Leadership & Business Wisdom

The Entrepreneurial Mindset

Sergey Brin is a computer scientist and entrepreneur. He met Larry Page at Stanford University, and the two created a search engine that would sort web pages based on popularity. Google became the most popular search engine in the world after launching in 1998, its overwhelming success turning the co-founders into billionaires. Brin and Page later became president and CEO of Google’s parent company, Alphabet, before they stepped down from their roles in December 2019. Sergey Mikhaylovich Brin was born on August 21, 1973, in Moscow, Russia.

The son of a Soviet mathematician economist, Brin and his family emigrated to the United States to escape Jewish persecution in 1979. After receiving his degree in mathematics and computer science from the University of Maryland at College Park, Brin entered Stanford University, where he met Larry Page. Both students were completing doctorates in computer science. As a research project at Stanford University, Brin and Page created a search engine that listed results according to the popularity of the pages, after concluding that the most popular result would often be the most useful. They called the search engine Google after the mathematical term “googol,” which is a 1 followed by 100 zeros, to reflect their mission to organize the immense amount of information available on the internet. After raising $1 million from family, friends and other investors, the pair launched the company in 1998. Headquartered in the heart of California’s Silicon Valley, Google held its initial public offering in August 2004, making Brin and Page billionaires. Google has since become the world’s most popular search engine, receiving an average of more than a trillion searches a day in 2016. In 2006, Google purchased the most popular website for user-submitted streaming videos, YouTube, for $1.65 billion in stock. In 2012, Google unveiled its futuristic Google Glass, a type of wearable eyeglass-computer that featured touchpad and voice control, an LED illuminated display and a camera. While touted as the latest “it” in tech toys, concerns over privacy and safety and a lack of a clear purpose in everyday life ultimately stymied its success in the commercial market. Its technology, however, has been applied for use in healthcare, journalism and the military. On August 10, 2015, Brin and Page announced that Google and its divisions were being restructured under the umbrella of a new parent company called Alphabet, with Brin and Page serving as Alphabet’s respective president and CEO. In November 2016, Brin was ranked No. 13 on Forbes’ “Billionaires” list, and No. 10 among U.S. billionaires who made the list. Early the following year he made headlines for joining a protest of President Donald Trump’s immigration policies at San Francisco International Airport, though he declined to comment beyond saying he was there “in a personal capacity.” On December 3, 2019, Brin and Page announced that they were stepping down from their day-to-day roles at Alphabet, though they were expected to remain involved in the company as its two largest individual shareholders.

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“I would like to see anyone be able to achieve their dreams, and that’s what this organization does.” Sergey Brin

“Any conversation I have about innovation starts with the ultimate goal.”

Sergey Brin

“The only way you are going to have success is to have lots of failures first.”

Sergey Brin

“As we go forward, I hope we’re going to continue to use technology to make really big differences in how people live and work.”

Sergey Brin