The Insider Story of Waze with Noam Bardin

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Jun 2, 2021

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ANECDOTE

Waze's Growth

Noam Bardin joined Waze in 2009 when it had only 2,000 monthly active users in Israel.
When he left in 2021, Waze had 140 million monthly actives globally.

INSIGHT

North Star Metric

Driven kilometers became Waze's North Star Metric, reflecting user engagement and data collection.
More driving meant more data, higher ad revenue, and increased user engagement.

ADVICE

Launch Globally

Launch globally, even from a small country, as it forces you to think big.
Local launches can create localized solutions that hinder global scaling.

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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.

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 host