Fall in Love with the Problem, Not the Solution (5/5)

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Rating (5/5): ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

📚 GoodReads Info 📚

Summary - A Must Read for Entrepreneurs Link to heading

It’s a bit ironic to fall in love with a book that provides a solution to falling in love with the problem.

Uri, best known for founding Waze, drops bombs of experience and knowledge every 5 minutes. Though the second half is a bit slower, THE FIRST HALF IS AN ABSOLUTE MUST READ for anyone who even has a small strand of entrepreneurship in their genes.

It’s clear that Uri poured his heart and soul into this book. It is the coalition of decades of experience, with tons of blood, sweat and tears poured in between the lines. He see-saws from ideology to concrete experience keeping the book engaging at all times.

I listened to the audiobook at 0.75x speed during my morning workout, leaving voice notes every time I heard something interesting. Suffice it to say, there was a moment when I had to stop my timed burpees just to jot something down.

Uri’s Entrepreneurship Journey - Not very sexy but realistic Link to heading

I’ve read about enough enterpenruship journeys to learn that that everyone forges their own unique path. Some paths, such as the 20 year old dropout from Harvard, are glorified by the media more than others. Uri’s is a lot more humble, realistic, and arguably why it is not talked about as much.

Uri spend over a decade working “the corporate life” before venturing into startups. In doing so, he created one of the world’s most recognizable brands (Waze), a product that benefits many (hundreds?) millions of people every day, had a successful unicorn level exit, yet only earned ~$30M from a $1.15B exit at the age of 48. In his words:

But then you pay taxes, you get divorced, and you end up with much less.

He is obviously not complaining, but I have personally met many people who have done much less and earned much more.

It was also refreshing to hear discuss how most people thoughts his ideas were unlikely to succeed until he’s had a couple of successes under his belt. I have to admit that I am also guilty of being biased by an individual’s wealth when listening to their ideas…

He had a great quote to capture this sentiment:

When you create something completely new, at first people will laugh at you. Then they’ll ignore you until finally you win (or they lose, depending on the perspective).

The Apple Connection - Wozniak’s Prologue Link to heading

Steve Wozniak wrote the prologue for the book, which I’m sure was a dream come true for Uri.

Steve’s writing of Apple’s success is, in a good way, very far removed from today’s i-Based ecosystem. He goes into detail of how software enable game development without needing custom hardware for each individual game from Atari’s earlier years.

Wozniak reminds us of one of Job’s favorite quotes by Leonardo da Vinci:

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication

In a way, Waze was the a simple and sophisticated solution to a the complex problem of navigation and traffic avoidance. What’s even more impressive, Waze was founded BEFORE the iPhone was released, because they were focused on solving the problem, regardless of the tools available!

Finding Product Market Fit Link to heading

For a book titled “Fall in love with the problem”, it’s no surprise that the most the engaging parts are about finding product market fit.

He calls out the obvious that builders learn over time: no one reads anything, no one likes change, and in fact, many people are averse to it.

There’s no way to fake PMF or bluff users into it. The only way to find it is to ship, iterate and see what users do. In addition, in order to be successful, you need to understand what evokes emotion in order to get engaged with the problem you’re solving for the user. I’m not going to retell the book in this paragraph, but he really hammers this point in.

In particular, he calls out that real users only convert on the third use. This is important to keep in mind: find a way to bring your users back at least three times.

User Feedback - Never let it go to waste Link to heading

In the past, I’ve taken part in user studies where I’d get paid $100 for a 30 minute session. I always found it crazy how much money is spent on this, but Uri calls out that no type of user feedback can replace watching a user the first time they interact with a product. I’m not going to forget this.

He goes at length on the different type of users and how they interact with products.

“Users are different; they don’t all fall into the same group or category. In fact, there are three relevant categories of users: innovators, early adopters, and the early majority. The biggest challenge is that a user from one category can’t even realize that there are other users that are not like them.”

Waze Anecdotes - GPS Nerds & Antarctica Link to heading

He gives an example how the very first users of Waze were people who were simply passionate about GIS and GPS, using empty maps that provided no value yet. This really reminds me about the state of the crypto industry today.

Another cool anecdote he referenced were the 27 users in Antarctica. It’s a great example of “you never know how your product will be used.” Though Waze had no maps around base camp, they used the dynamically built pseud-routes as a mechanism to build a map to/from base camp because compasses didn’t work: North is in all directions.

Cultivating Failure - Critical to success but has to be done right Link to heading

I’ve failed many times in my life. I don’t like failing. I’m afraid of failing. I still haven’t hit my big success yet. I know we the right thing to do is keep trying. To some degree I enjoy. To another degree, I don’t know if I’m just a masochist.

For obvious reasons, this part of the book hit home hard.

Let’s start with a re-quote from our good friend Einstein:

If you’ve never failed, you’ve never tried anything new.

If this really is true, I bet he’d take me on as a graduate student in the blink of an eye.

Uri adds his own twist on failure when it comes to experimentation:

The “fail fast” approach is not about which thesis or experiment worked. It is about simply having more experiments and, as a result, increasing the likelihood of being successful (that is, finding the one that does work). Remember what said (I love to repeat this quote because it’s so important).

In fact, this book should be called “Fail in Love with Failure” because he keeps going:

Failure is not only OK but also necessary. It may be the most important thing to understand about building a start-up. By embracing failure, you increase the likelihood of being successful.”

He doesn’t just want you to fall in love with failure, but to embrace it as well:

“By embracing failure, you increase the likelihood of being successful”

But then he does have words of support:

“What matters most is how fast you recover—how quickly you can get back on your feet. If you’re operating under fear of failure, you will break.”

But what’s most important to me is to make sure my team is not afraid of failing. When I hire someone, I only hire people who are willing to be mini entrepreneurs. Everyone owns their piece of the puzzle and must drive it.

What I plan to tell them week over week is to try things, change course quickly, and not be afraid.

I’ve been thinking about printing these images and putting them on my wall:

long journey what people think

Hiring - Hiring, Firing, Managing and Reflecting Link to heading

  • Most important question to ask 30 days of hiring something new: Would I hire them again?
    • If yes: give them a bonus.
    • If no: fire them.
  • Hard interviews aren’t only necessary but CRITICAL because it shows the candidate the caliber of the team they’re joining.
  • Decisions are usually made early in the interview, but later we just look for conviction.
  • Make the candidate feel comfortable by asking about their last project.
  • Keep asking why until you you reach “I don’t know”
    • If you can go really deep -> You know they did the work and relatively senior.
    • If they can’t go deep -> See how broad you can go and make a judgement off of that.
    • In either case, don’t stop until you reach I don’t know. If you don’t reach I don’t know, that says something about the candidate.
  • Another question I heard recently is asking the candidate if they consider themselves lucky.
    • If they say yes, I won’t to be around them because they’re either lucky, persistent or both. #Optimism
    • If they no, I don’t want to be around them because they’re either unlucky or don’t try hard enough. #Pessimism

normal distribution

Founder Mistakes - A few notes & takeaways Link to heading

A few takeaways for me here were:

  • You need to put on 200% startup and 0% to nothing else. Already done.
  • Passion must be greater than the fear of failure plus the alternative cost. I think I’m there.
  • Focus is about doing one thing at a time. Thank you for the reminder.
  • The most important days of a startup is all of them, one at a time. Love this.

Presentations - The first & last slides are the most important Link to heading

The way I discovered this book was through a podcast. I heard Uri speak about how the first and last slides are the most important. Funny enough, I had a presentation to do at a conference the next week, so I acted on this advice.

It turned out amazing and I had people come up to me after the presentation to:

  • Related to something I had on the first slide
  • An action item I had on the last slide

I’ve also annotated the full presentation on my substack: https://olshansky.substack.com/p/annotated-presentation-relay-mining

Acquisitions - A bit long-winded but great for if (when 🤞) the time comes Link to heading

If/when the time comes for me to entertain an acquisition offer, I’ll be sure to re-read this chapter.

In the meantime, the most important takeaway for me is to say yes to an okay offer if I’d regret things going to zero. This usually applies to first time exits because the money is usually life changing.

Global Markets & International Expansion Link to heading

This part of the book was a bit slower, but a really good and full of great experience backed insights:

  • Having both the #1 and #2 apps in the world creates more opportunity to learn and experiment (e.g. Google owning Maps & Waze)
  • We often overlook Brazil and Mexico as major markets where traction could easily exceed the US
  • We can’t control sales cycles, but we can streamline it for the sales team after PMF is found

Raising money & Managing Investor Expectations Link to heading

  • Love or hate are the only two types of relationships between investors and the founding team.
  • Investors can move ultra fast if they feel like they’re about to lose the deal.
  • Impressions are established in the first minute, everything afterwards is just seeking confirmation.
  • Lots of good tips about handling and preparing for board meetings that I won’t summarize here.
  • There’s a big chance everyone is afraid to look stupid in board meetings.

“Let’s look at fundraising as an example. It’s usually the most challenging phase for a start-up. If you fail in this phase, you will most likely die (well, your company will).”

Favorite Quotes Link to heading

What is luck?

While luck counts for a lot in this space, let me define luck as “When opportunity meets readiness.” This book is about making you ready for that moment.

While luck is great, it doesn’t help with making hard decisions.

The thing about hard decisions is that they are not easy and come with responsibility.

Making easy decisions is easy and making hard decisions is hard, and most people don’t like to make hard decisions. So, in a small organization like a start-up, most of the hard decisions will be for the CEO to make. This is where it becomes complicated

But classifying something as a “wrong decision” is too hard…

There are right decisions or NO decisions, simply because we can’t predict what would have happened on the path we didn’t take.

What I’ve found though is that constraints force you to make a decision, thereby breeding creativity.

What most people forget to mention in the balance between constraints, creativity and decision making is the role of frustration.

For me, it is always frustration that leads into understanding there is a problem. Then I try to figure out if it is a BIG PROBLEM—a problem worth solving. It is always the problem that triggers everything,

And for some reason, this relation to frustration made me keep thinking back to this quote:

What’s my point? Even when something works, you can’t be certain it will work again or that it will work the same way somewhere else.

But when things got philosophical, Uri took a step back and interleaved in some business humor:

“The CEO and CFO of a company were having lunch one day. The CFO said to the CEO, “I’m concerned that we’re investing so much in training our employees, and then they would leave.” The CEO replied, “I’m more concerned that we will not invest in training, and they will stay!”

Occasionally dropping some wisdom on ego management too:

“The main reason you need to brief each board member separately and personally before the meeting is that you can only manage ego on a one-on-one basis. Nobody can (or should) handle ego management in public.”

And my favorite quote of all related to the book I plan to write in 20 years.

I’ve already decided that my book will be titled “The Gap between Theory & Practice”, so hopefully Uri doesn’t beat me to it:

“Right now, it is all in theory, and we know that the difference between “in theory” and “in reality” is much bigger in reality than it is in theory”

Lastly, this quote about coin flipping is something I’ll utilize next time I really have to make a hard decision but can’t decide:

“I heard another version of the coin flip. You say, “If it is heads, I’m going to do X and if it’s tails, I’m going to do Y.” You flip the coin. Now, if you like the results then do it, if not, do the opposite.”