Google Founders' Hidden Documents

A story about how Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page showed their unique personalities and management style in the early days of Google.

"Sergey Brin had his resume online and if you inspect the source code of his website, you'll find his hidden objective laid out bare. It said 'I want a large office, good pay, very little work, frequent expense account trips to exotic lands would be a huge plus.'

Larry and Sergey took pride in arguing with each other. They would call each other stupid and fight until one person would win, then the other would concede and say 'your idea is better.' They wanted all employees to do this too, but most people aren't like that.

There's this crazy story about Larry Page and a janitor. When the janitor would take out trash, they'd leave an empty bag at the bottom of the trash can. Larry saw this and said 'that's the most efficient way I've ever seen anyone clean, that is brilliant.' He made this whole memo about it and laid out 8 rules for the office. Rules like 'if you think your idea is right, go straight to the person in charge and tell them exactly what you think' or 'if you're working on a project and not providing value, leave that project right away and go let the doers do what they need to do.'

These things were very logical, but unfortunately human emotion gets in the way. It's probably not practical when you have 500 employees, but that's how these guys would behave in the early days."

42:58 - 45:10
Full video: 50:28
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Sam Parr

Host of MFM and fitness influencer

Sam Parr is a serial entrepreneur and business media pioneer.

In 2016, he founded The Hustle, a business news media company that started in his kitchen with just $12 and grew to eight figures in revenue.

Sam led the charge in making newsletters popular when few believed in their potential.

After four successful years, he sold The Hustle to HubSpot, a publicly traded company. Now operating as HubSpot Media, The Hustle reaches 3 million readers daily, employs a team of nearly 100, and has been the launchpad for dozens of its staff to found their own media companies and newsletters.

Sam remains the host of the popular business podcast, My First Million, and continues to start and sell companies. He also co-founded Hampton, a highly vetted community for entrepreneurs, founders, and CEOs, and teaches people to write better through his platform, Copy That.

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