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Lessons from a two-time unicorn builder, 50-time startup advisor, and 20-time company board member | Uri Levine (co-founder of Waze)

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Jun 9, 2024

Guest

Uri Levine

Uri Levine, co-founder of Waze and a serial entrepreneur, shares invaluable insights for startup success. He emphasizes the importance of focusing on problems over solutions to resonate with customers. Levine discusses the iterative process of achieving product-market fit and the critical roles of decisive hiring and effective storytelling in fundraising. He stresses that understanding user behavior is key to product development and highlights the necessity of adapting through challenges, showcasing the dynamic journey of building impactful startups.

01:22:31

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ADVICE

Passion

Be passionate about the problem you choose to solve.
The startup journey is challenging, so passion is essential for perseverance.

question_answer

ANECDOTE

Oversea Pivot

Oversea started as a B2C company monitoring airfare fluctuations for individual travelers.
It pivoted to B2B, saving corporations 10% of their travel budgets through automatic rebooking.

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ANECDOTE

Waze Iteration

Waze achieved product-market fit through continuous iteration based on user feedback.
Despite initial global struggles, Waze succeeded by addressing user concerns in each version.

Get the Snipd Podcast app to discover more snips from this episode

Falling in Love with the Problem: A Guiding Principle for Entrepreneurs

02:50 • 4min

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Identifying Worthwhile Problems in Startup Ventures

07:00 • 4min

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Passion and Adaptation in Entrepreneurship

10:54 • 17min

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Navigating Startup Focus: From Problem to Growth

27:58 • 11min

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Maximizing B2B Marketing and Insights on Fundraising

38:33 • 2min

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Mastering Startup Fundraising

40:27 • 22min

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Decisive Hiring and Product Understanding

01:02:29 • 20min

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#13105

• Mentioned in 4 episodes

Fall in Love with the Problem, Not the Solution: A Handbook for Entrepreneurs

A Handbook for Entrepreneurs

Uri Levine

This book offers mentorship and insights from Uri Levine, a co-founder of Waze and Moovit, on how to build a successful business. It emphasizes the importance of identifying and solving the biggest problems faced by consumers and disrupting inefficient markets. The book covers various aspects of the startup journey, including fundraising, hiring and firing, understanding users, reaching product-market fit, scaling up, going global, and deciding when to sell. Levine shares practical advice and real-world examples from his own experiences, making the book a valuable resource for entrepreneurs, startup founders, CEOs, and other business leaders.

#5362

• Mentioned in 9 episodes

That Will Never Work

The Birth of Netflix and the Amazing Life of an Idea

Marc Randolph

This book tells the untold story of Netflix's origins, from its inception in 1997 to its initial public offering and beyond. Marc Randolph recounts the challenges, failures, and successes of building a disruptive startup, including pitching his idea to his business partner Reed Hastings, dealing with server crashes on launch day, and the infamous meeting with Blockbuster. The book offers insights into entrepreneurship, covering topics such as idea generation, team building, and handling success and failure.

#9136

• Mentioned in 6 episodes

Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones

An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones

James Clear

Atomic Habits by James Clear is a practical guide that teaches readers how to create good habits and break bad ones. The book emphasizes the importance of small, incremental changes that can lead to significant improvements over time. It introduces the Four Laws of Behavior Change: make it obvious, make it attractive, make it easy, and make it satisfying for creating good habits, and the inverse for breaking bad habits. The book also focuses on the concept of identity-based habits, where changing your habits is tied to changing how you view yourself. Clear draws on insights from biology, psychology, and neuroscience to provide actionable strategies for personal and professional improvement.

Uri Levine is the co-founder of Waze, the world’s largest community-based traffic and navigation app, acquired by Google for over $1 billion. He’s also founded nine other companies, been on the board of 20 companies, and advised more than 50 companies. He’s most recently the author of Fall in Love with the Problem, Not the Solution: A Handbook for Entrepreneurs, hailed by Steve Wozniak as the “Bible for entrepreneurs.” Uri is dedicated to creating impactful startups that solve real-world problems and has seen everything from failure to moderate success to big success. In our conversation, we dig into:

• Why falling in love with the problem is key to startup success

• The phases of the startup journey and how to navigate them

• Why firing is more important than hiring

• How Waze iterated to achieve product-market fit

• Tactics for telling a compelling story when fundraising

• Much more

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Find the transcript at: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/lessons-from-uri-levine

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Where to find Uri Levine:

• X: https://twitter.com/urilevine1

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/uri-levine

• Website: https://urilevine.com/

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Where to find Lenny:

• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com

• X: https://twitter.com/lennysan

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/

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In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) Uri’s background

(02:50) Falling in love with the problem

(09:03) Signs this is a big enough problem

(10:54) The importance of passion

(12:06) A pivot example

(14:01) Where to find startup ideas

(21:57) Finding product-market fit at Waze

(29:45) The different phases of a startup journey

(36:47) What investors don’t want to hear

(39:53) Fundraising tips

(48:02) How to make your presentations stronger

(50:32) A wild fundraising story

(53:46) Firing and hiring

(59:50) The 30-day test

(01:04:12) Understanding users

(01:12:10) Talking to the right users

(01:15:36) Lightning round

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Referenced:

• Fall in Love with the Problem, Not the Solution: A Handbook for Entrepreneurs: https://www.amazon.com/Fall-Love-Problem-Solution-Entrepreneurs/dp/1637741987

• Waze: https://www.waze.com/

• Ben Horowitz on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/behorowitz/

• Ben Horowitz quote: https://quotefancy.com/quote/1635284/Ben-Horowitz-As-a-startup-CEO-I-slept-like-a-baby-I-woke-up-every-2-hours-and-cried

• Michael Jordan quote: https://www.forbes.com/quotes/11194/#:~:text=I've%20lost%20almost%20300,that%20is%20why%20I%20succeed.

• Steph Curry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Curry

• How Airbnb Used Word of Mouth to Change the Travel Industry Forever: https://truested.com/story/airbnb

• Space Mountain: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Mountain_(Disneyland)

• How Netflix builds a culture of excellence | Elizabeth Stone (CTO): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-netflix-builds-a-culture-of-excellence

• Steve Wozniak on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wozniaksteve/

• Uri’s post about the conference in Guatemala with Steve Wozniak: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/uri-levine_jewishnewyear-speakers-book-activity-6980089544079486976-0ADa/

• Leonardo da Vinci quote: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/9010638-simplicity-is-the-ultimate-sophistication-when-once-you-have-tasted

• Geoffrey Moore on finding your beachhead, crossing the chasm, and dominating a market: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/geoffrey-moore-on-finding-your-beachhead

• Nana Korobi Ya Oki: https://ikigaitribe.com/vlog/nana-korobi-ya-oki/

• That Will Never Work: The Birth of Netflix and the Amazing Life of an Idea: https://www.amazon.com/That-Will-Never-Work-Netflix/dp/0316530204

• Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones: https://www.amazon.com/Atomic-Habits-Proven-Build-Break/dp/0735211299

• 8 Great Chess Apps for Beginners and Grand Masters: https://www.wired.com/story/best-chess-apps/

• Pontera: https://pontera.com/

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Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com.

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Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed.

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