Sergey Brin founder and president, Google

Careers and Colleges, Jan-Feb, 2002

As a student at Stanford University, Sergey Brin and a friend founded the search engine Google. The name is a play on "googol," the number represented by 1 and a hundred zeros--a reference to the huge amount of data available online. Today the company conducts more than 1,800 searches per second.

EDUCATION: BS, University of Maryland, College Park

STARTING OUT: "My parents got me a Commodore 64 computer when' I was nine years old."

FIRST JOB: President, Google, Inc.

OBSTACLES: "Finding the right partner to work with. Eventuary I found the right one--my partner Larry.

TIPS FOR TEENS: "Don't be afraid of failure. The more you stumble around, the more likely you are to stumble across some thing valuable. And go into computer science only if you love it, not for the money."