Very interesting. There is a very good interview with Chad about the wild ride: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l56Hw5H-DEI He talks quite a bit about their situation then.

Not many startups go from 0$ to 1.65B$ in 22 months.

Jason did not mention that Google itself was not a real business for a very long time. Are there good writeups of how Google managed to crack the biggest jackpot in business history with AdSense? Sure this experience taught them the lesson which they applied here. In poker terms it's like a draw to the nuts.