Google’s idea man. Craig Walker, the crafty upstart behind Google Voice, will be named Google Venture’s first “entrepreneur-in-residence,” The New York Times reports.
Google bought Walker’s call routing service, GrandCentral, for a reported $45 million in 2007 and turned it into what is now Google Voice.
Essentially, as the Times writes, Walker will now be “paid to sit around and think about new ideas, and investors get the chance to join an entrepreneur early in a new project, betting that lightning will strike twice.”
What’s more, he’ll have the ability to bounce ideas off Google’s experts in usability testing, back-end engineering, marketing and a host of other areas.
Photo by The New York Times.