The Billion Dollar Navigation App: The Waze Success Story

The asking price jumped from about 500 million a few months ago to about $1 billion by the time the talks with Facebook collapsed. Every big name in Silicon Valley is courting this tech company simply because they want a piece of their hot navigation app – Waze.

This navigation application that started due to the founder’s inability to found direction now boasts of over 47 million users. And there is really no way of this slowing down simply because of the interactive nature of the application and the fact that it is finding increasing use among users. Forbes Magazine reports that it is even now possible to direct traffic using the application and the addition of features such as real-time map changes only serves to endear it to its users.

The talks with Facebook collapsed, but they still have a host of other companies lined up to have a piece of the pie. There is still Apple and Google and probably a host of other companies that haven’t yet mustered the courage to fork out the asking price of Ehud Shabtai and the rest of the Waze co-founders.

It is not clear which company will really end up snatching up a piece of this Israel-based company, but what is certain is that there is really no other way to go but up. This is so especially considering the fact that earlier on, potential buyers were talking about buying the company for around $100 million, then there was a $400 million speculation and now it is in the tune of billions.

Provided that they stick to the basics and provided that they never deviate from what makes them rock, the Waze success story has no way of going sour. Well, they are still struggling with ways to monetize their application so as to turn it to profitability, but they will figure it out with time (they have already managed to sign up AT&T, Taco Bell, Starbucks and other big names such that ads of the companies pop up when a driver is next to any of their establishments). If things go well, this is another billion dollar accidental empire in the making and testament to the fact that there are still a lot of success stories to be written out of the mobile world application scripts.