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.

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.