The Insider Story of Waze with Noam Bardin

The NFX Podcast

We believe creating something of true significance starts with seeing things others do not. NFX is a venture firm exclusively focused on pre-seed & seed stage startups.

The Insider Story of Waze with Noam Bardin

E115 • Jun 2, 2021 • 61 mins

In this episode, former CEO of Waze, Noam Bardin, delves into the importance of U.S. success for a global brand, his framework for assessing business ideas, and Waze's unique design strategies. He discusses the power of network effects, the impact of user activity on functionality, and the value of data in Waze's business model. The conversation also covers growth tactics after achieving product-market fit, the costs of losing focus, and understanding competitor strategies.

Key Points

Creating a successful startup requires a deep understanding of your unique strengths, maintaining a narrow focus, and constantly aligning every action with your company's core mission and vision.
Startups should avoid trying to predict or understand the strategies of larger companies, instead focusing on what's right for their users and their own business objectives.
In the growth phase, it's crucial to recognize when to transition from lean startup methodologies to investing in infrastructure, analytics, and the right human capital to scale effectively.

Underlying Waze's journey is a little-known approach to product thinking, super-powerful data network effects, and a guiding north star metric. This is Waze's insider story, as told by their former CEO, Noam Bardin.

NFX Partner Gigi Levy-Weiss recently sat down with Noam, where they discussed the step-by-step story of the company's growth, starting from their early days in 2008 with just 2,000 monthly active users, through being acquired by Google for $1B in 2013, and hitting 140M monthly active users at the time Noam stepped down in Feb 2021.

Early-stage Founders are wise to study as many successful growth stories as they can. While there is no single playbook of best practices, each case contains deeply valuable learning that we at NFX aim to pass along from Founder to Founder.

Read the full NFX Essay here - https://www.nfx.com/post/the-insider-story-of-waze

Speakers

Gigi Levy-Weiss

Host • 17%

Noam Bardin

Guest • 82%

Chapters

0:00	Introduction and guest introduction - Noam Bardin, former CEO of Waze
7:36	The importance of U.S. success for a global brand and the shift to a globalized view of startups
14:29	Noam's framework for assessing business ideas and the role of user perception
16:30	The design strategies behind Waze's user interface and balancing functionality and fun
24:10	The danger of over-promising to users and addressing product flaws
27:25	The power of network effects in Waze and building the Waze map from scratch
32:21	The impact of user activity and driving habits on Waze's functionality
37:08	The value and importance of data in Waze's business model
42:25	Sponsor: ${name}
43:08	Growth tactics and strategies after achieving product-market fit and the power of innovative partnerships
51:45	The cost of losing focus and the importance of understanding competitor strategies
1:00:19	Wrapping up, final advice from Noam Bardin, and closing remarks by the NFX host

Transcript

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