Spanking The Naysayers

It’s Google’s tenth birthday and all the broadsheets carry features on their game-changing rise to dominance.  I remember stumbling across them the month of launch through a tiny article in a mag called Internet Magazine.  I instantly made them my homepage.  I marvelled at how someone had so simply ‘got it’.

The story goes that going cap-in-hand to several VCs, prospective funders weren’t exactly showering them with gifts.  Craig Silverstein, now Google’s director of technology and third on-board, recalled that “the venture capitalists tried to scare us, saying that 80% of start-ups fail. Larry (Page) shot back with: ‘Yes, but most of those are restaurants.’  They quickly banked $100k and the rest, as they say, is history.

Strikes me as a neat little tale to work into a conversation where someone (whether boss or client) is doubting that something can be done…