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Yes, they actually started well before Sept 4, 1998. Even their first angel round (August 1, 1998) predates that incorporation date. Various people told me that

Yes, they actually started well before Sept 4, 1998. Even their first angel round (August 1, 1998) predates that incorporation date. Various people told me that they didn't need the A round but wanted to get the angel notes off the books, but that might be a backsplanation. https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/google/company_financials https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/google/company_finan... Stanford had functioned as an incubator, and the project had received government (NSF) funding. Indeed the Page Brin page-rank patent was assigned to Stanford. It was filed Jan 8, 1998 with priority to 1997-01-10. Stanford paid for that and Stanford legal was going to defend it. https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/37/a9/18/d7c46ea42c4b05/US6285999.pdf https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/37/a9/18/d7c46ea... To me the lesson of Google is early profitability gives you immense leverage with VCs. They had $220,000 of revenue in 1999. Revenue is good.

jasode 5y ago
>To me the lesson of Google is early profitability gives you immense leverage with VCs. But Google didn't have profits in June 1999. They were hoping for VCs Mike Moritz @ Sequoia and John Doerr @ KPCB to bring them revenue because those 2 partners were on the boards of AOL and Yahoo. They wanted to try and sell their tech to those companies. (They eventually did do deals with both of them.) Later interviews with angel Ron Conway and Sequoia said Larry's slidedeck for investment didn't have a revenue plan. The "leverage" that Larry & Sergei had was that their search engine worked better than competitors such as AltaVista and Yahoo. EDIT reply to: >But it's on record that Google had $220,000 in revenue in 1999. But did they have that revenue before June 1999? Maybe everybody's memory is fuzzy but in the books and recollections from interviews of that time period, Google didn't have meaningful revenue so it wasn't a point of leverage. But another leverage they had besides the best-in-class search engine was that angel Ron Conway was willing to quickly assemble a consortium of investors in a few days to bypass Sequoia & KPCB. It was that threat of VCs losing the the deal was what finally got them to pull the trigger. Until then, those 2 VCs were sitting on their hands for weeks. Google's 1999 revenue was never brought up as leverage. Do you have insider information that contradicts that? >Revenue and early profitability is good thing for founders but not VCs. 100% agree about the principle in general -- but I don't think Google situation in 1999 is a case study of that.
- CalChris 5y ago
  No, I don't think Page + Brin needed Sand Hill Road to introduce them to fellow Stanford alums Jerry Yang and David Filo. Profit isn't revenue and visa versa. But it's on record that Google had $220,000 in revenue in 1999. Yahoo contracted out their search back then; they started as a directory and they believed in that. It's not clear exactly when the Yahoo search deal started. But it is clear when the Yahoo investment was made (which was after Series A). Yahoo also used Inktomi and Google's leverage with Yahoo was that they were better than Inktomi or Altavista. But their leverage with VCs was that they had revenue and it was going up and to the right. Sun was another company with early profitability, very early in Sun's case. That's my main point. Revenue and early profitability is good thing for founders but not VCs.
- mbesto 5y ago
  > It was that threat of VCs losing the the deal was what finally got them to pull the trigger. It almost always is. The VC "industry" is all about FOMO.

jasode 5y ago

>To me the lesson of Google is early profitability gives you immense leverage with VCs. But Google didn't have profits in June 1999. They were hoping for VCs Mike Moritz @ Sequoia and John Doerr @ KPCB to bring them revenue because those 2 partners were on the boards of AOL and Yahoo. They wanted to try and sell their tech to those companies. (They eventually did do deals with both of them.) Later interviews with angel Ron Conway and Sequoia said Larry's slidedeck for investment didn't have a revenue plan. The "leverage" that Larry & Sergei had was that their search engine worked better than competitors such as AltaVista and Yahoo. EDIT reply to: >But it's on record that Google had $220,000 in revenue in 1999. But did they have that revenue before June 1999? Maybe everybody's memory is fuzzy but in the books and recollections from interviews of that time period, Google didn't have meaningful revenue so it wasn't a point of leverage. But another leverage they had besides the best-in-class search engine was that angel Ron Conway was willing to quickly assemble a consortium of investors in a few days to bypass Sequoia & KPCB. It was that threat of VCs losing the the deal was what finally got them to pull the trigger. Until then, those 2 VCs were sitting on their hands for weeks. Google's 1999 revenue was never brought up as leverage. Do you have insider information that contradicts that? >Revenue and early profitability is good thing for founders but not VCs. 100% agree about the principle in general -- but I don't think Google situation in 1999 is a case study of that.

CalChris 5y ago
No, I don't think Page + Brin needed Sand Hill Road to introduce them to fellow Stanford alums Jerry Yang and David Filo. Profit isn't revenue and visa versa. But it's on record that Google had $220,000 in revenue in 1999. Yahoo contracted out their search back then; they started as a directory and they believed in that. It's not clear exactly when the Yahoo search deal started. But it is clear when the Yahoo investment was made (which was after Series A). Yahoo also used Inktomi and Google's leverage with Yahoo was that they were better than Inktomi or Altavista. But their leverage with VCs was that they had revenue and it was going up and to the right. Sun was another company with early profitability, very early in Sun's case. That's my main point. Revenue and early profitability is good thing for founders but not VCs.
mbesto 5y ago
> It was that threat of VCs losing the the deal was what finally got them to pull the trigger. It almost always is. The VC "industry" is all about FOMO.