BE BOLD

"Googled" is partly a book about how to successfully lead an Internet start up, but it's more importantly about how disruptive technology can change the world. How does one do it? According to Auletta, it's 1% inspiration and 99% boldness, or at the very least, 49% inspiration and 51% boldness. This idea emerges from the book as a whole but jumps out in a few key lines.

Auletta writes that the founders of Google shared "a reflexive belief that whatever the status quo is, it's wrong and there must be a better solution." They had a "penchant for pushing boundaries-without asking for permission," and that "they were not breathtakingly more brilliant than their peers...what was unusual about them, he said, was their boldness." I think Auletta is right about the Google founders, but more importantly, I think he's articulated the necessary mindset for entrepreneurs trying to build revolutionary innovations.

My dad always said, "ask for forgiveness, not permission." I can't discern whether this was always good advice in the pre-Internet world, but it's certainly good advice now. The Internet makes it possible to build a service so popular that most of the world uses it, and build it so fast that the businesses the service will replace don't even know what's happening. In the past an old assortment of private-sector (and possibly public-sector) interests could slow or stop a disruptive technology that would replace them. It is harder to stop that disruptive change than ever before.

The book also offered various pieces of reassurance for TurboVote. Brin's quip, "What's a business plan?" is telling. Google had a team of engineers before a business plan. It was more important to build something useful than to make money. Our business plan is similarly underdevelopment.

Auletta seems to really believe that on the Internet you can build it and they will come. That is, if someone builds something useful enough on the Internet it will become popular. I think he's right. Page and Brin were told there wasn't room for another search engine. They created Google anyway because they knew they could do it better. They were successful because they built a better search engine.

If TurboVote isn't successful right away it's because it isn't yet useful enough. Lawrence Lessig describes the motivation of an Internet entrepreneur: "I'm going to build it and you're free to use it however you want. I'm just going to empower you to do what you want." Since my last blog post TurboVote has gone online. Now we just need to keep improving it until it works.

My one disappointment with Auletta was that he told us about the disruptive power of Google versus other companies but he never explored the disruptive power of Google in regards to society. When Auletta spoke at HKS last year I asked him how he thought Google would change the culture in the United States. Would Americans become more or less interested in learning now that information was so much easier to access? Would Americans become more or less knowledgeable now that knowledge was free and easy to find? Unfortunately it didn't seem like he had given the questions much thought. I'm hopeful that the answer is that Americans will become more interested in learning and more knowledgable in general, but I have no evidence as of yet.