Mobility Innovators

Uri Levine ([00:00:00]):

If you are afraid to fail, in reality, you already failed because you’re not going to fail. That’s true. Albert Einstein used to say that if you haven’t failed that because you haven’t tried new things before, now you are Canada. Right? Wayne Gretzky. Wayne Gretzky said that I’m going to miss a hundred percent of the shots that I don’t think. And, and that’s it. Right? The other part is that you actually have to fail fast because when you fail fast, you still have plenty of time to try a different approach, to build another version, to try a different method to try something else, right? So, you fail fast. You still have plenty of time. You fail again and again and again. You still have multiple shots, right? The reality is that if you have more shots, then you increase the likelihood of making one.

Mobility Innovation Lab (MIL) ([00:00:55]):

Welcome to the Mobility Innovators Podcast.

Jaspal Singh ([00:01:02]):

Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of Mobility Innovator Podcast. I’m your host, Jaspal Singh.

Mobility Innovator Podcast invites key innovators in the transportation and logistics sector to share their experience and future forecast. In this episode, we’ll be discussing the story of Waze and the secret sauce to find the product market fit for founders.

Our today guest is an amazing entrepreneur, mentor, company builder, speaker and author. He has co-founded and advised many amazing startups. Two of them are part of our daily life. Waze – helping car drivers and Moovit – helping public transit rider

Jaspal Singh ([00:01:38]):

Moovit helping public transit Rider Waze founded in 2007, revolutionized the way people navigate and commute by leveraging crowdsource data. In 2013, Google acquired ways for approximately 1.1 billion. He was also the board member of Waze, which simplifies your urban mobility all around the world, making, getting around via transit easier and more convenient. Waze was acquired by Intel for $1 billion in May 2020. He also become an company builder and mentoring new numerous startup in Israel and around the world.

He is recognized as an influential figure in the Israeli startup ecosystem, known for his entrepreneurial spirit, business acumen, and commitment to making a positive impact. His experience and insight continue to inspire and guide aspiring and entrepreneurs worldwide. He’s also the author of bestselling book, Fall in Love with the Problem, not the Solution.

I’m so happy to welcome Uri Levine, co-founder of Waze and many other startups.

It’s now time to listen and learn.

Hello Uri. I’m really excited and grateful that you accepted our invitation. The day I read your book, I decided I should reach out to you and, and record this conversation with you because like I told you, it’s like a mini MBA for me again after 10 year when I did my MBA and after reading this book, I feel like a mini MBA and I feel it’s important to share your knowledge and experience with everyone. So thank you for joining us.

Uri Levine ([00:03:09]):

Thank you. I appreciate the feedback.

Jaspal Singh ([00:03:12]):

Great. I would like to kickstart our discussion with your personal journey, and I would say it’s like BW and AW, it’s like before Waze and after Waze. So would love to know more about your personal background. How did you start your career and start ecosystem? Because when, I read your book, you mentioned it’s not that your first startup, you were doing lot before that. And any interesting fact about your career, any secret, which is still not in public domain.

Uri Levine ([00:03:40]):

So you know, I started as a software developer at military service, Israeli Defense Forces. And then after that I was actually social developer for Comverse Systems, right? So Comverse technology was doing voicemail and many years ago we all had voicemails associated with our mobile phone and then I switched into more of marketing and business and starting in within Comverse some you know, divisions or product divisions.

In around 2000, I you know, I moved out of Comverse and started my first startup that was not successful. And back and forth you know, supporting many startups, consulting to some startups rolled into 2007 where I met the other two co-founders of Waze and we decided that this is what we’re going to do. And so I’m I would say I’m in the high tech scene since 1984, so almost 40 years. And I’m in the startup since, since 2000s. So a little bit almost 23 years already. And I probably will remain in those space forever.

Jaspal Singh ([00:05:07]):

No, that’s great. And, I agree with you sometime the failure teaches you much more, and less than success. So first start of failure give you much more lessons.

Uri Levine ([00:05:17]):

You actually, we learned more from you know, the reality is that if you do something and it turns out to be successful, then the key to learning is that I’m a genius, right? So, this is going to the point of you even though that you should have learned from that what did work and why. Right? But if you fail, then you learn so much more, right? Then usually what happens is that the failures are the best teachers there are.

Jaspal Singh ([00:05:44]):

I fully agree that failure, or fail people are the best teachers because they can share what went wrong and how you can do better. Thanks for sharing that. And it’s great to see 40 years you are in technology space, remarkable and 23 years are in startups. So I can see tons of experience and knowledge, and that’s why you are one of the person, unique person who managed to pull out so many successful startups.

So Waze is one of the remarkable startup of our time. I mean, everybody love Waze. Anybody who travel around, they know the value of Waze. So would love to hear the story of ways from you. Why did you start it? Because I read in the book how did you start it? But I would love to know from your mouth why this idea came to you and how did you manage to scale it up? Because it was not easy and you also managed to have one of the greatest exit of that time pulling out and doing everything.

I’m very curious about the behind story. I mean, you wrote a lot about in the book, but what went in your mind when things were happening, how you were feeling, and when the success happened, what, how life changed after that?

Uri Levine ([00:06:51]):

So for a second I would say you know, the short version is that I started ways because I hate traffic jams, right? but everyone hates traffic change, right? And that’s by itself is not enough. It was the eureka moment of the realization that if there is someone ahead of me on the road and that someone can tell me what’s going on, then this is really valuable information for me. And in particular if it’s being compiled into the fastest route. And I was sort of discovered that by coincidence back in 2006 when we were in a family vacation in the northern part of Israel, and Israel is a small place, at the end of the day, it was time to go back to Tel Aviv. And back then there were only two alternative routes, right?

Uri Levine ([00:07:39]):

And so and we were like 10 different vehicles there and we had four little kids. So we were the last one to leave. And I called up some of the other drivers, but asked them which route they are on and how is traffic light, right? And then I realized that all I need is someone ahead of me on the road. It was more than a year later until I actually found that two other co-founders that believed in the same vision and the same mission of helping drivers to avoid traffic jams and in particular on their daily commute because ways, when using it today also as a navigation driving tool. But most people, if you would ask them how often do you use ways they will tell you every day, every day that I go to the office, I’m using Waze because, and it’s not that I don’t know how to get there, but I would like to know how long it’s going to take me.

Uri Levine ([00:08:35]):

And if there is a fastest route today, then maybe I would use that. But we ended up with having the vision of helping drivers to avoid traffic jams and, essentially, save people time. Over the years, we realized that there is way bigger value than that, which is providing certainty, right? So, most people will tell me, I don’t care that there is a fastest route. Yeah, I know that this, my route is going take me 55 minutes and I’m going to be there on time and I’m good with it, and there might be another route that is faster, but I don’t care. So the certainty turns out to be very valuable. The people told me that I’ve empowered them to thrive, right? So obviously you came from India, you know, that for non-Indian to drive in India is challenging, right?

Uri Levine ([00:09:30]):

And, but with ways you empower people to drive out of there, out of their comfort zone, right? And so empowerment certainty turns out to be way bigger value than saving people time. Even though that we started with this vision so we started the company back in 2007 and we basically said, okay, wait a minute. We need to raise capital. And because we had a prototype version running on PDA, a long, long, long time ago, there were dinosaurs and then PDAs, and then Nokia phones. And since then, the war evolved, right? And so we were trying to raise capital. It was only until March, 2008 that we were able to raise capital. And this is where we formally started the company and built the first Realtime version of ways running on a Nokia phone.

Uri Levine ([00:10:24]):

And this is what we launched in, in Israel, end of 2008, actually beginning of 2009, we launched that in Israel. And after a few more evils iterations, it ended up to be pretty good. And then we said, wait a minute. If this is working in Israel, then traffic jams is a problem everywhere, then we should launch that globally. We did some adaptation to that. And we ended up launching the product globally at the end of 2009. And it was not good enough. It was not good enough in Toronto, it was not good enough in the US it was not good enough in India, it was not good enough in Western Europe. It was not good enough nearly anywhere. Because the, you know, the magic of ways is that we crowdsource everything, not just traffic information and speed traps, but the map data itself.

Uri Levine ([00:11:21]):

This process of crowdsourcing is actually creating better and better and better data over time, but it takes time for the data to become good enough. And that was a full year of iterations of improving the product, improving the data, improving the product, improving the data. Some of those iterations, it was, you made a baby step forward. Some of those iterations you make a leapfrog, which is awesome, right? Some of those iterations worse than before. And obviously you don’t know which one of the iteration is going to make the impact. If you would know, then you will start with those frogs. and it was only around 2000 end of 2010 or beginning of 2011 that it started to become good enough in multiple places. And then it was really good enough. It was good enough in the US that was one metropolitan and after that or so, Los Angeles first and then San Francisco, and then Chicago third and going to Atlanta, Washington DC and York and Toronto and so forth in Europe, one country after that, Italy first and then Netherlands, and then Sweden and France and Spain in one country after that, or, and so forth, India, by the way, very surprising numbers.

Uri Levine ([00:12:35]):

I was looking at the, mostly the global markets and I was telling, said, ok, wait a minute. Traffic jams in India are really bad and therefore we should be extremely successful. Right? But this is 2010 or maybe 2011. And if you look at the Indian market back, then you would see that if you had a smartphone back then, you also had a driver. If you had a driver, then you see it in the backseat, then you don’t really care. And that’s the reality. So now there are probably, you know, I would imagine that there are hundreds of millions of people in India that are using Waze. But back then that was dramatically different. And then in 2012, Waze was actually growing faster than the entire industry combined. So you take all navigation devices and all entire navigation system and all navigation apps and so forth, ways out, all of them combined.

Uri Levine ([00:13:36]):

And, you know, In 2013, Google came with a proposal to acquire us and we said yes. And I left the day after so I can build more startups. So this is really a very short version of the journey. But when you think of building a startup, when you think of the journey itself, I would define this journey as you know, in three different dimensions. Number one, this is going to be a rollercoaster journey, right? With ups downs and ups and downs. And, and, if you’ll tell me that all the businesses in the world have ups and downs, and definitely in the last few years, we are seeing that. I agree. But the frequency of those when you are building a startup are dramatically higher. And I think that I heard the best quote here on from Ben Ho.

Uri Levine ([00:14:24]):

It’s Ben Horowitz is one of the founders of Andreessen Horowitz’s venture capital firm. And before that, he used to be a CEO of a startup and he was asked whether or not he was sleeping well at night as a CEO of a startup. He said, oh yeah, I slept like a baby. I woke up every two hours and cried, this is the rollercoaster part of it. The other part is that this is going to be a journey of failures, right? We are trying to do something that no one did before, right? And so we, we think that we know exactly what we are doing, but the reality is that we don’t. So we try one thing and it doesn’t work. We’ll try another thing, and it does work. We keep on trying different things until we find one thing that does work.

Uri Levine ([00:15:06]):

When we do, then we buy ourself a ticket to the next part of the journey, right? And so if you realize that this is going to be a journey of failures, then there are two immediate conclusion, right? The first one is that If you are afraid to fail, in reality, you already failed because you’re not going to fail. That’s true. Albert Einstein used to say that if you haven’t failed that because you haven’t tried new things before, now you are Canada. Right? Wayne Gretzky. Wayne Gretzky said that I’m going to miss a hundred percent of the shots that I don’t think. And, and that’s it. Right? The other part is that you actually have to fail fast because when you fail fast, you still have plenty of time to try a different approach, to build another version, to try a different method to try something else, right? So, you fail fast. You still have plenty of time. You fail again and again and again. You still have multiple shots, right? The reality is that if you have more shots, then you increase the likelihood of making one. That’s very simple. That’s a good point.

Uri Levine ([00:16:16]):

And the last part of this journey is that this is going to be a long journey. Very long. And in particular at the beginning, the longest part is always when you’re trying to figure out product market feed and you don’t get there, right? And so you are iterating and you think you are there, but you are essentially in the middle of the desert, at the desert of no traction, right? Because if you don’t have product market feed, you will die as simple as that. And product market feed, by the way, what I mean by saying product market feed is that you create value to your users or to your customers. And now it made perfect sense, right? If you don’t create value for them, then you will die. That’s it, right? Also derivative of that, the realizations that there is only one metric for product market fee.

Uri Levine ([00:17:06]):

And this is retention. If you create value, they will come back. If you don’t create value, guess what? They’re not going to come back, right? At the end of the day, this is the only metric for product market feed. And it’s simply hard to get there. It’s simply hard. It’s a journey of failures. And in particular, you usually don’t have enough funding from the beginning to actually get there. And so you will need to try to raise capital in the middle of the desert. And guess what? Capital is not easy in the middle of the desert. And, by the way, if you for a second, I would say single fold applications that we are using every day, right? So, from ways WhatsApp searching, Google, using Uber, Netflix, Instagram, whatever it is, and ask yourself what is the difference between any of those today?

Uri Levine ([00:18:01]):

And the first time that you have used that and 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 or WhatsApp or Uber or whatever it is, the same way that we did it for the first time in our life. So once a company figure out product market feed, they don’t change that anymore. Getting there is a long journey. In fact, you never heard of a company that did not figure out product market feed. This simply died. That’s it.

Jaspal Singh ([00:18:31]):

Yeah.

Uri Levine ([00:18:32]):

It was four years for waste until you maybe heard of it because this is where we were in the middle of the desert trying to figure out and create product market feed. And only then you would hear about it. It was five years for Microsoft, it was 10 years for Netflix, right? It’s a long journey to get there. Most companies, most founders, most entrepreneurs, they don’t know that when they start, and its actually good news that they don’t know that because that might be discouraging, right? It’s going to be a long while. Before you actually create any value. But the journey to the value creation is the only one that matters. Cause if you create value, you will be successful.

Jaspal Singh ([00:19:18]):

All these are, I would say, great points. I mean, it’s again, bring back all the memory. When I read your book about toothbrush model, build a product which everybody use twice a day. That kind of stuff you need to do. And, I love the point in your book when you said there are no bad decisions. Either there is a decision or there is no decision. And like you said, you have to take a decision, you have to play your shot, and then only you will find out whether it’s good or bad. Otherwise it’s all bad because if you don’t take any decision, it’s all bad. Exactly. And journey of failure.

Uri Levine ([00:19:48]):

It’s you know, I Steve Wozniak called my book the Bible for Entrepreneurs. And when I first approached him, he told me, I wish I had that when I started.

Uri Levine ([00:20:03]):

Because what I try to do, and this is end of the day, people would know me as an entrepreneur, right? And, know that, right? I’ve built 10 different startups. I have two unicorns so far, and I’m building more. And, so I’m an entrepreneur, right? But I’m also a teacher. And so for a second, I would say I feel equally rewarded if I build stuff myself or guide someone to build it. The book is fulfilling my destiny as a teacher, right? Because what I really want to do is share the know-how, which is unique, right? The understanding, the theory is easy, but building companies and then sharing the know-how is rather unique. And I see that as for now I would say my biggest creation so far. So bigger than in the ability to actually make a bigger impact because you know, you look at the war today and you say, wait a minute, do it.

Uri Levine ([00:21:01]):

It’s only changed by entrepreneurs, right? If you want to change something, then you’ll need someone that had nothing to lose, right? Yeah. And you look at all the top 10 companies of the war today, and they were all startups not that long time ago, right? So if you take apple and Google, apple and Microsoft out of the equation, the rest are less than 30 years old. Everyone else is less than 30 years old, right? And, and Apple and Microsoft are 46 years old, right? So that they’re 400 years old, right? but the value was created by an entrepreneur. Yeah. And that started a different approach or try to address a different problem or do something. And if I can increase the likelihood of entrepreneurs becoming more successful, then the impact on the world is going to be bigger.

Jaspal Singh ([00:21:50]):

That’s true. And in fact, I just want to add because to our listener about your book, which is fall in love with the problem not with the solution. And I wish I had that book when I started my first company in 2010, because now I read it and I’ve realized, man, I did so many mistake. I didn’t follow what should be the blueprint for this, for the founder and entrepreneur. So like Steve Wozniak said, I wish I should have the same book and I already read it twice, even I’m not a founder now, but I’m working more as advisor and mentor. But I, I already read it twice and I tell everybody to read it. So I would say many congratulations for you to, to writing that book. And like you said, you created to unicorn, but with your book, I don’t know how many unicorns you’re going to create. And, and people should come back to you and thank you, if they implement it. And, personally, I tell my university alma mater that they should introduce as a course book because I said you can’t teach so much knowledge in such a short time span. So this is a book EV everybody should read. So do you want to share a little more about your book? And, and I’m also curious, when is the second part coming? When are you writing your second book now?

Uri Levine ([00:23:01]):

So I don’t know. But I probably will you know, and, and I’m actually here a little bit of different perspective on what the second book should be all about. Part of it is actually I thought that maybe this is going to be entrepreneur story, so showing you know, all the different, or not all, but many of the different entrepreneurs that came to me for perspective. And this is probably going to reemphasize the simplicity of the book. And another part of me is saying, wait a minute, you are actually very unique in the space of mobility. I have about 700 million users of ways and more than a billion users of moving, and I have Zoom Car and now I have a parking solution. And I’ve seen mobility, you know, more mobility startups than anyone else probably.

Uri Levine ([00:24:05]):

And maybe I should write the book about mobility, but turns out that not a lot of people care, right? So people like to complain, but solving mobility is very challenging. The good news is that, look, you can do steps in mobility that will add significant value even if they’re local, right? Even if I’m going to take care of you know what people usually call the last mile and they’re wrong. Last mile is a simpler problem. The first mile is the bigger problem. And so just think of all people that are living in the suburbs of Toronto and they can use the metro or the public transportation to go into the center area, but the station is two miles away. So what is likely to happen is that they’re going to take their car and drive to the station, and then they figure out that there is no not enough parking near the station.

Uri Levine ([00:25:09]):

And then what is going to happen is that they will continue to drive with their car into the city of the run, which is the nature of the beast of the first mile. Because if there was a different solution that is going to take them from home to the train station, then they would dramatically reduce the traffic going into the city and as a result, make Toronto a way better place to live. And this is local, right? Very, very local. And most people are focusing on the last mile, but the last mile is not a problem. You haven’t solved the first mile, and so we, you know, we think about it as everything coming from the center to the outskirts, and no, when it’s come to people, they’re coming from the outskirt into the center.

Uri Levine ([00:26:01]):

And so you need to deal with the first mile, but this is just, you know, a perspective or, or how important parking is and the yeah. The reality is that in particular in cities where people are living in multi-story buildings which is mainly in Europe or not necessarily in the US right? You look at all the people in Toronto and you end up with realizing that 90% of the people actually living in a single family house and they have parking garage and they have a driveway. And because it’s a single family house, they also have plenty of room plenty, plenty of state of, of space on the street. But if you go to Europe, or you go to India, or you go to Latin America, or you go to rest of the world where organizations happened later, and most people are actually living in a multifamily, in a multifamily complex.

Uri Levine ([00:27:00]):

So usually this is a tall building, not necessarily a hundred stories Yeah. Would be 4, 6, 8, 10 stories, right? And it was built either with no parking garage or with parking garage with the underlining assumptions of the previous centuries in terms of the number of vehicles needed to be supported. Then you end up with a very severe parking problem. And in these cities, what happen is that looking for parking is the most frustrating part of the day. And this is every day, right? Toothbrush, every day. So this is this is dramatic, right? And if you can address that, then one of my startups is now addressing the on-street parking for residential and this is starting to become significant. Turns out that about one third of the traffic is people looking for, for parking.

Uri Levine ([00:28:02]):

That’s, you eliminate that. If you reduce that even by a little, instead of 33%, you reduce that to only 25%, you will end up with making significant impact on the overall mobility of a city, or a place. Very true, very true. And but at the end of the day, look, the nature of the beast of mobility is I want you to imagine what is the 400 highway in Toronto? So I want you to think of one lane and one kilometer in the length. One lane, one kilometer. During the busy hour, say eight or [9:00] AM right? There are about 40 vehicles in this one kilometer and this 40 vehicles, there are about 45 people. That’s it. The ratio between number of passengers and number of vehicles in, in North America is about 1.1. So 45 people are occupying one kilometer, right?

Uri Levine ([00:29:13]):

And then you basically do the math and say, wait a minute, we simply don’t have enough kilometers, right? That’s it. And so the nature of the beast is that we allocate too much space on the road because it’s not just us, right? It’s our vehicle. And then we need to keep distance from the vehicles that we don’t collide with other vehicles. And we end up with occupying too, way too much space. And if we change the ratio of number of passengers per vehicle, we eliminate traffic trucks. Now we can do that through public transportation, we can do that through carpool. There are not multiple ways, but at the end of the day, without active engagements of the municipality, it’s not going to happen. Cause if you want me to design a public transportation system, that will make perfect sense, I will go back to the user, right?

Uri Levine ([00:30:09]):

Which is most people don’t do, right? Most people think of public transportation system or mobility system, not from the user perspective, but from the system perspective. And in my mind, if you build something that people are not going, don’t want to use, guess what? They’re not going to use it. And so you have invested tons of money in building a system that no one cares. You go back to the user and ask the user, what do you care about? And you will end up with three, three parameters, right?

• Convenience
• Speed
• Cost

that’s it. And that’s the order, by the way, convenience, speed. So obviously if you want to build on a system, then it needs to be able to take you from anywhere to anywhere. It needs to be convenient, right? If it’s not, then people will basically say, you know what? I’m going to drive my car.

Uri Levine ([00:31:01]):

And it needs to be faster than driving your car, because otherwise nothing is going to be equal to the convenience of driving your car. Actually, not exactly right? Because when you drive, then you cannot watch TV, you cannot read the newspaper, you cannot work on something on your computer, right? So there are limitations that might be associated with the convenience of not driving the car, right? If you are using private transportation, then you will figure out that you can do all those and still get to the office sometimes. And, and so convenience, speed, and, and then cost, right? I would design a system. I would basically say, you know what, I’m going to take half of the streets and half of the avenues in Toronto and I can convert them into a public transportation streets, right? Not just Lane Street.

Uri Levine ([00:31:53]):

And in those streets, which is built, like agreed, I would have small vehicles going back and forth, high frequency, small vehicles, right? So say every minute, every two minutes in the busy hour, there is a small vehicles, maybe size of a mini bus or over a event that is going and coming back, right? And then obviously because these, these are dedicated lanes, you can give them priority on traffic than anyone else. And you can actually end up with, with a system that is somewhat similar to an elevator, right? Going back and forth. That’s it. Limited capacity. Obviously elevators is only a single vehicle, actually not all the elevators in the world, but most of them are single vehicles. But think of a vehicle of a, you know, tens of vehicles that are going back and forth on the same street because it’s every other street. Then you enable anywhere to anywhere because it’s dedicated lane you end up with not waiting for traffic and actually way faster than anything else. And you end up with only the issue of price, right? For a second, I would say we should subsidize that. Look, public transportation is subsidized anyhow, and it, there are places that it’s subsidized by a hundred percent.

Jaspal Singh ([00:33:20]):

Yeah.

Uri Levine ([00:33:21]):

From the Baltic countries into Europe, in Australia, there are some places that have tried a hundred percent subsidy and turns out that it’s actually pretty good. And if you think of dedicated land, right? If this rate is only for public transportation vehicles and all those vehicles are actually small vans going back and forth then they can be autonomous.

Jaspal Singh ([00:33:48]):

That’s that. I was thinking about the same. They can be autonomous and, and providing high frequency running one exactly

Uri Levine ([00:33:54]):

Like the, like an elevator, right? The elevator is autonomous. Now, there is no driver for the elevator, but when I was kid, there was still a driver for the elevator, right?

Uri Levine ([00:34:04]):

And so obviously if this is dedicated lane, you can easily do that. And you know, if the mayor of Toronto is listening to this podcast and decides that this is what they’re going to implement, look, everyone is going to beach around, right? Because you basically say, I’m going to take half of the streets and make them only for public transportation, right? If you live in the street, then you have no access for your car anymore. Or maybe it’s you know, just between, you know, three and [9:00] PM and between, you know, seven and [10:00] AM right? And so but at the end of the day, you will end up with a so much more efficient system

Jaspal Singh ([00:34:44]):

Yeah.

Uri Levine ([00:34:45]):

That everyone is going to be thankful.

Jaspal Singh ([00:34:48]):

Oh yeah. Very true. I love your, I love your point. In fact, you should write two books, one on mobility and one on, you know, lessons from entrepreneurs and sign me for the pre-order, because I would love to read it. The point you mentioned, I mean, the data you have on your tips, it’s, it’s amazing. You understand the problem. And like you said, you built two startups in mobility, you understand this space so well. So it’s great to see.

Another question I want, which you, which you mentioned, is which you actually thinking about writing a book because you have already shared so many lessons in your first book like how to build a successful startup. But can you share some of the common mistake made by the entrepreneur in their journey and, and any additional blind spot for mobility startup, like you mentioned about mobility startup and, and what I love the pinpoint you mentioned about convenience, speed, and cost, and a lot of mobility startup, they don’t do these things. They just build a product. They don’t think about the users. So what are the blind spots for the startups, especially the mobility one?

Uri Levine ([00:35:52]):

So I would start with you know, the more generic approach and then, the book called Fall in Love with the Problem, not the Solution. This turns out to be very significant, right? A lot of people are starting their journey from a solution perspective rather than, and then, then looking for a problem, right? And in general, I would say, no, you should start with the problem. Think of a problem, a big problem, something that it’s worth solving. Yeah. then ask yourself, so who has this problem, right? And if you happen to be, you know, the only person on the planet, then go to a shrink, which run faster than Bill startup. But if a lot of people 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 go and build a solution.

Uri Levine ([00:36:43]):

Now, if you follow this path and your solution works, it’s guaranteed that you are creating value, because for me, solving a problem is the simplest way to create value, right? Someone told you, well, this is the problem, right? And so all you have to do is solve that, and you create value, right? And so not only that, the simplest way, there are two other things that are going to happen if you remain focused on the problem. One is that the problem is going to serve as the north star of your journey. And if you have a north star, then you are going to make less deviations from the church, which increases the likelihood of being successful. The second part is that your story way more compelling, right?

If I would be here in 2007, and I will tell you I’m going to build an AI crowdsource based navigation system, then you say, oh, very interesting, but you don’t care if I will tell you I’m going to help you to avoid traffic jams, then you do care. And so when you tell a problem, when you tell a story about the problem, then you, it’s easier to engage your customers, your users, your investors, the media, everyone. And, and so starting with the problem turns out to be pretty significant. Now, in particular, the hardest part is to tell yourself, so who has this problem?

Jaspal Singh ([00:38:02]):

Mm.

Uri Levine ([00:38:03]):

And in mobility, if you think that the municipality have the problem, now they have a different problem, the users have a problem, right? They are the one that are, get stuck in traffic. They are the one that are needs to, you know, essentially go on a bus that is too crowded and they feel uncomfortable. They are the one that actually paying the price of, of insufficient or not good enough service. So you have to start with the users. And this is true for all the startups. And then you end up with actually asking yourself, so, okay, what is the value that I’m going to create for those users? And the problem is going to be the trigger point. But then you ask yourself, okay, in order to create value, then I need to solve that problem. But for whom? What is the value that you bring to those users?

Uri Levine ([00:38:52]):

The funny part is that when we started waste, we thought about saving, saving people time on their daily commute. It’s not the most significant value, it’s actually the ETA that is the most significant value, because you can plan, you can be on time everywhere, and you don’t need to get there half an hour earlier. You can still, you know, check the ETA (Estimated Time of Arrival) and basically say, I don’t need to be there an hour earlier in order to make sure that I’m there on time. You can be there on time, as simple as that. And so the user ended up to be very important perspective. I think that many of the startups that I’ve seen, they might have started this journey with the problem. But they very soon forget about it. Because if I speak with you know, entrepreneurs and ask them, okay, so what do you do?

Uri Levine ([00:39:46]):

Most of the time what I would hear is our system is right, which is basically focused on the solution or in, so if you speak about yourself, you focus on this solution. If you’ll tell someone, this is the problem I’m addressing, then you focus on the problem, I hear about 10 out of a hundred that this is their story, right? The best story, by the way, this is the value that we create for you, which is focused on the user. But this is occasionally it’s harder because people don’t understand the value if they don’t understand what the problem is. And, and therefore I would say, you know, out of a hundred startups about somewhere between 80 to 90 of them are going to start with, this is our system. Our system is right then and not that aware. So this turns out to be pretty significant.

Uri Levine ([00:40:36]):

Failing fast, right? Failing fast is, is dramatic. The biggest enemy of good enough is perfect. You don’t need to be perfect in order to win the market. You need to be good enough. And the best way to become good enough is guess what is, you start with not good enough. And then through iterations you become good enough and then, and then you win the market. So for a second, I would say for, for all entrepreneurs in the world, just imagine that there are two twin sisters companies, right? They started, they exactly the same day, they’re doing exactly the same thing. They have exactly the same story, the same team. Everything is exactly the same, and they’re making exactly the same progress. Now, at the certain point of time, this company is saying, you know what? Our product is really bad. It’s really sad. We are going to keep on building it, right?

Uri Levine ([00:41:23]):

And this company is, you know what? Our product is really bad, it’s really sad, but we are going to go to the market with it. From this point on, this company is making so much faster progress and this is the most important product. Cuz this company is way more likely to win the market because of the progress that they’re making. Now, a lot of times I tell that to entrepreneurs and they’re telling me, no, no, no, you don’t understand a product is embarrassing level. If I’m going to launch that, I’m going to lose my users. And then I would tell them, wait a minute, you don’t even add users. I have users, right? And so what exactly you going to lose? Oh, we are going to hurt our brand name. You don’t have a brand name yet. And the reality is that this is the journey of failures.

Uri Levine ([00:42:06]):

This is the failing fast. This is the meaning of that is that you actually going to do experiments, real life experiments, right? Faster, because this is how you’re going to learn. You’re going to learn by listening to the users and improving, listen to the users and improving. One of the things that turns out to be you know, pretty significant is I spoke with many entrepreneurs, but their startup failed and asked him why? What happened? And about half told me the team was not right? Yeah. And I kept on asking, okay, what do you mean the team was not right? Right. And so what I heard the most is, you know, we had this guy not good enough, and so not good enough was the main reason. And another reason that I heard quite often is that we had communication issues, right?

Uri Levine ([00:42:48]):

Something that I actually called ego management issues and then asked them the most interesting question, when did you know that the team is not right? Now? That was scary because all of them told me within the first month. Yeah, Wanda told me before we even started, right? I said, wait a minute, wait a minute. He knew within the first month that the team is not right, and he didn’t do anything. The problem was not that the team was not right, the problem was that the CEO did not make hard decision. Yeah. Making easy decisions, easy making hard decisions is hard. Firing someone is very hard decisions. There is a chapter in my book that is called Firing and Hiring. I read that when, and when I wrote that and I sent, you know, the book proposal to multiple publishers, they told me, some of them told me, look, it should be hiring and firing.

Uri Levine ([00:43:39]):

And I said, no. Firing is hard decision. Hiring is easy decisions. You need to learn how to make the hard decisions before you can even make these easy decisions. And then I end this a chapter with a very strong conclusion, right? Every hiring manager in the world, and it doesn’t matter if this is a startup or a university or a corporate or a government, whatever it is, every time that you hire someone new, mark your calendars for 30 days down the road and ask yourself one question.

Knowing what I know today, I hired this person. Now if the answer is no, then fire them immediately. They’re already set on a trajectory of not being successful. They are going to fail. And this is going to be on your head right now. There is a bigger challenge if there is a bigger challenge because startup is a smaller organization, right?

 

Uri Levine ([00:44:35]):

If there is someone that shouldn’t be there, everyone knows, and the CEO doesn’t do anything, that’s the nature of the business. So, in order to convert an organization into way better, you occasionally would ask yourself, so what is going to have a bigger impact? Hiring another awesome person or firing someone that shouldn’t be there.

Firing someone that shouldn’t be there because everyone knows and the impact was on everyone and not just on that particular individual. Now, if you would answer that question, would you hire this person knowing what you know today? Then I would say, wait a minute, go and tell that person that they are, you know, that they have exceeded your expectation, that you are extremely pleased with the fact that they have joined the team. And if you can do something for them, then this is the time to do it, right? So maybe more equity, maybe a bonus, maybe whatever token of recognition.

Jaspal Singh ([00:45:32]):

Yeah.

Uri Levine ([00:45:33]):

Is the now it’s time to do it.

Jaspal Singh ([00:45:37]):

I mean, these are again, I would say when I read the book, I realized I did a lot of these mistakes when I was founder. I had a lot of people, everyone does that, everyone does that. And the point you mentioned about understanding users, that’s what some people miss. In fact, I use your cheat sheet now. Any founder come to me with a solution, I say, what is the problem you’re solving? So tell me first about the problem. And like you said, people don’t want to talk about problem. They just want to talk about the solution, which is, which is not worth. You need to understand why you’re doing this.

Uri Levine ([00:46:11]):

It start with the why, right?

Jaspal Singh ([00:46:14]):

Start, start with the why

Uri Levine ([00:46:16]):

And, and then whom

Jaspal Singh ([00:46:18]):

And then whom and I’m surprised a lot of people don’t have answer for those. I mean, you must be meeting tens of thousands of people and discovering the same. But I feel after, after like, man, this is like a basic why you’re building this for whom they have no answers.

Uri Levine ([00:46:36]):

And look, it’s like going back to basics, right? I’m pretty, that obviously there are, there are stuff in the, in my book that you, you read, and you say that’s obvious, right? You’re stating obvious and I am. But we need to repeat that multiple times for people to actually go back to the basics, right? This is 1:1. If you want to create value, then solve a problem. That’s the simplest way, right? If you want to understand what’s the problem and speak with the users, otherwise you don’t know. Otherwise you are just a sample of one person, right? And so these are all obvious, right? And when I tell people that then, then they occasionally they would say, yeah, this is obvious. Yeah.

Uri Levine ([00:47:32]):

1:1 of the interesting part in is understanding users. You, you mentioned that earlier and you are right, right? Because we want to think of the perspective of ourself as a user, right? And we only a sample of one. And for a second, this is a very interesting experiment that I occasionally would do in with an audience. I would ask them, okay, here are, you know, two different ways of three different ways of using ways app, right? Which one you are using, right? And then all of a sudden, what I need to tell the people is look around you. There are people that are not using it the same way that you are. And it’s not, they’re stupid, they’re simply different. That’s it, right? And so when you use a product in a certain way, it does not even cross your mind that there is might be a different way of using it.

Uri Levine ([00:48:33]):

When you face a challenge, and, and this is becoming in particular, when you deal with the ability to adapt something new, you know, most product builders are either innovators or early adopters. The good thing about myself, I’m an early majority, yeah. And as an early majority, what I see is the state of mind of the early majority and the state of mind is very simple. Don’t drop the boat. I’m very happy with what I’m currently doing. Why do you need me to use salesforce.com if I have an Excel and I using that for the last two decades, right? And so the state of mind is that new is more scary than creating more vans. And if this is the case, then I don’t want changes, right? I’m afraid of changes. Most people afraid of changes, they don’t want the change.

Uri Levine ([00:49:31]):

And what you need to do is actually understand that part and realize that the change is going to be hard for them. And it’s not simple for them to actually, it’s not enough that you’ll tell them that you’re going to create them. That they need to see someone using, they need to see someone that tells them what to do. They afraid of the change. And in particular, what they’re afraid the most is that they’re going to run into something that the system is going to ask them something that they don’t know. And they will feel stupid and people don’t like to feel stupid or they, you would ask for something that I don’t understand why you even need that, right? And so you know, in the registration, you’re going to ask me for something that that I want?

Uri Levine ([00:50:17]):

I don’t even know what’s the value is, why should I even register? And so building a successful product is a journey and part it is that you need to watch and listen to your users all the time. And in particular those that fail because this is the only way for you to improve, right? If you speak with the users that retain and keep on using the product and they tell you what they’re going to tell you, they can tell you it’s awesome, right? Yeah. Because you create value for them. The fact is that they’re coming back, which means that you create value for them and that’s it, right? And they might want to dream of some other features that you don’t need, and they don’t, they don’t need. The fact is that they’re using the product, right? But if you go and speak with those that have tried and discontinue to use the product, right, have churn, then they will tell them. Then they will tell you why. And that’s the most important feedbacks that you need.

Jaspal Singh ([00:51:15]):

Yeah, I love your point. Like the entrepreneur should be early majority not the innovator, because as an early majority, you will be much more critical about things changing and, and changing the status quo. And in fact, I want to follow up with the question because you mentioned about product market fit. And I tell everybody now it’s about value creation, whether users are using it or not.

But if you see the mobility sector is going through a huge transformation right now. Like there’s a lot of electrification, automation, we see urban air mobility, we see drones, we see all kind of crazy idea, which is people are promoting. And during this period you see a lot of noise about a lot of thing, which is like a fat, like suddenly it boom up and then crash, like micro mobility in a lot of cities. The bike sharing gains up the free float in China, it was huge OfO and Mobike and suddenly it disappeared. So what do you think the founder should do to differentiate between a, like a really a real problem or a fad Because like lot of time when you have easy money, you see a lot of fashionable thing, but which will not last long. So how founder can differentiate.

Uri Levine ([00:52:27]):

So you go back basic, right? And the basic mobility is that you speak with the users and you understand that there are only three parameters that define the convenience, speed, and price. Yeah, that’s it. If you building a mobility startup and you don’t have, if you have unlimited resources to fund that, then you can try to address something dramatically bigger, right? So you can build the you know X space, you can build the people mover, you can build multiple stuff. But if you really are standard startup with limited funding, then focus on a problem that you are independent in the ability to address. You don’t need the government to say yes. You don’t need anyone to say yes. And micro mobility, by the way, turns out to be very successful in some places. Yeah. By the way, Tel Aviv is the most successful micro mobility for all the operators in the war, right?

Uri Levine ([00:53:28]):

So even if someone tells you, wait a minute, Paris is bigger, but profitability is higher in Tel Aviv. Now it’s higher because Tel Aviv is a small place with nice weather to actually use micro mobility and paid with a huge amount of bike lanes. So the result is that this is very successful. Now, if that, what does it mean about the next city? And if you look at the parameters of what makes one city successful and what makes other city fail, then you should go only to the places that it’s going to be successful. You shouldn’t go to a place that, that you’re not going to move the needle, right? Toronto, there is no micro mobility in Toronto because the winter is way too cold, right? So, so people are not going to use that during the winter time and, and it’s a large city, right?

Uri Levine ([00:54:22]):

You cannot go from anywhere to anywhere, right? So you end up with a very local solution and in Tel Aviv it’s you know, it’s five mile north to north to south, that’s it, right? In five miles, you can do that with micro mobility and usually you don’t need that. Well, they’re all five miles. And so a significant part of it is to understand number one, you need to be completely independent. Like if you want to rely on someone else and trust them to do the heavy lifting for you, guess what? They are not going to do the heavy lifting for you. They’re going to do the heavy lifting for themselves, not for you. Number two use the art with the problem. You focus on the users and you create value for them. If you create value for them, then they will keep on using it.

 

Uri Levine ([00:55:11]):

Now, it’s true that you know, some cities like Paris actually wanted to ban the use of scooters, right? Then the micro mobility solutions there, because obviously it turns out to be very successful, and creates new problems, right? And so if you think that you are going to remove those and go back to the previous problem, wait a minute. Not at all work that way.

The biggest, the previous problem were bigger than the current one. And so they will need to figure out a different way to address that. And I agree that there should be regulations on that. And so maybe limiting, maybe creating dedicated lens in particular creating places that they can park and everyone follows. Right? Look, up until recently, Uber was amazing. Right now I’m hearing more and more and more complaints about using Uber because the balance Yeah. Was shifted and, and all of a sudden, in particular in Europe, Uber is not a reliable solution. Oh yeah. It, while in the US it still is, but in Europe, it’s not a reliable solution anymore. Right. If it’s not reliable, then, then guess what? People are going someplace else. Right? Because it’s not anywhere to anywhere anymore. If I cannot trust that to arrive in time and to, you know, take me to the airport or take me wherever, then I’m going to find different alternatives.

Jaspal Singh ([00:56:36]):

No, that’s, that’s a great point. Thank you. Sorry. You want to add something more?

Uri Levine ([00:56:41]):

And I think that mobility space is huge, right? At the end of the day, let’s go back to the nature of the beast. You spend an hour a day sitting behind the driving and the driving wheel, the steering wheel. And this is you about 4% of the day and about maybe you know, 6% of the relevant hours of the day for you. And it’s a lot, right? I will give you that time then. You really like that. Yeah. So if I had a magical teleportation system, then everyone is going to sign up. The problem is that I don’t

Jaspal Singh ([00:57:23]):

<Laugh>

Uri Levine ([00:57:24]):

At the end of the day, we realize that that mobility is complex. And if you look at the last decade or last 20 years, look, when we started ways we thought that we’re going to help people to avoid graphic jobs today, there are more traffic jams than 10 years ago. That’s it. Right? And in particular, if you think of India, then this is way more severe, right? Because Oh yeah. The nature of the beast, and, and by the way, India is, you know, the largest country. And obviously everything is in largest scale there. But if you think that in Sao Paulo things are better, or Jakarta or Nairobi or Mexico, it’s not right? It’s as bad as it is in Delhi, right? Or Mumbai, or, and so, to solve mobility at a larger scale, you need the help of the government or the municipalities.

Uri Levine ([00:58:21]):

And this requires major decision, right? Because the only way to do that is actually allocating half of the roads and the streets for public transportation only. And then you can do it, then you can create an impact if you are an entrepreneur and you cannot move that needle Yeah. Then you need to address a local problem that will make an impact, like I mentioned earlier, the first mile or going to event, right? So events is a major problem of mobility, right? So just imagine that you know, there is a major soccer game or, football game, right? Or a concert, right? And there are a hundred thousand people moving going into this event, and then they need to clear up the area and yeah. And so if you, you know, and, and out of those a hundred thousand people, then in many cases, you know, just imagine college football in the US right? It’s a university that has 30,000- 40,000 people stadium. And that means approximately 20,000 vehicles are going to come to this event where exactly these 20,000 vehicles are going to park.

Uri Levine ([00:59:38]):

Now, this is a problem that is worth solving. Obviously the frequency of use is not every day. But they play, they have multiple plays multiple games throughout decision Right. Throughout the season. And, and this is a problem that it’s worth solving cause it’s significant and have, so frequency of use is a good thing, but it’s not always needed. Right. If it’s a bigger problem by itself, then address that.

Jaspal Singh ([01:00:03]):

Yeah, no, I, I fully agree with you. It’s like sometime there’s a lot of these things that depend on the local comet. And if you’re dependent on the regulation, it’ll never work. And, and I would say the success of Uber was early. They didn’t follow the regulation because they said if you start following the regulation, Uber would never be Uber. What is it today? So Exactly. Sometime you have to be a rebel.

Uri Levine ([01:00:25]):

You have to be a rebel. And look at the end of the day, occasionally they will shut you down, right? Uber had multiple fights in multiple markets. But the reality is that if you become part of the solution of the system, then you are less likely to be shut down. Or you will be addressed and, and you know, and you will basically need to address some of the concerns. Right? Okay. So no, you in New York City, you have to have a TLC number, right? Otherwise you cannot be an Uber. Okay, that makes sense. Then, then you are part of the system.

Jaspal Singh ([01:01:01]):

Yeah

Uri Levine ([01:01:03]):

Yeah. Which by the way makes sense, right? And for a second, I would say for Uber, biggest city in the world is San Paul. And still when I’m there, even though that Uber is way more convenient, medallion taxi way faster because they have the public transportation lane.

Jaspal Singh ([01:01:22]):

Mm-Hmm.

Uri Levine ([01:01:24]):

And Uber cannot ride there. Right? And so if, if they would work with the municipalities and get the ability to for ride on public transportation lane, then it would be way better solution.

Jaspal Singh ([01:01:37]):

Yeah. No, that, that’s truly, truly, truly, you know, great point. And, I agree with you. It’s like finding a local problem. Now, you know, the question I want to ask you, you started ways in 2007 and World has changed after that. I mean, the whole navigation system, the mapping industry has changed. I saw the Google annual day recently, and they show how Google mapping is now integrating, and also now they are expanding ways into lot of other vehicles. What do you think is the future of digital mapping and navigation? And, and if you get a chance to start another mapping startup again, will you do it? Or, how different it’ll be?

Uri Levine ([01:02:16]):

So I think that, you know, we go back to the problem we’re trying to solve, right? And by the way, Google Maps is very different than Waze right? If I would ask a hundred people that are using Waze how often do you use Waze? What they will tell me is that every day. I would ask a hundred people that are using Google Maps how often they use Google Maps. They will tell me when I need it. Which is not the same, right? The use case is different and therefore the applications are different and therefore you cannot even merge them, right? Because they are pressed on different use case, and you cannot. Combine multiple use case and end up with a single product for them. And so for a second, I would say impact on the war, right?

Uri Levine ([01:03:11]):

You look at the market before ways and nearly no one was using a driving app, and today everyone is using it. And so obviously the market has changed dramatically with major disruption to the market. And when disruption happens, then obviously the player changes and what used to be TomTom, you know, the major provider of those navigation devices is they only need to barely exist, right? Because they don’t provide the device anymore for consumers. Now what we had in the time that people actually had a built in navigation systems in the car, no one cares, right? I just want to be able to connect my ways to the entertainment system dark screen. And this is right. And, and so this is Apple Play and Google Auto address that very well. And you end up with having the ability to see that, the driving app on the mainstream. So obviously the world have changed.

Uri Levine ([01:04:20]):

Is there a room for more changes? So, so let me start with the future of that, right? If we will have autonomous vehicles, then people don’t care anymore. If you see in the back seat, you don’t care anymore. You don’t care if you need to make a left or need to make a right, it’s not your problem anymore. What you do want to know is when exactly we going to get there and that’s it, right? And the end of story, right? And so is that going to be the same way as this before? Probably not. Is that going to be something else? Probably yes. because the autonomous vehicles will still need to have a navigation system to get to the destination, but it’s not going to be a driver act. If there is no driver, then the driver is not important anymore.

Uri Levine ([01:05:10]):

And you know, it’s going to be somewhat similar to what we have on an airplane. When you sitting in economy class and the screen tells you that, okay, we are going to get there in one hour and 40 minutes, and this is approximately where we are about, and this is how you know, the, the speed wind and the temperature outside and all sorts of information. But that are, just answering a matter of curiosity because you don’t really care if there is minus 60 degrees out there, you are not out there, right? That’s right. So you don’t really care. But still they ended up to be interesting, irrelevant information. If this is going to be the case, then it’s going to be the same, right? Just imagine that you are riding a bus and, or, or, or the metro, right? And so, you know, what is the station and, and you know, and every station tells you this is your station or not your station and that’s it, right? And where exactly you are, you don’t care.

Jaspal Singh ([01:06:15]):

That’s very interesting. That’s what I mean. I agree with you once, it’s like when you sit in the bus or in the train, you don’t care about the route navigation, anything. You just reach to your destination, you know, the time and that’s it. And with the, and that’s it right?

Uri Levine ([01:06:27]):

And the only thing that you would like is maybe get an alert few minutes beforehand so you wouldn’t in particular in a train that is making a very rapid stops, and so you want to get off before you want to wake up before you get off.

Jaspal Singh ([01:06:43]):

So are you advising any startup which is building a future mapping product or something like that for autonomous vehicle?

Uri Levine ([01:06:52]):

I was at the board of Here Technology for a while. But not anymore. Not right now.

Jaspal Singh ([01:07:01]):

Right.

Uri Levine ([01:07:02]):

I think that one of the biggest challenges that you, you know, you ask yourself, so what exactly is Waze good enough for autonomous vehicles? And the answer is probably yes, even though that it’s not accurate enough.

Jaspal Singh ([01:07:20]):

Mm.

Uri Levine ([01:07:23]):

And because autonomous vehicles have limited brain ability, right? So, so they would know, they start thermos vehicle start from the point of view of let’s not crash, right?

Jaspal Singh ([01:07:37]):

Yeah.

Uri Levine ([01:07:38]):

But when we are driving our car, it’s not the only thing that comes to our mind, right? And so driving is way more than let’s not crash, right? And so let’s get, keep a distance from the car ahead of us and let’s make sure that we are not you know, moving out of our lane when there is a vehicle that we might run into them and so forth. And over the time there was improvement that’s not crash into a little bit more and more and more and more and more like driving. Like, and still, if you go into an autonomous vehicle and sitting in the driver’s seat, you are going to be frustrated. And the reason is that the autonomous vehicle is driving differently different than you, and you’re used to you to your driving and not someone else’s.

Uri Levine ([01:08:28]):

So you’re sitting in the driver’s seat. And for a second, I would say, let’s say that there is a curb in the road and you are usually taking the inner part of it and the autonomous vehicle is taking the middle part of it. It’s not the same lane, it’s not the same line that you would take. The result is that you would feel uncomfortable. And if you weren’t sitting in the backseat, you wouldn’t know and you wouldn’t care. As long as you are still in the driving position, it’s very hard to build a system that will drive like you.

Uri Levine ([01:09:01]):

And at the same time, I would say, look, the thermos vehicles will not speed up above speed limit, right? You might, you might occasionally, right? You might do that overtaking a vehicle and then you don’t care how fast you’re driving because you want to complete the overtaking as fast as possible, right? And so autonomous vehicles wouldn’t know that and they will not break the law. And so the result is that this is going to be very different than your driving and obviously requires different mapping for that. But some of the major issues, and this is you know, always a discussion that I had with some of the ability of building a way more detailed map and I say it’s not needed. Cause, then people will tell me, okay, wait a minute, we can wait the sensors, we can detect that there is a pothole in the road. And I said, okay, let’s say that there is a pothole in the road and so what are you going to do about it? And then they will tell you, we going to slow down and said, okay. And what do you think that all the drivers ahead of you just did?

Jaspal Singh ([01:10:17]):

Yeah.

Uri Levine ([01:10:18]):

So, no, that’s exactly, so the, the why is not important. The action is always going to be the same. And if this is the case, then simpler autonomous vehicle map is going to do the exactly the same job as a way more sophisticated than indeed.

Jaspal Singh ([01:10:40]):

I fully agree with you. I mean, that’s sometime we rely too much on technology, but forget about the human side of it. The human angle of it. And like you mentioned, sometime technology can solve hundreds of problem, but we do you really need it, like finding a pothole and slowing down it all, the driver will do it. If there’ll the bump on the road, all the driver will, you know, take that precaution and you know, and that’s how we drive today.

Uri Levine ([01:11:02]):

Exactly and for a second, I would say the beauty of waste is that waste doesn’t care why. Right? If there is a traffic jam, then there is a traffic jam, right? If there is a slowdown, there is a right why it’s interesting, but it doesn’t change anything in terms of your behavior.

 

Jaspal Singh ([01:11:20]):

I mean it’s existing, you just take action accordingly. So you don’t say.

Now your second company about Moovit, because I’m a big fan of Moovit. I actually visited their headquarter in Israel last year and I see they’re changing a lot. They’re bringing new products, new ideas, new kind of solutions in the market, but their core will remain the 1.5 billion worldwide users.

What was your experience when you were working with Moovit and how did you manage to scale it up? Because it’s a little different from ways but solving a different type of problem. But what kind of a strategy and tactics did you apply to bring that high number of user and engagement with such large audience?

Uri Levine ([01:12:06]):

So, move it is very similar to ways, right? With two aspects. Number one, it answers the same question, how do I get from here wherever I want to go right now. But this one is driving and this one is using public transportation. The second part is that the outbreak, the scalability came from crowdsourcing. Cause if you look at the data that Google Maps can provide or on public transportation, it might be okay in some cities, but it’s completely, you know, lacking a lot of the information in most of the world move. It is crowdsourced all this data. From users that will tell you where exactly the bus station is and which informal bus is actually stopping here, right? And you think about it in developing countries, which is you know, still 90% of the world and on nine it’s 80% of the world. And this is the case, right?

Jaspal Singh ([01:13:11]):

Yeah.

Uri Levine ([01:13:13]):

And so and just giving you a very simple example, right? Let’s say that there is a bus station at a certain point of time just before the intersection, right? And now there is construction here and someone is moving the bus stations to be after the intersection, right? Because bus is unable to stop at the original. No one is changing that information anymore. Google will send you to a bus station that does not exist, move it will send you to the right location of the bus station. And that huge difference, right? Because yeah, 10 to 15% of the bus stations will be moved throughout the year because of constructions, because of you know, complaints of the people because of multiple reasons.

Jaspal Singh ([01:14:01]):

Yeah.

Uri Levine ([01:14:02]):

And they will stay there. No one is moving them back.

Jaspal Singh ([01:14:07]):

And move it, provide the accurate information. And again, like you mentioned about value creation. So if you create value, people will come, right?

 

 

Uri Levine ([01:14:15]):

And it’s all because of crowdsource, right? Cause the people that know are the people that are responsible for the data.

Jaspal Singh ([01:14:23]):

That’s, so those that’s so true. I mean providing that value creation is very important. And providing that feedback, it’s very important that you can attract users. Now, another question I want to check with you and is about a lot of discussion happening about Generative AI. Everybody’s right now talking about Generative AI and, and everybody’s thinking how the world will change with AI and how we are going to move in a different era. What’s your view on that and, and how do you see it’s really going to change our life and, and some of the impact it’ll leave on us?

Uri Levine ([01:14:59]):

So, I would say a few things and then maybe I would ask I think to join the conversation as well. So, the first thing for me, it’s always about the use case. So what is the use case or where, what is the value that we create? Now, if we are going to end up with the ability to actually provide you know, essays for students at elementary school or middle school, then it’s not significant enough. People are not willing to pay for it. If this is going to be become more and more and more specific. We are not a product market fit yet. It’s not good enough and will require us to become specific for each one of those markets. Now, at the end of the day, generative AI or ChatGPT, this is a language model, but this is not facts model. It’s a language model, which is basically in many cases going to end up saying what makes sense in terms of the language and not what makes sense in terms of the facts.

Jaspal Singh ([01:15:58]):

Mm.

Uri Levine ([01:16:00]):

You know, I’d occasionally sending me very funny stuff about, very funny facts about myself, when she’s asking the generative AI to, to tell them, you know, who is, who relevant, what is the book is all about different stuff. And then you read that and you realize that wait a minute, this is so off. This is so off. The fact that you are 80% accurate is okay if you wouldn’t use that other 20% of bullshit.

Jaspal Singh ([01:16:33]):

Mm-Hmm.

Uri Levine ([01:16:36]):

If you would be incomplete, it’s one thing. But if you start to generate stuff that is the language makes sense and not the data makes sense, then it’s going to end up worse than before.

Jaspal Singh ([01:16:49]):

And, do you think they can, they can be used for customer service because, in fact, I asked ChatGPT how can be useful for public transport and users, and it said, oh, I can be your customer service executive. I can be your journey planner. I can be data analytics. Like, do you meet some of the startup which are thinking to use that in their customer service experience or, or let’s say booking.

Uri Levine ([01:17:13]):

So I think that the one that are going to use that as a customer experience or customer support are actually the large corporates they have. There is a value for that, right? If they going to reduce the expenses that they’re spending on the customer support. But then you need to train the model with the specific data Yeah. Of warning a specific product or specific company, right? Because otherwise you are going to basically be useless with so many words. Right? This is going to be even more frustrating than before

Jaspal Singh ([01:17:50]):

I agree with you because they have more motivation and incentive to implement because of the cost and the complexity of their system. And also they have data, so they can use those data to train the AI model.

Uri Levine ([01:18:02]):

If they use the data to train or to train an engine, then they would end up with something that is better if they don’t use that. And, by the way, they will need to reduce the you know, the level of the ability of the generation of the language, right? Because you know, providing long answers or something, that short answer is required Yeah. Is not practice.

Jaspal Singh ([01:18:28]):

That’s true. That’s true. Now Uri, I want to discuss a little bit about your advisor and mentorship side. I mean, you are kind of a builder and advisor to so many startups. What do you look in a startup that you choose to advise or support? Because I’m pretty sure a lot of people are coming to you and say, Hey Yuri, we need your help. We need your guidance. But you must be very picky. So what are the first thing or say, top five thing? You look in any startup you really want to support and help.

Uri Levine ([01:18:57]):

It’s simpler than you think, right? At the end of the day, my destiny is about value creation, right? And so the most important thing is whether or not I can create value. And this is a combination of two things. Actually three things, right? My perspective do I think that I can add value? Yeah, give the time to create value and this is my own personal perspective, and then whether or not I want to create value in this space or not, right? Cause I can create value in multiple areas, but not all of them. I want. And so that, that part is, is simpler.

The second part is, you know, in order for me to have meaningful advice, then in addition to the fact that I want to do that and I know what to say, I need the other party to listen. So this is about communication and relationships that I can build with the CEO of the startup. Cause if I’m telling them stuff that they don’t, they don’t care, they don’t listen, then I don’t create value and in fact I don’t want to be there. And then last, whether or not it makes sense you know, at the end of the day, you’re right. I’m picky because I can only do x number of startups. And so it needs to be paid off as well.

Jaspal Singh ([01:20:20]):

That’s, that’s so true. I mean, if you are giving advice and if somebody don’t listen to your implement, it makes no sense and I love your point, my time and I’m not creating value.

 

Uri Levine ([01:20:28]):

My dad once told me that as soon as you stop creating value, you start to do damage. Now, we might want to say that this is not a single point. It’s actually a little bit more than a point, but yeah, this is the direction, right? If you have graded value and the value that you create is going down and down and down and down, there is a certain point that you start to create that.

Jaspal Singh ([01:20:52]):

It’s like eating food. So at certain point, eating food is good, but beyond that, it, it’s actually damaging your body, then helping us. That’s so true that.

Thank you so much, Yuri, and then really enjoyed the conversation. Thank you for your feedback on this point. I know it took a little longer time than expected, but I really enjoyed it, and I hope like you said finding some value in this discussion. And I’ll happily share your discussion with a lot of these city officials and mayors and see, you never know, probably we have some city coming forward and say, hey, we want to implement this solution.

Uri Levine ([01:21:25]):

Absolutely. I actually agree.

Jaspal Singh ([01:21:26]):

Thank you so much.

Uri Levine ([01:21:28]):

Thank you.

Jaspal Singh ([01:21:29]):

Thank you for listening to this podcast. We’ll be inviting some other inspiring guests in the coming week. You can subscribe to this podcast online to get the notification for the next episode. If you like this podcast, please don’t forget to give us a five star rating as it’ll help us to spread our message. If you have any feedback or suggestion for this podcast, please do write to us at info at mobility-innovator.com. I look forward to see you next time. Thank you.