Partovi passed on Google in 1999 due to competitive hubris
Ali Partovi · 20VC: How I Lost a $125M Deal with Yahoo by Being Too Honest, The M&A Meeting with Steve Jobs That Did Not Go Well and How U2's Bono Saved The Day For One Tech Startup with Ali Partovi, CEO @ Neo · Jan 21, 2022 · at 25:10
Ali Partovi, CEO of Neo, discusses passing on Google during its inception when his Harvard classmate Craig Silverstein joined as CTO.
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“One of my smartest friends from Harvard, Craig Silverstein, was probably the top guy in our CS program. He and my brother and I were probably always vying for which of us is the best coder in the Harvard class of 94 in computer science, and it was probably Craig. After, I think in 1999, he was leaving his Stanford PhD program to join a new startup, and I felt like I am so much ahead of this guy, like, while he's been languishing in academia, I have Built a startup and sold it, and I'm the most successful person from our class now. Clearly, I'm better, and what is this startup he's joining as CTO and first employee of this new Google startup with his PhD friends? It's surely not going to make it, and so I didn't engage when I learned about this company. That one was definitely a big miss. Clearly remember having this hubris, you know, that like this guy who I knew was a genius, I had this feeling like, oh, they don't have a business plan. How are they possibly going to beat You know, the search engine greats like Yahoo and yeah, so I didn't invest in that.”
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