Our hat is off to Jason Shellen! And to Vanessa Fox!  These two brave souls left Google to start their own companies in the midst of a recession.

They don’t talk about gutsy, they epitomize gutsy.

“Jason Shellen, resigned as Google’s manager of new business development in 2007 to launch Plinky.com, a startup that’s designed to inspire bloggers and users of social media sites. Shellen says he was getting complacent working at Google, despite the company’s domination of the Web.”

Vanessa Fox, aka, the Google Lady Webmaster, the most well-known woman among the SEO community, who helped build Webmaster Central, one of the company’s most successful projects took the leap as well. A star at Google, Rand Fishkin,  CEO of Seo Oz, in an anthem to her abilities and webmasters debt to her says:

” I don’t believe that anyone, outside of a few of Vanessa’s close friends, realize how much she’s done to help Google’s public image, their bottom line and their relations with webmasters, nor do most of us know how much Vanessa’s done to fight for webmasters internally at Google. … Webmaster Central was not only Vanessa’s department, it was her baby, her idea (right from inception), her show. If not for Vanessa, we might never have had the dedicated team of webmaster relations specialists (people like Jonathan, Amanda, Trevor, Susan & Maile). We might never have been able to send sitemaps to Google, see data about our sites (particularly the link data, for which Vanessa was always a fantastic advocate), verify ownership, select a preferred domain display or do any of the hundreds of other things that Webmaster Central enables.”

So, to Vanessa’s new company……. Hello Jane and Robot!

Most people in the high tech sector would kill to work at Google.  All that money.  All those stock options. Who could resist?  And why would you want to?

In, CNN.com’s reporting, They left the corporate cocoon to blossom, Shellen says he decided to leave Google despite a shaky economy because he wanted to force himself to change.

“Being an entrepreneur is all about risk and innovation, not timing the market,” Shellen says. “A good idea doesn’t wait for the perfect time to emerge. The ability to build something new outweighed the need for stability.”

Now there’s a person with the entrepreneurial gene.

“Shellen believes the large resources of a company can actually slow down the creative process. A person might want to invent a product, but small things like the name of the product end up being discussed in a committee.

“You don’t find that in a small company,” he says. “At my new company, Plinky, we sometimes dream things up in the morning and by the afternoon have it live on the Web. That never happens at a big company.”

In another example of taking the giant leap, “greater freedom is also what inspired Vanessa Fox to resign from her position at Google. Today, Fox is the founder of “Jane and Robot,” which helps Web site developers ensure their sites can be found by potential customers, and “Nine By Blue,” which helps businesses use online data to better understand their customers.

Fox says the challenge of creating something in an evolving space like the Internet was too great to pass up.

“As hokey as it sounds, there’s more to life than money,” she says. “As much as I loved working at Google, I am really enjoying the flexibility I have now, as well as the ability to really make a difference in the direction I choose to go in.”

If any of these comments sound remotely like something you might say, if you took the leap then Congratuations! You have the entreprerial gene.

So go for it!  Take the leap!  I salute you, too.  We hope to greet you out there launching your new business very soon. ( It certainly beats the cascading pink slips which will engulf many as gloomy economic times drag on and downwards, forcing many companies to cut back.)

In the meantime: Hello Plinky.  Hello Jane and Robot!