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By Root 1989 0

growth," he said, "'If I tell you, you'll just ask again.'" The article also quoted "a different money manager with a billion-dollar Internet fund" as saying, "'They seem to think you should feel privileged [to buy Google stock]. That's the attitude—and it's a bizarre one.'"† The writer questioned whether Sergey had the maturity or the humility to run a major technology company and whether our founders would "be blinded by the sort of success that would go to anyone's head."

"How can I win, Doug?" Cindy, who was on tour with them, asked me.

"It's like living in a Greek tragedy," I told her. "These guys define hubris. I'm afraid it will be our downfall."

The lack of deference seen as an asset in Silicon Valley didn't play well among the status-conscious players of the Wall Street establishment.

Nor did the twenty-three million shares of stock we had neglected to register with the SEC before giving them to employees. Or the interview Larry and Sergey had done with Playboy the week before filing the S-1. We didn't think it would come out until after the IPO date, but on August 12, there it was on the PR department's fax machine, with a cover sheet from Playboy's editors saying, "Enjoy and Congrats!" We didn't enjoy, because the SEC made us include the full text of the article in our filing statement and pushed back our IPO a week.

I took advantage of the unexpected break to arrange a quickie vacation to San Diego with Kristen and our kids, who barely recognized me anymore. A day before our planned departure, though, my wife's grandmother passed away. Kristen flew to Seattle for the funeral, and I stayed home with the children, doing loads of laundry, shopping for groceries, and playing board games while running to my laptop every few minutes to respond to emails about budgeting, trademarks, and trade show giveaways.

It was an odd interregnum. My life had been moving so quickly, I hadn't taken a break in what seemed like years. Now I was overcome by lethargy, perhaps induced by exhaustion or by the knowledge that I had become part of something larger and that, consequentially, my individual contribution had become less essential. In my early days at Google, if I didn't do the marketing tasks, they didn't get done. Now Google overflowed with PMs, APMs, PMMs, and APMMs eager to showcase their abilities.

The Saturday before our scheduled offering, Jonathan put out the word that he had hired a director of product marketing. The era of corporate marketing had truly ended and the era of product marketing had formally begun.

I cut my vacation short and returned to work early on Thursday, August 19—IPO day—to watch the circus. I drove by the TV trucks and into the parking lot. The auction for Google shares had ended, the initial price was set at eighty-five dollars, and when the markets opened, the world would tell us what it thought of the business we had built.

There was no company meeting scheduled. Sergey was with us in Mountain View to set the proper tone: it was a Thursday like any other, and we needed to stay focused on the work ahead of us. The rest of the executives were at the NASDAQ, preparing to start the day's trading. Larry called Sergey, according to David Krane, and gave him a rundown. Not on the valuation he expected, but on the technology being used by the traders. "Here's what I'm looking at," Krane heard Larry tell Sergey. "Here's what the systems look like, and here's how much data is passing through. This is how fast it's updating. This is the resolution of the displays. This is how big the displays are, how many they have..."

I joined a half dozen employees gathered around a TV mounted on the wall above the PR cubicles. On the screen, a bunch of people in suits stood before a large electronic display. I didn't recognize Larry at first, wearing a gray jacket, a white shirt, and a red tie. Was this the guy I had seen sweating on a locker room bench as he struggled out of his hockey pads? Eric stood to Larry's left and Omid looked over his shoulder, as Larry picked up a marker and signed his name on a glass