How Sergey Brin and Larry Page raised money for Google

Not many people know that one of the founders of the world’s biggest internet entity, the Google search engine, was born in Russia. Sergey Brin, one of the leading minds in global technology, is a Russian Jew who migrated to the United States. He was born in 1973, in Moscow, Russia. In 1979, his family fled Jewish persecution and relocated to the United States.

Sergey Brin co-founded Google with his classmate, Larry Page. Today, the parent company, Alphabet, is worth over $1trillion.

Let’s quickly look at how Sergey and Larry raised money to start the immensely successful Google.

Raising funds for Google

In the early days of Google, Sergey Brin and Larry Page struggled to raise money. They often asked their professors for cash and hardware, which they needed to run the startup. The first seed money they received was a $100,000 check written to them by one of their professors.

They were later able to secure good funding for their business from venture capital firms that were interested in their startup tech company. That investment in the company, together with a future IPO, has blown up to create a $1 trillion-dollar corporation.

Fund-raising model: Venture Capital

Sergey Brin and Larry Page were able to convince top venture capital firms to invest in their tech startup, committing about $25 million as early as 1997 to their startup. The major investors were rival venture capital firms, Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers and Sequoia Capital.

Google is one of the earliest companies in today’s Silicon Valley. Both founders met at Stanford University, an Ivy League university, and were able to leverage the massive network of top professors, facilities, and contacts in Silicon Valley which finally led them to secure funds from top venture capital firms.

Net worth

Sergey Brin and Larry Page are among the wealthiest people in the tech world today. Sergey is worth $99.6 billion, according to Forbes, while Larry is worth $102.8 billion.

What you should know

The co-founders once contemplated selling Google to a competitor for $1million dollars.