A Google veteran explains how the company's product meetings with Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Eric Schmidt flipped the usual question from "Why?" to "Why not?" This pushed teams to think bigger, like launching across all of Europe instead of a few countries. He now uses the same approach mentoring startups at AngelPad.
One of the things that struck me the most is when I arrived at Google and Google had this notion of GPSs, Google Product Strategy Meetings, which was usually on Tuesdays all day. Larry, Sergey, and Eric would sit in a room and product managers kind of would come in. You would have 15 minutes with them. and you would present things, you would ask for things, you do the whole shebang to get the approval from the boss. And everything that I've learned to that point— and remember, I was educated in Europe, so there's even more restrictions to what you're supposed to do or not do than here— was that you had to argue why you would do certain things. You'd come in and say, I want to do this because of this, this, this, and this. And when I got to Google, the only question I always got was, why not? So we'd say things like, oh, we're going to launch in 6 countries in the next 6 months. And Larry would say, why not all of Europe? I can't do his accent, actually. Not that he has an accent so much as just a bizarre voice, which we now know why. Back then, we didn't know that he had actually a problem with his voice. But they would always ask why not. Larry especially would just ask you why not the whole time. And I do that today with the startups that are at AngelPad. Many times I ask them why not. And they would tell me, oh, we can do this and this and we can— like, why not? Why not do more? Why not go faster? Why not break the rules? What is holding you up? It's only our own perception of what we can and should be doing that limits to what we can be doing.
