For Some Who Passed On Google Long Ago, Wistful Thinking
Google Inc.'s initial public offering is over and many people are a whole lot richer. Then there's Emily Cikovsky.
Five years ago, Ms. Cikovsky took cash instead of Google stock. She and an associate moonlighted for Google, preparing PowerPoint slides and speaking notes that co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page used to announce their first venture-capital funding. They were willing to pay her in stock options, she says. Instead, she sent them a bill for about $4,000.
Her associate, Abbe Patterson, did take Google stock options for this and related public-relations tasks. Forgoing a $5,000 fee, she took options for 4,000 shares. After two stock splits, she has 16,000 shares. They're now worth $1.7 million.
Ms. Cikovsky can't remember what she spent her $4,000 on. When the Google founders were willing to let her take options, "I should have followed up on that more," she now muses.
The small world of Silicon Valley has always been a place of near-misses. But since the bubble collapsed, no tech phenomenon has inspired the sort of wistfulness that Google has. With the Web-search company's shares closing Friday at $108.31, up 27% from the initial-offer price, its market value is nearly $30 billion.
Google coulda-beens can now tally their losses with precision. They include those who missed a shot at Google stock, Google jobs and even a chance to buy the whole company, cheap.
They can comfort themselves -- a little -- that Google in the early years was far from a sure thing. It was just one of many search engines, and it hadn't yet worked out its lucrative advertising model. Besides, there are plenty of people who did take stock in new Silicon Valley companies and now have nothing, the firms having vanished when the bubble popped.
In the 1990s, "I thought the Google stuff was boring," Brian Lent now says. He was a graduate student at Stanford University -- which owns the patent to Google's core technology -- with Messrs. Brin and Page as they conducted research that led to Google's creation. Mr. Lent was part of a group of academics who met weekly and discussed the co-founders' early work analyzing the Web. He thinks he could have been part of Google's founding team or an early employee if he hadn't gone to work for another start-up firm, which was later taken over by Amazon.com Inc.
A Google spokesman declined to comment, citing the "quiet period" rules surrounding IPOs. Stanford computer-science professor Jeffrey Ullman, who was there when the early research was being done and has served as an adviser to Google, confirms that Mr. Lent might well have been considered to be one of its first staffers. Mr. Lent reckons that could have brought him a stake of roughly 5% today. That would be worth $1.5 billion.
Regrets? "I would be non-human if I said I wasn't envious. Sergey and Larry are worth about $4 billion each," says Mr. Lent, 33, now an "entrepreneur in residence" at the venture-capital firm of Mohr, Davidow Ventures in Menlo Park, Calif.
Mr. Lent says he holds the distinction of having also turned down an offer from Yahoo Inc.'s co-founders to be one of their first hires. A Yahoo spokeswoman said she wasn't able to confirm that.
Guido Appenzeller, another former Stanford graduate student, says he hung out with the Google co-founders in 1997, and they asked him to help write a business plan. Soon thereafter, "we talked about whether I would be interested" in joining Google, says the German native, now 33. Instead, he decided to finish his Ph.D. He is now a co-founder of Voltage Security Inc., an information-security company in Palo Alto, Calif.
Some who did join Google provide a gauge of how much those like Mr. Appenzeller may have passed up. Omid Kordestani, 40, who started with Google in May 1999 and is now a senior vice president, sold $20.4 million of shares at the IPO and still has 4.6 million shares, worth $495 million.
A company Joe Kraus co-founded was urged to buy Google outright. A venture capitalist who backed both Mr. Kraus's business -- Excite@Home -- and Google says he encouraged Excite to purchase Google several years ago. "I tried to get Excite to buy them," Vinod Khosla, of the venture-capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, said at a public forum in May. "Excite thought they were just another search company.... I tried four times to get them to buy."
The management of Excite declined, and that company is now defunct. "Let me just say that we were wrong," Mr. Kraus says. "I'll be the first to stand up and say 'whoops.' "
Messrs. Page and Brin originally didn't want to create a company to house the search engine, says Google's official history, since they had their Stanford Ph.D.s in computer science to complete. (They never did finish.) Instead, they wanted other Internet firms to license their technology. In 1998, they pitched such an arrangement to Yahoo co-founder David Filo, according to the Google history, which says Mr. Filo responded: "When it's fully developed...let's talk again."
Yahoo later licensed Google's technology and, in a related agreement, obtained some of its shares. But Yahoo recently spent two years and more than $2 billion on acquisitions to create its own search business to compete with Google. A spokeswoman for Yahoo said Mr. Filo wasn't available for comment.
Steve Kirsch, a founder of Infoseek Corp., a Web portal, says he turned down an early licensing deal with Google twice, after deciding the price was too steep.
First Stanford approached him and Infoseek offered $250,000, a price the university found too low, Mr. Kirsch says. A few months later, he says, Mr. Page returned to try to interest him in a deal; again he said no. "They were looking for a $1 million-type investment number," he says. "We thought we couldn't justify the cost."
Infoseek was later sold to Walt Disney Co. Mr. Kirsch, who says he earned over $100 million in the deal, is now chairman of Propel Software Corp. in San Jose, Calif.
For those who did get in early, Google shares didn't always carry bragging rights. Ms. Patterson, 43, who did the $5,000 worth of public-relations work for Google, eventually figured her Google stake could be worthless. She thought it might even represent a loss, since she had to spend $800 to convert the options she was given into stock. In 1999, her husband argued she should have taken Google's money instead of the options. The couple used to call a wedding present they got from Messrs. Brin and Page their "$5,000 candlesticks," having little else to show for her three weeks of part-time work for them.
When Google's newly public shares broke through $100 on their first day of trading Thursday, her husband called her from the office to formally concede he'd been wrong.
Like most early Google investors and staff, they can't sell their stock right now. The "lockup" provision that restricts the sale will gradually unlock over the next six months. Assuming the stock is still worth plenty when they're free to sell, they plan to partly cash out to buy a house and pay for her daughter's college.
As for her associate who took the cash in 1999, she is taking a philosophical approach to her missed opportunity. Ms. Cikovsky, 36, is now a senior product manager at Global Healthcare Exchange LLC in Westminster, Colo. "Do I wish I'd had the shares? Yes," Ms. Cikovsky says. But "what's always in the back of my mind is an IPO is never a guaranteed.... And nine out of 10 start-ups fail."
错失Google股票，空留无尽遗憾
Google Inc.的首次上市发行已经结束了，许多人因此一夜暴富。这正是艾米莉?西科夫斯基(Emily Cikovsky)的故事值得关注的原因。
五年前，西科夫斯基接受了现金，而不是Google的股票。她和另外一位兼职的合作者为Google准备Power Point幻灯片文件及发言稿，供Google的创始人塞尔吉?布林(Sergey Brin)和拉里?帕吉(Larry Page)在宣布推出首个风险资本基金时使用。西科夫斯基表示，当时，Google公司愿意以股票期权的形式支付酬金。但西科夫斯基给Google公司寄去一张大约4,000美元的帐单。
她的合作者艾比?帕特森(Abbe Patterson)则接受了Google公司的股票期权，作为这些工作及相关公关工作的酬金。她放弃了5,000美元的现金，接受了4,000股的股票期权。在Google进行了分股后，帕特森持有Google公司16,000股股票。目前，这些股票价值170万美元。
西科夫斯基已经不记得自己怎样花掉了这4,000美元。现在，她若有所思地说，当Google公司的创始人表示愿意支付她股票期权的时候，她应该接受。
硅谷的世界很小，这里的人们总会与机会失之交臂。但自从互联网泡沫破灭之后，还没有哪种科技现象如Google这般令人充满无限遐想。上周五，这家互联网搜索引擎公司的股票收于108.31美元，较首日上市发行价格上涨27%，公司市值因此达到将近300亿美元。
曾经有机会与Google沾边的人现在可以精确地计算自己的损失了。其中包括错失了获得Google股票机会的人，与Google公司的职位擦肩而过的人，甚至那些失去廉价收购整个公司的机会的人。
他们可以稍微安慰自己的是：Google在发展初期并不是注定会成功。它只不过是众多的互联网搜索引擎公司之一，并且该公司尚未找到赚钱的广告模式。而且，有许多人曾经都持有硅谷新公司的股票，但最终一无所获。当互联网泡沫破灭之后，这些公司都烟消云散了。
斯坦福大学(Stanford University)的毕业生布赖恩?伦特(Brian Lent)对Google的核心技术Messrs拥有专利。他表示，在上个世纪90年代，他还认为Google的那套东西令人厌倦。在布林和帕吉研究那些最终创建了Google公司的技术的时候，伦特是一个相关研究小组的成员之一，他们每周聚会，探讨两位创始人分析网络的初步工作。伦特认为，他本来有机会成为Google公司创始团队中的一员，或者成为Google公司的早期雇员。但伦特加入了另外一家新创企业，后来那家公司被亚马逊公司(Amazon.com Inc.)收购。
Google公司一位发言人拒绝对此置评，声称要遵守与Google首次上市发行相关的“沉默期”规定。但斯坦福大学的计算机学教授杰弗里?乌尔曼(Jeffrey Ullman)证实，伦特的确很有机会成为Google公司的首批雇员之一。乌尔曼也参与了Google的早期研究工作，并且曾担任Google公司的顾问。伦特认为，那个机会可能会让他到现在持有大约5%的Google股票，而这些股票当前的价值是150万美元。
后悔吗？伦特表示，如果自己说一点都不嫉妒，那他是撒谎。现在，布林和帕吉每人的身家都已达到40亿美元左右。伦特今年33岁，是风险投资公司Mohr, Davidow Ventures的“储备企业家”。
伦特表示，他也曾经拒绝了成为雅虎公司(Yahoo Inc.)首批雇员之一的机会。雅虎的一位发言人则表示，她不能证实这种说法。
吉多?阿彭泽勒(Guido Appenzeller)也是前斯坦福大学的毕业生，他表示，自己在1997年曾约见Google的两位创始人，当时他们让吉多帮忙写一份商业计划书。其后，他们问吉多是否有兴趣加入Google公司。但当时他决定首先完成博士学位。吉多?阿彭泽勒是德国人，今年33岁，是加州一家信息安全公司Voltage Security Inc.的联合创始人。
一些加入了Google公司的人可以拿来作个参照，看看阿彭泽勒等人错失了什么。欧米德?科德斯塔尼(Omid Kordestani)今年40岁，在1999年5月加入Google公司，目前是公司的高级副总裁。在Google首次上市发行期间，他卖出2,040万股股票，同时仍持有460万股，总价值4.95亿美元。
乔?克劳斯(Joe Kraus)为创始人之一的一家公司也曾被建议完全收购Google。一位同时支持克劳斯的公司Excite@Home和Google的风险投资家表示，他几年前曾经鼓励Excite收购Google。风险投资公司Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers的维诺德?科思拉(Vinod Khosla)在5月份的一次公开论坛上做出这样的建议。但Excite认为他们只是另一家搜索引擎公司。科思拉表示自己曾四次提出收购建议。
Excite的管理层最终拒绝了建议。现在，Excite已经不复存在。克劳斯表示，自己应该是第一个站起来承认错误的人。
根据Google的官方历史，布林和帕吉最初并不想创建一家公司来做搜索引擎，因为他们当时需要完成自己在斯坦福大学的计算机博士学位（他们最终也没有完成学位）。相反，两人希望找到其他互联网公司，授权他们的技术。据Google的官方历史记载，在1998年，他们找到了雅虎的联合创始人大卫?费罗(David Filo)，但费罗拒绝了他们。
后来，雅虎给Google的技术授予了许可，并通过一个相关的协议获得Google的部份股票。但近年来，雅虎投入了两年的时间和超过20亿美元的资金用于收购以创建自己的搜索引擎业务与Google竞争。雅虎的发言人表示，无法联系到费罗对此事置评。
互联网门户网站Infoseek Corp.的创始人史蒂夫?基尔希(Steve Kirsch)表示，他曾经两次拒绝与Google达成初步的授权交易，因为他认为价格太不合理了。
基尔希表示，首先斯坦福大学联系到他，Infoseek报价25万美元，但斯坦福大学认为这个报价太低。几个月之后，帕吉先生再次找到他，希望双方能达成交易。但基尔希拒绝了。他表示，Google方面希望找到100万美元左右规模的投资，但他们当时认为无法证明这笔投资的合理性。
Infoseek后来被卖给了迪斯尼(Walt Disney Co.)。基尔希表示，他通过这笔交易获得了1亿多美元。基尔希先生目前是位于加州圣何塞的Propel Software Corp.的董事长。
对于那些较早得到Google股票的人来说，Google股票并不总是有令人骄傲的资本。43岁的帕特森曾经为Google公司做过价值5,000美元的公关工作，她一度认为自己持有的Google股票将一文不值。她甚至认为这可能意味著自己会赔本，因为她不得不花费800美元来进行股票期权转换。在1999年，她的丈夫与她争论说，她本来应该从Google公司拿现金的，而不是股票期权。
上周四，当首次公开发行的Google股票在交易首日即突破100美元的时候，她的丈夫从办公室给她打来电话，正式承认了自己的错误。
和大多数Google早期的投资者及Google的员工一样，他们不能立即出售股票。限制他们抛售股票的“冻结期”规定将在未来的6个月内逐渐解冻。假定等到“冻结期”结束后，股价仍然是那么高，他们计划进行部份套现，并用所得买一处住房和支付女儿上大学的学费。
而至于她那位在1999年取了现金的同事，则采取了哲人的态度看待自己错失的良机。36岁的西科夫斯基现在是Global Healthcare Exchange LLC的一位高级产品经理。她表示，自己愿意拥有那些股票，但同时她仍然清楚地知道没有哪只股票的首次公开发行是打了保票的，毕竟十之八九的新创企业都失败了。
