Mayer illustrated this with the story of her high school friend Laura Beckman, who tried out for the volleyball team and was given a hard choice: bench on varsity or start on JV. Most people chose to play. Laura chose varsity and benched the entire season. Senior year, she made varsity as a starter. All the previous year's JV starters benched. Mayer asked Laura how she knew to choose varsity. 'I just knew. I just knew if I got to practice with the better players every day I would become a better player, even if I didn't get to play in the games.' Mayer applied this directly to her own career: she chose Google because the first employee, Craig Silverstein, was 'one of the five smartest people I've ever met in person.' In the Laura Beckman analogy, Craig was varsity. 'And I just knew if I got to work alongside of him and be critiqued by him, I would become so much better.'