Why Ex-Employees Are Glad They Sold Google

Written by Francine Kizner of Entrepreneur.com

Free gourmet meals, on-site medical care, laundry facilities in the office and a cool company culture complete with lava lamps, pets and ping pong tables, have made Google (GOOG Quote) an attractive employer.

But as it's grown from a small, entrepreneurial operation to a corporate entity, buying out smaller tech companies and expanding around the globe, some of its more independent-minded employees have struck out on their own.

Approximately Google's 300th employee, Dan Daugherty started in the Mountain View, Calif., Googleplex in 2002 working on AdWords, but soon left for Colorado, where he launched the Denver sales and operations office. He spent three years there working with Fortune 500 accounts and started investing in real estate on the side.

While trying to rent out his properties, he found he had to list them on many different sites to get the number of leads he wanted. Daugherty, 28, partnered with Dariusz Rakowicz and Lisa Ray, and developed his solution to the dilemma for about six months before leaving Google in November 2005. They launched Rent Marketer to the public in 2006, bankrolled by a portion of Daugherty's Google stock.

Cashing Out

It's estimated that Google's August 2004 IPO created at least 900 instant millionaires of the company's 2,300 employees. And with the IPO price at $85 -- a bargain, since at press time a share is about $700 -- many other stockholders pursued their own ventures.