Interview with Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Circa 1999

Here is a great artifact: an interview with Google’s founders from 1999 by Ubergizmo writer Karsten Lemm. (Thanks to ValleyWag for first pointing readers to the piece.)

It’s really fascinating to look back. One of the first things to jump out at me is 1999 Brin saying that, “Everybody who we talked to wanted to invest. No exceptions. Now, we get probably 5 to 10 e-mails every day [from potential investors]. We collect their names. We’ll have to decide [at some point] what we want to do.”

Popular Valley lore gives Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia Capital a lot of credit for funding these guys when no one else wanted to. But apparently, that’s not exactly accurate.

Lemm also asked the cofounders, “Where do you see yourselves in, say, five years?” Lemm probably thought Brin’s answer was a little ostentatious at the time. He said, “That’s a long way down the sea…We think this does have a potential to really change things forever.