There isn’t much that is more difficult than landing a job at Google. With an acceptance rate close to 0.2% according to CNBC, you’d have far better luck applying to Harvard or Yale.
However, for Sameer Samat, all it took was one cold email.
During the dot-com boom, the then 20-something-year-old was trying to navigate the tech startup world. But with his cofounders contemplating jumping ship for graduate school, he needed advice on how to convince them to stay. So, he boldly sent Google cofounder Sergey Brin a 3 a.m. email seeking guidance.
“A couple of them were on to go to grad school, and we had a big fight about it,” Samat said to Business Insider. “I said, ‘I don’t understand how you can want to go to grad school; we’re building this company.’”
“’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.
Weighing going to college or becoming a tech entrepreneur
The decision whether to go to graduate school is a tough decision many young adults face, especially in today’s education world where AI is reshaping what students need to learn. Samat said the decision comes down to what’s better for someone personally, but sometimes, knowing less about formal strategy—and instead following your gut—can lead to greater success.
“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.”
His boss, Google CEO Sundar Pichai—who Samat called a “work big brother”—has similar feelings on navigating one’s career path.
“I think it’s tough to find things you love doing, but I think listening to your heart a bit more than your mind [helps] in terms of figuring out what you want to do,” Pichai said on the Lex Fridman podcast last month.
Nevertheless, Pichai’s education resume includes a master’s degree in material science and engineering, as well as, an MBA from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.
While the price of higher education is high—and some are questioning its value—there’s no question that it is one of the ultimate destinations for networking. After all, Google’s founders first met when Brin, then a graduate student at Stanford, was assigned to show prospective student Larry Page around campus. The rest is a $2 trillion history.
