Waze

“When we started Waze, we thought that we're going to sell map data and traffic information. And we ended up with doing advertisement.”

“Japan is a very good example where it didn't work, and it will never work, right?”

“It was actually good enough in about four places in the Czech Republic, in Slovakia, in Latvia, and Ecuador, and that's about it. Rest of the world, not good enough.”

“If you ask people, what is the value of ways? Then it's not about avoiding traffic. It's about creating certainty. And certainty is way higher value than saving time. So, you know, exactly when you're going to get there. And this is a way higher value.”

“For Waze, it was four years. For Microsoft, it was five years. For Netflix, it was 10 years.”

“So Waze raised about fifty million dollars throughout the entire journey. We started by raising 12. That was this, the first investment round, and then we raised 30. And then was the last round that we raised, actually not a lot.”

“Microsoft decided that, wait a minute, we don't have our own maps, so let's invest in Waze. So we ended up getting investment from someone that we did not expect.”

“What we did is we reduced the salary of the management only. And to a certain extent, I would say people didn't even know. We decided in the management meeting that this is what we're going to do.”

“Our own investors told us that, look, if we can sell the company for 20 or thirty million dollars today, do it, because you are not going to be successful.”