Where did Google's first significant investment come from? What is special about this investment story?

This is quite an interesting story, a classic in the history of Silicon Valley.

Google's first truly significant funding came from Andy Bechtolsheim, one of the co-founders of Sun Microsystems, who was already a prominent figure in Silicon Valley at the time.

What makes this investment story particularly special is its "unconventional" nature.

At that time, Larry Page and Sergey Brin were still PhD students at Stanford University. They only had a search engine prototype and hadn't even formally registered a company. They were introduced to Andy by a professor and demonstrated their technology on the professor's porch.

Andy only watched the demo for a few minutes but immediately grasped the immense potential of their creation. It's said that he was rushing to his next meeting and simply declared, "Instead of discussing the details here, why don't I just write you a check?"

And he truly did, writing a check for $100,000, made out to "Google, Inc."

Here comes the most dramatic part: "Google, Inc." didn't even exist yet! Page and Brin hadn't had time to register the company. So, they held this huge check but couldn't deposit it into a bank. The check sat in their drawer for several weeks until they hastily completed the legal procedures to register the company, finally allowing them to cash it.

This story perfectly embodies the Silicon Valley investment style: brilliant technology, a visionary investor, and an immediate meeting of minds, where conventional processes like business plans or company entities can be set aside for the moment. A brief demonstration on a porch secured the initial capital for their startup.