Bruce checked the time, slipped the documents he had prepared into his briefcase, and gave his desk a quick tidy. He was just about to leave the office when there was a knock at the door.
"Come in."
The door opened, and Tim George stepped inside.
"Boss."
Bruce was about to answer when his eyes landed on the woman walking in behind Tim, and for a moment his attention drifted.
She was wearing a white blouse with the collar turned out, a fitted black office suit, black stockings, and crystal-strapped mid-heel sandals. Between her delicate features, her long golden-brown hair falling over her shoulders, and her tall, graceful figure, she carried herself with an elegance that was impossible to miss.
Even with two lifetimes behind him, Bruce had to admit he was impressed.
"Boss, this is Ms. Wendy Soro," Tim said. "She's here to interview for the CEO assistant position."
After hearing that, Bruce caught the look in Tim's eyes and had a pretty good idea what was going on.
Still, he did not comment.
To be fair, he had never had any dirty motives in mind when he asked for a secretary. But deep down, he certainly did not mind the idea of seeing a beautiful, polished woman every day instead of some exhausted middle-aged office admin.
He nodded, took the résumé Tim handed him, and skimmed through it.
"Ms. Soro, not only are you beautiful, you're also a Harvard economics graduate."
Wendy did not even blink.
"As your employee, I think you should be more concerned with whether I'm qualified for the job than with how I look."
Bruce looked up at her again, slightly surprised.
Her expression was serious, almost cold, and her tone carried a quiet confidence.
Then he nodded.
"Fair point. Your background is more than strong enough for the role. But I am curious. With your qualifications, you could easily go to a major firm on Wall Street. Why us? Especially now, after the Nasdaq crash, when most people think the internet industry is headed straight off a cliff."
"The main reason I came," Wendy said evenly, "is because you were the first company to offer me an interview. I happened to want a job at an internet company after graduation, so I came."
Then a spark entered her eyes.
"As for the future of the internet... if you didn't believe in it, Mr. Guo, you wouldn't have founded one."
Bruce smiled.
"Tim, take Ms. Soro to HR and get her onboarded."
Tim nodded and took back the file.
"Ms. Soro, right this way."
Before leaving, Wendy gave Bruce one last look, then turned and walked out.
Bruce followed a moment later.
Out in the office, the men were already in full hormonal overdrive, openly whispering and grinning after seeing the new hire. Bruce did not bother saying anything. He had never cared much about keeping office culture overly rigid. As long as people got their work done, he did not mind giving them room to breathe.
That was pretty standard in later tech companies anyway.
He was just using it early.
After leaving the office, Bruce drove alone to 2400 Bayshore Parkway, not far from the Hills building.
That was where Google had moved after raising $25 million in venture funding from Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia the year before.
Bruce looked up at the logo, still very different from the version people would know years later. He took a breath, organized his thoughts one last time, and walked inside with his briefcase in hand.
"Good afternoon, sir."
"Hello. I'm with Phoenix Capital. I have an appointment with Mr. Page."
The receptionist studied him for a moment.
"You're Mr. Bruce Guo?"
"That's right."
"Please wait just a moment."
She picked up the phone and made a quick call. A short while later, a young man in a black suit came out briskly from the office area.
"Mr. Guo, good afternoon. I'm Charlie, Mr. Page's assistant."
"Nice to meet you."
They shook hands.
"This way, please."
Bruce followed Charlie into Google's office.
It was obvious that the $25 million financing had changed a lot. Even though Google still had not found a true monetization model and had not yet ridden any massive strategic tailwind from Yahoo, its office and staff were already far beyond anything LinkedIn currently had.
"Please, go in."
Charlie pushed open the conference room door, and Bruce stepped inside.
Coming from the future, he knew Larry Page and Sergey Brin very well, at least in the broad historical sense. But compared with the giants they would later become, the two men in front of him were still very young, still rough around the edges, still years away from the polish that came with surviving the business world.
Then again, compared to them, nineteen-year-old Bruce looked even younger.
"Mr. Page, good afternoon."
Larry Page stood and shook his hand, though the look on his face carried obvious surprise as he sized Bruce up.
"You're Bruce Guo? From Phoenix Capital?"
In Larry's mind, finance people were supposed to be older, seasoned, the sort of men who looked like they lived inside conference rooms. Someone Bruce's age barely fit the picture at all.
Bruce nodded with an easy smile.
"That's me. Actually, I should probably be calling you upperclassman."
Larry raised an eyebrow.
"You went to Stanford too?"
"I did. Class of '97. Master's in Computer Science. Professor Ben Foster was my advisor."
Shared schools could go a long way in America too.
Bruce had planned that line from the start.
And it worked.
The moment he said it, he could feel Larry soften a little.
"Professor Foster was one of my advisors too," Larry said. "But if your degree is in computer science, why'd you end up in finance?"
"Personal interest."
Larry gave a small nod. Bruce clearly did not want to say more, and Larry was smart enough not to push.
"Have a seat."
"Thanks."
The two sat across from each other, and Charlie quickly brought over two glasses of water before stepping out again.
"Since we've got some Stanford overlap," Larry said, "let's keep it casual. Mind if I call you Bruce?"
Bruce was more than happy with that.
"Not at all."
Larry got straight to the point.
"Bruce, how much are you looking to invest in Google, and how much equity do you want in return?"
By now Bruce was already used to the bluntness of American business conversations, especially after absorbing so much from the original owner of this body.
So he did not find the directness strange at all.
"If I wanted to acquire the whole company," Bruce said, "would you sell?"
He already knew the odds were slim, but he asked anyway.
Larry looked him over quickly, then smiled.
"If you can put $400 million on the table, I'll say yes."
"Fine. No problem."
Larry froze.
He had been joking.
In the middle of a Nasdaq collapse, with tech stocks getting hammered everywhere, who in their right mind was going to offer $400 million for an internet company that had not even figured out a real revenue model yet?
"You're not joking?"
"Not even a little. I don't joke with four hundred million dollars."
Bruce truly was not joking.
At the moment, $400 million looked absurdly high compared to Google's operating value.
But compared to what Google would become?
It was laughably cheap.
Larry studied his face, realized he was serious, and shook his head.
"I'm sorry. Google isn't for sale."
The refusal was not surprising.
Even in the middle of the internet crash, Google's user growth was still strong. And with $25 million from Sequoia and Kleiner Perkins still keeping the company alive, Google was nowhere near the edge of collapse.
Bruce had never actually expected a full acquisition to work.
He had only started there because that was how negotiations were played.
"All right," he said. "Then let's talk about option two. Eighty million dollars for forty percent of Google."
Larry's expression tightened immediately, but Bruce kept going before he could respond.
"You know the market conditions as well as I do. Nasdaq is down roughly a third already, and it may fall further. Realistically, this downturn could drag on for another two or three years before the sector fully recovers. And it's been more than a year since Sequoia and Kleiner Perkins put in that $25 million. At the pace you've been growing, I doubt there's much of that left. If Google still doesn't have a reliable revenue model, then what you need most right now is more capital."
Bruce knew exactly where to press.
He had the Wells Fargo report in hand. He knew Google's operating condition in considerable detail, and he had spent more than half a month preparing for this meeting.
Every point he made landed exactly where the company was vulnerable.
As CEO, Larry knew better than anyone how things actually stood. Google had grown several times over in the past year, and it had burned through cash accordingly. Under normal market conditions, they would almost certainly have been thinking about a Series B round already.
But this was not a normal market.
After the Nasdaq crash, even aggressive investors had become skittish about internet companies, especially ones like Google that still had no clear monetization model.
After a long pause, Larry finally said, "I'm sorry. Forty percent is too much."
That answer made sense.
To raise the earlier $25 million, Google had already sold about twenty percent combined to Sequoia and Kleiner Perkins. If it gave up another forty percent now, and you also accounted for the five percent held by early co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim, then Larry and Sergey would be down to around thirty-five percent between them.
That would mean losing outright control.
Bruce leaned back slightly.
"What if I only ask for half the voting rights attached to that stake?"
Larry stared at him for a moment.
"Bruce... are you really that bullish on the future of the internet?"
"Absolutely." Bruce did not hesitate for even a second. "Stanford used to hammer one idea into us: that every Stanford student should be trying to change the world. And in my view, the internet is the single best tool for doing that."
The confidence in his face, and the unmistakable conviction in his eyes, seemed to pull Larry back for a second to his own days at Stanford.
But nostalgia was not what mattered here.
What mattered was the offer on the table.
And Larry was clearly thinking about it.