Founders at Work.pdf

Paul Buchheit 171
lot even if things don’t work out. But not everyone likes adventure. A lot of
people seem to be against uncertainty, actually. In all areas of life.
I’m suddenly reminded that, for a while, I asked people, if they were playing
Russian roulette with a gun with a billion barrels (or some huge number, so
in other words, some low probability that they would actually be killed), how
much would they have to be paid to play one round? A lot of people were
almost offended by the question and they’d say, “I wouldn’t do it at any price.”
But, of course, we do that every day. They drive to work in cars to earn money
and they are taking risks all the time, but they don’t like to acknowledge that
they are taking risks. They want to pretend that everything is risk-free.
Livingston: Wasn’t it controversial when you tried to test out the AdSense idea?
Buchheit: Yes, absolutely. Everyone hated it. Many people were kind of mad at
me because they didn’t really go for the whole concept. It was something that
had been talked about, and people agreed that it was not workable, it was not a
good idea. So, to some extent, they were agitated that I wasted my time.
Livingston: But you did it in one day?
Buchheit: Yeah, pretty much.
Livingston: And they were still annoyed?
Buchheit: Different people to different degrees. There were only a few people
who were sort of upset about my distracting from the main task. Other people
just didn’t like the concept, because it’s obviously something that’s very controversial
and it isn’t immediately obvious when you just hear about the idea and
you haven’t really used it.
At first, it kind of seems a little bit wrong, right? Just because it’s very unfamiliar.
So it takes some getting used to. But people got used to it and then they
were OK with it.
Livingston: Most startup founders have investors, but you had Larry and
Sergey to answer to. What’s it like having them as your investors, in a way?
Buchheit: I think it’s probably reasonable. I’ve never had other investors so I
don’t have a lot of perspective, but they are very open to crazy ideas—more so
than almost anyone I’ve ever met. I used to tell people my ideas, and then
they’d explain to me that I just didn’t understand how the world worked and
why I was wrong about whatever. One of the exceptional things for me, coming
to Google, was that it was the first time that I would tell people my crazy ideas
and they’d say, “Oh, yeah, that’s a good idea. I was thinking the same thing.” So
it was an environment with many people who are open to these kind of unusual
ideas, and this is especially true with Larry and Sergey.
Livingston: So they aren’t “risk-averse” like so many investors.
Buchheit: Obviously they consider risk and so forth, but they are definitely
more open to the idea of something unexpected or different. Which I believe is
very much their own thinking.