Acquired Episode 17: Waze

Topics covered include: 


Community Showcase: the Nexcast podcasting platform from
listener Brian Sanders, along with their podcast chronicling the
team’s journey building the company 

Waze’s origin in cofounder & CTO Ehud Shabtai’s desire to
hack his portable GPS navigation unit

Waze CEO Noam Bardin’s  retrospective blog post on the
Waze journey 

 Waze’s Palo Alto office and the bizarre Silicon Valley
phenomenon of tech companies being located in retail
storefronts 

Apple’s  ill-fated launch of Apple Maps as part of iOS 6
at WWDC 2012, Apple’s subsequent apology letter, and  Scott
Forstall’s ultimate ouster from the company 

The climax of the mobile platform wars… which it turns out
Apple and Google  both won

 Apple, Facebook, and Google all vying to acquire Waze
throughout 2013

 Google’s renewed design ethos under Larry Page

Ben and David spontaneously agree (surprise) to create on a
new category of acquisition for the show 

The increasing strategic value of data and data assets as
technology enters the age of machine learning 

The coming mega trend of autonomous vehicles, and  the
role Israeli startups are playing in it (including the
globalization of startups & innovation)

The disruptive power of network and data-based business
models

Emergence of native as *the* definitive advertising medium on
mobile, including ability to close the advertising loop via
location-based products and services 



Sponsors:


WorkOS: https://bit.ly/workos25

Sierra: https://bit.ly/acquiredsierra

Sentry: https://bit.ly/acquiredsentry

Anthropic: https://bit.ly/acquiredclaude25






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The Carve Out:


Ben: Weezer’s “Summer Elaine and Drunk Dori” on Song
Exploder 

David:  Simon Sinek’s “Start with Why” TED Talk



  Followups: 


None this week… coverage of Instagram Stories to come next
time!