[dwightgunning]

On the contrary, I thought this was a strange and irrelevant fact to include in the article. There's no indication that his role at Google had any bearing on the success of the business.

Perhaps if he'd worked on Google Music (or other music related area of the business) or the referenced exposure to "top brass" opened some doors... but it seems unlikely this is the case.

There's certainly correlation between Google employees and successful initiatives... but not much beyond that.

[edoceo]

After working at BigCo and saving steady pay while nurturing your startup at night for a few years. You have a visibility to traction. And a cushion against failure. So you can take the "risk". It's easy to take a "risk" when it's not really there.

It's not like this founder started with $100 and made an ongoing business employing a few others.

Started on second, scored on as RBI and media talks about your Grand Slam.

[nickpsecurity]

That's actually a really good point if it's what he did. The common approach to employment is placing it safe using one job's revenue to get to higher-paying one. Or even savings. Many startups or bootstrappers go all in with different incentives and cost structure. Plus time available.

So, it's worth learning things like that in these stories in tracing the bigger picture of how the success story played out with what ingredients that might work next time.