Learning CEO lessons on the job
"I always thought, 'Man, [this] is awesome to be this close to it. But it would be even more awesome to be on the other side of the table,'" Walker says. Later that year, Walker jumped right back into the fray by launching GrandCentral Communications, a startup whose software allowed users to make phone calls and manage their voicemail messages over the web. In 2007, that company, also for an undisclosed amount. This time, Walker stayed on at Google for nearly four years, leading the transition of his former business into the Google Voice platform.
"I was getting out of bed and [it was] the first time since I graduated from law school that I was kind of dreading going to work," he says.