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The ex-CEO of Waze was preaching to the startup choir
How unchecked confirmation bias can make you betray your own values
Last week, I read the article by Noam Bardin, ex-CEO of Waze, on why he stayed so long at Google. In it, he states that his experience selling Waze to Google proved to him that it’s difficult for startups to operate within a large corporation without clashes over culture and governance.
Like many people working with startups, I was nodding approvingly by the end and excitedly shared the article with my networks.
The man is clearly very intelligent and hard-working, and he built an incredible company that was bought out by an even more incredible company. Noam provided some poignant examples of things startups should look out for when joining a corporation, especially if they’re interested in maintaining their culture and agile operations. He even went so far as to admit it was his fault for believing he could “keep the start-up magic within a corporation, in spite of all the evidence showing the opposite.”
Yet there was something about his writing that rubbed me the wrong way, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. Given that I was otherwise pleased with the article overall, I pushed those concerns aside.
