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Is There a Silver Bullet?
"There isn't a silver bullet here. And looking back, every one's a genius," he says. "I think what helps is having clarity on what it is we're trying to do at this stage and how that leads to our vision"
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
(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 hostListen to all your favourite podcasts with AI-powered features
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