The problem is, if this employee is the perfect person to create this business, why are they working at Google and not on their own starting this venture already?
Why waste time letting one of your clearly risk averse in-house employees (hence why they work at Google in the first place), fumble around for 5-10 years trying to build something? While your competitors might be doing the same thing and will actually succeed? And while the rest of your employees start complaining, "why can't we also play startup for 5-10 years on the Google gravy train like John?"
Google can just sit back and let the real startup ecosystem do its thing. Then buy whatever they see that has shown success in areas of strategic value to Google. No PR or legal risk while the startup does necessary but shady things to force itself into being. This is a much better model, hence why innovation is most often acquired, not incubated.
I think the point he was making is it’s a half measure compared to having no safety net. The “adjust as you see fit” would be not operating under the Google umbrella at all.
The simple act of having to do the rounds to repeatedly secure financing and letting that, or the actual performance of the business, gate growth or survival and being a cofounder or employee in this environment has a different emotional and operational strain on the business.
I worked in a company like this btw for about five years, we were started as a subsidiary of a successful medical device company by that ceo as a “what if”, to take the already developed dispensing hardware by our parent and adopt it to the general supply chain management industry. We were doing decent business ($30M ARR for a 40 person company) and were minimally profitable but eventually shuttered by our parent company after it became apparent the hockey-stick like growth was not coming.
I’ve also worked at startup that failed after about 6 years. The difference between how those two companies screeched to a halt was stark. In one case it came out of the blue and suddenly 1/3 of the employees were sucked up into the parent company and the rest got pink slips. In the other case it was a really wild final year with the writing clearly on the wall, multiple furloughs and downsizing for survival.
There is a possibility a better balance of risk/reward (say 5% of ownership and 150k salary) could well produce just as good or better outcomes.