Foundry is a premium business intelligence publication featuring 551 articles from the best founders and investors. Topics cover leadership, strategy, fundraising, growth, AI, and more.

What topics does Foundry cover?

Foundry covers leadership, investing, AI and technology, product development, founder stories, mindset and career, marketing, hiring, fundraising, strategy, and more. Articles feature insights from founders like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Sam Altman, and Jensen Huang.

Can I submit a story to Foundry?

Yes. You can submit a story at thefoundrybrief.com/submit. Foundry publishes articles featuring insights from founders and investors across all industries.

How Two Google Engineers Built 'Did You Mean?' in Their Spare Time

Google's spell-check feature was a side project. It changed how a billion people search.

Key Points

Paul Buchheit and Noam Shazeer built Google's 'Did you mean?' feature as a side project
They used Google's own search data to figure out what people actually meant to type
The feature shipped fast because they didn't ask permission

We just used the data we already had. People were already telling us what they meant to type.

The Side Project That Changed Search Forever

You've used it a thousand times. You misspell a word in Google. A little link appears: 'Did you mean?' You click it. Magic.

That magic was built by two guys in their spare time. Paul Buchheit and Noam Shazeer. No committee approved it. No roadmap included it.

A billion-user feature. Built as a side project. No approval needed.

The Data Was Already There

The genius wasn't in the code. It was in the insight. People who misspell a word often search again with the correct spelling right after.

Google already had that data. Millions of people correcting themselves every day. Buchheit and Shazeer just turned those corrections into suggestions.

Users were already fixing their own typos. Google just started paying attention.

Why Side Projects Win

This feature didn't come from a product roadmap meeting. It came from two engineers who noticed a pattern and couldn't stop thinking about it.

That's how the best features get built. Not by assignment. By obsession. Someone sees a problem and can't sleep until they fix it.

The best features aren't assigned. They're built by people who can't sleep.

Ship First, Ask Permission Never

Early Google had a culture that made this possible. Engineers could build things and ship them. No six-month review cycle. No steering committee.

Buchheit and Shazeer built it, tested it, and pushed it live. The results spoke for themselves. Sometimes the best process is no process.

They built it and shipped it. No committee. No review cycle. No permission.

Noam Shazeer Went On to Build Transformers

Here's the kicker. Noam Shazeer, the coauthor of this little side project, went on to coinvent the Transformer architecture. The foundation of ChatGPT, Gemini, and every modern AI.

The person who helped you fix typos in 2001 helped build the AI revolution twenty years later. That's what happens when you let wild engineers build.

The guy who built 'Did you mean?' went on to coinvent the Transformer. Let engineers build.