- Waze Journey
- Disruption and Innovation
- UNDERSTAND YOUR USERS
- Figure Out Product-Market Fit or Die
- How to make money – building a business model
- How to Get to a Billion Users? Go To Market Strategies
Uri Levine is a serial entrepreneur, tech disruptor, and globally sought-after entrepreneurship speaker best known as the co-founder of Waze, the world’s largest community-based navigation platform serving more than 750 million drivers. Waze was acquired by Google for 1.1 billion dollars in 2013. Uri also played a pivotal role as first board member and early investor in Moovit, the leading public transportation navigation platform used by more than 750 million people worldwide, later acquired by Intel for 1 billion dollars.
Since these landmark exits, Uri has dedicated his career to building high-impact startups that challenge inefficient markets, eliminate friction for consumers, and create large-scale value. His approach centers on solving big problems, improving under-performing services, and empowering users through technology.
Uri is the author of “Fall In Love with the Problem – Not the Solution,” a foundational guide for entrepreneurs seeking clarity, discipline, and purpose in company-building. A prominent global keynote speaker, he shares lessons from both successes and failures, offering audiences practical insights into innovation, disruption, and the realities of startup growth. He also teaches “How to Build a Startup,” an academic workshop for undergraduate and graduate business students, cultivating the next generation of innovators.
Uri Levine is a globally recognized serial entrepreneur, tech visionary, and champion of problem-driven innovation who has dedicated his career to disrupting inefficient markets and creating large-scale value for consumers. Best known as the co-founder of Waze, the world’s largest community-based traffic and navigation app, Uri helped build a platform that fundamentally changed how hundreds of millions of people move through the world. With more than 750 million users today, Waze became a defining example of user-powered problem solving and was acquired by Google in 2013 for 1.1 billion dollars.
Uri’s track record of impact extends far beyond Waze. He was the first board member and an early investor in Moovit, often called “Waze for public transportation,” which now supports more than 750 million users navigating transit systems worldwide. Moovit was acquired by Intel in 2020 for 1 billion dollars, marking another major milestone in Uri’s mission to improve daily mobility at a global scale.
Driven by a deep belief in empowering consumers and eliminating friction in broken markets, Uri Levine has continued to build and guide startups that focus on solving big, meaningful problems. He typically serves as co-founder, chairman, or board member, shaping products and business models from the earliest stages. His ventures span diverse industries but share a common philosophy: create significant value, make people’s lives easier, and challenge systems that no longer serve the public effectively.
Uri Levine is also committed to democratizing entrepreneurial thinking. His bestselling book, “Fall In Love with the Problem – Not the Solution,” distills decades of experience into a practical, honest, and highly actionable roadmap for founders. In it, he emphasizes the mindset required to create products people truly need and the discipline to stay focused on the real problem rather than falling in love with an idea.
As a global keynote speaker, Uri Levine shares hard-earned lessons from both successes and failures, offering audiences a rare, inside look at how innovative companies are built, scaled, and sometimes rebuilt. His presentations blend storytelling with clear frameworks, empowering entrepreneurs, corporate teams, and students to approach innovation with clarity and courage.
In academia, Uri Levine leads “How to Build a Startup,” an immersive workshop designed for undergraduate and graduate business students. By teaching through real-world examples and challenges, he equips future innovators with the tools needed to navigate uncertainty and create lasting impact.
Across every endeavor, Uri’s vision remains consistent: improve the world by solving big problems and enabling others to do the same.
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CeBIT Global Conferences – 15 March 2016: Keynote “Passion & Disruption” Uri Levine, Co-founder and Chairman, FeeX. Co-founder, Waze, FeeX, Inc
In this keynote, Uri Levine speaks directly to entrepreneurs about the mindset, discipline, and emotional resilience required to build impactful companies. He begins by framing entrepreneurship as a deep emotional journey rooted in love or hate: strong feelings about a problem are what inspire founders to act. He explains that passion fuels perseverance, especially as the entrepreneurial path is consistently harder than expected and filled with constant ups and downs.
Uri describes the predictable cycle many founders experience, from discovering their next startup idea long before the current one ends, to the early stage where founders fall in love with an idea and begin sharing it with friends, only to be met with skepticism. He emphasizes that criticism is inevitable but should not derail the entrepreneur’s conviction.
He outlines several core principles of the first year of a startup. Fundraising is the fuel that determines how far the company can go. Founders must design their company’s DNA intentionally from day one because culture forms quickly and solidifies. Focus, he argues, is less about what a team chooses to do and more about what it chooses not to do. Success comes from doing one thing right.
Uri then explains the long, challenging period of “no traction,” comparing it to crossing a desert. Progress feels invisible, but founders must avoid changing direction and avoid running out of resources. He introduces the test for whether an idea is big: identify who will be out of business if you succeed.
In this session at London Business School, Uri Levine speaks to MBA students about what entrepreneurship really feels like, how Waze was built, and how to think clearly about disruption.
He opens by asking who in the room is an entrepreneur or plans to be one, then sets expectations: the session will cover the entrepreneurial journey, the Waze story, and disruption. Entrepreneurship, he explains, usually starts with a strong feeling of love or hate toward a problem, which develops into passion and a dream. That dream comes with sacrifice and a “roller coaster” reality where founders can be on top of the world and at the bottom within hours.
Uri compares starting a startup to falling in love. You date many ideas, then choose one. At first you spend time alone with the idea, then you share it with friends, who often say it will never work. He argues that this skepticism is normal; those who abandon their ideas after criticism were simply not in love enough to survive the hard journey. The startup path, he stresses, is a journey of failures: you try things, they don’t work, you iterate until something does, which only earns you a ticket to the next, more complex phase.
He highlights the importance of culture and DNA in the first year, urging founders to intentionally design the workplace they themselves would love. He then shifts to problem selection: define the problem, know who has it, and ask how the world will be different if you succeed. If you cannot see real impact, the idea may not be big enough.
Uri walks through the Waze story: the need for real
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