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How I Screwed Up My Google Acquisition

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Re: How I Screwed Up My Google Acquisition

#71

Post by jlees »

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #24
jlees wrote: post #14

One thing I have learnt since joining Google: everyone inside Google is always infernally busy. I'm British, so my concepts of bothering people, being a nuisance, and being impolite are already vastly out of skew with the American work culture -- I've had to relearn a lot of that behaviour since coming to the USA and Google. IMO it's not really specifically a Google thing. I think the lesson to be learned from this p…

Suffice it to say (and for mostly unrelated reasons), he didn't get accepted. Maybe it's more of an American idiom, but usually when we say "suffice it to say", we mean it was for related reasons :)

I was using it more in the sense of "Long story short". I suppose I would usually use it to make a related/contiguous point, but I didn't want to imply that I rejected the application purely because he had woken me up at 3am (which was partly my own fault anyway for forgetting to flip silent mode).

Re: How I Screwed Up My Google Acquisition

#72

Post by jlees »

tptacek wrote: post #61
joshu wrote: post #10

Another one I learned that pops up in this tale: get on the plane if the meeting is important.

Telling your counterparty that you're about to get on a plane to meet them is one way to qualify a deal: they may tell you not to. A bizdev friend of mine taught me another: reschedule a call to a Saturday (make up a reason). If it's a serious deal... like, "you're going to be Powerpoint in our office suite"... they'll bitch, but do it. Sometimes these things are about followup, but a lot of times they're really abou…

Telling your counterparty that you're about to get on a plane to meet them is one way to qualify a deal: they may tell you not to.

Ah, again we see the parallels with dating?

(I did very nearly do this once.)

Re: How I Screwed Up My Google Acquisition

#73

Post by jayro »

jonknee wrote: post #43
jayro wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, we were trying to coordinate that. Jonathan was anxious to get me up there and thought I'd be a big hit with the Writely guys who he seemed to hold in very high regard. But he had to fly back to New York (we were in SF at the time for the conference), then he had some other trip and then it just got complicated. That's why he just decided to pass me up the ladder, but in the end that clearly didn't work to my a…

I think Josh's point was to not wait for them to fly you out, but to fly out yourself. As rokhayakebe noted, say you'll be in town in two weeks and set up a meeting. Perhaps Google has streamlined the process to fly you out, but it still isn't as easy as "Great, check in at the front desk on Wednesday at 2PM". If meeting is a much bigger deal to you than who you're meeting with you need to do what you can to make it…

I do agree with Josh's advice (not that I considered anything like that at the time), but just to clarify, Jonathan was in New York with the rest of the Google Spreadsheet team, was due to fly somewhere else (I think it may have been Europe) and felt it was important to meet at the Googleplex in Mountain View with the Writely team. I don't think I could have showed up in Mountain View without him being there since he was the champion of the acquisition, and the decision makers weren't in New York so it probably wouldn't have helped much for me to fly there. Obviously, none of this matters now, but I just wanted to explain that the logistics weren't quite so simple.

That said if you want to make something happen then you make it happen and I didn't. Fail.

Re: How I Screwed Up My Google Acquisition

#74

Post by jayro »

sportsTAKES wrote: post #31

I know I've had experiences in life where I look back and say 'what was I thinking?!?' As difficult as it is, nicely done on recognizing the situation, holding yourself accountable and chalking it up as a lesson learned. No doubt about it, this experience will help you somewhere down the line... I'm really impressed with your articulate re-cap of the story.

Thanks, I really do appreciate that. It was more difficult than I thought to actually write the story down once and for all. I'm still sitting here wondering what my mental block was at the time because it's not like I'm at all introverted or uncomfortable contacting people. Hell, listen to my podcast (TechZing) all I do is run my mouth. ;) Maybe the insight will come to me after some deep thinking or maybe even some regression hypnosis and I'll write a follow up. The post will have to be entitled something like - The Real Reason I Completely Choked. Ugh. ;)

Re: How I Screwed Up My Google Acquisition

#75

Post by jayro »

psnj wrote: post #18

I used to work at OT when Glazer was there, and I attended a workshop once where he gave a talk. Very impressive guy -- I remember thinking "I want to work for the company that guy's working for!"

I agree. He seemed like a very friendly and intelligent guy when we spoke on the phone. The same goes for Jonathan Rochelle.

Re: How I Screwed Up My Google Acquisition

#76

Post by afterburner »

theturtle32 wrote: post #41
epo wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just like the American "could care less" is the same as the British "couldn't care less". Two nations divided by a common language as someone is supposed to have said.

"could care less" is actually wrong -- it literally means that you do actually care about the thing in question.

Devil's advocate: "I care very very little right now, but if you keep bugging me about it, I could care less, if you like."

or:

"I care very very little right now, but there's nothing holding me back from caring even less than that."

Re: How I Screwed Up My Google Acquisition

#77

Post by geekfactor »

epo wrote: post #38
ryanwaggoner wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Suffice it to say (and for mostly unrelated reasons), he didn't get accepted. Maybe it's more of an American idiom, but usually when we say "suffice it to say", we mean it was for related reasons :)

Just like the American "could care less" is the same as the British "couldn't care less". Two nations divided by a common language as someone is supposed to have said.

At the very least, you just said it. If this counts as "saying." Jeesh.

Re: How I Screwed Up My Google Acquisition

#78

Post by corin_ »

ma2rten wrote: post #50
burgerbrain wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A better example of phrases that mean different things on either side of the Atlantic is what it means to "table" a proposal. In the US it means "kill it", but in the UK it means "bring it up". If an American says "could care less", they're just being incorrect. ;) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_%28verb%29

Getting pissed is also a good example, imo

In England that can mean either way, depends entirely on context.

Re: How I Screwed Up My Google Acquisition

#79

Post by megrimlock »

zandorg wrote: post #19

I (a UK developer) just dealt with a company who were interested in my Pretext software, which finds text in images. I rang at 2PM their time when I rang, and when his development committee finally rejected me after a month of waiting, he said "You have written very capable and useful software - however, we want to develop in-house", I was polite and said goodbye, etc. Everything to gain. Nothing lost but a couple tr…

You should ping them again once some time has passed, just to inquire as to how things are going. It will only take you a moment, and there's a non-zero chance they may have grappled with the problem enough to have changed their mind and be eager to speak with you.

Re: How I Screwed Up My Google Acquisition

#80

Post by ezy »

epoxyhockey wrote: post #40
seltzered wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

not sure why there's downvotes, maybe I worded the above too strongly. He clearly mentions how he discusses how he routed around browser editing/DOM manipulation to Google, and then a similar approach was taken by Google later in their product.

This thought often goes through my mind when people ask me "how did you do that?" If they were Google, and interested in acquiring me, I would be less guarded in answering the question though. Companies would get a pretty bad reputation very quickly if they were in the business of stealing peoples' ideas.

Android phones, App Store, and, oh yeah, check out the industrial design of that Netbook they came out with. And those are the flat out rip-offs...

Google is not all about stealing ideas, but they certainly will if it benefits them. They are probably going to end up taking the crown from Microsoft for mediocre implementations of others good ideas, just by virtue of their size (and still growing) and their reach.

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