The wake of this week found me reading a new book – The Google Story. It’s a book whose summary I had read before, but just last weekend in Ife, a young man – Sola Adeyinka decided to give me a gift of this book (arguably my best gift of that week). The first night I openned the book to read, I was awake till 3am! It’s a book I recommend for anybody who is contemplating going into business. Don’t practice everything you see there, but it sure lifts the lid off conventional thinking.
The first fact I love about the google story was the fact that their drive was targeted towards creating a solution, and not about the money they could make from it. They were passionate about making information available to research students and people generally who needed information at their finger tips. A drive to do this saw them developing the best search engine in the world, with capability not only to search for the information you need, but in the order of priority.
It looked like a mystery to me, but you won’t believe that 2yrs into the running of that business they still had not been able to connect it with a way to make money. It’s so interesting to note that 80% of the people reading this article cannot still fathom even today, how google makes its money. All google had when the started was a noble intention and the possibility that perhaps they could liscence the product to other companies who would make use of the strength of the search engine for their own businesses.
Like fate always has it, in stories that get written 🙂 The google guys (Brin and Page), 25yr old, PHD drop outs at the start of the company were able to get a way around making money with google. The company moved from its initial IPO in August 19, 2004 of shares at $85 per share to selling at $300 in the same year. Google has grown to become a company worth over $80Billion!
It sounds like a puzzle to me but can you imagine that google got it’s first investment of $100,000 without having registered the company? They got venture capital investment worth $25 million when the seasoned venture capitalists couldn’t fathom how they would make profit? It beats me, but drives home one point. Noble intentions are powerful! The power of noble intentions backed by passionate conviction by the founders of the company has driven a small young company in silicon valley up and up when all else went down. Their corporate mantra “Do no evil” cements their position.
Who sets your limits, who says your ideas cannot fly? Have it in mind to solve a real human problem and you are well on your way to stardom! If you have what the world needs, go and live in the wilderness, the world will build a path to your house! We’ll all be remembered for two things, the problems we created, or the ones we solved.
