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: Sierra: https://bit.ly/acquiredsierra Sentry: https://bit.ly/acquiredsentry Anthropic: https://bit.ly/acquiredclaude25 Vanta: https://vanta.com/acquired More Acquired! Get email updates with hints on next episode and follow-ups from recent episodes Join the Slack Subscribe to ACQ2 Merch Store ! © Copyright 2015-2025 ACQ, LLC 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!