“I called them every month for five months and finally got my audition with Larry and Sergey.”

Ron Conway

Ron Conway is one of the best known angels in Silicon Valley. But getting into Google still wasn’t easy.

A Little Project at Stanford

The story began at a party.

Conway ran into David Cheriton, a Stanford computer science professor. Both were wearing tuxedos, which they hated.

“And I said, ‘Hey, what’s happening at Stanford?’”

Cheriton described an interesting project by two students in the comp sci department. It searched the internet using page rank, or the number of inbound links a website has.

“In 1998, that was not obvious.”

Getting the Meeting

Intrigued, Conway asked to meet them. Cheriton demurred.

“You can’t meet ‘em till they’re ready,” he said.

Conway relates this incredible story in a panel discussion at Stanford from 2014. Bonus: the interviewer is a young Sam Altman.

Conway wouldn’t stop until he got a meeting. Months later, he finally got his chance.

How Conway Won Over Larry and Sergey

“Right away, they were very strategic. They said, ‘We’ll let you invest if you can get Sequoia.’”

Google was already a hot commodity among investors. But despite his sterling reputation, Conway had to earn his way into the deal.

And just like clockwork, he delivered. Conway got the young entrepreneurs the meeting with Sequoia, who invested in Google’s Series A in 1999.

Fun fact: Shaq, Arnold Schwarznegger, and Henry Kissinger were also investors!

How Conway Picks Founders

How did Conway spot Google as the incredible opportunity it was? Above all, he evaluates people.

“We invest in people first, not necessarily the product idea.”

At the seed stage, when Conway usually invests, the product is likely to change a lot anyhow. I have several seed investments that threw out their first product and built something completely different.

When Conway evaluates a founder, he looks for leadership ability first.

“…Is this person a leader? Is this person rifle-focused and obsessed by the product?”

One of the first questions he asks is why the person started this company. He looks for founders solving a problem they encountered.

When a founder is solving his own problem, he’s more likely to be obsessed with it. And it takes obsession and incredible hard work to make a billion dollar company out of nothing.

Wrap-Up

The story of how Conway hit the ultimate score teaches me to be persistent. The best deals don’t come easy.

If one of the most respected angels in Silicon Valley had to work his butt off to get into his best deal, I’ll have to work even harder!

Do you pursue founders? Why or why not?

Leave a comment and let us know!

Have a great weekend, everyone!

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