Waze is a GPS mobile app that helps drivers navigate the globe in more efficient and adventurous ways depending on your destination. Concert, no address? Waze will take you there. The online Waze community has astronomical stats for any startup: doubling users in July 2012 from 10 to 20 million in 6 months!
Apparently Waze founders, Uri Levine, Ehud Shabtai, and Amir Shinar, hijacked the banal task of digital cartography into a gamified experience like in an organized beehive to accomplish a total distance of 3.2 billion miles mapped out. For daily commuters in France, this means having a tailored driving experience to help make even smarter driving decisions.
GPS technology began as early as a decade ago when the US government urged the military to make data from the Department of Defense satellites free and publicly available for improving access. This one small step meant $90 billion in value to the US economy in 2011 alone.
Why all the noise? Why should France care? That’s what I asked Michal Habdank-Kolaczkowski, Director of Communications at Waze who was happy to tell us why this is not just another start-up…