Susan Wojcicki completed her MBA in 1998. Thereafter she bought a house in Menlo Park, California for $6,00,000. To help pay her mortgage, she rented out her garage to Sergey Brin and Larry Page, who were developing their new search engine- Google.
She found the concept really compelling and joined Google as the 16th employee. She was its first marketing manager. One of her early projects was to liven up the Google logo for holidays and special events.
In 2003, she suggested Google’s ad offering not only be available within search but also on websites across the internet and AdSense was born. It drastically increased Google’s advertising potential.
Today more than 35 million websites use AdSense. Google’s total ad revenue in 2020 was over $146 Billion.
Susan saw how user-generated videos could spark emotions after launching Google video, a free video sharing website. She would also notice her kids’ reactions to videos. But the user generated content wasn’t immediately available on Google Video and by the time the design flaw was fixed, YouTube acquired a significant chunk of market share but had no resources to keep up with the demand.
She saw an opportunity to combine the two services. She worked up some spreadsheets to justify the $1.65 billion purchase price and convinced the founders. In 2006, despite board members finding the growth figured ambitious, she got Google the green light to purchase YouTube.
In 2010, she was promoted to one of the eight Senior Vice Presidents of Google and by 2014, she became the CEO of YouTube. Under her leadership, YouTube has grown to over 2 billion monthly logged-in users, with people watching over a billion hours of videos, generating billions of views everyday.
With her hard work, determination and passion, Susan became the CEO of YouTube from an ordinary garage owner. She is an inspiration for all females to follow their dreams and achieve their goals.