“However builders who had been one of the best of their subject 4 years in the past, who wrote clear and efficient code, solved tough issues elegantly, and had been in a position to mix open code libraries inside complicated techniques have grow to be the underdog nearly in a single day. They’re now being compelled to desert a decade of habits and grow to be radically higher builders than others.
“In an AI world, they need to deliver not the code itself, however the considering that constituted their excellence: a strategic method to duties, architectonic considering, understanding of large-scale exercise, stability, and security.
“The problem is to restrain themselves from writing code even when the answer is totally apparent. As an alternative of including intervals and commas themselves, they need to clarify to the agent (an AI assistant) that there’s a bug, what the right and efficient resolution is, and let the agent do it. If they do not study to work this manner, it can by no means enhance and they’ll even be left behind.
“As a CEO, I can not disguise actuality. Modifications happen so rapidly that there is no such thing as a time to disclaim or prettify them. I evaluate this to a deer standing on the highway in entrance of a automobile’s headlights. It hasn’t received per week to get used to it however should transfer instantly.”
In speaking about AI, Kaufman additionally points a warning: “In the event you contemplate the web as one thing that needs to be fed, it already incorporates extra artificial content material than human content material. This content material is fed again into fashions and each bias in AI generates further biased content material, which creates extra mistaken confidence. It is a harmful loop.
“Take conspiracy theories, for instance. In the event you create sufficient content material round a spurious thought, such because the world is flat, and assemble broad statistical dispersal round it, the mannequin will begin treating it as true just because there’s a number of it.”
“We all know what occurs when individuals overlook”
Holocaust Memorial Day leads Kaufman to speak about one other challenge with which he’s preoccupied and is cooperating with Zohar from Wix and different tech trade leaders. Via a philanthropic group he based named Colours, they’re funding delegations of Holocaust survivors to the March of the Residing on the loss of life camps in Poland.
“My connection to the Holocaust comes from a totally completely different route,” he explains. “My mother and father grew up in Argentina and skilled the mass escape of Nazis to that nation. They noticed the Nazi youth actions with their very own eyes. Anti-Semitism was very sturdy in Buenos Aires. It was a major a part of their adolescence there.” They immigrated to Israel to combat within the Six-Day Conflict, “however by the point they received right here, the conflict had already ended.”
A mean of 8,000 individuals participate within the March of the Residing annually, solely half of whom are Jews – many from nations just like the US, Canada, and Mexico, however only some Holocaust survivors come from Israel. Final 12 months, Kaufman and his companions within the challenge additionally organized flights for launched hostages and widows and orphans from the October 7, 2023 conflict.
Kaufman flew a number of of the survivors to a particular ringing of the bell on the New York Inventory Alternate. He deliberate to extend the delegation measurement a number of instances over this 12 months to fill a jumbo jet, however the conflict thwarted all these plans.
“We all know what occurs when individuals overlook,” he says. “They overlook the Holocaust, the Yom Kippur Conflict, and they’ll overlook October 7, God forbid. I am very frightened that this has already occurred to us.”
It appears as if in case you have grow to be a welfare bureau. Is {that a} purpose that you just set for your self?
“To start with, there’s a primary Jewish thought of solidarity. I skilled an awakening occasion on October 7 by which the very first thing that occurred to me was, ‘The place had been you for over a decade? The Jewish communities across the Gaza Strip had been being attacked day by day and also you had been stopping to drink espresso in your option to the workplace.’ It isn’t as if the scenario in southern Israel did not curiosity me; I merely did not do something. It was a time for soul looking by which I assumed, ‘We’re individuals with a voice. We’ve got been fortunate and we’ve got the means and the flexibility to affect issues.'”
Most of us do not feel a necessity to avoid wasting a unique sufferer of injustice each night.
“I am unsure that is right. Take kind of any Israeli, put a uniform on him, and he’ll all of the sudden assume like that. Why ought to somebody from Tel Aviv who wears a uniform go and threat himself to guard a selected border? As a result of he is a citizen of this nation. You possibly can’t simply sit again and luxuriate in the advantages of this. You possibly can’t simply benefit from the rights with out fulfilling the obligations. That is additionally a really primary thought.”
You’ve been in your job for nearly 17 years. Do you’ve any ideas about stepping down?
“This can be a reliable query that each CEO has to ask himself. Do I’ve the need and power and am I the proper individual to proceed main the corporate for a minimum of one other 12 months or two? I take a number of days to consider it yearly. As of now, I come again each time with a optimistic reply. It excites and pursuits me. I am doing issues I by no means did earlier than. I do not really feel depleted and I am the proper man for the job, however I do not really feel that this may all the time be the reply.”
Revealed by Globes, Israel enterprise information – en.globes.co.il – on April 20, 2026.
© Copyright of Globes Writer Itonut (1983) Ltd., 2026.
