page grabbed a pen and recorded the idea at once. he then spent hours checking whether it was possible. by morning, his calculations had given him enough confidence to continue. in his telling, he was “a lucky twenty-three-year-old with a dream.”
when a really great dream shows up, grab it!
the links became the important part. the web’s link structure showed which pages pointed to others. that idea became pagerank, which supported the search engine that became google. page told the story himself in a commencement address, including the pen and the night-time calculations.
page’s account does not make clear whether this was a sleeping dream or an idea at the edge of sleep. the record should not decide for him. his stated lesson is still direct: write a strong night idea down before morning removes it.