Leaving My Google Dream Job To Pursue a Mission
“Mr. Fong, we’ll need your badge back.”
With that, it was over. I stood at the entrance of Google, giving back the badge I wore for 8.5 years. Today marks the start of an uncomfortably exciting new chapter as I became a Xoogler (ex-Googler).
I remain just as passionate about Google’s mission as I did on my first day in 2006, and will be supporting the inspiring work of ex-coworkers through the launch of the Xooglerpreneurs community. Xooglerpreneurs was made possible by Googlers’ and Xooglers’ passion to help Xoogler startups grow. If you are a Xoogler or Googler and may be interested in contributing or receiving help — whether through product support, mentoring sessions, or seed funding — please consider joining us! We already have 50+ Xooglers and Googlers with a variety of experiences involved.
Along with working with Googlers and Xooglers to form this community, there is a new mission that I am pursuing via a startup. The job I just left was my dream job — working with venture capitalists and entrepreneurs like Mike Lee and Albert Lee and their teams at MyFitnessPal, and Allen Lau and Ivan Yuen and their teams from Wattpad — across all of Google’s products. Similar to Google’s founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, meeting such inspiring founders who were passionate about a mission and built great products used by millions of users has given me the understanding and tenacity that focusing on the long term is what’s needed to build a successful startup.
My co-founder and I hope to build a company that makes a positive difference in people’s lives — just like Mike and Albert Lee, Allen Lau and Ivan Yuen and Larry Page and Sergey Brin — that can only come in time if we get the basics right. That is, focusing on the user and the mission we’re aspiring towards.
There’s never a good time to leave Google, especially after 8.5 years. But I’ve always been motivated with starting something from nothing. In college, recognizing how costly new textbooks are for many students, I created an online exchange that enabled students to trade their second-hand textbooks directly with each other, an effort which later evolved into a classifieds portal. The mission I’m embarking on will provide a new challenge to tackle, and with any luck I’ll spend the next 8.5 years trying to solve this worthwhile problem.
Please let me know here if you want to hear more about my startup’s mission and see how you might want to be involved.
