Ron Conway spotted a rare opportunity in Google, but getting a stake required months of persistence rather than a quick handshake.
The veteran investor first heard about the project through David Cheriton, a Stanford computer science professor, during a party conversation. Cheriton mentioned two students tinkering with an unconventional search algorithm. That system, called PageRank, ranked webpages based on inbound links rather than simple keyword matching. In 1998, such an approach seemed far from an obvious path to building a search engine.
Conway pressed for an introduction. Cheriton told him to wait until the founders were ready. Conway kept asking anyway.
Months later, he finally sat down with Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Google remained a small operation with uncertain prospects, not the global force it would eventually become. Conway described the experience during a 2014 Stanford panel moderated by Sam Altman. At the time, nothing about Google’s future looked guaranteed.
The founders demanded something concrete before accepting his money. They asked Conway to arrange a meeting with Sequoia Capital. He delivered, and Sequoia joined Google’s Series A in 1999. That detail matters: Conway earned his position by providing value first, not by relying on his reputation.
Google’s early backers included memorable names like Shaquille O’Neal, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Henry Kissinger. Yet Conway’s path into the deal reveals more about how early-stage investing actually works. He had to keep knocking before the door opened.
Conway has said he backs people before products. At the seed stage, startups often abandon their initial offerings entirely once customers respond. Founders must survive that pivot. He looks for leadership, focus, and a genuine connection to the problem being solved.
One question guides his evaluation: why did this person start the company? Someone who lived through the problem tends to stay closer to it, even when the first version fails.
The Google investment worked because Conway recognized something unusual, pursued access relentlessly, and proved his usefulness before writing a check. The billion-dollar outcome came much later. The persistence came first.
