What were the key decisions that Page and Brin made in the early days of Google
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Re: What were the key decisions that Page and Brin made in the early days of Google
#2Wow.
LOTS of useful stuff here. In addition to a lot of the usual stuff, most especially keeping control, there are these not unrelated gems:
"Retaining control over the company proved to be crucial to Google's success. Most of the early company revenues came from enterprise search, and the investors and Eric Schmidt pressured the company to drop consumer facing search and to focus on the enterprise market. However Page and Brin disregarded this advice as they anticipated the growth of a market for online advertisement. At the time this decision was being made, the New York Times was quoting experts as saying "No one will ever make $250 million dollars a year from online advertising." It has also been said that Page and Brin disregarded pressure from investors to copy Yahoo! and diversify Google into a portal site, deciding instead to focus on the core search and advertising market."
We also now understand their particular style of secrecy: avoiding getting crushed by Microsoft back when that was the fear of every high tech company it could possibly compete with.
The comments as of now are also of high quality and some are not to be missed.
Re: What were the key decisions that Page and Brin made in the early days of Google
#3Excellent set of answers, this was my first foray into Quora, btw; if other answers are half as good, it's a great resource.
Among other key decisions they got right (and some lucking out), the one thing they got absolutely right is the culture. Not just perks, food, etc. because during the boom almost all cool startups had these (or better), it's much more than that. The culture components ones that I think were most influential were the 20% time and committee decision making (with actual engineers, not suits).
Having the right culture is not sufficient for success, but without it, I think, all most certainly will be lost.
Re: What were the key decisions that Page and Brin made in the early days of Google
#4The highest ranked answer on that thread, though it contains some interesting details, is way off. Managing VCs well was not what made Google successful-- or what makes any startup successful. The real key decisions were things like realizing search itself was important, at a time when all the other search engines thought it was unsexy, and were trying to get people to start calling them "portals" instead; designing the architecture to work on large numbers of unreliable, cheap computers; understanding how important speed was; making the site uncluttered; deciding to hire only very smart people; etc. That's what made the company valuable, and if it hadn't been valuable it wouldn't have mattered how well they'd avoided dilution.
Re: What were the key decisions that Page and Brin made in the early days of Google
#5As a customer I know these key decisions:
i) Self managed ads system. Before AdWords it was impossible to buy $ 5 of ads. Even years after AdWords Overture (Yahoo) and AdCenter (Microsoft) couldn't even copy the smooth process (I remember Overture charging me a minimum of $ 15 and their staff changing my keywords)
ii) Text Ads instead of banners as a more respected way of advertising.
Re: What were the key decisions that Page and Brin made in the early days of Google
#6The highest ranked answer on that thread, though it contains some interesting details, is way off. Managing VCs well was not what made Google successful-- or what makes any startup successful. The real key decisions were things like realizing search itself was important, at a time when all the other search engines thought it was unsexy, and were trying to get people to start calling them "portals" instead; designing…
That, however, conflicts with the alleged desire of VCs and CEO to focus on enterprise search and abandon consumer search. I don't know how true that allegation is, but if it is true, and VCs had a larger slice of the pie, it's possible that that desire would have been followed, hugely reducing Google's value.
Re: What were the key decisions that Page and Brin made in the early days of Google
#7The highest ranked answer on that thread, though it contains some interesting details, is way off. Managing VCs well was not what made Google successful-- or what makes any startup successful. The real key decisions were things like realizing search itself was important, at a time when all the other search engines thought it was unsexy, and were trying to get people to start calling them "portals" instead; designing…
I think the key point re managing VC's is that they avoided being forced into an early exit and retained control over the product by keeping control of the company.
Most mature investors want two things: The value of their stock to increase and liquidity opportunities (opportunities to realize that value). They want both to happen rather sooner than later due to the time value of money. They also believe that if they have more control they can achieve these first two objectives more effectively.
These investor goals are not always aligned with what's in the best interests of the product or company which is why it is sometimes a good thing for founders to retain control.
Re: What were the key decisions that Page and Brin made in the early days of Google
#8The highest ranked answer on that thread, though it contains some interesting details, is way off. Managing VCs well was not what made Google successful-- or what makes any startup successful. The real key decisions were things like realizing search itself was important, at a time when all the other search engines thought it was unsexy, and were trying to get people to start calling them "portals" instead; designing…
My takeaway was that they managed dilution so that they could guide the product and the company the way they felt was important. Managing VCs well allowed Google to manage the product well.
Interesting thought experiment: Would Zappos have sold to Amazon if they had managed dilution better?
Re: What were the key decisions that Page and Brin made in the early days of Google
#9The highest ranked answer on that thread, though it contains some interesting details, is way off. Managing VCs well was not what made Google successful-- or what makes any startup successful. The real key decisions were things like realizing search itself was important, at a time when all the other search engines thought it was unsexy, and were trying to get people to start calling them "portals" instead; designing…
My takeaway was that they managed dilution so that they could guide the product and the company the way they felt was important. Managing VCs well allowed Google to manage the product well. Interesting thought experiment: Would Zappos have sold to Amazon if they had managed dilution better?
According to Tony Hsieh's book, no.
Re: What were the key decisions that Page and Brin made in the early days of Google
#10It was surprising to learn that Larry Page's brother already had successful startup experience.