DAVID CHERITON – The Math Teacher Who Introduced the World to Google

August 1998. In a small house in Palo Alto, a group of engineers and entrepreneurs gathered. Two Stanford graduate students, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, dreamed of changing the internet. They spoke about their project — a revolutionary search engine that would organize online information with a new logic.

At the table sat today’s birthday celebrant, David Cheriton, a professor of mathematics and computer science at Stanford University. He listened carefully. Then, he invested $100,000 in their startup.

That check was Google’s first-ever investment. Later, it brought Cheriton a fortune of over $1 billion, but the professor remained true to his principles — modesty, science, and teaching. We take a closer look in today’s Strifor Review.From Programmer to Investor

David Cheriton was born on March 29, 1951, in Vancouver, Canada. From a young age, he was passionate about mathematics and programming, but a programmer’s career did not attract him — he was more interested in education.

After earning his PhD from the University of Waterloo, he moved to California and began teaching at Stanford. In the mid-1980s, he founded Granite Systems, a company developing high-speed networking technologies. In 1996, Cisco acquired it for $220 million, and Cheriton encountered significant capital for the first time.

But money did not interest him. He did not buy expensive cars, did not move into a mansion, and continued cycling to the university. Nevertheless, he had a keen eye for technological breakthroughs — and became an angel investor.

Why Did Cheriton Believe in Google?

In the late 1990s, internet search was chaotic. AltaVista, Yahoo, Lycos — all these services searched for information, but inefficiently and inconveniently. When Larry Page and Sergey Brin presented their PageRank algorithm, Cheriton immediately understood: this was the future. He saw not just a search engine but a system that would make the internet organized and useful.

Cheriton didn’t just provide funding. He introduced Page and Brin to Andy Bechtolsheim, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, who immediately wrote a $100,000 check. These investments helped create Google’s first infrastructure.

A Modest Billionaire Who Doesn’t Love Money

When Google went public in 2004, Cheriton’s investment turned into $1.3 billion. But he did not change his lifestyle.

• He still drove a Honda Accord, avoided luxury, and lived in an ordinary house.
• He disliked publicity and refused interviews.
• Rather than investing in yachts or sports cars, he supported new technologies and donated to education.

Cheriton continued teaching at Stanford and investing in promising startups such as VMware, Arista Networks, and Apstra. And you, too, can trade CFDs on the shares of the world’s largest companies under competitive conditions with Strifor broker!

Conclusion

The story of a professor who became a billionaire proves: it’s not just about making money, but about seeing potential where others don’t. He didn’t create Google, didn’t write code, and didn’t develop algorithms. But he believed in an idea, recognized its prospects, and helped bring it to life.

Today, David Cheriton is one of the wealthiest professors in the world, but his greatest legacy is not his fortune — it’s the projects that changed the internet.

The success stories of great investors do not provide a ready-made roadmap to financial well-being, but they enrich investment thinking and psychology — two of the key elements of a successful trader. If David Cheriton’s story has inspired you, register an account and make trades under competitive conditions with Strifor broker.

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