Google Goes Public? Search for 'Rich Get Richer' (Published 2004) (2024)

Tiger Woods has his small stake. So do Shaquille O'Neal, Henry A. Kissinger and Arnold Schwarzenegger. All can be counted among that small club of people lucky enough to own a sliver of Google, one of the hottest companies in Silicon Valley and what could be the hottest deal on Wall Street this year.

Michael S. Ovitz, once a top Hollywood agent, pulled strings in an effort to enter a pool that was being offered to a group of rich investors and would eventually own a small piece of Google. But that was in the late 1990's, and apparently his star was already fading. Mr. Ovitz was turned away.

The question of if and when Google, the world's most popular search engine, might finally proceed with an initial offering of shares to the public has captivated Silicon Valley in recent days. That is because it nears a deadline this week to provide a financial disclosure document required under the 1934 securities law.

The company has not declared its intentions, but Google is the most anticipated public offering since the dot-com bubble burst four years ago.

People speculate. People dream. And if the numbers are to be believed, people will drool. The current prediction is that Google, if it decides to sell shares to investors this year, would probably end up with a market value of $20 billion to $25 billion by the end of its first day as a publicly traded company.

A $25 billion market value would instantly make Google worth more than Lockheed Martin, the big military contractor; Federal Express, the package delivery service; or Nike, the sports clothing maker.

As a great many people have learned the hard way in recent years, things don't always happen as the experts predict, especially when a company is involved in the high-risk realm of technology.

''It's bound to happen,'' Andy Bechtolsheim, who was the first person outside the company to invest in Google, said of the long-awaited public offering. Mr. Bechtolsheim, a founder of Sun Microsystems, said he owns a little more than 1 percent of Google. Assuming a huge opening day, the $200,000 he invested in Google in 1998 could be worth at least $300 million. Not everyone would fare as well. Many own a small stake in Google through an investment syndicate that included lots of Internet failures, and would stand to make only a modest profit on their total investment, if anything.

The list of those expected to profit handsomely if Google proceeds with an initial public offering certainly includes the usual suspects. Start with the company's two young founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, who started Google as graduate students at Stanford and are known affectionately as ''the boys'' among Silicon Valley insiders.

Mr. Brin and Mr. Page, now in their early 30's, together own an estimated one-third to one half of Google, depending on which insider's number deserves credence.

''In a way, it doesn't make a difference whether the boys own a third of the company or half,'' said a Silicon Valley venture capitalist who spoke on the condition he not be identified because Google is a secretive company. ''We're all living in a Google world now. You can safely say,'' he said, that ''both of them will be worth in the many billions.''

Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Sequoia Capital, the two venture capital firms that invested in Google in June 1999, just as Google was becoming a daily tool of the digital elite, each own 11 percent to 14 percent of the company, several Silicon Valley venture capitalists say.

The list of institutions that stand to make a small fortune from Google includes two of its potential rivals, America Online, now part of Time Warner, and Yahoo.

''People made fun of Yahoo for its licensing deal,'' said an executive at a search-related start-up company that is a partner with Yahoo and Google, who insisted on anonymity to avoid spoiling his relationships. ''They helped to create a big competitor. But this deal that hurts them strategically will make the company a lot of money.''

Yahoo invested $10 million several years ago, when Google was the search engine powering Yahoo's operations on its Web portal. Yahoo owns a small stake, a person who has seen the terms of the deal said.

Under a different deal struck in 2002, America Online has the right to buy nearly two million shares of Google for roughly $22 million, according to Time Warner.

A list of the others who stand to be enriched should Google go public seems to prove that the rich get richer. It reads like a ''Who's Who'' of Silicon Valley insiders, including Frank P. Quattrone, the former investment banker now on trial in Manhattan on charges of obstruction of justice and witness tampering.

It includes some of Silicon Valley's greatest entrepreneurial successes, including Marc Andreessen, the founder of Netscape; Pierre M. Omidyar, a founder of eBay; Shawn Fanning, the creator of Napster; and Bill Joy, the software innovator who recently left Sun Microsystems.

Stanford, one of the country's richest universities, also stands to add considerably to its bottom line. Mr. Brin and Mr. Page, who met in 1995 at a party for incoming computer science graduate students, worked together on a university-funded data-mining project. During that collaboration, the pair invented the search technology that would eventually be Google's core technology.

''The university owns the technology,'' said Katharine Ku, the director of Stanford's Office of Technology Licensing. ''We license it to Google, which back then was just these two kids. They pay Stanford royalties annually. We also took a bit of stock in the deal.''

Under the terms of that deal, the royalties are evenly split three ways among Mr. Brin and Mr. Page, the computer science department and the university's engineering school. That deal was struck in 1996.

For two years, the university tried to license the deal to existing search companies; at least one company ''offered a significant amount of money'' to buy Google, but in 1998 ''the two decided to start their own company.''

Ms. Ku declined to share the terms of the licensing deal, which is still in effect, or to speculate on the potential value of the university's equity stake.

David R. Cheriton, a computer science professor at Stanford, introduced Mr. Bechtolsheim to Google's founders. In August 1998, the four sat on the porch of Mr. Cheriton's Palo Alto home, where Mr. Page and Mr. Brin tried to demonstrate their product for Mr. Bechtolsheim. Before the pair could finish, he had decided to write them the first of two $100,000 checks.

''They needed money to pay the lawyers to incorporate the company,'' he said. ''And I wanted to make sure I was part of this company.''

The founders raised roughly $1 million that September, including Mr. Bechtolsheim's investment. Other early investors include Mr. Cheriton and Ram Shriram, a former Netscape and Amazon executive.

''Basically they needed money to buy the machines so they could prove out the concept,'' Mr. Bechtolsheim said.

The company closed on a second round of financing in June 1999. By then, much of Silicon Valley's elite wanted a piece of Google, which had become the default search engine of choice among the area's digerati.

That is when Ron Conway and Bob Bozeman, two partners in a venture fund called Angel Investors, discovered Google -- and, according to an investors list prepared by Angel Investors, brought along many famous people, including Mr. Woods and Mr. Kissinger, and some of the Valley's best-connected entrepreneurs and financiers, among them at least five billionaires.

A former executive at the personal computer maker Altos Computer Systems, Mr. Conway had been investing his money in Internet start-ups. Enough wealthy friends asked him if they could piggyback on his investments that in late 1998 he created Angel Investors as an Internet index fund that would invest in an array of Web-related start-ups. That year, under the title Angel-1, he raised $30 million; the next year, under Angel-2, $150 million, Ultimately Mr. Conway raised money from more than 500 people, only a few of whom he had known before entering a business relationship.

Anyone who invested in Angel-1 or Angel-2 owns a small stake in Google, though those in Angel-1 own shares obtained at a much better price (roughly 50 cents a share, compared with $2.34 a share), given that the investments were made six months part.

''If I decide I want something to happen and I'm very motivated,'' Mr. Conway said in 2001. ''I try real hard to make it happen.''

Mr. Conway, Mr. Bozeman said, is ''the premier elbow guy in the business.'' Mr. Conway declined to comment for this article.

Based solely on the Google deal, Angel-1 should ''make each of us several times our original investment,'' an investor in both funds said. This investor, who receives updates from Angel Investors, insisted on anonymity because of a confidentiality agreement.

Most of the companies in which Mr. Conway and Mr. Bozeman invested with money raised in Angel-2 in 1999 and 2000 have gone out of business. But such is the potential power of Google that, though Angel-2 includes nearly 200 worthless investments, an investor said, ''we might actually get our investment back, if not make a little extra.''

The typical Silicon Valley start-up endures several rounds of venture financing before reaching profitability, and no longer needing additional outside money. With each round the founders' shares are further diluted, until they end up owning only a small share of the company.

Yet Google raised only one round of venture capital. In June, Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia, two of the Valley's most highly prized venture capitalists, bought a total of roughly one-quarter of the company, according to financial documents spelling out the terms of the deal. There was the deal with Yahoo, and the hiring of a new chief executive, Eric E. Schmidt, in 2001, who undoubtedly received a handsome stock package -- yet one rival venture capitalist marvels at the size of the equity stake the two founders retained.

''That's what makes this deal so unusual,'' the venture capitalist said. ''There's been no almost no dilution of financing. The founders did a first round, they basically did a deal with the C.E.O., there's the deal with Yahoo, and that's it.''

Andrew Anker, an entrepreneur and former venture capitalist, said: ''This is the deal of the century as far as I'm concerned. No matter how you cut it, this will make a lot of people very happy.''