Necessity may be the mother of invention, but it's only one parent. Being annoyed is another as the Waze founder discovered.
Uri Levine was heading home from a family gathering in the tiny Israeli town of Metula, about 120 miles away from Tel Aviv where he lived. Like many Israelis, he'd been celebrating the Jewish holiday of Rosh Hashana, and the roads were filled motorists.
Israel is a small country and there were only two possible highways he might take. Levine remembers thinking: "If only we had someone driving ahead of us to inform us which roads were jammed and which were open."
That was in 2006. Seven years later, he sold Waze, the company he cofounded following that crawl home, to Alphabet, for $1.15 billion in cash. It may not seem like a huge amount in today's market, but at the time it was the most ever paid for an app maker.
Map Your Next Move Like The Waze Founder
Since selling Waze, Levine has been involved in several other startups, including Moovit (sold for $1 billion to Intel in 2020). And he's also written a management guide, "Fall In Love With The Problem, Not The Solution."
One of the keys to his success, he told Investor's Business Daily, is a mindset that "questioned everything. To look at something and say, 'I don't like it. Let's see if we can change it.'"
It's an attitude with some drawbacks. "Question everything and in most places they will consider you a troublemaker," he said. "Most entrepreneurs are troublemakers, because they think differently, they approach things from a different perspective."
And inertia is a powerful force for innovators to overcome. "They end up saying what's currently available is not good enough for me, and I'm going to change that," he said. "This is how you become an entrepreneur."
Uri Levine: Relish Stirring Up Trouble
So the key is being a troublemaker? "It's not the key," Levine said. "But it is part of the behavior. Being a troublemaker doesn't make you an entrepreneur. But most entrepreneurs, turns out they were troublemakers."
Levine left Waze shortly after the Alphabet deal was completed "because I wanted to build more startups," he said. Moovit, FairFly and RefundIt were among the other apps he helped found. How does he find them?
"In my case, I run into everyday situations that frustrate me," he said. "I ask myself, am I the only one who gets frustrated? Or, is this a problem that's worth solving? Then I speak to other people and try to figure out if they have the same experiences and reactions that I do. That would make the problem significant enough to move forward."
Aviel Siman-Tov, who cofounded FairFly with Levine, says Levine has special vision. "He can see how current problems can translate into huge opportunities. Uri often approaches challenges from a different angle," Siman-Tov said.
Relish Tackling Problems
There are always challenges to innovation, in part because there is often resistance to a new idea.
"When you have an idea for something new, you think about it for along period of time, from multiple perspectives," Levine said. "At some point, you feel comfortable enough to present your idea to someone else. But that person didn't have a chance to think about it and generally their immediate response is that this won't work. For example, people told me no one cares about traffic."
Whether it's a new app or a new product, "in general people like their own ideas and they don't like change, so every time you introduce something new there's going to be a lot of rejection," he said.
Appreciate The Lessons Of Failure
Success therefore requires a certain amount of bravado and self-assurance. Any time you're building something new "it's a roller coaster journey that includes failures. If you're afraid to fail, then you've already failed because you're not going to try," Levine said.
As far as Levine is concerned, failure is a valuable tool. "The best way to figure out what works is to try more things," he said.
If your idea doesn't work, try something else. Don't dwell. Move on. Based on his experience building apps, Levine says, suppose you've added a feature to your app and it doesn't produce the desired results. "You should think immediately about the next feature that is worthwhile and concentrate on that," he said.
Quickly adjusting creates a positive culture in an organization that suggests a hypothesis is worth trying. "If it works, that's it. If not, then it's on to the next hypothesis," he said.
Launch Ideas Before They're Perfect
Levine goes a step further. He suggests launching a new product even before it's 100% ready. "You'll learn faster. You only learn when you have real users and real feedback," he said.
Once you understand that failure is part of the new product journey, "the best way to maximize this reality is to fail fast. That way you can jump on the horse and try again," he said.
Surprisingly, Levine discovered that a good product alone does not assure success. "I've asked many entrepreneurs why their startups fail, and one of the most common answers I heard is that the team was not quite right," he said. CEOs often tell Levine, "We had this guy who wasn't quite good enough."
Communication issues also trip up entrepreneurs. "What surprised me, though, is that when I asked when they knew things were not right, the answer was within the first month," he said.
Take Responsibility Like Levine
Not allowing problems to fester is Levine's lesson in accountability. "My response was, 'You mean you knew in the first month that the team was not right and you didn't do anything?' Then it wasn't the team that was the problem, it was the CEO," he said.
When CEOs don't make the hard decisions, "the results are can be catastrophic," Levine said. "The top performing people will leave. They will leave because they can and join a company whose leader they believe in."
Prune People Who Don't Work Out
Knowing when people aren't working out is not just for new companies. It applies to all businesses. "If management keeps people who shouldn't be there they lose their ability to lead and the ability to attract talent," Levine said.
Levine's solution: "Every time you hire someone, allow yourself 30 days and then ask yourself: 'Knowing what I know now, would I hire this person.' If the answer is no, fire them the next day."
The same take-no-prisoners attitude applies to finding investors. The process he calls "the dance of 100 no's" is exhausting. But don't let the need for cash or eagerness to move forward lock you into a bad deal. CEOs have to "be able to say no to the deal you don't want," he said.
It's not just that the terms of the deal have to be satisfactory. So does the quality of he dealmaker. Ask around. Speak to people who've dealt with the firm before. "Ask yourself if things go bad do I really want him (or her) as part of my company?" Levine said.
Waze Founder: Love The Problem
Once a decision is made, move forward.
In "Fall in Love With The Problem," Levine writes: "People often ask me whether selling Waze for $1.15 billion in 2013 was the right decision, and if Waze would be worth way more than a $1 billion today."
But Levine doesn't look back. "There are only right decisions or no decisions because when you make a decision — when you choose a path you don't know what it would be like if you had chosen a different path. Making decisions with conviction is one of the most important behaviors of a successful CEO."
Waze co-founder Uri Levine's Keys
- Founded traffic navigation Waze, which Alphabet bought in 2013 for $1.15 billion.
- Overcame: Difficulty listening to others when they don't like his ideas.
- Lesson: "It can be detrimental to ignore what others are telling you (because you're in love with your idea). Maybe your friends, potential business partners, investors have something important to say."
