Entrepreneurship and
Disruption
Uri Levine [email protected]
Waze / FeeX / Moovit / Roomer / Zeek / Engie / FairFly / SeeTree / Refundit / LiveCare
Entrepreneurship• Love or Hate leads to Dream and Passion
• Willing to Sacrifice
• Longer Roller Coaster Journey
• No doubt what’s next
• It is like…
What is the problem you’re solving?
Venture
• Out of tons of ideas
• You fall in love with one
• It takes time to fall in love
• Then you share your idea – to get feedback
• And if they don’t like it – you disengage…
• With your friends
• Out of many girls
• You fall in love with one
• It takes time to fall in love
• Then you show up with your girl – to get feedback
• And if they don’t like her – you disengage…
• With your friends
Girl
If you don’t LOVE what you’re doing…then do something that you do love
Falling in Love
The Long Journey
If you’re happy with your product – you launch way tooooooo late
Journey of Failures
Failures are the best teachers
The 1st year – keys for success
• Fund Raising
• DNA
• Mission
• Focus
The main thing, is to keep the main thing the main thing
Big Ideas…
• Ask yourself – who will be out of business when
I succeed?
• If you don’t know – it is not big enough
Celebration – the 1st everything
• Good:
• Launch, Employee, User, PR, Revenue,
Million, Office, Prize, Deal, Fund raising
• Better:
• Overloading, Patent infringement,
Law suit, Fraud
• Best:
• Thank you letter from users
Ask for help – you will find many that can and will help you
The Startup Journey
Entrepreneur: Passion for a change > Fear of failure and loss
Problem
Users
Solution
Startup
Find a Solution For many Users With a Problem
The Waze Journey
Wazer One
The Story: Livemaps
The Story: Livemaps
The Story: Livemaps
The Story: Livemaps
The Story: Livemaps
The Story: Livemaps
Does it really work?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRlwwtAuMio
The Journey
People don’t stop dreaming when they get old, they get old as they stop dreaming
Making a Long Story Short
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WazersExcitement
of creation
Moving the
Needle
Magic
happens
Total
Disruption
StarTips• Who are your USERS and their PROBLEM
• Make your MISTAKES FAST
• DNA + MISSION journey
• Fall in LOVE with the PROBLEM, not the solution
• FOCUS – it is what we are not doing
• TEAM – 50% of failures, 100% knew ahead
Fall in love with the Problem, not the solution
Fund Raising Tips – How Fast?
• Strongest point at the beginning
• They are users too
• Story Telling
• Big Market
• Strongest point at the end
The main thing, is to keep the main thing, the main thing
Disruption
Waze, Uber, Self Driving Car, iPhone
Product Price
Knowledge Model
Market Equilibrium
Disruptors…
• Entrepreneurs or new players
• Nothing to lose
• Driven by Passion or Hate (Palo Alto Networks)
• Existing players can NOT disrupt
Calling for disruption
• A market that information is missing or asymmetric
• A market with middlemen
• Price <> Value
• Regulation that doesn’t work
• 80% of employees entitled for tax refunds
• 95% of VAT on goods is not being claimed
• 90% of air-travelers rights are not being reserved
Disrupted POV• “Netflix is a very small niche business”
• Blockbuster CEO, 2000
• “There's no chance that the iPhone is going to
get any significant market share.”
• MSFT CEO, 2007
• “That’s cute – but don’t tell anyone about it”
• Kodak CEO
Disruption is good
• Better market equilibrium – always
• Disruption is scary – what about me???
Car Industry as a model• 100 years of no change
• Autonomous cars
• How the market will change
• Product? Pricing model? Price? Demand?
• Which other markets?
• Driving schools? Parking? Car insurance? Leasing?
• One more question
If you don’t know how
much you’re paying…• Fees
• Mechanic
• Airfare
• Medical Services
• Legal
• Insurance
Uri Levine
• Serial Parallel Entrepreneur
• Mainly consumers
• a lot of Good to a lot of People
• Money and time loss
• Empowerment
• Real problems
• Big Impact
• 1-2 new startups a year
Fall in Love with the Problem – not the solution
Fall in Love in the PROBLEM you’re solving – not the solution
My Startups
The Traffic Problem
• How many new cars were added last year?
• Car utilization is 4%
• Autonomous vehicles solution or problem?
Traffic – what we see5 lanes of traffic jam, right?
The Reality
The Alternative
Uber make it worse200 People in 225 cars
AV is even more200 People in 500 cars
So what do we do?
• Public Transportation that is
• Reliable
• Efficient
• Fast
• Safe
• Affordable
• Anywhere to anywhere
• Less than 5 minutes away
In other words
• Grid based network
• 400 meters apart
• Smaller size buses
• High frequency
• Dedicated lanes
• Free
The yellow tag lines IFocus: it is not what we are doing it is what we are not doing
What is the problem you’re solving?
Who are your users?
If you don’t LOVE what you’re doing…then do something that you do love
Fall in love with the problem you’re solving – not the solution
The main thing, is to keep the main thing the main thing
No one was born CEO – build a team to support you
The CEO is all alone
The biggest enemy of good enough is….perfect
My more successful companies built their management teams at the beginning
If you’re happy with with your product – you launch way tooooooo late
Success = (A lot of value) X (a lot of people) X (a lot of times)
Find a big F…… problem to solve
When you started you had a mission – prove that you can
Show significant value before you can ask something in return
Ask for help – you will find many that can and will help you
Entrepreneur: Passion for a change > Fear of failure and loss
The yellow tag lines IIIf you don’t know your usage figures, you’re doing something wrong
Focus: it is not what we are doing it is what we are not doing
A Startup is a continuous quest for product X users – until you find it…
Today is the first day of the rest of your life
Never forget your long run goal and what you stand for
Does it even worth it – what will happen if you’re successful?
Prepare for rejection – do not be afraid to fail
Don’t worry that someone will copy you – worry if they don’t
We have two ears and one mouth – so we can listen twice as much as we talk
Strategy is very important is can be up to 20% of the success – rest is execution
A dog will not jump if you hang the sausage from the ceiling
Why do dogs lick their balls?
Ideas are easy – making them happen is the hardest part
If you don’t measure it – it does not exist
You won’t be good enough, if you don’t know what good enough is – metrics is key
To start you need: to know better your customers your product and passion for it
Displeased customers are your key for improvement
The yellow tag lines IIIDon’t assume – ask… and if it doesn’t work, then TRY
Funding is like fuel for the car – I would rather go without refueling
Who would be out of business if you’re successful
The difference between CEO and CFO
Ben Horowitz: as a CEO, I slept like a baby, woke up every 2 hours and cried
Schedule Your Priorities and not priority your schedule
The winning triangle: Users + Problem + Solution
A lot of nickels and dimes is still nickels and dimes
If there is no main dish – there is no meal
Vinod Khosla: 70-80% of the VCs add negative value (so nothing is better)
Smart Money – WTF? Have separate money and separate smart
You don’t want to go home with a deal that you don’t like
Once they invest – they get you by the balls, AND you get them…
Fund Raising is an extreme sport
People don’t stop dreaming when they get old, they get old as they stop dreaming
You either lead, follow or get out of my way
If you can’t win at home – what makes you think you can win away?