However, for Sameer Samat, all it took was one cold email.
“’What would you do in this situation? I’m sure you had this wrestle with this grad school decision,’” he recalled writing to Brin in 1999.
A minute later, Brin responded and invited Samat and his team to Google headquarters. But instead of sitting them down together, he conducted 1-1 interviews on the spot—and Samat landed a job offer.
While Samat ultimately declined the role—electing to stay with his machine learning startup Mohomine—Brin connected him with others in the industry, including investors. Years later, he joined the tech giant in 2008 as a product management director, eventually rising to president of Android in 2024. But he couldn’t have done it without that early foot in the door from Brin.
“He didn’t have to do any of that,” Samat said. “And so I try to pay that forward, too, when people call me up with something similar.”
Fortune reached out to Google for comment.
“There is no substitute for taking a pretty good plan and just running like hell,” Samat said to BI. “And sometimes the naiveness of someone who doesn’t have that background makes a much better entrepreneur.”
