Lenny's Podcast: Product | Growth | Career

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

Jun 9, 2024

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

Creator website

Episode guests

Uri Levine

AI Summary

Highlights

AI Chapters

Episode notes

Podcast summary created with Snipd AI

Quick takeaways

Focusing on the problem, not the solution, is vital for startup success.

Achieving product-market fit requires personal passion, testing, and adaptation.

Effective storytelling and perseverance are key in engaging investors during fundraising.

Deep dives

Falling in Love with the Problem

Falling in love with the problem is emphasized as a crucial startup lesson. It is highlighted that the essence of entrepreneurship lies in solving a problem to create value, with simplicity driving this focus. Engaging others to embrace the core problem becomes the compass for a successful journey and compelling story. Starting by identifying a significant problem shared by many, then understanding their perspective before developing a solution, becomes the key to creating value.

Put your strongest points on the first and last slides

01:47

Shifting Company Focus in Different Phases

03:23

Start with the Problem, Not the Solution

02:53

Hiring and firing

03:16

Intro

3min

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

4min

Identifying Worthwhile Problems in Startup Ventures

4min

Passion and Adaptation in Entrepreneurship

17min

Navigating Startup Focus: From Problem to Growth

11min

Maximizing B2B Marketing and Insights on Fundraising

2min

Mastering Startup Fundraising

22min

Decisive Hiring and Product Understanding

20min

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

—

Brought to you by:

• Vanta—Automate compliance. Simplify security

• Mercury—The powerful and intuitive way for ambitious companies to bank

• LinkedIn Ads—Reach professionals and drive results for your business

—