Google Ventures has a direct financial incentive to ensure the companies we invest in succeed.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Google was a venture-funded company. Being part of that brings an energy to the company.
We have to develop the whole system of early stage investors and a tax system around it. For every Google that has come on the scene, there are hundred entrepreneurs who never did.
We have this powerful lever at Google Ventures, which is to invest $200 million a year. This is a huge lever. It's not all going into one place; it's going into lots of start ups and founders and entrepreneurs, all of which are levers to try and change the world in one way or another.
Google was founded to get information to everybody. A by-product of that strategy is that we invented an advertising business which has provided great economics that allows us to build the servers, hire the employees, create value.
Many entrepreneurs, and the venture investors who back them, seek to build billion-dollar companies.
We are a consumer company and our success is directly linked to our users trusting us. Therefore we have the same incentive as the user: they want to see relevant advertising so their experience of Google is positive and we want to deliver it.
With a regular venture fund, you raise, let's say, a billion dollars, and then over the next three or four years, you've got to invest that money; otherwise, the people who invested with you will say, 'What are you doing? You're just collecting fees on our money.'
Investors who find the best businesses to put their money behind are rewarded for their research.
Most startup entrepreneurs unnecessarily spend half their time and give up half their equity in search of funding from angel investors and venture capitalists. Tens of millions of dollars are available to them for free from partners who not only don't want their equity, they don't even want to be paid back.
I can make it very clear: I get paid if we make good investments. And if we don't, I don't get paid. I have no incentive to sell our companies to Google; the entrepreneurs get to decide that. We are minority shareholders.