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