The Moment

We were both foam rolling at Glen Park’s neighborhood gym when he asked me how long I’d been at Google.

“15 years.”

“I’ve been at Apple for 11.”

“Do you think you’ll stay?”

“Yeah, I’m a lifer.”

Two hours earlier, I had turned in my laptop, corporate phone, and badge at Google’s San Francisco office. When I got home, Aarti told me that despite my mentions of wanting to do something new, she had just assumed that I was too attached to my team to leave Google. She was proud of me.

The final meetings I’ve had with Google colleagues over the past few weeks have centered around a related question: what caused me to change from a Google “lifer” to an entrepreneur? Indeed, there were opportunities that I had passed up before to stay at Google. As a technical person living in the Bay Area, the past 15 years have been riddled with moments in which recruiters, start ups, former colleagues, and friends have tried to entice me to join them in a compelling venture. At times, I’d even entertained these conversations, only to be offered a project at Google that made the proposed external one seem less appealing by comparison.

The answer I have given people in those final meetings starts in December of 2022 when I started playing extensively with ChatGPT and continues into the present, in which I was running experiments using a number of open source foundation models in my spare time, reading papers, and opening my eyes to possibilities outside of the company that has been my first and only full time job. Sometimes I end the answer by describing the start ups, VCs, and potential clients I have spoken with that gave me the conviction to pursue this new direction.

What that answer misses are the many other moments that came before it. There were my first 20% projects at Google, at the encouragement of my managers, which gave me the confidence to explore new ideas outside of my day-to-day. There were the technical mentors who taught me everything from distributed systems to applied machine learning, enabling me to delve deep into multiple technical areas while giving me the breadth to understand a variety of considerations when building a solution. There were the managers who taught me the nuances of working with others and many of the soft skills that enabled me to be effective in navigating a variety of hurdles. Then there were the many opportunites to lead technical efforts, in which I was working directly with clients and learning what was a must-have and what was an optimization for later. There was the time I got to participate inside an Alphabet startup and learn a lot more about the nuances of a business. There were the times I started to manage people and teams, in which I learned how to navigate a number of difficult situations, pivot where necessary, take risks along the way, and learn from both successes and failures. There were the moments in which I helped identify new external partners, and learned how to build trust with their organizations. All these moments suggest that my experiences at Google have played an outsized role in incubating the confidence and experience leading up to the present.

And for that, I am greatful for the many people I met over the years for helping me here. The coming months will no doubt involve a number of new experiences that will challenge me, but I think the foundations I have developed have given me the grit with which to engage with these. Thank you, and stay tuned for updates as I embark on this new venture.