Clever Geek Handbook

The history of Waze: from nonsense to a billion dollar company



One of the important stages of learning in SkillFactory (for example, in courses for Android and iOS developers) is creating your own products. These can be functional programs and simple games. Such projects have a chance to become something more than just work for a portfolio. But how much does the "takeoff" of the project depend on the developers themselves, and how much - on external circumstances?



Today we are sharing the story of Waze, an app for dealing with traffic jams, which at first few people believed in, but which has managed to grow into a solid business.





A few years ago, while covering the financial situation of Israel's largest news company, I spoke with a former senior Waze employee who told me the story of the company's early days. “At first, few people understood what we were trying to do,” he said. Most of the potential investors asked us: "Why do we need a navigation system along the daily route?"



To be honest, then we ourselves did not know how to clearly explain our vision of the product.



His tone reflected how difficult it was for the company.



Waze was founded in 2007 by an Israeli trio: Ehud Shabtai, Amir Shinar and Uri Levin. For that time, the idea was a bit unusual. Crowd driven navigation app. Users draw maps of the roads they drive. The app collects coordinates via GPS signals and guides drivers along less congested routes, distributing traffic. Waze is a free traffic jam app.



At that time, the market was filled with traditional tools - expensive GPS systems with built-in maps that had no connection to real-time data and basically just showed the driver where to turn to get to the place. The Waze app was different.



“In the beginning, there were a lot of people around us who explained that we were simply stupid and would not survive in the market,” recalled CEO Noam Bardeen. The company, however, found funding and began to gain traction. Mostly in Israel, where the Waze app was sold by word of mouth.



Obstacles on the way



Things were going well, but not very well. 2010 turned out to be a harsh year when the company was looking for new investors.



“We met with investors and funds,” recalls one of the founders, Uri Levin. "They had a hundred reasons to say no, and only one to say yes." One company even said that "He won't touch us with a stick." After selling Waze, we thought about sending this company a stick as a gift.



The Miami Herald reports that Levin referred to this period as a roller coaster ride in the dark.

You don't know where the turn is until you turn.



The app was having navigation problems. It indicated the route to the highway directly from the bridge. The US launch attempt turned out to be more difficult than the company had hoped. Not many users have installed the app. So the product, which mainly depends on the crowd, laid out bizarre routes.



A former employee spoke about the problem of self-determination and transmission of Waze's vision to users. At one point, the app was presented as a social environment for drivers. It took time to fine-tune the tool's advantages and potential.



Tim Cook Day



In a watershed year of 2012, Waze began to grow into a successful international company with 26 million users. But Waze, of course, hadn't made billions yet.



On September 28, 2012, a little after the release of the new version of Apple Maps, it became clear that the application was full of bugs and had an unusually low quality. And Tim Cook did what the people of his position usually hate to do. He has publicly apologized . Moreover, in his appeal, Cook, oddly enough, recommended that iPhone users switch to other navigation applications for a while. One of the recommended apps was Waze. After Cook's announcement, downloads soared 40%.



“We had no idea [that Cook would mention Waze],” Noam Bardeen told the Wall Street Journal. “Nobody asked us about anything, nobody asked us. Today we will break all download records. ” From now on, every September, Waze celebrates "Tim Cook Day."



Deal with Google



The Apple fiasco has allowed Waze to become one of the largest navigation apps in the world. “Even in Antarctica, there were 27 users,” Levin said. By this time, other large companies were paying close attention to the application.



Full caution, negotiations with Google continued for a month. Bardeen recalled : “The night before the deal, Google threatened to cancel everything because someone leaked the details to the press. The story could easily have ended differently. "



In June 2013, Google announces the purchase of Waze. The deal was estimated at between $ 1 billion and $ 1.3 billion. The world was shocked. Back then, the price for an app was extraordinary. TechCrunch announced the deal with the headline, "What the hell is this Waze and why did Google just pay over a billion for it?"



Waze is still an important part of Google's business today, with over 130 million active users worldwide.



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