Thanks to a statement from CEO Tim Cook, the anonymous application becomes a billion-dollar company

Years ago, while in charge of finance for Israel’s largest news organization, I spoke to a former senior Waze employee, who told me the story of the early days of company.

“In the beginning, very few people understood what we were doing. Most of the potential investors asked us, ‘Is anyone on earth going to use the navigation system for the familiar path every day’. ? “

“To be honest, we didn’t know how to explain our vision back then.”

His tone reflected how difficult it was for them to have an early stage.

Waze was founded in 2007 by the Israeli trio, Ehud Shabtai, Amir Shinar and Uri Levine. Their idea was a bit bold: a navigation app that wields the power of the crowd. Users are people who draw maps as they drive on the road. The application collects all the active user’s location via GPS signal and can thus help guide them to choose less crowded, traffic-balanced routes. This is a free traffic jam navigation app.

At the time, the market had traditional navigation tools – usually an expensive GPS system with an integrated map, no direct link to the data, and essentially visible only to the driver. where to go. Waze is different.

CEO Noam Bardin recalled: “At first, there were always people complaining to us that we were stupid and could never implement that idea.”

However, the company managed to get some funding and started gaining traction, mainly in Israel, where Waze was advertised through word of mouth.

Waze stumbled upon a barrier

Everything went well but not great. 2010 was a difficult year for Waze, at that time, Waze was looking for more investment.

“We have met with investors and funds. They have 100 different ways to say” no “to you, but there is only one way to say” yes “, says Uri Levine .

According to the Miami Herald report, Levine describes this period as being riding a roller coaster in the dark.

“There are turns but you don’t know when they’ll show up until they are halfway there.”

The product also had a few problems. Bardin points out that the navigation problems, the one-track application, can cause drivers to jump off bridges and onto highways. The US launch attempt was harder than they had hoped for, as there weren’t many users joining the app. And so, Waze, gave US users some weird routes.

A former worker mentioned to me that the problem lies in defining and communicating Waze’s vision. It was introduced as a driver’s social network. Adjusting the advantages and potentials of this tool takes some time.

Then “Tim Cook Day” arrived

The big moment came in 2012. By that point, Waze had become a successful worldwide company – with 26 million users – but it was not a billion dollar company.

On September 28, 2012, shortly after the release of the new Apple map, it was clear that this was a bug-filled product and was generally of very low quality. The CEO of Apple, Tim Cook, did what people of his stature would hate to do. It is a public apology. Furthermore, in a letter he personally wrote, Cook actually recommended that iPhone users use other navigation apps temporarily. One of the applications he mentioned is Waze.

Waze downloads soared and rose 40% following Cook’s statement.

Bardin told the Wall Street Journal: “We didn’t know Cook would mention Waze. Nobody asked us anything, nobody contacted us. Today is the day we will break every download record. “.

Since then, every September Waze employees celebrate “Tim Cook Day”.

Apple’s failure paved the way for Waze to become one of the biggest navigation apps in the world. “There are even 27 users in Antarctica,” Levine said. Other big companies have noticed us.

With absolute caution, Waze has been negotiating with Google for months. “On the night before the deal, Google threatened to break the whole thing because someone disclosed the details to the press,” Bardin recalls. The story could have easily ended in another way.

In June 2013, Google announced that it was acquiring Waze.

Estimated figure is between 1 billion – 1.3 billion USD.

The world was shocked. This is not a normal price to pay for an app at the time. Techcrunch asked “What is Waze and why did Google pay a billion dollars for it?”

Waze is an important part of Google’s operations to this day, with more than 130 million active users around the world.

Getting off to a hard start. Smart, successful, and experienced people can say that you will fail. They may be wrong. Sometimes, defining your true purpose takes time. Be open and flexible to change the way you see your company and tell its story.

Your users can help you pave the way and draw a map of your company using just the product. They even give you better ideas.

The gap between failure and success can be very small. Maybe just one right word from the right person.