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

Transcript from https://podmenti.com/t/462988b7e9032ff4

You've co-founded ten different companies. You've been on the board of twenty. You've also built two unicorns, including Waze. The biggest startup lesson you seem to have taken out of that is to Fall in love. Fall in love. Fall in love. Fall in love with the problem. And then actually what you're trying to do is engage everyone else to fall in love with the same problem, to go into this journey, into this path, and follow your
Anything you wanted to share around hiring firing. Every time that you hire someone new, mark your calendars for thirty days down the road, and ask yourself one question. Knowing what I know today, would I hire this person? If the answer is no, fire them immediately. Let's actually talk about fundraising. Most people are missing the most important.
important slide of their presentation is the first slide. This slide is going to be presented for the longest period of time. This is the place that you're gonna put your strongest. The second most important slide is the last one.

Today my guest is Uri Levine. Uri is the co-founder of Waze and nine other companies.
He sold two companies for over a billion dollars.
He's also been on twenty different startup boards, including a dozen he's still currently on.
He's also advised over fifty founders and startups over his career.
More recently, he wrote a book that summarizes all of his advice for founders called Fall in Love with the Problem, Not the Solution, A Handbook for Entrepreneurs.
In the foreword to the book, Steve Wozniak said this book will change your life and become your Bible if you're an entrepreneur.
And I cannot disagree with that. This book is very tactical, with amazing stories, and walks you through the ideation phase all the way to exiting your company.
In my conversation with Ori, we chat about many of my favorite chapters, including why falling in love with the problem is so important, how to find product market fit, a really clever tactic for firing people who aren't a fit for your company.
A ton of really genius tactical advice for improving your fundraising pitch.
And so much more.
With that, I bring you Uri Levine. And if you enjoy this podcast, don't forget to subscribe and follow it in your favorite podcasting app or YouTube. It's the best way to avoid missing future episodes, and it helps the podcast tremendously.

Hurry, thank you so much for being here. Welcome to the podcast.
Thank you, happy to be here.
Okay, so here's what I've gathered about your career and let me know if I've missed anything.
You've co founded
Ten different companies.
including four year still operating.
You've been on the board of twenty companies.
You've advised
fifty, maybe more companies. You've also built two unicorns, including Waze.
which she sold for over a billion dollars, which back then was an a astronomical amount.
Money it still is.
So does that all sound right? Is there anything big I missed about your career?
That sounds about right.
I think what's really interesting to me is that from all of that experience
The biggest startup lesson you seem to have taken
out of that is to fall in love with the problem.
It's what your book is called. You have a T shirt that you're wearing right now that you wear on every podcast that says that exactly.
Clearly this lesson has struck a big chord with you.
I'm curious if there's a moment where you realize that that's the core and that's something that every founder needs to
Yeah, right. Is there an aha moment?
Or is it kind of this progressive like, Oh wow, maybe this is the secret
I I'm not sure that this is a certain moment. I think that that was evolving over time.

in realizing that look at the end of the day the entrepreneurship journey is is about value creation.
The simplest way to create value is solve a problem. That's the simplest way. And uh in my background I'm an engineer always looking for the simplest way and uh
And solve a problem. Yeah, is the the simplest way. And so this is where falling love with the problem coming from in people occasionally would confuse uh
mm, the T shirt with the book and uh no the T shirt is about ten or f or even more years old.
And the book is only two years old. So I was wearing those T shirts for a long while before I wrote the book. And when I wrote the book that was obvious that this is going to be the name of the book. But there are m way more into that, right? So when you
Fall in love with the problem.
then what happened is that the program is going to serve as the north star of your journey. And when you have a north star you're going to make less deviation from the course. And you are way more likely to become successful.
But also
The story that you are about to tell
is way more compelling.
Just imagine that we will be here in two thousand and seven, just before I started Ways, and I will tell you I'm going to build an AI crowd source based navigation system.
You're going to say, Oh yeah, very interesting.
But you don't care.
If I will tell you
I'm gonna help you to avoid traffic jobs.
Then you do care.
And when your customer cares.
They want you to be successful, and when they want you to be successful, they are going to help you to become successful.
And so in that sense, falling in love with the problem is really a key
To increase the likelihood of being successful.
So in general I you know, all of my startups start with a problem.
Think of a problem. A big problem. Something that it's worth solving. Something that the world will become a better place if you solve that.
And then ask yourself who has this problem.
She happened to be the only person on the planet with this problem.
I can recommend you are therapist.
Don't build a startup. It's way more expensive and takes way longer period of time to build a startup. But if a lot of people actually have this problem, what you really want to do next is go and speak with those people.
and understand their perception of the problem.
And only then start to build at the solution.
If you follow this path and your solution works.
It's guaranteed that you're creating value.
You start with the solution.
You might be building something that no one cares and that's really frustrating.
So fall in love with the problem. This is where you want to start.
Now this is really hard because I'm not sure.
Getting tons of emails every every week from entrepreneurs.
And they're all start with
what we are doing.
And I don't really care what you're doing. What I really care about is why
You are doing that. And this is the problem that you solve, or the value that you create, or the value that you create for me. This is what really matters, right?
And so
If you start your story with
our company is or our system is and in the recent year it's uh everything is our AI system is or our AI company is, right? But
But generally speaking, um
If you start your story with that
You focus on your solution.
If you start with the story with the problem we are solving is then you focus on the problem. If your story starts with the value that we create for you,
is then you focus on the user.
The last two are way better than focus on the problem the solution.
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I wanna follow a couple of threads here because
I imagine there's certain problems people fall in love with
Amazing. I'm gonna solve this very
obscure problem for my
Family.
Or a friend of mine.
And then they realize this is never gonna be a huge venture scale business if that's a goal of theirs.
You talked about like make sure enough people have this problem versus just getting a therapist that's gonna help you with this problem.
What are some signals?
And heuristics folks can use to help them understand this is a big enough problem that it's really worth their time.
So people ask me, so you send me to speak with users how many? And I will tell them a hundred.
You don't need a hundred, but the hundred basically say you need to get out of your comfort zone and just it's not just your close friends and family that you need to discuss that. You need to discuss that with people that you don't know.
And usually what happen is and the validation is is
In most cases
It's really clear, right? If you tell someone this is the problem I'm going to address
And they will tell you, Oh, I know someone that has this problem.
It's not a real problem.
They should tell you, No, no, no, no, no, this is not the problem. The problem is
And they will give you their description of the problem.
This is something that you really want to follow. So if you speak with a hundred people, but if you actually speak with twenty people that you don't know.
You will get validated whether or not this problem is real or not.
And and look, it's not the only way to become successful, right? You start with uh um
You look at the um
you know, one of the most successful um products in the world, uh the iPhone, right?
And you ask yourself, what was exactly the problem when they started? And the answer is that there was no problem when they started, right? There were smartphones.
And people were actually very happy with them.
And so occasionally we need to invent something completely new.
But solving a problem is simply the simplest way to create value.
Another element of
Picking a problem to work on. So you say you fall in love with a problem.
Is
being excited to work on this problem.
There's oftentimes
Problems you find that aren't like
that exciting to you, or you're not excited to work on like real estate software, but you find there's a big problem.
How important is it that you're personally
passionate and excited to work on this thing versus like, Oh wow, this is a huge business opportunity. I gotta go after it.
It doesn't matter if I'm not that passionate about it.
Fall in love, right? This is really passionate. Really, really passionate.
Well the journey is really hard and complex and long.
And so you have to be in love in order to go into this journey because otherwise it's not going to be successful. You really want to be passionate. If you're not passionate about the problem, even though that the problem might be real and big and significant,
There is not enough drive, there is not enough internal drive.
to take you through the hardship of the journey.
And so you you need to be passionate, you need to fall in love, you personally need to fall in love with the problem.
And then actually what you're trying to do is engage everyone else to fall in love with the same problem to go into this journey, into this path, and follow your leadership there.
Is there an example of a pivot that you maybe wrote?
Where you realize the problem was not as big as you thought, or you realize there's a bigger problem.
Th so so actually there are many right. So so oversee uh deals with maybe um
biggest secret in travel industry. What happened to airfare
After you book your flight.
You have no idea because you never compare prices after the you made the reservations. But you know that airfare is going up and down all the time. It's going up and down
before you're making the reservation and keep on going up and down after you're making the reservations.
So if this is the price that you paid.
And this is cancellation fees. If the price drops here.
You can rebook the same flight at the cheaper price. Genius.
If she would only
Com keep on comparing prices after that, right?

So we started this company that is actually monitoring your own itinerary and uh um and we um realized that this is going to be um
huge benefits to travelers, right.
And we sort of that as um
B to C company, direct to consumers.
And we realize that even though the people really care
They are not willing to take the action that is required.

And we ended up with doing that for corporate.
in corporates they you know, they are very simple uh ways for them to engage that automatically. So automatic rebooking and so forth.
And we can save corporates about ten percent of the travel budget that goes directly to bottom line. So
So we started that as uh B to C and then we realized that this is uh
way harder than we think it is, and we ended up with converting that into
B to B, uh, which turns out to be very successful for us.
And so occasionally there are um companies that you start your journey with uh um with one perception and you change that and uh
And that will happen multiple times.
That's an awesome example.
Okay, I wanna before I move on to uh I'm kind of thinking about this in the phases of starting a company. So we're talking right now about coming up with the idea that you wanna commit to.
A lot of people that wanna start companies are not sure how to find a great idea.
So the core advice you're sharing is find something
Find a problem and fall in love with solving that problem in whatever way you can.
Do you have any other advice for helping somebody find a problem and finding a startup idea?
Where do you find startup ideas? What do you find what does work for you mostly?

So for me it's usually personal frustration that leads me to start to think about it whether or not we can change it. I hate traffic change, right? I hate uh
los leaving money on the table, right? So there are many things that I run into and I get frustrated and I tell myself, No, no, no, there must be a a different way to do that.
But in general, look
The
Problem itself needs to start from
From you, right?
Something that
really bothers you something that you care about.
And then it's the validations of the problem that you speak with many people try to realize. Now if you'll tell me, oh this is a B2B, then speak with many businesses, right?
Speak with those that you believe actually do have this problem.
And understand their perception.
Once you validate that.
then there are a few things that you need to realise. One is
About the journey itself.
This is going to be
uh multi dimensional journey, right? It's gonna be at least three dimensions and and maybe fourth, right? So so the the three dimensions, one is them is um
it's gonna be a roller coaster journey.
With ups and downs and ups and downs and
And look, if you'll tell me that all the businesses in the world have ups and downs, I agree, but the frequency of those when you're building a startup.
Way higher.
I think that I heard the best quote on that from Ben Horvitz.
a recent Horwitz Venture Capital Firm and before that he used to be a CO of a startup.
And he was asked whether or not he was sleeping well at night, and he said, Oh yeah, slept like a baby.
I woke up every two hours and cried.
And that's really the reality of that. The frequency of the differences are so dramatic that there is nothing
compared to that Aurora Coaster journey.
It's also a journey of failures.
Look, we're trying to build something new that no one did before. And even though that we think that we know exactly what we are doing.
We don't, so we try.
We try one thing and it doesn't work, we try another thing and it doesn't work. We keep on trying different things until we find one thing that does work.
Yeah.
Now if you realize that this is going to be a journey of failures.
then there are two immediate conclusions. The first one is that if you're afraid to fail
then in reality you already failed because you're not going to try.
Albert Einstein used to say that if you haven't failed that because you haven't tried new things before, if you're gonna try new things.
You will fail.
Michael Jordan used to say that uh
You know, I've failed over and over and over and over again, and this is what made me successful.
And so this is the first conclusion. The second conclusion is that you really want to fail fast.
Just think about it, right? If you fail fast you still have plenty of time to try another attempt.
and build another version of the product. Try another go to market approach. Try a different business model. So you still have plenty of time to make more and more and more attempts. And the more attempts that you have,
You simply increase the likelihood of being successful.
Just think that you play basketball right and you try to score from half court.
If you have one shot.
And you're not Stef Gary, you are very likely to miss.
But if you actually have a lot of shots.
One of them you gonna make.
That's it.
Just think about it, the biggest enemy of good enough.
is perfect.
You don't need to be perfect. You need to be good enough in order to win the market. And the way that you're going to become good enough, by the way, is really simple. You start with
Not good enough.
And you iterate and iterate and iterate until you become good enough. And then you win.
Third I mentioned is that this is going to be
Long.
Jerry.
Very long. Way longer than you think it is.
And the longest part of it is until you figure out product market fit.
And product market feed goes into the different phases of building a company.
To a certain extent I would say look the difference between a corporate and a startup
Is that a corporate no
This is our value proposition. This is the product that we are selling. This is the pricing of this product that we are selling. This is the target audience. This is how we're going to sell them. This is how we go into the market. And we all all we have to do is keep on executing and hopefully nothing will change over the over the
over the period of time, right? When you start as a startup.
You don't have a product.
You don't know what's the business model. You don't know what what people are going to pay you for.
You don't know how to grow your business.
And you need to figure out all of those.
And this is going to be a long journey.
Now the longest part is usually figuring out product market feet.
And product market fit is really simple. That means that you create value to your customers.
If you do not figure out product market fee.
You will die.
As simple as that.
You never heard of a company that did not figure out product market feed. They simply died. That's it.
Now once they do and for a second I want you to think of you know all the applications that you're using every day, right? From searching Google, using Waze, WhatsApp, Facebook, Netflix, Uber, whatever it is.
And ask yourself what is the difference between any of those today?
And the first time that you have used that.
And the answer is that there is no difference.
We are searching Google today the same way that we search Google for the first time in our life. We're using Ways today the same way.
that we used Waze for the first time in their life. So once a company figure out product market feed, they don't change their product anymore.
Because this is the value that they create to the customers and you don't want to change that.
What we don't know.
Is how long did it take them?
to get to this point, right? Beforehand.
We never heard of them.
And after that they don't change that anymore.
It's a matter of years.
For Ways it was four years.
For Microsoft it was five years. For Netflix it was ten years.
If you'll tell me, Oh, today is very different. Chat GPT just started a year ago.
No, they are seven years old.
It took them six years until you heard about them for the first time in your life.
So it does take time to create value and this is something that is really significant.
Now at the end of the day.
Product market feet have one metric.
One metric. That's it.
Retention.
That's really simple. If you create value they will come back.
If they are not coming back, that means that you are not creating value.
Now think about your art episodes, right, of the of the uh of this podcast, right?
Most of the of your listeners are returning, right? Because you create value for them and they are coming back. One hundred percent.
Every single one.
Every episode. Occasionally there are new one, right? And there's new ones coming in all the time.
Okay.
By the way, this is one thing that uh
Some businesses don't realize that whether or not they they are
If customers are going to be new customers or
returning customers. And uh
And in many cases they simply fail to realize that upfront, and the result is that they are not building
The right go to market strategy.
We covered a lot of ground there. That was amazing. Um I'm gonna follow a number of threads of things you just touched on.
You talked about product market fit briefly.
Uh
What was the moment you felt product market fit with Waze? I don't know if I've ever heard that story.
Okay, we started in Israel. And Israel is a small place and we ended up with um being very successful in Israel and then we said, Wait a minute, where is crowdsource all the data, right? Not just uh traffic information and speed caps and so forth, but also the map data itself. So
We can start from a blank page.
And the users while they drive, they create the map and they create traffic information and so forth.
And so we figure out that we can start anywhere and we made l ways global at the end of two thousand and nine.
And uh
We expect that to work the same way that it did in Israel, but it didn't. It was not good enough.
It was not good enough in the US, it was not good enough in Western Europe, it was not good enough in in Latin America, it was not good enough in Egypt, it was not good enough anywhere that matters, 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.
So what we did is um
We spoke with the drivers.
No they wanted us to be successful. We basically say we the drivers are going to fight traffic jobs together. So common enemy togetherness.
All goodness. Everyone wanted that to work, right? So people downloaded the app and it simply was not good enough.
So they
Sure, right. Because if it's not good enough, you're not coming back.
We spoke with them, we asked them what what didn't work for them, they told us because they wanted it to work.
And we build the next version addressing everything that they've told us.
And we know that this is it.
And it's not.
So we're doing it all over again. We speak with the drivers, we ask them what
didn't work for them, they tell us now we build the next version and now we have the conviction that it's going to work.
And it's not.
Journey of errors iteration after iteration after iteration after iteration.
more than a year of iterations until
beginning of two thousand eleven that we actually started to see that working in in m and then it's in multiple places, right? In the US
one metropolitan after that, right? Los Angeles first and then San Francisco and then Washington D C and Chicago and uh New York and Atlanta and so forth.
In Europe, one country after that, Italy first, and then France and Netherlands and Sweden and Spain and one country after that.
In Latin America, one country after that, or um Colombia first, and then Chile, and then Brazil, and then Mexico, and then rest of Latin America.
In Asia, multiple countries, one of the not all of them, by the way. Not all of them.
Japan is a very good example where it
Didn't work and it will never work.
So
Where is crowdsourced the information, right? Which basically says that as soon as we get to the level of good enough.
Then we are good enough.
House numbering plan in the US it's really simple, right? Every block is a hundred numbers, right? And so if I have the map, I can actually count the number of blocks and take you to approximately the the the right location, even if I don't have exactly all the house numbers there.
most of the Western world it's a geographical order, right? So in Israel this is going to be sequential order.
old number on one side of the street, even number on the other side of the street, starting from one and until the end of the street and so forth. So it's enough that I will have few
that I can a few house numbers that I can actually take you to the right place in
In the UK they are you know house number starts on one side of the street and then on the other side they're coming back, right? And so so there is an order.
In Japan it's chronological order.
The oldest house in the neighborhood is house number one. Oh well.
And then the house number two
Can be
Miles away, but it's the second oldest house in the neighborhood.
And so you have to have all the house numbers unless and until then you are not good enough.
And crowdsources um if you need perfect information.
Crowd source may not be the right way to do that.
Just to close the loop on this question, when you were launching these markets and it wasn't working.
Were you actually looking at retention at that point? And if so, was there like a number you were looking for, or was it more qualitative, like
It's just taken off off and to the right. Like where we actually watching back
Back in the early days.
uh that was easier for us because we tried to compare everything to Israel. So we we looked at the um the frequency of use, right? Or uh or when our people are coming back. How how long does it take them until the next try and until the next try and in general speaking
Um if you look at something that have high frequency of use.
then you will be looking at the um
three month retentions of thirty, forty, fifty percent is actually pretty good indication. But usually what would happen is that you would know when they convert.
Um
you know, the third over the fourth time. And if they're not getting to the fourth time.
then they are basically saying, Okay, we give it a try.
We really like the story, we gave it another try.
And it's not good enough.
That's a cool heuristic. Do you find that that
Is useful for other startups, consumer type startups, or is that just something you think specific to Waze at that point?
This idea of coming back for the third time.
It's really depending on the frequency of use, right? If I will tell you that I have a startup that uh helps you to file your real tax returns in three minutes.
Then okay, that's
Absolutely amazing.
But you're only going to do that next time is next year.
By the way, we did have a startup that it was doing that. It's still a little bit up and running, but uh
That was really frustrating.
Because the tax authorities shut us down.
Mm.
You gotta fall in with the problem. You gotta power through that.
Just uh change the government.
Just kidding. I the story you told of way isn't iterating is a really good example of falling in love with the problem.
You're
Really?
passionate about I need to I wanna solve traffic. I hate traffic.
By the way
What it made me think about a little bit is
Uh Elon when he hated traffic.
he built like the boring company and built tunnels underneath underground and their solution to hate traffic is
I'm gonna build ways in a in a in a software app.
So look, if I would
You know, we start ways.
with the vision that we are going to help people to avoid traffic jobs. Now the reality is that there are more traffic jobs today than there were in two thousand and seven.
Obviously number one, I'm not done.
Um and number two
If you ask people what is the value of ways,
then it's not about avoiding traffic. It's about creating certainty.
Uncertainty is way higher value than saving time.
So you know exactly when you're gonna get there and this is uh
way higher value. And we, by the way, we learned that in the US market when we spoke with people, they told us uh
You know, if
If I'm in living in Cupertino and I need to drive uh drive up to the C to San Francisco, and I can take one hundred one or two eighty.
I don't really want to change my route unless there is something dramatic.
But what I really want to know is how long it's gonna take me.
So I'm gonna stay on the one-on-one. I'm not going to get into service road. I'm not going to take El Camino Royale. I'm not going to try something else. I'm going to stay on the one-on-one.
Just let me know how long it's gonna take.
So certainty creates way more value than her
uh than saving time.
I wanna talk through a couple of other of the chapter in your book.
So chapter four is around
The different phases
of a startup journey.
And
Your core advice is that it's important to focus on one thing at a time in each of these phases.
And the first phase you call it the uh
all over the place phase, I think, or yeah, the all over phase.
And the idea is you need to get out of that as soon as you can and then focus

Just kinda talk through these different phases and what you think people do wrong along those
Along the phases, maybe they got they get them wrong or they focus on the wrong things in each phase.
So so you know, initially you think about your new idea from multiple perspective, right? This is the problem, this is how the solution is going to look like, this is what I'm gonna do next year, this is
My ten years vision. This is
My business model and so forth. So you think about everything.
But you actually need to execute only one thing.
Now this one thing is figuring out product market feed. It's not one thing, right? You wait wait a minute, you also need to build an organization and you want that organization to be something that you really like.
And so there are
A lot of operational stuff.
But you need to figure out product market feed. As we said earlier, if you don't figure out product market feed, you will die.
If you do.
Then you get to live and die another day.
In the outer day is whether or not you're gonna figure out how to grow your business.
and whether or not you're gonna figure out your business model.
Now the good news is that I will tell you that if you create value, you will figure out a business model.
Okay.
at least for the people that you create value for them, they are most likely willing to pay. Now, if the if in general I'm not saying that this is the only business model that the
that is viable, but if you create value, we you will figure out a business model.
But figuring out a business model is a journey by itself. And guess what? It's going to be a long roller coaster journey of failures.
When we started Waze, we thought that we're gonna sell map data and traffic information.
And we ended up with doing advertisement.
Very different business model.
Because we realise that it's not for us. It's uh it's
too long sales cycles.
We were very
You know, mobile internet, dynamic company and selling to government is not exactly what we wanted to do.

And so we ended up with a different business model, but with a lot of reasoning why this is the right business model for us.
in in figuring out growth. Look, if I would ask a hundred people on the street, how did you hear about ways
Day ninety five of them, if not ninety nine of them, will tell me someone told me.
War of Moth.
Right. So everyone wants to have water of mouth.
Ward of Math you can only have
If you have high frequency of use.
If you're doing tax returns once a year, even if you really like the experience, then once a year you're gonna tell someone else.
If you're using waves every day, then
Every day you have an opportunity to tell someone else.
So word of mouth even though that everyone would like that.
It's only going to happen.
If you have high frequency of use.
So those phases
requires different focus of the company, right? Initially, if you focus on product market fee, then you don't need sales.
You have no product to sell.
You don't need business development. You don't need even marketing.
You need product.
You need developers and you need product uh
Product lead to define the product and lead through the iterations of the product until we get to the level that it's good enough.
I once you get there
You shift gears.
If the product doesn't change, if we search Google the same way that we search Google for the first time in our life.
Then the product development.
is now not going to be focused about value creation. It's going to be focused about
either figuring out business model or figuring out scale, right?
In the entire company.
shift gears and move to a different phase. Now this is really hard.
Just think about it. If up until now the product development group was the only things that matters.
All of a sudden we think about marketing now, because we are now in the go to market phase.
That this is the most important thing of the company.
Occasionally I found companies that have
challenging and shifting years, right? So um so they didn't figure out where the clutch is.
And you have to.
Because otherwise you're stuck.
in the previous phase that you kind of you know finish that journey. This journey is nearly done.
And and you need the shift gears.
And uh if you don't do that, then you get stuck. If you do that, uh if you try to do multiple things at the same time.
You will fail.
Focus is not about what we're doing, it's about what we are not doing. These are the secrets.
I like that.
So the four phases, just to briefly summarize, it's kinda like come up with the idea.
Fine product market fit.
then it's a question of should you keep focusing on growth or should you figure out the business model.
Before
focusing heavily on growth. And your advice sounds like if it's high frequency
Word of mouth driven.
Focus on growth and then you figure out business model later. If not
figure out how you're gonna make money and then figure out growth.
Exactly. Because if if you have high frequency of fuse, you will end up with uh growth coming by itself, right? Word of mouth.
And therefore you should uh do that at the beginning.
If you don't have high frequency of use, you are
Sentence to
Acquire users.
or customers all of your lifetime.
If this is the case, then you really want to figure out the business model before you start and go and do that.
That's really helpful.
I think actually a counterexample to your
uh point about how frequency of use is necessary for word of mouth growth is Airbnb.
something like seventy percent of Airbnb growth is word of mouth.
And frequency of use is actually really low. It's like once or twice a year.
And I wonder if it's because the experience is so
Unique and special.
that it still works and enough people travel enough times.
Slash if it was a higher frequency, it would have grown even faster, I imagine.
High frequency of fuse is the simplest way for word of mouth. The other thing is coolness.
If it's really cool.
Then you'll tell more people. Mm-hmm.
And Airbnb was um really cool at the beginning of the journey, right? So now everyone knows about the Airbnb, but when they started
That was way cheaper.
in really unique experience than um than the hotels.
It's still actually mostly word of mouth.
Uh I think it was probably higher initially, but it's still like almost seventy, eighty percent driven by word of mouth.
So it's still cool enough.
Good for them.
Um, you have a couple of quotes that I wanted to share, which are along the lines of things you shared. One is just
Uh.
You have this kind of what's the most important stage at a company. They all are.
But one at a time.
I love that line.
The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.
The same advice you just shared. Just like focus, so you're in the PM product market fit phase, focus on that. Don't think about growth yet, don't think about business model yet necessarily.
I know investors are gonna push you to figure these things out and you'll have to have some story of like here's how make make money
Here's how we think we're gonna grow, right? You need to think about that a little bit, but maybe don't
Make that the focus.
So this is one of the areas that investors don't like to hear the truth, right? The truth is that I don't know how I'm gonna bring the users. I will figure that out once I get there.
But the reality is that right now I don't know. But they don't want to hear that. What they want to hear is that, oh, I know exactly how I'm gonna bring them.
And what I will say is that I know exactly where I'm going to start my experiments.
But but uh most of the investors would like to see
a coherent story that makes sense, right? This is our business model, this is how we're gonna make money, this is what we're gonna sell, this is how much they're going to be to pay, this is why it's a simple business model, and these these are the comparable to this business model.
Yeah.
Mm.
But investors have the final word, unfortunately, right? They decide if they want to invest or not.
And so if your story is not compelling, they're gonna be like, All right, we'll find someone else.
You know, it's uh um
seasonality, right? There are periods of time that uh
uh raising capital is easier and then uh
uh many of the enterprise will be choosers and not beggars and the there are periods of time that is the other way around and
Most of the entrepreneurs will be beggars and not choosers.
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Let's actually talk about fundraising, it's a topic I wanted to spend a little time on.
How much money have you raised?
For the companies that you've
Started total, roughly.
So Waze raised about fifty million dollars throughout the entire journey.
Um
We started by raising uh um twelve.
Um that was this the the first uh investment round and then we raised the
Thirty.
Yeah, and then there was the last one that we raised uh actually not a lot. Um
That's a surprising small amount of money to raise for
Yeah, come.
In general I would say Israeli startups are leaner than American startups and and so they would um
You can raise less money.
Yeah, that's amazing.
end up with um pretty successful results.
That's amazing.
Raising capital. Um
You know, it's a journey by itself and and different from the other journeys that you need only once uh raising capital is going to happen multiple times.
And if we say that building a startup is a roller coaster journey, then I would say uh
Raising capital is a a roller coaster journey.
In the dark.
It's like Space Mountain.
Yeah. Sort of. And and and one of the reason is that this is a different ball game.
And you don't know how to play at the beginning.
I would say a few things about uh raising capital for the first time. Um
Number one it um
You know, I spoke with uh um many investors and and one of um the conversation that they had that they really
really resonate with me was uh when I spoke with uh um one of the leading VC in Israel and I asked their partner
How long does it take you to decide if you like this the
you know, the entrepreneur or not. And he asked me, do you want the right answer or the real answer?
Say, you know, I heard the right answer so many times. Give me the real answer.
And we were sitting in a small meeting room, so the guys looking at me and then looking at the door and looking at me again and say it's before they sit down.
Say oh no no say say that again, right?
That's the first impression.
Now we all have first impression.
How long does it take you to decide if you like a candidate or not?
Second.
You go on a date, how long does it take you to decide if you like the date?
Second.
Then maybe there are a few more minutes.
that you allow yourself to either change your mind or let that first impression slow the fight.
Now if this is the case and you're looking to raise capital, start with the strongest point at the beginning.
Whatever it is. I mean, I don't care if this is the size of the problem, this is the faction that you have, this is the team that you have with. I don't care what it is. Start with that because by the time you'll get there.
They might be already setting up their mind.
Then start with the strongest point at the beginning. And by the way, finish with that as well.
Um so this is the first uh um conclusion. The second conclusion is that I spoke with uh
um the early stage investors, right? Those that invest the first money
So company has
a story to tell. That's about it, right? No traction, nothing yet uh is built and so forth.
And asked him, Why did you decide to invest in this company and this company and this company? And I spoke with many investors and what I heard
was actually pretty consistent.
I like the CO.
I like the story.
That's it.
I like the CO, I like the store.
Now if this is the case then there are two immediate conclusions. The first one is that the CO goes alone to the meeting.
I need the headlight on me.
I don't need any destructions, I don't need my team members, I don't need anything else in the room, just me.
Because if if I bring other people then
At the end of the day they might say, Um, yeah, I like the team, but I did I
This the CO was not.
specific, right? Was not unique, was not
Jumping out of the pages.
So CO goes along and tell the story. The other part is that they need to tell a good story.
A good story is not about facts.
is about creating emotional engagement. It's about
creating the sense that the listener would like to be part of this story.
And for investor, it's uh two things. Number one is that they they want to believe that this is usable.
And number two, they want to believe that you can build it.
And this is the story that you need to tell.
Uh I would say always start with uh the problem, right? Because uh guess what?
Investors are also users.
If they don't think that they're gonna use it
So it's just relevant for them and they don't think that they're gonna use it.
They will basically dismiss that.
They will basically say the market is not there.
So these are two main things. The third thing is um
It's a different ball game, right? So if you have
product and you tell the story to potential customers.
the right order of magnitude is that about one third of the listeners will buy.
So in a more mature company their pipeline is going to be three X in order to sell at the end of the year one X.
One third are going to say yes.
In investors, it's one percent.
Not one third one percent.
So you're gonna hear a hundred times no.
Until you hear one w one yes.

And that hundred times no is something that you need to
Understand from the beginning.
Because that's really discouraging, right? You go and speak with investors and they tell you
I call that um they open up the big book of excuses why not, but in general they are not going to invest, right? Now you look at it from the outer side.
A venture capital partner is likely to see uh between a hundred and two hundred companies a year.
in investing one or two, one percent.
That's it.
So if this is the case, then it's gonna be the same case for you.
One out of a hundred.
If you want to increase the likelihood, learn how to tell a good story, start with the strongest point at the beginning, remember that there are users too, so their emotional engagement is going to come through.
The usage.
the use case and not through
um how big the business is.
Mm.
I love the summary at the end. I love that you summarized your your points.
'Cause I try to do that. You did my job.
Uh.
I love this phrase you have in your book, the dance of the of one hundred knows.

you know, at the beginning you you you look at it and it and you say, Okay, they they say the they uh not they decided not to invest because of
X Y Z, right. Whatever it is, right. Google can do that in no time or
the market is not big enough or the market is complex or whatever it is, right? And uh and then you try to argue and and you don't know that it's useless, right?
It's like you go on a date and she said uh no and you tried to argue, right? No, this is
There is nothing to argue anymore, right? That's no
Yeah. I I look at a lot of startups too. I do a bunch of angel investing and I
Like, yeah, if it's not gonna be a fit, I'm not I'm not
Um
It's just not gonna work. And and I could spend all this time trying to explain it to you, but it's nothing's gonna change.
And because there's other startups out there is a big part of it, right? You just want to pick the things you can that are the best.
Not necessarily things that are good ideas.
Um, I really like this idea of starting with your strongest point. That's such an important tactical piece of advice.
To your point.
investors make decisions really quickly. And so starting with something that really catches their
Attention, it makes so much sense.
Because once you feel like oh wow, maybe this is a thing, your whole brain is starting to look at it from a oh yeah, okay.
Like you have a positive bend on everything you're hearing versus like no no it's never gonna work and everything is
Already biased.

So I would add here another very strong advice.
Most people are missing.
the most important slide of their presentation.
The most important slide of your presentation is the first slide.
Not the one that you think about it. The first slide, the one that says company XYZ intro.
This slide is going to be presented for the longest period of time.
That's a good point.
the longest period of time in the presentation, this slide is going to be presented on the screen.
And you didn't say anything there.
This is the place that you're gonna put your strongest point.
I love that. Is there an example of someone that did that or wait or did you do that when you're startups? What what do you put that I do that all the time. What's an example of something you put on that slide? That's such a good idea.
Maybe size of the market.
Maybe description of the problem.
Whatever it is, right, the strongest point is there.
The second most important slide.
Is the last one.
Not the summary, the one that says thank you.
That's the time to repeat that.
So most of their presentations will end up with uh
You know, um
Thank you and my email, right. And and this is going to be the last slide, right?
Which makes sense.
You just missed the opportunity. This is going to be the second longest displayed slide of the presentation, maybe the first.
Yeah. Everyone's sitting there
Chatting, asking you questions.
That's so smart.
Uh are there any more of these tips uh sitting in your head?
To share,'cause these are awesome.
I I do a lot of public speaking and usually my last slide say is uh
One more story.
And I decide on this story based on the audience and the dialogue so far and so forth.
But I have man many of stories, many last stories that I would like to tell. Yeah.
Important part is that no one is going to cut you off the stage.
If you have just one more story.
And so this is where you can recap everything.
this is where you can do whatever you want, right? Because no one is going to tell you, okay, time is up.
Right, and they're not impatient. They're like, Okay, it's almost over. Let's just let'em finish.
Exactly. Yeah. I love that.
Uh speaking of stories, is there what's the wildest fundraising story?
you've been through. Is there one that comes to mind of like holy shit, I can't believe
That happened. Or I can't believe that worked out.
One of the earlier startups that I was guiding was about um
um eventually roll the into gift cards. But uh but in Israel when you return something to the store
you don't get your money back. What you get is uh is a gift card for that particular store, right?
And obviously if you return something, then it's not necessary that you have something to buy in the store.
Um and you ended up with having a gift card that is never being used and uh
And so why not sell this gift card?
What happened is that um I heard the story of the COs and I thought that the story is not good enough and I told him, Look, you have to tell a better story and you give me an example and I said, Yeah, just imagine that uh
Yeah, and then there was a long story about uh
the microwave uh stuff uh working and I bought a new one and and and really long, long, long story about uh with the details, right? How how do you make a story bel make believe.
With details.
Right. The more details people think that this is real. Right. If there are no details then this is not real.

And so I told him this story that was like five minutes explaining trying to fit the microwave into the the closet and it didn't fit in and the into the cabinet and it didn't fit in, and I had to return it to the to the box and so forth and whole story.
And uh um and then I spoke with uh um
an investor in Israel and I told him about this new company that I'm going to invest in. I told him the same story about this microwave, right?
Yeah.
And he said, This is interest, I would like to uh to meet the CO.
Then he met the CO, and CO told him exactly the same story about the work.
And I when I tell that, this is my microwave, right? This is personal. This has happened to me. And um
And and so he told me the investor call me up later. He said, This is you know, he told me the exactly the same story. So that was really funny.
But but at the end of the day you um
One of the things that make story
Authentic.
his details.
Because otherwise it's not, right? So if you're gonna tell me, Okay, this is the use case of the product, then you end up with explaining a use case in in three lines.
This is not authentic.
If you
What your real users
then what happened is that you actually and you speak with them.
Then you have the authenticity to have to tell a a good story.
Really, really critical. If you want to tell user story,
These need to be real.
Yeah.
You have to learn how to tell a story with th with many details.
But interestingly it sounds like the story itself doesn't have to have happened to you in real life. It could be
A made up story, but with a lot of details is is is the lesson there.
Interesting.
If you if you tell it very briefly.
Then it doesn't sound right.
Amazing. And any other advice along those lines? I want to talk about two more chapters before we wrap up. Is there anything else around fundraising that you think is important for people to know?
So I will tell you which uh chapters I would like to speak about. Let's do it. Well I wonder what they are. I wonder if they're the same.
Understanding users and firing and hiring. Okay. Firing hiring. That was on my list. Okay, let's let's start there and then understanding users wasn't but
Uh I'm excited to hear what you have to say there.
So um
You know, I send the book proposal to many publisher and there is one chapter that says firing and hiring and many of them came back and say, Oh, it should be
Hiring and firing.
And I said, uh no.
Firing is hard decision.
Hiring is easy decisions.
you have to first of all learn how to make the hard decisions.
Now the inspirations from for for this chapter came from

many dialogues that I had with entrepreneurs that their startup failed and asked them why. What happened.
And about half told me the team was not right. And I kept on asking, Okay, what do you mean the team was not right? And what I heard the most is, you know, we had this guy not good enough and this guy not good enough. So this is what I heard the most. Another thing that I heard quite often is that we had um
communication issues, right? Something that I actually called uh
Ego management issues.
And then I asked them the most interesting question, when did you know that the team is not right?
Now the answer was actually rather scary. All of them told me within the first month
Then you said, Wait a minute, if you knew within the first month that the team is not right, and you didn't do anything. The problem was not that the team was not right, the problem was that the CO did not make our decision.
Making hard decisions is hard.
Making easy decisions is this is why no one likes to make the hard decisions.
Because you need to leave with the consequences.
In a small place like the startup.
The hard decisions will always go to the top.
Now if the CO does not make that hard decisions, the result is always the same.
The top performing people.
would leave.
Uh, they would leave because they don't want to be in a place that is unable to make hard decisions and they have a choice.
The nature of the beast is different.
Startup is a small organization.
Just imagine that you're in a small organization, right? It could be a team
Yeah.
Whatever it is, right? Ten, twenty, thirty people.
And there is someone that shouldn't be there.
And I don't care if that someone shouldn't be there because they are way underperforming or because they are asshole. I don't really care.
They shouldn't be there.
Everyone knows.
Everyone knows.
And the CO doesn't do anything.
The nature of the beast.
And this is why to performing people would leave.

Now building a startup is really, really hard, right?
It's hard if you have the right team.
But if you have people that shouldn't be there that are still there and the top performing people are leaving
Then it's going to be mission impossible.
The conclusion of this chapter is really really interesting.
Might if if
Everyone knows within a month.
And every time that you hire someone new
What I really want you to do is mark your calendars for thirty days down the road.
And ask yourself one question.
Knowing what I know today would I hire this person.
At the end of the day I like to nail that into
Yes or no, right? Because this is where decisions are being made easily.
If you ask yourself that question, if the answer is yes, then go to this person and tell them that you're really excited that they've joined there exceeding your expectations and give them more equity.
And you buy their loyalty for life.
If the answer is no.
Fire them immediately.
They're already set on a trajectory of not being successful.
And they're creating damage.
to you
To the rest of the team.
And to themselves, right.
They deserve to be successful, but it's not going to happen here.
They deserve to find someplace else that they can be successful.
But it's not going to happen here.
Yeah.
And that decision is really, really dramatic.
Now in many cases
With hard decisions.
We know what is the right decisions. We are looking for confirmation.
If you look for confirmation, then go and speak with the top performing people.
And tell them, ask them the following, right?
Assuming X Y Z person is is going to leave, how sore are you gonna feel?
And you will be
Surprised that they are going to tell you, Oh, it's not a big deal.
This is your confirmation.
Yeah, we had um
Elizabeth Stone from Netflix, the CTO of Netflix on and she
talked about this thing they call the keeper test, which is exactly that where every manager
As always.
Asking themselves if this person
were to leave tomorrow and tell me they're leaving, would I fight to keep them?
And if not, I should just I need to let them go.
And that's always top of mind for managers there.
you know, one of my companies had a pretty good year and uh and they decided to um
And to have any annual bonuses to um.
By and large, to nearly all of the employees. And then I asked the CO, so h how did you end up with the list? And said okay
Yeah, the
these people that getting uh um, you know, as twice as much as the others and then the otters and then there are four people that uh
are not going to get anything.
And ask them, Are they still here?
They shouldn't be here, right? If they are so much underperforming, then they shouldn't be here.
But it but generally
You you need the time.
To ask yourself the tough questions.
Because only then you can answer them, right?
If you don't ask the tough questions, then you don't answer them.
Yeah, I really love this very tactical piece of advice, which I was definitely gonna
touch on of putting a calendar entry into your calendar.
When you hire someone thirty days in.
To remind yourself, asking yourself, would I hire this person knowing what I know now? And if not, you should probably let them go.
By the way, I can tell you that for everything in your life, right?
Mm.
Knowing what you know today, would you do something different?
Wow. If the answer is yes, then do something different today.
Today is um the first day of the rest of your life.
That is uh powerful advice. So what I'm thinking there is like if I bought something, maybe return it. Is there what else what else have you applied that to in your life?
relationship in general, um
direction that you're going, right?
Mm.
Do you still like that? I you know, I have uh
Five children.
And uh and they're all written in you know, in their twenties and uh and beginning of thirties and uh
And they struggle with their career path, right? And I basically tell them, Look, if you're going to work in a place and you don't like it.
then what I want you to do is ask yourself why you're not liking it and whether or not there is something that you can change.
And I'm gonna ask you a the same question in ninety days from now. And if this still is the case.
Then quit. Mm-hmm.
It's interesting that you make that ninety days, which it kind of implies some decisions you need to wait a little bit more, you need more data, you need more time than
Not really thirty days, but set some kind of timeline.
Okay.
If you don't set a timeline.
It will never happen.
I think the other really interesting implication here is most decisions are two way door. Most decisions and m decisions you can
Change your mind. You can quit.
You can
Leave a relationship. I was gonna s I was thinking you were gonna stay with your five kids.
thirty days after they're born. Do uh w do I still want uh this kid thirty days.
Uh with the knowing what I know now.
Glad you think of it.
I'm
Bad you know, we'd uh
No, this is different, right? You go into this journey of
Having children.
With
the understanding that this is long journey, right? Go into this journey of building a startup with the understanding that this is a long journey, right?
The fact that it's gonna be hard.
Okay.
So it's hard.
It is hard, by no means.
But uh but yeah.
Um the the uh
Decisions that the um
uh obviously they need to be relative to their duration, right? So uh
So so yeah, raising kids is a long term.
And a one way door also.
Is there anything else you you wanted to say around the hiring and firing concept?
Clearly firing is the is the main lesson here is get really good at firing and firing quickly and decisively.
You know, there are tons of advisors in in the book and eventually I will tell
even in the hiring process, right? Most of us are going to interview candidates and then decide that they like or dislike the candidate, right?
But they don't know.
Then speak with someone that does know.
Speak with the reference.
Do you have a favorite question you like to ask references? Is there something that you find is really helpful to tell you?
Tell you uh give you honest insight.
For reference. Yeah.
That's really simple.
Would you hire him? Mm-hmm.
Or would you hire her, right?
So essentially at the end of the day you want to nail it into yes or no.
Yeah, and hope that they're being honest. That's uh sometimes a challenge.
No, if they will tell me yes, then I would ask them why didn't you?

It's uh someone asked me for a reference on on someone that I really enjoyed working with. I really think highly of them.
And he asked me if they they can schedule a call for half an hour and I said, Look, I'm traveling, I don't really have time, but uh
If you want an email in one word, take the gun.
Yeah.
And then he was um
you know, trying to outsmart and uh ask me back, Can I have that in towards and I said yeah.
Take the guy fast.

When you know, you know, that's it.
Like that.
That's what you want to be looking for.
Okay. Amazing. So let's do one more chapter. The one I was gonna pick
You choose what you're more excited about is selling.
Accompany your last chapter exit.
The one you were thinking about going to is talking to users.
I imagine that's much more applicable to more people, so that's probably the better choice, but your choice.
Okay, then let's stick with uh understanding yes, sir.
Um
Uh Steve Woznier, co founder of Apple, wrote the um the forward to my book and he called it uh
the Bible for entrepreneurs and when I send them the first chapter, he said, Wow, I wish I had that when I started.
I met Steve Wozniak for the first time about um ten years ago. We spoke at the same conference in Guatemala.
And look, when I grew up, Steve Wozniak was my technological guru, right? So he was uh
the most important person in my
in in the technology space in my mind.
And then we spoke at the same conference and we had dinner the night before, and the only thing that actually was really important for me is uh
To have a selfie with uh
With with my eye though, right.
And so I took up my iPhone and uh with the iPhone
You can take pictures by clicking here on the screen.
Or using the volume button on the side, right.
And so I took a selfie with him holding the phone like that and clicking on the volume button.
And he said uh
Finally.
I said finally what?
Finally someone using it the way that I meant it to be.
Now you realize that there is no right or wrong.
They are different people.
that are using different products in a different ways.
And occasionally if I would have large audience, then I would ask the people, okay, how do you use ways, right? So
So you go to your destination and you enter the destination and then Waze guides you
through the screen with the display of the of the maneuvers that needs to be made.
Or with the audio guidelines of uh, you know, turn right, turn left and so forth.
If you're watching the screen, raise your hand and then I would have about seventy percent of the people ra raise their hand.
Then ask people to watch around them and see those people. Then ask if you're listening to the audio prompts, raise your hand.
then I have about uh twenty or thirty more percent of the people raising their head. Then again I send people to
Watch around and see those heads, right?
There is no right or wrong.
Different people are using it differently.
Now if you're using ways,
In a certain way.
Up until this moment you didn't know that there are other people that are using it differently?
And to be frank.
You don't care.
You getting your own value the way that you get it, then you don't really care that there are other people that are getting it differently.
But if you're building a product.
And you don't know that.
then you are building the wrong product.
You don't know that there are other people that are not like you and you think that you're building the product for yourself.
Then you're making a big mistake.
And the way to figure that out is by the way two things. Number one, watch new users.
Simply watch users and see what they're doing.
And number two, if they are not doing what you expect them to do.
Then ask them why.
Because this why
is the one that is going to make your product successful.
You understand the why and the next version you're going to address that.
Now this is in particular
When it comes to understanding users.
Obviously there are a lot of users, but we can group them.
into several groups of their ability to adapt something new.
Something new is not necessarily
New technology, right? We think about it as a new technology, but it's not necessarily about technology. It's about new behavior, right?
And then we look at the entire population and every time that we look into large numbers, they will have normal distribution, right? So the bell curve of the distribution. And then we will have about two percent of the population that are the innovatives.
The innovatives are going to use something new because it's new.
That's it.
They care about this uh subject and they
going to be the first one to hear about it and they are going to try that out because it's new.
The second group.
is usually what we will get to see as the first users are the
Early adopters.
As soon as they realise that there is value, they're gonna give it a try.
And if there is value then they will keep on using it, and if there is no value then they will um
And then they will quit.
The third group is the most important group. This is where market leaders are, right? This is called the early majority. This is about one third of the population.
and the one that wins the early majority wins the market.
The challenge with those group with the people in this group is that they're afraid of change.
So their state of mind is don't rock the boat.
Whatever I'm currently doing is good enough for me.
So if you have Salesforce dot com, which is absolutely amazing, their reaction is going to be what's wrong with Excel?
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Because they're afraid of change.
They are not going to try something anymore.
Now the reason is that at the end of the day they afraid that this is going to be too complex for them.
And they will not get it.
And they don't want to be embarrassed and they don't want to feel like idiots. And you know, guess what? People don't like to feel like idiots.
And so they are not good.
And you need to see those people to understand their barriers.
For starting to use your service.
And by the way, the solution is always the same. Simplicity.
Leonardo da Vinci say that uh
Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.
If you want to make it simple.
In your journey of building a product, we basically say this is iterations and iterations and iterations. But in many of those you add features and you add features and you add features until you all of a sudden you add the features that people are using.
What you really want to do next is remove the rest of the features that people are not using because they are adding complexity.
Now most of the product owners
They're either innovators or early adapters.
You cannot understand.
an early majority person, if you belong to one group.
You cannot understand a person from that group unless
You watch them and asked away.
So the most important part of understanding users is actually
Seeing those users.
They are not wrong.
This is how they behave.
A couple of threads there I'll pull out. One is
Look for surprising uses of your product.
Because
As you said, you'll realize oh, some people are using this in a way that I didn't expect and it'll remind you.
People are not the way you are.
And don't assume that they're gonna want exactly what you're building.
So pay attention to things that surprise you.
We had Jeffrey Moore on the podcast.
And he talked through a lot of this stuff.
And one of the lessons there to help
You bridge that gap.
From
Uh to the
What is it, the third group you how did you describe it? The late late uh majority.
The early majority.
Uh as your people never use the product. They will use your product only if they have to. Yeah, the laggards, I think he calls it. Um they look for basically reference references, people telling them, hey, you really need to use this. A lot of people just like
Basically word of mouth is the way you described it.
No not just word of mouth, even occasionally some someone to show them how to use it.
Yeah, that makes sense.
Just like here, check out waves. Here's how it works.
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
Okay.
Amazing.
Is there anything else along those lines as you're talking to customers and understanding what you're looking for that you want to share?
You know, occasionally we we w what happened is that we speak with the wrong customers.
Night so just imagine that we have
what I call funnel of use, right? So on top of the funnel we have people that are done or dead, let's say, or
Or have you
you know, enter their website, right? And then the next phase is that they registered, and the next phase that they're trying to use it for the first time, and then the next phase is that they are
um getting the value and then coming back, right?
In this final
What we usually try to do is speak with the users at the bottom of the files, those that were successful.
But in order to improve, we need to speak with those that fail.
Those that were unsuccessful.
Those that did not register, or they did register and did not use, or they did use and did not come back.
Because they know something that we really need to know.
Why?
This why.
is what makes a great product.
Interesting.
I imagine you could also fall into danger there if people that just aren't a fit for your product. There's just no point wasting
your time on people that are just not going to be a fit.
So is the idea there.
Find people that are really far down the funnel, but still balanced and churned.
Yep. Awesome.
Amazing. Okay. So we've gone through all the chapters I was hoping to go through plus the ones you're excited about.
Final thing before we get to our very exciting lightning round.
We have a segment on this podcast called Fail Corner.
Where
I ask a guest to share a
Time they failed in their career.
And what they learn from that experience. And I'm curious if there's
There's a story that comes to mind of a time that you failed.
Either in a startup or in your
as you're an employee somewhere.
And how that was important.
You know.
So so number one, I reserve the right for my biggest failure yet to come.

And uh um and look, I keep on trying new things, right? I keep on doing things. And so eventually I will fail.
As much as uh maybe I maybe I'm more successful.
um statistically than than ours, but I will say it.
And this is very, very important part to realise.
Don't be afraid to fail, right? In your journey you're gonna fail multiple times.
And when you fail and get up, you get up stronger.
This is maybe something that I will um tell all the parents in the ward.
The biggest advice that I can give you is teach your children to fail.
Because when they get up, they get up stronger.
And when they know that
they will get out of their comfort zone.
and they will eventually discover what makes them happy.
At the end of the day as parents.
There's only one thing that we really like. We want our kids to be happy.
In their own way. We don't know what it is.
They don't know what it is we want them to explore.
And they will only explore if they are not afraid to fail.
Yeah, this is uh very uh timely advice for me'cause our kid is always falling down.
And it's always this balance between helping'em not fall.
Letting him figure things out.
Let them fall.
There is a Japanese thing uh
Four seven times and get up eight.
Or he is there
Anything else that you wanted to share or leave listeners with before we get to our very exciting lightning round?

Um no, I think that was actually I really enjoyed it. Amazing. Well we're not done yet. We've reached our very exciting lightning round. Are you ready?
Yeah.
What are two or three books that you recommended most to other people other than your own books?
Mark Randolph.
Of Netflix, uh
That will never work, right? And and by the way, it's funny, Mark Randolph uh wrote endorsement to my book and uh
I reached out to him, um because I read someplace that uh
Um
that he's answering all of his emails and uh I reach I send him an email and say, look, we have at least three things in common.
Um
Number one, I do answer all of my emails as well.
Number two.
I'm using your product, you are using mine.
In number three I heard more time that will never work than you did.
And and I think that understanding
this journey is really, really important. So this is definitely a book that I will um
I would recommend that.
Atomic habit.
Getting habits.
And improving them.
measuring and improving.
It's really, really important.
Very cool choices.
Do you have a favorite recent movie or TV show that you really enjoyed?
I don't watch a lot.
Easy then.
Do you have a favorite product that you've recently discovered that you really love?

So I'm I can bet that most of the people say the
Chat GPT that uh
But actually no, I um
Recently downloaded the chess app.
And I return to play chess with uh the computer, something that I haven't done for so many years, and I really enjoyed it. Amazing. Uh it's actually I don't think Chat GPT has ever been recommended.
Uh, recent choices have been a beautiful Persian rug.
A uh Rivian.
Uh a very nice Mercedes.
And uh like I I think recently it was a course on uh nervous system
a regulation.
Cool.
Two final questions. Do you have a favorite life motto that you
Find
really useful in work your life.
It may be the one on your shirt, but is there is there any other
They come back too often if I'm useful.
Don't be afraid to fail.
I I think that in many cases we need to accept the fact that we don't know.
Important words.
Final question. Is there a problem you're starting to fall in love with?
More recently, maybe tinkering with a new startup idea.
Where are you done with?
Starting companies.
Um I'm probably will never be done.
Mm-hmm.
Um
I have um you know, ten different startups in in multiple areas. One of them, uh Pontera, helps people to retire richer, uh, which is uh one of the biggest challenges in
in the world in general, but also in the US, um
If I would ask a hundred people on the street that have four one K plans, uh
What is your four one K plan invest?
Ninety five percent of them will tell me I don't know.
I do know, by the way.
in the default.
Whatever was the default when they joined, right.
No, obviously if you didn't do anything and you think it's right, uh no, it's not right. It's probably simply not enough.
Um so this is a big problem. Um I have one in the medical space that is trying to create the um
Um I would call that the the
A I of the medical knowledge, so trying to improve doctors uh um in in particular in clinical decisions.
that is going to change the world. But if you would ask me, then I will um give you some examples, right? So so mobility is still a problem, right? You look at many eras in our lifetime and mobility is still uh every year it's instead of getting better, it's getting lesser.
So mobility is still a problem. Um
And um
Medical services, right.
US medical services are
Five to ten times more expensive than they are in Germany.
No, it's not there better.
They're simply more expensive. So obviously you ask yourself, okay, where is this inefficiency?
Where is it?
at a lot of places of inefficiency in the medical services if they're so imp so expensive.
Um
Education.
Okay, anything that I will tell you that we are still doing the same way that our parents did.
is probably something that we need to revisit.
I feel like a nerd sniped you with uh falling in love of problems. Clearly you fall in love with a lot of problems you wanna solve.
Solve them all.
You're addicted to startups. The good news is that there are a lot of problems. And the bad news is that there are lots of problems.
And you're there to solve it. I love it.
Uh Uri, your book is amazing. It's incredibly practical, full of tons of advice that every founder should read.
Uh and it goes from idea all the way to exit. So basically no matter where you're on the journey.
The book is gonna be useful to you.
Tell people where to find it and where they can
follow you for more stuff that you share over time and then how can listeners be useful to you?
So um obviously this is uh the book uh nobles uh
Um basically places that you can find it.
Um, you can follow me on LinkedIn. Um this is pretty much the only um
The only network that I'm um actually engaged.
Um if you read the book, then you will find my email in the book and then you can email me as well.
I um and I do answer all of my emails.
You know.
I want you to read the book. I don't want you to buy the book. I want you to read the book.
And the reason is that uh um I have a purpose in life and this is um creating value.
And I believe that this book is going to be the best return on investment that you ever made.
Not the twenty or thirty dollars that it costs, but the time that you're gonna spend on writing it.
And therefore I can be valuable for you. And if I can be valuable for you, then I serve my purpose.
Amazing.
If you weren't on YouTube watching this, the book is called Fall in Love with the Problem, Not the Solution, if you're trying to Google it and find it on Amazon.
And uh
Cori, thank you so much for being here.
Thank you.
Bye everyone.
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