
What were the key decisions that Page & Brin made in the early days of Google? - aniobi
http://www.quora.com/Google-Inc-company/What-were-the-4-or-5-key-decisions-that-Larry-Page-and-Sergey-Brin-made-in-the-early-days-of-Google
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bioh42_2
_Larry Page's brother Carl Page had experience with venture capitalists,
having sold eGroups to Yahoo for $432 million._

I did not know that.

I did know Bill Gates' mom was on the United Way executive committee with
IBM's CEO.

I think these details are often omitted because we like to promote the idea
that all you need is hard work and talent and perhaps a bit of luck to
succeed.

We tend to not like stories about success as a function of familiar ties. This
may have something to do with our distaste for monarchies and aristocracies.

It's also a bit depressing when you're working on a startup but no one in your
family is well off, and no one is on a board with the CEO of a huge and
potential partner, and your brother did not sell his startup for hundreds of
millions.

~~~
nostrademons
Think of it from Carl Page's perspective, then: _his_ brother had not yet sold
his startup for hundreds of millions.

~~~
zubazuba
You both make good points.

It is still amazing what they did with what they had, despite the fact that
they had more than the average person.

However, there is no denying that they were lucky to have that money in the
first place so that they could wait until their company was valued more and
they had to give less away to VCs. I wonder how many startups had to give away
their autonomy for badly needed cash? A large number no doubt.

From Carl Page's perspective: his brother had not yet sold his startup for
hundreds of millions. It is quite a feat that he was able to do it by himself.
But if Carl Page did have those hundreds of millions as a possible source of
funding, could he have kept his startup from VCs longer and had more autonomy
in it, and perhaps sold it for billions?

~~~
nostrademons
eGroups wasn't sold to Yahoo until August 2000 (after it IPO'd, actually), 2
years after Google was founded. Larry Page didn't have any more money
available than any other Stanford grad student with a professor dad. He did
have the experience of having a family member who'd gone through the VC
process, but lots of people know people who've taken VC.

------
tomhoward
This appeared on HN 250 days ago -
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1502765>

As pg and paul (Buchheit - Google employee #23) point out, the top answer is
inaccurate and misleading about what factors were really important.

As paul said: _Unfortunately it's written in an authoratative style, so people
assume it's true and upvote, demonstrating one of the major flaws in vote
based systems._

~~~
mda
Also summary section now contains bogus items which are not mentioned in the
answers at all. Way to go Quora.

------
Kylekramer
Discussed pretty heavily here, with a rebuttal to the top post from pg and
Buchheit: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1502765>

~~~
Jun8
I suggest that one should read the thread completely in that discussion, as I
have done just now, rather than arrive at the quick conclusion that this guy
is clearly wrong. As far as I understand, the points given are wrong per se,
but just that pg and Buchheit just think that other factors were more
important.

I think that (unless you're a historian or somesuch) asking what is the most
important 1-2 factors in the success of a person and or company is not very
profitable, one should have the larger picture so you can emulate it.

From the answers, my important takeaways to emulate are:

1) Single out what you think is innovative/right/awesome, pursue it
relentlessly and let no one hinder you (tech pundits, VCs, board, etc)

2) Be knowledgeable with history of other companies (e.g. why they failed-
succeeded) and current dynamics (e.g. the Microsoft-Netscape competition
mentioned)

3) Create company culture from day one (one problem with the highest answer is
that it never mentions this well-known factor) and don't let it get diluted
(OK< maybe after 20K employees)

4) Don't sell out when you see a pile of cash (or do quickly, if your belief
in (1) is now gone, before others notice too)

------
luckydude
I was the 4th guy there, only stayed a while because I wanted to do my own
thing.

The thing that struct me the first time I went into the house in menlo park
where they got started was that instead of techy books on their desks, there
were stacks of books on hiring. That was new to me, usually the geeks are
thinking about engineering and if not that, marketing.

------
Matt_Cutts
I stopped reading after "Early NSA partnership."

~~~
nostrademons
I think he meant "Early _Netscape_ partnership". Netscape is apparently the
NSA now. Who knew?

------
InclinedPlane
Here's my stab (probably about as accurate as any of the misleading answers on
quora):

0: realizing that search was important on its own (it wasn't a loss leader or
a gimmick to get people to visit your portal where the real content and money
making happened)

1: using cutting edge research to improve search result quality based on human
factors (page rank)

2: using cutting edge computer science to create highly efficient search
systems through sharding and aggressive parallelization.

3: facilitating aggressive parallelization through highly automated data
center operations relying on large quantities of consumer grade hardware.

4: continuing concentration on human factors (UI simplicity, search result
speed, unobtrusive advertisements, etc.)

All of these together made google a juggernaut, with some of them google would
have been successful but maybe not dominant, with all of them nobody could
touch google so long as they managed to monetize well. Better search results
faster at lower cost per query and with much higher click-through rates for
ads. That's a world beating formula right there.

------
megamark16
Just do it. Now.

------
fleitz
Not all the decisions we're made by them, you'd probably also have to thank
Yahoo and a bunch of other companies for refusing to buy them.

I can only imagine how Yahoo would have destroyed that company.

