Larry Page and Google Entrepreneurship at Its Finest

The Critical Success Factors Used by Larry Page, Co-founder of Google

Born on March 26, 1973 to a mother and father who were both computer experts during the infancy of these technologies, Lawrence “Larry” Page was naturally drawn to computer engineering. His studies at Stanford University and his early friendship with a collegemate and co-founder, Sergio Brin, inspired and grew a company that would transform the entire world. Certainly, some people have truly great business ideas, but Page was one of the rare entrepreneurs during the boom days of computer science development who envisioned a business model and made it an enormously profitable reality (Solomon et al., 2020). Indeed, some authorities maintain -- and with good reason -- that Page is among the greatest entrepreneurs in the world today. To determine how Page achieved this outcome, this paper provides a brief overview of the company cofounded by Page followed by an analysis of his entrepreneurial qualities that have fueled his success. Following this review, the paper provides a summary of the research concerning Page and Google in the conclusion.

Company Background

Formally launched on September 4, 1998 at Menlo Park, California, the search engine and then business empire that would become “Google” was originally called “Backrub,” and the company became the most popular search engine in the world with Page as chief executive officer (Larry Page, 2022). The history of the company that would become Google can be traced from its humble beginnings in 1998 to a fateful meeting between cofounders Page and Brin in 1995. Lacking their iconic garage at the time, Page and Brin built their original search engine that ranked the relative importance and popularity of individual Web sites in their dorm rooms at Stanford. This innovative feature served to attract tens of millions of users over the years, prompting Page and Brin to eventually formulate their corporate mission “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful” (From the garage to the Googleplex, 2022, para. 3). By April 2004, the co-founders believed the time was right and took Google public, generating more than $1.67 billion in the process (Choo, 2005).

Today, the company’s annual revenues are greater than many countries’ gross domestic product and ranks it among the most valuable companies in the world. In this regard, Google reports that, “As of October 2022, Alphabet (Google) has a market cap of $1.328 Trillion. This makes Alphabet (Google) the world's 4th most valuable company by market cap according to our data” (Market capitalization of Google, 2022, para. 3). Taken together, it is reasonable to suggest that this outcome was attributable in large part to Google’s co-founders’ impressive entrepreneurial abilities and these issues are discussed below with respect to Page.

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Although the debate over nature versus nurture continues, it is clear that Page’s life was shaped by his parents’ occupations as computer experts during a period in history when these technologies were still in their developmental stages. For instance, according to one biographer, “Lawrence Page was born on March 26, 1973, in East Lansing, Michigan. His father, Carl Page, was a pioneer in computer science and artificial intelligence, and his mother taught computer programming” (Larry Page, 2022, para. 6). To his credit, though, Page leveraged this natural interest in all-things computer related and succeeded in becoming one of the world’s most famous and successful entrepreneurs despite the multiple challenges that he faced during the early part of his career (Catana et al., 2021).

One of the main catalysts that contributed to Page’s early success was the fact that Google’s search engine stood out from its competitors in significant ways, a feature that was eventually noticed by Silicon investors with deep pockets. For example, according to his official biography, “Over the next few years, Google caught the attention of not only the academic community, but Silicon Valley investors as well. In August 1998, Sun co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim wrote Larry and Sergey a check for $100,000, and Google Inc. was officially born” (From the garage to the Googleplex, 2022, para. 7).

Not only did this comparatively modest investment provide the co-founders with the capital they needed to develop their search engine, it also allowed them to move out of their dorm rooms and into an actual garage. They also used some of the money to create a comfortable and even enjoyable workplace out of these otherwise-dismal surrounding by equipping their “headquarters” with a ping pong table and other accessories as well as colorful decorations that would become the hallmark of Google’s brand. Likewise, Google is now world-famous for providing its employees with a plush workplace that is the envy of even workers who work from home, but these early actions reflected Page’s enlightened approach to doing business from the outset.

Given his relatively affluent upbringing, it would be a stretch to characterize Page’s life thereafter as a “rags to riches” story, but the actions he took in his career early on reflected his evolving entrepreneurial mindset concerning how best to succeed in the competitive search engine sector (From the garage to the Googleplex, 2022). Moreover, in addition to his computer-infused early homelife and formal education in computer science, Page was also the beneficiary during the early stages of his professional career of a business-savvy mentor who was an executive at Apple. In this regard, Wang (2017) points out that, “Most successful tech titans were founded by people who had mentors. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg was mentored by Steve Jobs. Jobs was mentored by Mike Markkula – an early investor and executive at Apple. Eric Schmidt mentored Larry Page and Sergey Brin of Google” (p. 113).

This mentorship provided Page with the business acumen he would need to build the Google empire, and his purchase of YouTube in 2006 in exchange for $1.6 billion in stock is indicative of his foresight concerning what consumers wanted from their Web experience (Larry Page, 2022). Likewise, another defining aspect of Page’s career at Google was his humble recognition that despite his impressive business success, he did not have all of the answers all of the time. This recognition helped Page to effectively navigate Google through the economic downturn that resulted from the Great Recession in 2008-2009 when he still managed to maintain a corporate culture of innovation and entrepreneurship (Finkle, 2012).

Following the creation of Google’s parent company, Alphabet, in 2015, Page made to the decision to turn the company over to Sundar Pichai to pursue other business opportunities (Larry Page, 2022). Perhaps attempting to finally deliver on the repeated promises from the scientific community during the mid-20th century that consumers would enjoy flying cars someday soon, Page personally funded a New Zealand-based company called “Kitty Hawk” to develop an autonomous electric flying taxi (Larry Page, 2022). In addition, Page is also actively working on asteroid-mining technologies with U.S.-based Braintree Bryan Johnson, and has invested in a Canadian-based firm that is developing an electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft (Joseph, 2021).