In writing this book, we have been entrusted with an important legacy, and for that we have to first and foremost thank Bill’s widow, Eileen Bocci, and his children, Jim Campbell and Maggie Campbell. It was an honor and a pleasure to be given this tremendous opportunity.
We spoke with more than eighty people whose lives have been touched by Bill. All of them are busy, accomplished people. All of them gave us their time freely, and every one of them concluded our conversation with an offer to help in any way they could with the creation of this book. Thank you, all of you:
David Agus
Shellye Archambeau
Kristina Homer Armstrong
Clay Bavor
Chase Beeler
Deborah Biondolillo
Lee Black
Laszlo Bock
Lee C. Bollinger
Todd Bradley
Sergey Brin
Shona Brown
Eve Burton
Al Butts
Derek Butts
Bruce Chizen
Jared Cohen
Scott Cook
Dick Costolo
Eddy Cue
John Doerr
John Donahoe
Mickey Drexler
David Drummond
Donna Dubinsky
Joe Ducar
Brad Ehikian
Alan Eustace
Bruno Fortozo
Pat Gallagher
Dean Gilbert
Alan Gleicher
Al Gore
Diane Greene
Bill Gurley
John Hennessy
Ben Horowitz
Bradley Horowitz
Mark Human
Chad Hurley
Jim Husson
Bob Iger
Eric Johnson
Andrea Jung
Salar Kamangar
Vinod Khosla
Dave Kinser
Omid Kordestani
Scotty Kramer
Adam Lashinsky
Ronnie Lott
Marissa Mayer
Marc Mazur
Mike McCue
Mary Meeker
Shishir Mehrotra
Emil Michael
Michael Moe
Larry Page
Sundar Pichai
Patrick Pichette
Peter Pilling
Ruth Porat
Jeff Reynolds
Jesse Rogers
Dan Rosensweig
Wayne Rosing
Jim Rudgers
Sheryl Sandberg
Philip Schiller
Philipp Schindler
Chadé Severin
Danny Shader
Ram Shriram
Brad Smith
Esta Stecher
Dr. Ron Sugar
Stacy Sullivan
Nirav Tolia
Rachel Whetstone
Susan Wojcicki
Like any important project, this was a team effort, and ours has been fantastic. Lauren LeBeouf kept us organized and managed all of those interviews, but more important, proved to be an astute and sensitive editor. She made this book much better.
Marina Krakovsky helped us connect Bill’s principles with academic research, showing that he was truly ahead of his time in the business management world. She is always creative and insightful, and a heck of an editor to boot. It was a great pleasure to work with you again, Marina!
Jim Levine is our constant agent, cheerleader, and coach, and guided us to the best title after much debate. Hollis Heimbouch pushed us in the right direction, edited us into elegance, and gently helped these sometimes clueless West Coast techies understand the world of publishing. Thank you both for your unflagging support and help!
Melissa Carson Thomas keeps our facts straight. She has an incredible eye for detail and a knack and passion for getting to the truth. Thank you for that, Melissa.
Marc Ellenbogen, Corey duBrowa, Winnie King, and Tom Oliveri are Google colleagues and friends who helped us navigate the ins and outs of big company legal and PR stuff while keeping the heart and soul of our tale intact.
Karen May oversees leadership training at Google and worked closely with Bill to help him teach his principles to Googlers. She helped us launch this project and provided several insightful additions to the manuscript.
Guy Kawasaki has written more than a dozen very successful books. He took the time to read ours and give us some very pointed, spot-on feedback! (“Do you guys really think this is almost finished?”)
Adam Grant not only agreed to our request to write our foreword, but he supplied many interesting academic references, entertained us with a lengthy email tangent on sports teams, and provided a fantastic Charles Darwin quote.
Jennifer Aaker gave us plenty of feedback on narrative and storytelling, which she teaches at Stanford’s business school, but failed to make our book as funny as her family’s travelogues.
Emmett Kim, Cindy Mai, and Andy Berndt got us rolling with some cover design concepts. Then Rodrigo Corral and Anna Kassoway took us the rest of the way, bringing a sometimes messy (and contentious) process to a beautiful conclusion. Thank you all for your patience and insane creativity.
Miles Johnson somehow parlayed his day job as a Google brand strategist into a decidedly less glamorous gig overseeing the creation of our website. It looks great, Miles!
Mindy Matthews is a brilliant copyeditor, keeper of tenses, slayer of extraneous, commas. The only sentences in this book that she didn’t scrutinize with a picky eye for detail are these two.
Josh Rosenberg provided the most detailed edits of anyone who doesn’t have the word editor in his job description. Although he’s still mad we left the Warriors off the list of the all-time greatest sports dynasties. Hannah Rosenberg and Beryl Grace critiqued the work at every step and help remind Jonathan of Bill by regularly asking at the dinner table, “What would Bill do?”
Joanne Eagle was occasionally Alan and Jonathan’s substitute English teacher in high school and apparently still feels like she has to mark up our papers. Thank you, Mom!
Mark Fallon is our Homestead connection, giving us invaluable info about Bill’s hometown and an amazing portrait of Bill that hangs in Jonathan’s office. It is literally infused with sand from Google’s volleyball court.
Debbie Brookfield is Bill’s longtime assistant who always greeted us so warmly when we trekked to Bill’s office. She was the glue that held Bill’s professional life together.
Ken Auletta talked several times with Bill about writing a book about him and gave us some great feedback on the manuscript. We’re honored by his help.
Glenn Yeffeth, a good friend, is the successful publisher of BenBellaBooks and helped educate us with an insider’s perspective on the publishing industry.
Josh and Jason Malkofsky-Berger take pride in being card-carrying members of the Jonathan fan club and choose to read and critique almost everything he writes.
Don Hutchison asks for early opportunities to read everything, so he can be the first to produce an excellent and highly ranked book review. Hurry up, Don!
Prem Ramaswami, our longtime collaborator at Google, always gives us great input and then incorporates only the best points in his college lectures.
Susan Feigenbaum taught Jonathan everything he knows about statistics in college, but also always gave him excellent insights on storytelling and narrative as well.
Matt Pyken—a real Hollywood writer!—suggested ways to add flair and keep our readers’ eyes glued to every page.
Jeff Huang teaches philosophy and focuses on ethics and moral issues. He encouraged us to write a book about Bill so he could teach those principles in the classroom.
James Isaacs, Jonathan’s former boss at Apple, is a lifelong learner himself and constantly pushes us to do better.
Dave Deeds, a professor of entrepreneurship, helped us steer the manuscript to be accessible to all the founders and leaders of small companies, who spawn the majority of economic growth.
Eric Braverman, Cassie Crockett, and Dennis Woodside all took the time out of their busy schedules to read the manuscript and give us their thoughts. And Eric’s and Cassie’s “conceptual questions” still have us thinking.
Zach Gleicher is a Google product manager whom we met through Bill. Bill promised us that Zach would do a terrific job at Google. Bill never broke a promise!