I think it's appropriate in this case. Paul started Gmail inside of Google as a side project. At first most people were not a supporter, including Marissa Mayer and other peers. He was scratching an itch though and eventually got Larry and Sergey on board which helped the cause and eventually grew into what it is today.

So with that, there are a lot of similarities into what we'd call a founder today. While financially there wasn't a big risk, it was still a product he was passionate about and created from nothing.