When will we hear something new about Greplin besides this same old story...

In the last month or two we've open sourced a bunch of useful projects and tools (http://github.com/Greplin), released a cool chrome extension that is constantly getting new features (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/bjclhonkhgkidmlkgh...), added support for a lot of new services (including Salesforce.com, Yammer, Highrise, and Basecamp), added many advanced search operators (http://help.greplin.com/customer/portal/articles/15527-how-c...), and massively improved search quality.

And that's all this while we're in the middle of a major architectural shift and hiring/interviewing like crazy (check out https://www.greplin.com/jobs! We're still hiring across the board).

The best part is that this is all nothing compared to the changes you're going to see in the coming months :-D

How is Mark an outlier relatively to the sentence you have quoted? He started from 0 and had nothing to show besides the flip flops on his feet and his skills.

The two arguable factors are luck and outside capital. Are you sure luck played such a great factor in his case ? and was his decision to take outside funding at that stage unnecessary?

He was raised in Westchester County and went to Philips Exeter, then Harvard.

Many others have as well, and have not done what he did. But that still doesn't qualify as "starting from zero" or "nothing to show."

How many people do you know who started off at an age of 19-20 and were a tech celebrity in 2-3 years? Well I do not know of many hence they are and will be an outlier for me.

A lot of things including luck and timing beside the usual clicked for both Mark and Bill and hence they are where they are today!