A Classic Immigrant Success Story - Sergey Brin
From humble beginnings in the Soviet Union to the heights of greatest online success, Sergey Mikhaylovich Brin is a great example of the classic immigrant success story in world history. He is born into the minority strict soviet country in 1973 and most of his early life was spent there. Brin’s father, who dreamt to become an astronomer, but he was forced to give up because of the country’s anti-semitic policies.
Early Life
Brin’s father sensed that staying in such a country have nothing good to do with his children's future. After attending a scientific show in Moscow, he realised that the west has ample opportunities for himself and his children to pursue their goals. So he took a major risk and attempted to bring the family to the United States. He emigrated with his family to the United States, bringing one of the world’s top scientific mind with them.
Academics
Brin showed great potential at high school itself during his teenage years in the USA and graduated university with a Bachelor of Science. He then went on to start a PhD at the esteemed Stanford University - studies that he paused upon starting Google later in his life. During that time he met a student who is ‘equally as obnoxious as himself’ - Larry Page. They both clashed constantly on ideas and theories by taking a different side in debates.
They were intellectual rivals, but great friends and their different theories on information soon took ahold which resulted in one of the world’s most productive projects. They started working on what would become one of the world’s most popular, informative websites in their dorm room - while it was never originally called Google.
Beginning
At first, they attempted creating a smaller network that spanned Stanford’s computer systems, but it crashed the college network due to the heavy volume of searches, yet the project was a success. Well, it is amazing to think that one of the world’s most profitable online company was started without any plans of making money at all. Like Facebook and any other network, Google was never just about income generation.
In the early days of the search engine, Page and Brin made an offer to leading investors to sell their entire company for just one million dollars. They mentioned control of the company over several years and leading it to immense and essential success through a series of savvy investments and long-term plans. However, the site failed to make any money for it’s first few years after launching it in late 1997. The company failed to make a single cent and burned through most of its investment capital very quickly. But after that, Google has become an immense success, bringing in a multi-million dollar fortune for Brin.
Achievements
He became the co-founder of the search engine firm Google with Larry Page. Google company went public in 2004 and changed its name to Alphabet in 2015. Brin now works as the president of the tech giant Alphabet, the parent firm of Google.
Google become the most profitable search engine and an immense informational resource for billions of people around the world. A small-time college project becomes the greatest success ever!
If Brin’s story is anything, it is a lesson in the importance of having a plan for the long term. Remember they both had no plans of making money out of Google and their plans failed miserably at times. But with smart planning for long-term and persistence, the website grew into one of the web’s most important and treasured assets of all time.