There are a lot of ex-Googlers who have gone on to create good companies post-Google, but most of them were ICs, or technical people. I can’t think of too many Google execs who did well outside of Google (as a founder or CEO?) The only one I can think of is Nikesh Arora at Palo Alto Networks. (Check out their stock and growth) There is a long list of not so good outcomes or companies going sideways though: 1. Vic Gondutra 2. Rajat Monga 3. Cesar Sengupta 4. Shishir Mehrotra Etc Who am I overlooking?
Most Google execs join another company, get overpaid big time, don’t deliver, leave with a big financial “success” under their belt. It turns out the skill of milking the greatest cash cow in history doesn’t scale across companies.
What do you mean by doesn't scale across companies? Isn't that what they do?
I said the skill (of milking a cash cow like search) doesn’t scale across companies. For obvious reasons: no other company has a cash cow like search. So these people go to other companies, institute heavy processes and try to make it like Google. But the missing link is their entire experience is around having a juggernaut like search that you can make optimizations to. Or having a juggernaut that subsidizes and hides all of your lack of vision because it just kept growing regardless.
What about Marisa Myers lol?
Mayer's Yahoo and Tim Armstrong's AOL were acquired by Verizon, merged and written down 50% in about a year.
Sridhar Ramaswamy founded Neeva and now is acquired by Snowflake. I consider that failed though as they weren't able to find a profitable business model and got acquired to avoid cash burn and becoming defunct. May be Snowflake felt it is getting a good deal because of the talent they get? A successful person outside is Sheryl Sandberg. She created the Ads growth in Meta. I can't think of any other success story at C* level from ex-googlers.
Nikesh is killing it at Palo Alto Networks
In what way? Yeah stock is growing, but seems to have insane P/E. Wondering if he is creating an unsustainable hype?
You missed the most important exec
Who Nikesh? I mentioned it in the original post. He is the only one I can think of that is successful outside of Google
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