Yesterday, The Information reported that Google is allegedly close to launching its own wireless service using Sprint and T-Mobile’s networks. This makes and ton of sense and doesn’t surprise me one bit. I think its a great idea if it’s FREE. I decided to write this post because it’s an idea that I’ve been thinking about it for awhile. Here is the backstory.
Late last spring a Google recruiter reached out to me via LinkedIn asking if I’d be interested in working for Google. Based on my entrepreneurial background, the recruiter felt that I’d be right for a senior level product manager role within the company. She mentioned that she researched me because another product manager within Google had added my name to Google’s database of potential candidates. I thought it was an intriguing offer, and was flattered and impressed that Google identified me despite my lack of history as an employee. For these same reasons, I wasn’t mentally prepared to consider the possibility. As a long-time serial entrepreneur, I can barely remember the last time I had a job that I didn’t create for myself. Basically, I’ve always viewed myself as a capital gains guy, not a W-2 guy. This has been my path since I fell in love with entrepreneurship during undergrad after co-founding my first company and was reinforced early in my career upon the acquisition of my first dot-com startup, ImageCafe, by Network Solutions in 1999. Consequently, without giving it much thought, my immediate response was, “Not interested.” As luck would have it, a few months later, the recruiter reached out again asking if I would reconsider. Her outreach was timely because during the subsequent months following her initial contact, I had spent some time thinking about what it might be like to grow within Google. Which brings me to why I’ve decided to write this post.
After being encouraged to go through the interview process by a few friends within my inner circle, and my curiosity regarding my worth to a company such as Google, I decided to move forward. Even though the notion of being an employee went against my core, I thought to myself, “maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea for me to spend a year or two as a Sr. level product manager at Google.” Here in Silicon Valley, having a Google stint behind your name is like having a graduate degree from MIT or Stanford — it’s a badge of honor that can only help my future entrepreneurial efforts, I rationed. After meeting with a friend-of-a-friend (a former entrepreneur turned Google product manager) and learning more about his transition, I decided to move forward with the process.
Going into the interviews, I was sure of one thing. If I got the job, I wanted to spend my time at Google working on a product that had the potential to “moved the needle” for Google. Otherwise, my time at Google wouldn’t mean much. So I needed to think of a green field opportunity that Google was uniquely positioned to benefit from. It didn’t take long because it’s no secret that Google is an Ads driven company. Google is dominant in text, banner and video based web ads where it derives over 80% of its revenue. I thought to myself at the time, the one ads-based area where Google has no footprint is audio. So who dominates audio ads? The radio industry. Upon doing a little research, I discovered that the ad spend on audio ads across radio stations is $14 billion annually and those ads are heavily purchased by local advertisers — car dealers and such. I then thought, what if Google launched a free wireless phone carrier, solely supported by pre-call audio ads? Hell, Google knows my search history, and via mobile they also know my location. What if Google served up a 10 second audio ad immediately before connecting my phone calls in exchange for free mobile phone service. Even if I didn’t make it my primary line, I’d purchase an Android phone and signup for the service. Also, given that public wi-fi will soon be ubiquitous (partly because of Google’s efforts in this area), Google will soon be able to totally bypass the phone carriers and connect phone calls via VoIP over public wi-fi.
Armed with this vision, I moved forward with my interviews to potentially become a product manager at Google. For those of you who aren’t familiar, being a product manager is in some ways like being the CEO of a product, albeit with less control. The skills required to be a good product manager are a combination of business, tech, and user-experience (UX) skills. Upon my research, I wasn’t surprised to discover that most of the product managers at Google, were software engineers who had gotten MBAs. It’s no secret that Google is an engineering lead company and they value quantitative skills above all else. I myself have always been a design/user-experience/product-focused entrepreneur. My background in architecture and business have been the catalyst for how I think about product. Over the past 3 years or so, I’d noticed that Google had started to develop its own design language and was impressed by the shift that I was seeing within Google products as a result of its increased focused on UX. It was clear to me that Google’s top brass understood the importance of and had started to value UX and design within the company. So it made sense that they were approaching me, I thought.
However, my interviews revealed a different reality. Interview after interview, I sat down with product managers who all had basically the same background. They were engineers with MBAs who had become product managers after spending time as software developers. It was clear that they didn’t quite know what to think of me. My thoughts and ideas are very entrepreneurial. During my interviews I openly shared my vision for Google to become a free wireless phone carrier supported by audio ads. I wanted to gauge if it would be possible for me to drive such a vision if I were to join Google. A few days following my interviews, it became a moot point. I didn’t get the job offer. Which was actually good because it gave me less to think about. Had I been offered the position, I am not sure I would have accepted it. As I mentioned, being an employee isn’t in my DNA and joining Google would have derailed me from launching VentureFund.io among other things.
A few weeks following my interviews, I got a call from the Google recruiter once again. This time she wanted me to interview for a Head of Industry Telecom position at Google. Based on this offer, it was clear that my vision had gotten someone’s attention. The position was based out of New York and I live in Palo Alto so I turned down the offer and declined to interview. I’m also not a telecom guy. I’m a product driven entrepreneur. Having said all this, even though I didn’t get to champion my vision within Google, with yesterday’s announcement that Google is nearing becoming a wireless carrier, I am hopefully optimistic that when Google officially launches its wireless service, it will be a free service completely supported by pre-call audio ads.
