Alphabet Inc (GOOG): Walking away from Google riches By John...

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Saturday, 02/04/2006 3:30:29 PM

Saturday, February 04, 2006 3:30:29 PM

Walking away from Google riches
By John Boudreau, Knight Ridder Newspapers
MercuryNews.com, Posted on Fri, Feb. 03, 2006

To Alberto Savoia, peace of mind is worth tens of millions of dollars.

That's the kind of money he willingly walked away from when he left Google in summer 2002 to co-found Agitar. He had early stock options in Google, but left the company about two years before it went public in a stock offering that made many employees of the Mountain View search giant instantly wealthy.

At the time of his departure, Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt tried to get Savoia, the engineering executive in charge of the ads group, to stay. Schmidt told him he was turning his back on a company that one day would be worth $100 billion, Savoia said. Today, Google's market capitalization is about $112 billion.

``It was a great risk,'' Savoia admitted. ``In Italy, we have a saying: Fate helps the fools and the brave.''

He and co-founder Roongko Doong hope to revolutionize how developers weed out software bugs and security holes. The company, which is also in Mountain View, has received three funding rounds from venture capitalists such as Sequoia Capital and New Enterprise Associates. It has also garnered numerous awards for its technology.

``Google's a great company,'' Savoia said. ``But my passion is not selling ads on the Net. We are tackling a problem that is just as complicated as organizing information.''

Allessandra Savoia, his wife, supported his decision. ``He's just an entrepreneur at heart,'' she said.

It's not that the couple, who have two children, can ignore Google's rippling wealth effect; they have a good friend who is experiencing Google's stock bounty. ``We are constantly faced with it,'' Allessandra Savoia said.

``It's one of those moments in life that you have to think about philosophically,'' she said. ``I've never had any regrets. I think it's a good lesson for the kids. It's important in life to be happy. If you are happy, everything else will follow.''

Agitar is creating software testing technology that aims to lower development costs by automating the manual test process of finding bugs and security holes in Java code, the world's most popular programming language. The idea is to catch problems early on, before the code is passed on to the quality assurance team. Bugs and security problems cost corporations billions of dollars a year in lost productivity, glitches businesses experience and the work needed to fix them.

``Most software fails,'' said Agitar Chief Executive Jerry Rudisin.

Savoia is betting that technology that reduces those expenses has the potential to launch Agitar as a significant player in its market. About 100 companies are using Agitar's technology, including Cisco, Fujitsu and Honeywell.

``Our goal is to become the Google in our space,'' Rudisin said.

Gartner analyst Theresa Lanowitz is impressed with the company's technology and swagger. ``I always like it when a start-up company has a bit of bravado,'' she said. ``It means they aren't sitting there waiting for someone to acquire them. It means their sales people are being aggressive and they have good energy.''

Agitar, which competes with companies such as Monrovia-based Parasoft and Compuware in Detroit, has a good start, Lanowitz said.

``Their technology is good,'' she sad. ``The other companies have good technology, as well. You can't enter into this market and have technology that doesn't work. Developers are very discerning people.''

Agitar's business is a bit like volunteering to tackle the toughest equation in math class; the idea is that few others will be able to compete, Doong said.

``Google took on a tough problem,'' said the co-founder, who passed on an opportunity to join the search engine in 2002. ``We are trying to do the same. From a business model, it creates a lot of opportunities. We know the market is there.''
Savoia said he has tried to borrow from Google's culture, including a grueling hiring process and free lunches to cultivate an esprit de corps among his 55 employees, including 30 in Mountain View.

At the company headquarters, workers sit at tables made from doors. The company's developers stitch code side by side.
Savoia said he was attracted to the decidedly unimpressive office because it reminded him of Google's corporate digs when he joined the company in late 2001.

``It was a dump. I thought, I don't know if I want to work here,'' he recalled.

But when he spotted the nondescript Mountain View office that would become Agitar's world headquarters, ``We said, `This is the place.' ''

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/breaking_news/13788448.htm

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