Founders at Work in Font

Maker DataMatrix in Font Founders at Work

optimistic. That s the only reason I kept going. Not because I thought I could take this suckiness for a long time, but that it s going to be better tomorrow. I had all these big ideas, and I could never stop thinking about the product and the thing I was going to build next. That always being around the corner in my mind is basically what allowed me to go through all the bad stuff. As well as the fact that, at that point, it was just pride. It was so public. If I would have stopped, that would have been very public also.

Livingston: Were there any other really stressful moments Williams: That s an understatement. I can think of many. For example, when

the site got hacked on Christmas day. I was in Iowa, visiting my mom, and I didn t find out until the next morning. Someone was able to run an update on the database that changed thousands of users passwords to the number 1 (which people started to realize when they couldn t log in and used the forgotten password feature to get theirs via email). Having your site hacked is stressful enough, but here I was in Iowa trying to assess the damage over a dial-up connection and a tiny laptop. And I didn t have a sys admin or anyone else working for me at the time. I ended up spending most of the day in a Kinko s doing damage control. So much for enjoying the holidays.

Livingston: What advice would you give someone Williams: I think one of the things that kills great things so often is compro-

mise letting people talk you out of what your gut is telling you. Not that I don t value people s input, but you have to have the strength to ignore it sometimes, too. If you feel really strongly, there might be something to that, and if you see something that other people don t see, it could be because it s that powerful and different. If everyone agrees, it s probably because you re not doing anything original. I had the personality that never liked school and rejected the normal way of doing things. Even when I was in school, I d try to make up alternative solutions to math problems. When I was at Google, they had this huge focus on academia. Grades were super-important. Getting good grades at a good school is one filter of brains, but it might also suggest you like following rules. Another thing is that luck comes in many forms and often looks bad at first. I always look back on the deals that we didn t do and the things that didn t work out, and realize what seemed like a bummer at the time was really lucky. Like the early acquisition opportunities. These obviously would have been really bad, as opposed to what happened later. Through that whole experience that s one of the biggest things that I ve taken away: if you have some plan and it doesn t go that way, roll with it. There s no way to know if it s good or bad until later, if ever.

people are feeling. So when problems came up with some of my coworkers, it totally surprised me. That stuff shouldn t surprise you, and it did. I think I was also surprised by the success of something so simple. That s a mantra for many people in the technology world simplicity. But what we built wasn t that amazing. It was the idea of putting a couple of things together and being able to establish a lead by doing something really, really simple. How far you can get on a simple idea is amazing. I have a tendency to add more and more the ideas always get too big to implement before they even get off the ground. Simplicity is powerful.