{"id":49995,"date":"2024-12-02T12:29:15","date_gmt":"2024-12-02T06:59:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/officechai.com\/?p=49995"},"modified":"2024-12-06T09:02:30","modified_gmt":"2024-12-06T03:32:30","slug":"i-cringe-when-i-see-a-beautiful-startup-office-former-google-ceo-eric-schmidt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/officechai.com\/learn\/i-cringe-when-i-see-a-beautiful-startup-office-former-google-ceo-eric-schmidt\/","title":{"rendered":"I Cringe When I See A Beautiful Startup Office: Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Startups these days can have very swanky offices that can hold their own against offices of top multinationals, but they make Eric Schmidt very uncomfortable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt says that seeing a beautiful startup office makes him cringe. &#8220;I can always tell when we&#8217;re dealing with a proper founder (based on) how are they spending their money. And so whenever I go into a startup that has beautiful offices and really nice chairs, I cringe because that means that they haven&#8217;t quite figured out that it&#8217;s not their money. Unless it is their money, in which case they can waste it on that,&#8221; he <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=cTui1vkow3M\">said<\/a> in an interview.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/officechai.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/Ex-Google-CEO-Eric-Schmidt.png?resize=640%2C480\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-49565\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/officechai.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/Ex-Google-CEO-Eric-Schmidt.png?w=1000&amp;ssl=1 1000w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/officechai.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/Ex-Google-CEO-Eric-Schmidt.png?resize=300%2C225&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/officechai.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/Ex-Google-CEO-Eric-Schmidt.png?resize=768%2C576&amp;ssl=1 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Schmidt then recalled the early days of Google when the company didn&#8217;t have anything resembling a swanky office. &#8220;When I joined Google, I was given an office and I had a little corner of a desk with four other engineers. Eventually I was given an 8 by 12 office where my desk was literally a door. I&#8217;ve retained (that door) to try to remind myself of what it takes to be successful. So my office today has that door in it,&#8221; he explained.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;The great founders are frugal,&#8221; Schmidt continued. &#8220;They understand that the money needs to be used precisely for certain areas. Many of the most successful founders begin with no salary at all. I have lots of stories about (Google founders) Larry and Sergey, but let&#8217;s just say that when I started, one of them was having trouble with his car, so I had to loan him my car because he broke down,&#8221; Schmidt recalled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s the kind of stuff we&#8217;re talking about. So if you&#8217;re not prepared to live that, you don&#8217;t really understand what being a founder is like,&#8221; he explained.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Schmidt&#8217;s comments will ring particularly true for India, where during the ZIRP period of the mid 2010s, brand-new startups were building offices that looked like they belonged to a Google or a Facebook with stunning decor, game rooms, and large-screen TV displays. Many of these startups never found product-market fit, and ended up <a href=\"https:\/\/officechai.com\/stories\/nowfloats-acquires-lookup\/\">shutting shop<\/a> before these offices were ever properly used. These companies drew inspiration from multinationals like <a href=\"https:\/\/officechai.com\/offices\/google-hyderabad-office-hitech-city\/\">Google <\/a>and <a href=\"https:\/\/officechai.com\/offices\/facebook-offices-art\/\">Facebook<\/a>, which had similar offices in India and elsewhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But Google and Facebook hadn&#8217;t started off with such offices. Google had started off in a garage, while Facebook had started off in a dorm room. Both companies managed to find a business model that made tons of money, and then moved into suitably swanky offices for their cutting-edge workforce. And like Eric Schmidt says, for a startup with no product-market fit and no revenue to build a beautiful office might be putting the cart before the horse.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Startups these days can have very swanky offices that can hold their own against offices of top multinationals, but they make Eric Schmidt&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":49565,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-49995","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-learn"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v25.5 - 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