The Untold Story: How Google Began in Susan Wojcicki's Garage

Many believe that Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the founders of Google, started their company in their own garage, but that's not exactly how it happened.

Back In 1998, Susan Wojcicki, then a student, purchased a house in Silicon Valley and sought someone to help her with the mortgage. Larry and Sergey, who were looking for cost-effective space to launch their venture, found a solution by renting Susan's garage

Growing up on the Stanford campus, surrounded by professors, Susan and her siblings, including 23andMe founder, were influenced by a culture of pursuit of knowledge and creativity, which played a key role in shaping their careers and interests.

Despite studying history & literature at Harvard, a series of temp jobs, including one at a startup, exposed Susan to the potential of technology, sparking an interest that led her to take a CS class and eventually dive into the tech industry in Silicon Valley.

Following the start of Google, Susan became the company’s 16th employee and first marketing manager and worked on multiple things, including Google Doodles, Google Images, and Google Books to build the ad business

Throughout her journey at Google, Susan understood the importance of being adaptable and recognizing opportunities within the company, such as working on projects like image search when others were focusing on text search.

According to Susan, if you are working at a startup, it is crucial to be willing to do whatever is required for its growth. Susan recognized that while every employee at Google was focusing on aspects like tech search, she realized the importance of image search.

She believes that having the freedom within a startup to explore various tasks and identify opportunities ultimately aids the startup's growth