November 13 at 12:33 am
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Sumit Chachra, Dan Hsiao, Michael Muller and 19 other people liked this
"Many of the Xooglers (the name is a contraction of ex-Googlers but is pronounced “zooglers”) are young, entrepreneurial and, thanks to Google’s soaring success, wealthy enough to start their own second acts. Some are starting companies in Silicon Valley and beyond, and others are helping to finance those ventures." - Atul Arora
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"Google is rewriting the rules and accelerating the pace. Only time will tell if the Xooglers’ start-ups will achieve the success of the most notable Silicon Valley alumni network, PayPal. After eBay acquired PayPal, founders and employees went on to start LinkedIn, YouTube, Slide, Yelp and Founders Fund." - Chris White
Maybe some people think PayPal is the most prolific alumni network, but I think history says Apple would easily rival that. (e.g. NeXT, General Magic, PageMill, VeriSign, WebTV, Pixo, Danger, and Android, just off the top of my head). - Chris White
Nice mention of FriendFeed - "FriendFeed is perhaps the best example of the network in action. Bret Taylor left Google with his colleague Jim Norris, and they became entrepreneurs-in-residence at Benchmark Capital, a venture capital firm. While seeking financing for FriendFeed, they pitched their idea to Paul Buchheit and Sanjeev Singh, two Xooglers-turned-angel investors, who had worked on Gmail. They were so impressed that they invested in and joined the company. FriendFeed’s first $5 million came mostly from Mr. Buchheit and Mr. Singh." - Atul Arora
A great quote from Dominic: "“Google is the most nimble, most malleable 20,000-person company out there, but it still is a 20,000-person company." - Jess Lee
Prolific alumni network? How about Oracle? - Julio F ~ @SocialJulio
Silicon Valley's most important alumni network was Fairfield Semiconductor -- out of which came Intel, AMD, National, LSI Logic and basically every other semiconductor company in the Valley not named Hewlett Packard. One exec, Robert Noyce, mentored Steve Jobs when he founded Apple. Other notable Fairchild alum also included Eugene Kleiner, who founded Kleiner Perkins and Don Valentine, who founded Sequoia Capital. - Bryan Power




