"Mr. Guo, this way, please."
It was only his second time here, but the moment Bruce stepped inside, Larry Page's secretary led him straight to the conference room.
"Bruce."
"Larry." Bruce shook his hand, then turned to the thinner young man beside him, who already had that unmistakable programmer energy about him. "And you must be Sergey."
"Hi."
Sergey Brin clearly was not much of a talker. He shook Bruce's hand and left it at that.
"Have a seat."
At Larry's invitation, everyone took their seats.
"Bruce, we can accept the terms. Eighty million dollars for forty percent of Google, with voting rights attached to only twenty percent," Larry said, getting straight to it. "But once the agreements are signed, we want the funding transferred as quickly as possible."
Bruce frowned, then shook his head immediately.
"I'm sorry, but I need time to raise the capital. I'll need two months. In exchange, I'm willing to pay a five-hundred-thousand-dollar option fee for that window."
Half a million dollars was not a small amount.
Larry had been ready to refuse outright, but now he paused. After thinking it over, he said, "One month, maximum. The Nasdaq downturn is getting worse, and we need capital fast, both to keep growing and to maintain investor confidence."
Bruce could not accept one month.
But he had come prepared.
"What if I can solve Google's revenue problem?" he said, his tone calm and deliberate.
"Really?"
Sergey blurted it out before he could stop himself.
Larry was more controlled, but the contraction in his eyes gave him away just as clearly.
Bruce smiled, opened his briefcase, and pulled out a document he had prepared in advance.
Since this was about Google's future, Larry did not bother pretending to be patient, and Sergey was even less restrained. The moment Larry opened the file, Sergey stood up and moved behind him to read over his shoulder.
As the seconds passed, the concern on their faces gave way to excitement.
"Bruce, this sidebar ad model is brilliant," Sergey said, with zero hesitation in his praise.
To people from the future, search pages with ads running down the side were so common they were almost invisible. But in 2000, this was still something fresh.
Larry looked up sharply.
"Bruce, we accept your terms. And more than that, I want you to come in as Google's President."
After seeing the kind of commercial instinct Bruce had, Larry's first thought was to pull him directly into senior management. Before this meeting, he had only been considering him for a non-executive role.
Bruce raised a hand.
"Let's not rush. I actually have one more proposal. And this one is ten or twenty times more important to Google than sidebar ads. But before I show it to you, I have a few conditions."
"There's more?"
Sergey could hardly sit still.
Larry stopped him with a look and said, "Go ahead."
"My conditions are simple," Bruce said evenly. "First, neither of these advertising models can be implemented for the next two months. If either one is used during that period, you will transfer an additional fifteen percent of Google equity to me, with full voting rights attached."
He let that settle, then continued.
"Second, once we have an agreement, we sign two contracts. The first is the standard equity purchase agreement. The second is an option agreement. The second agreement will specify that if I fail to transfer the full eighty million dollars to Google within two months, then the first agreement is void."
He leaned back slightly.
"Third, once the full funds have been delivered, I become Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Google."
He looked from Larry to Sergey.
"And finally, everyone in this room signs a confidentiality agreement. No one discloses anything about this negotiation to anyone outside this room, whether individual or institution."
Larry thought about it for a moment before replying.
"If this second model is really as important as you claim, then I have no problem stepping aside and letting you serve as Chairman and CEO. But why do both models have to wait two months before they're used?"
Bruce smiled faintly.
"I think you're smart enough to guess the reason."
Larry's eyes narrowed.
"You're planning to buy out Sequoia and Kleiner Perkins' Google stake?"
"Exactly." Bruce did not deny it. "I'm extremely bullish on the future of search. If the two of you were willing to sell, I'd buy the whole company outright."
He said it without the slightest hesitation.
When you were dealing with smart people, direct pressure often worked better than tricks.
For a few seconds, the two men just looked at each other.
Then Larry laughed softly.
"I didn't realize you valued Google this highly."
"I do."
Larry folded his hands.
"And what if we tell Sequoia and Kleiner Perkins everything you showed us today? Sidebar ads are a business model, not a patentable invention. We could use it to address the revenue problem ourselves."
Bruce nodded.
"I'd be worried, of course. But only if you don't want the second model I'm holding back."
Larry frowned.
"How do I know this second model even exists? And even if it does, how do I know it's actually useful?"
Bruce met his gaze without flinching.
"If I'm making demands in a negotiation like this, it's because I have something real behind them. I'm not going to sabotage a deal this important with a stupid bluff."
"Larry..."
Sergey had barely spoken, but Larry did not need more than the tone to know where he stood.
Sergey was already convinced.
After a long silence, Larry nodded.
"All right. You win. We can draft the agreements based on the terms you just laid out."
Bruce had kept a cool face the entire time, but inside, the tension that had been hanging over him finally loosened. In truth, he had not been anywhere near as calm as he looked.
Still, it worked.
And from Larry's point of view, the conditions were not actually disastrous. Even if Bruce eventually bought out Sequoia and Kleiner's stake, Larry and Sergey would still retain effective control. More importantly, with the sidebar model already proving Bruce knew what he was talking about, Larry was intensely curious about the last document.
With George Davis handling the legal side, the contracts were drafted and signed.
The moment Bruce put his name down, he felt a surge of satisfaction that was hard to put into words.
Larry leaned back in his chair.
"All right. Now that the agreements are signed, I assume you're ready to show us the more important advertising solution."
"Of course."
Bruce opened his briefcase and pulled out the last document, the one he had been saving.
"This," he said, "is a bid-based paid placement advertising model."
Bid-based ranking and sidebar advertising would go on to become the two core revenue engines of every major search company in the world. And of the two, paid ranking was the real foundation. Whether it was Google or Baidu, it would become one of the pillars holding up the entire business.
Sergey finished reading first.
"This is incredible," he said, practically vibrating. "Larry, we've got it. This is it. Google wins. Our future is wide open."
Larry nodded hard. He was trying to stay composed, but the excitement was written all over his face.
As one of Google's founders, he did not need a pilot launch to understand what this meant. This model filled the last major gap in the company's business.
"Bruce," Larry said, looking at him with a mix of admiration and excitement, "you are the most important partner Google has had so far."
Bruce smiled.
"Then from here on out, we build it together."
"Together," Larry said.
The two of them shook hands.
After that, Larry took Bruce on a walk through the Google office. For now, since the two-month window had not passed, Bruce still could not actually exercise his authority as future Chairman and CEO.
Eventually, Larry and Sergey personally walked him out of the building.
As Bruce was about to leave, he turned to George Davis.
"Mr. Davis, my company is still missing legal counsel. Any chance you'd consider taking the role?"
As his businesses expanded, he was going to need far more legal support. On both competence and trust, George Davis was the best option he had right now.
Davis looked at him.
"For Google?"
"No. For my other company. LinkedIn."
George Davis fell silent for a moment.
Before this, he would have refused without much thought. But after sitting through the Google negotiation, he had finally seen what this nineteen-year-old was capable of.
"I'll need some time to think about it."
"That's fine," Bruce said. "Just don't make me wait too long."
Davis nodded.
"I'll have my office bill the legal fees to your account. Good day, Mr. Guo."
"See you, Mr. Davis."
They parted there and went their separate ways.
Three days after signing the Google deal, Bruce drove to the San Francisco office of AIG, the largest commercial insurance company in the country.