Big Dreams: From Google to Monster

Dreams have no meaning? Don’t tell that to Larry Page. Or Jeff Taylor.

Page recently said that a dream sparked the idea that became the world’s largest search engine. This is how the Google co-founder explained it in his commencement address at the University of Michigan:

You know what it's like to wake up in the middle of the night with a vivid dream? And you know how, if you don't have a pencil and pad by the bed to write it down, it will be completely gone the next morning? Well, I had one of those dreams when I was 23. When I suddenly woke up, I was thinking: what if we could download the whole web, and just keep the links and...I grabbed a pen and started writing! Sometimes it is important to wake up and stop dreaming.

His conclusion? “When a really great dream shows up, grab it!”



Page’s story sounds a lot like Taylor’s. The Monster.com founder recently told Roger Ziegler about his dream:

I woke up from the dream and sketched out the entire idea. The idea for a happy monster logo and the concept of ‘big, not scary,’ the design of the buyer-seller marketplace which is still in place to this day and a really important patent, all came out of that dream.

Ziegler added that Taylor keeps a dream journal next to his bed. This allows him to write ideas down when he wakes up.

How about you? Do you write down “big ideas” that you get from your dreams?

Read more about interpreting dreams on the Sleep Education Blog. Learn more about dreams and nightmares on SleepEducation.com.