Guide Note

In 1999, Bonnie Brown took a job as Google's in-house part-time masseuse. The job paid $450 a week plus stock options. Five years later, Brown left the job and cashed in most of those options. The stock had doubled in value and Brown received a multi-million dollar fortune. Her remaining shares have continued to balloon in value, making her even more money.

Fast Facts

1. Started a private charitable foundation with her Google wealth
2. Wrote a book entitled Giigle: How I Got Lucky Massaging Google
3. Brown lives in a 3,000-square-foot house in Nevada
4. An estimated 1,000 Google employees have earned over $5 million each through stock options
5. Google stock has increased 900% since startup

1. "I had been a little bit involved in the stock market and knew the possibilities of a start up late in the nineties. So they incorporated options into my package. I was an independent contractor. I was never an employee of Google and that arrangement was kind of unheard of for a contractor."
2. "Recently I was in Ethiopia and Egypt and I was actually with a friend looking for the Ark of the Covenant and, in the process of that, which was so much fun, we visited an orphanage and were able to do some neat work there. A couple of people that I was with had adopted children from there. I just sporadically and spontaneously go around doing that kind of thing."