But would you have known the significance at the time? Google at 10 employees consisted of a handful of scraggly guys* typing on a computer all day, and a coup

But would you have known the significance at the time? Google at 10 employees consisted of a handful of scraggly guys* typing on a computer all day, and a couple other scraggly guys talking on the phone all day to get deals done (hosting contracts, funding, etc). There's nothing that looks interesting or unique about an early-stage startup--it's just people in an office. Compare that to a zoo that has plenty of room for kids to run and scream and see things they've never seen before. I'm not saying it's useless to take kids to startup offices -- it socializes the value of entrepreneurship -- but it's not quite the same experience as seeing the size of an african elephant for the first time, or looking a gorllia in the eye. * I use "guys" in a gender-neutral sense here; I don't know what the gender ratio was at Google at 10 employees.