Uri Levine is the co-founder of 10 companies, including Waze (which he sold to Google for $1.1B) and Moovit (which he sold to Intel for $1B). He’s also been on 20 different boards, including a dozen he’s still on, and has advised over 50 startups on all things product, growth, hiring, and M&A. Most recently, he's the author of "Fall in Love with the Problem, Not the Solution: A Handbook for Entrepreneurs" which was described by Steve Wozniak as the “Bible for entrepreneurs.”
In our conversation, we cover:
🔸 Why falling in love with the problem is so important for entrepreneurs
🔸 The 3 phases of a startup, and what to focus on during each phase
🔸 Tactics for telling a compelling story when fundraising
🔸 Why firing is more important than hiring
🔸 How Waze iterated to achieve product-market fit
🔸 Much more
Listen now 👇
- YouTube: https://lnkd.in/gxWJb_Rg
- Spotify: https://lnkd.in/gDg4EmqF
- Apple: https://lnkd.in/ge8uXpRJ
Some key takeaways:
1. You need to “fall in love with the problem” that you’re solving. This is the biggest driver of startup success. It will help you deliver value to users, tell a more inspiring story about your company, and recruit a team. “Falling in love” means feeling enough passion about the problem that it can drive you to persist through hard times.
2. The ultimate measure of product-market fit is customer retention. If customers keep coming back, it indicates that your product or service is meeting their needs and providing value. Achieving product-market fit requires patience and iteration. With Waze, the team went through countless iterations, incorporating user feedback to improve the app. Uri stresses that you must “keep trying different things until you find the one thing that works.”
3. The first and last slides in a pitch deck are the most underused. They show onscreen the longest—while you get set up and while you take questions afterward—so they should contain your strongest point. Don’t waste this valuable real estate on showing your company name or “Thank you.”
4. Use the “30-day test” to maintain a high-performance team. Create a reminder to ask yourself this question 30 days after someone joins the team: “Knowing what I know today, would I hire this person?” If the answer is yes, tell the person you’re excited about them and give them more equity—you’ll gain a lot of loyalty. If the answer is no, you need to fire them immediately, to avoid the inevitable damage they will cause to you, your team, and themselves.
5. Watch users, especially those who use your product in unexpected ways. Different people use products differently, so observing a diverse range of users is key to building the right solution. Uri also advises focusing on those who didn’t convert to uncover barriers and points of friction.
Programmatic Advertising Expert - Leading Klever Programmatic, and Prebid.org's Buyer Taskforce
1dI’m sure you’ll be really busy but if you have spare time. I’d love to come say hello!