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We recently got a plug on the Google Blogoscoped blog.  An early comment on this blog compares LinkSViewer to theyrule.net, which doesn’t have Google listed, only incorporates board relationships, and takes forever to load.  Don’t get me wrong, theyrule.net is a cool site with many nice features, but I consider it more of a political advocacy site versus our relational capital site geared toward the Silicon Valley investment community. 

I use this post to showcase some interesting Google People Network Maps and highlight practical applications of the maps.  This first is the People Relational Map of Google with pendants dropped (both current and former board and management teams included) - this is the map referenced on Blogoscoped:

The above map shows some interesting public company current and former ties: (1) Al Gore, Arthur Levinson, and Eric Schmidt all have board ties to Apple; and (2) George Reyes and Udi Manber are now at Google from Sun and Yahoo, respectively.  Also note the private company ties: (1) VC ties from John Doerr (Kleiner Perkins), Ram Shriram (Sherpalo), and Michael Moritz (Sequoia) to eLance, Zazzle, and Plaxo; (2) Management Team ties from Eric Schmidt and Vinton Cerf to Volunteer Match; and (3) Management Team/VC ties from Sukhinder Singh Cassidy and Shriram to Business Signatures.  Here we see Google’s past and present connections to successful public companies and their ties to private emerging companies.   The next map examines the common ties of the VCs in the above map: Michael Moritz, John Doerr, and Ram Shriram (Numbers 1, 2, and 4 on the 2007 Forbes Midas List, respectively). 

This map illustrates the connections of the connectors. It indicates who has common ties with Google VC board members, two degrees away.  These people are indirectly connected to Google (with the exception of Singh Cassidy).  New board members (current companies) now appearing on the map are Bill Campbell, Bruce Dunlevie, Tim Koogle, Lawrence Lenihan, and Randy Korba.  New companies (person ties) appearing on the map are Intuit (Doerr-Campbell), Good Technology (Doerr-Campbell-Dunlevie), Palm (Doerr-Dunlevie), Friendster (Koogle-Doerr), Saba (Moritz-Lenihan), and PayPal (Moritz-Korda).  Here we see how Google may bolster their board, form strategic partner alliances, or investigate natural acquisitions - based on common ties of their board members.   

For further information and more practical applications of Google Network Maps, check out the below Google-related posts on the CapitalBLOG site. 

Midas List 1-20 Network Analysis 

JotSpot hits the spot for Google

Google Acquires YouTube – Leveraging Relational Capital

Apple and Google - Network Clusters and Interlocks

IPO Speculation using LinkSViewer: Does Success Breed Success?

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 15th, 2007 at 1:59 pm and is filed under Company Analysis, Board Member Analysis, Management Team. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.