A founder’s guide to crisis management | Uri Levine (Waze co-founder, serial entrepreneur)

Lenny's Podcast: Product | Growth | Career

Lenny Rachitsky

Technology, Business, Entrepreneurship

5 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 16 February 2025

⏱️ 84 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Uri Levine is a co-founder of Waze (which was acquired by Google for $1.3 billion in 2013), along with nine other companies (including another company he sold for over $1 billion). He’s also been on 20 boards and has been an advisor to over 50 startups. He recently released a new chapter of his best-selling book Fall in Love with the Problem, Not the Solution, which provides a guide to surviving crises at your company. In this episode, we cover:

• The two types of startup crisis and how to handle them

• Why speed of action is the most important thing

• How to keep your team motivated when things look dire

• A framework for deciding whether or not to pivot

• What to do when product-market fit disappears

• How to approach raising money during a crisis

• More

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Find the transcript at: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/a-founders-guide-to-crisis-management-uri-levine

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Where to find Uri Levine:

• X: https://twitter.com/urilevine1

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/uri-levine

• Website: https://urilevine.com

• Book: https://www.amazon.com/Fall-Love-Problem-Solution-Entrepreneurs/dp/1637746601/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

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Where to find Lenny:

• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com

• X: https://twitter.com/lennysan

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/

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In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) Welcome back, Uri!

(05:10) The new chapter: navigating crises

(08:15) Types of crises founders face

(29:10) Navigating cash crises

(38:31) The importance of never giving up

(46:26) How to keep people engaged through a crises

(47:59) Transparency in crisis management

(56:58) Navigating product-market-fit challenges

(59:27) Deciding when to pivot or shut down

(01:13:34) Real-life startup survival stories

(01:17:06) Avoiding and preparing for crises

(01:21:21) Final thoughts and book promotion

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Referenced:

• Waze: https://www.waze.com/

• Moovit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moovit

• Order Chat: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/order-chat

• Fibo: https://finder.startupnationcentral.org/company_page/fibo

• Behind the founder: Drew Houston (Dropbox): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/behind-the-founder-drew-houston-dropbox

• TomTom: https://www.tomtom.com/

• Khosla Ventures: https://www.khoslaventures.com/

• WeSki: https://www.weski.com/

• Larry Silverstein: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Silverstein

• Oversee: https://oversee.biz/

• Lessons from 1,000+ YC startups: Resilience, tar pit ideas, pivoting, more | Dalton Caldwell (Y Combinator, Managing Director): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/lessons-from-1000-yc-startups

• Tobi Lütke’s leadership playbook: Playing infinite games, operating from first principles, and maximizing human potential (founder and CEO of Shopify): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/tobi-lutkes-leadership-playbook

• Harley Finkelstein on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/harleyf/

• Zip: https://zip.co/us

• Qualcomm: https://www.qualcomm.com/

• Einstein quote: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/albert_einstein_148788

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Recommended book:

• Fall in Love with the Problem, Not the Solution: A Handbook for Entrepreneurs (updated 2025 version): https://urilevine.com/book/#Pre-order

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Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected].

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Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed.

Get full access to Lenny's Newsletter at www.lennysnewsletter.com/subscribe

Transcript

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0:00.0	Let's talk about crisis. I think it might be helpful to do a quick taxonomy of the types of crisis
0:04.7	founders face. So to abstractly two types of crisis, one is I would call that a cash crisis.
0:10.8	All of a sudden, your cash program or plan is being jeopardized. You know, losing a customer,
0:17.7	disappearing investor. In the other one is lose of product market fit. When product market
0:23.9	fit disappeared, you actually need to go back to square one. And you basically say, everything that
0:28.9	I know so far is irrelevant anymore. You also talk along these lines of never give up in a crisis
0:34.3	and throughout your journey. Always keep on looking for ways to make it
0:37.9	work. Never give up is the most important behavior of successful CEOs of startup. The second one,
0:43.2	by the way, is making decisions with conviction. If you don't make them with conviction,
0:47.3	then the team is not going to follow. If the team is not going to follow, then you're not going
0:51.1	to be successful. The core part of your advice on crisis, it's always
0:54.8	the founder's fault if things don't work out. At the end of the day, you cannot rely on someone else.
1:01.9	You have only one company. You need to make sure that this company is successful. When you assume
1:06.7	responsibility, you're basically saying, you know what, I control my own destiny.
1:11.1	Any advice for how to avoid falling into a crisis as a founder?
1:14.0	Number one answer is no. Don't worry, you will face crisis.
1:21.1	Today, my guest is Uri Levine.
1:23.6	Uri is the co-founder of Waze, along with nine other companies. He's sold two companies for over a billion dollars.
1:29.8	He's been on 20 different startup boards, has been an advisor to over 50 different startups.
1:34.8	And even more impressively, this is his second time on the podcast.
1:38.8	In our first conversation, we walked through the biggest lessons that he's learned over the course of working with all of these different startups that he chronicled in his beloved book,
1:46.7	Fall in Love with the Problem, Not the Solution.
	...

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