Back in the early days of Google, there was a time where they almost sold the company. There were offers, many of which were very good. The thing that stopped them wasn’t the lack of money, but the lack of a long-term vision.
“Search seemed pretty important to us, we wanted to do something in that area, but it didn’t seem very important to those organizations,” said Google cofounder Larry Page.
“It’s amazing when the business people take over, how rational they get and start focusing on short term revenue over a long term vision,” said interviewer Vinod Khosla.
Many companies end in failure – not just start-ups, but many of the larger listed companies as well. Especially recently.
“When I talk to a lot of these companies, they have a very short term focus,” said Page.
A short-term view doesn’t allow for solving big problems: you get too caught up in making money and the big problems seem much bigger than they are, from a long-term view. In the long term, there’s a lot more possibility: you can go down different roads that aren’t available in the short term, and solving those big problems becomes a lot simpler, Page went on to say.
Khosla’s discussion with Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin focused almost exclusively on the future. About what Google has in the pipe line and what their plans for the future were, simply because that’s where their minds were.
Google has a vision for the future and that’s their focus. Maybe by watching this video and listening to their plans for the future, you can start thinking about what you want for your company 10 or 20 years down the line, and how to start building towards that now.
Image credit: CC by thierry ehrmann
