People love to jump on a fallen hero.
I’ve never worked with Mr. Yang, though I’ve met him a couple of times over the years. You don’t play start up in Silicon Valley for over a decade and not bump into both luminaries and lunkheads – we’re fairly inbred, whether kings of the hill or still climbing it. By the way, in this racket you’re often, but not always, a lunkhead until you’re a luminary.
I know people who have worked at Yahoo!, some from very early on (Wendy, are you listening?), some who are there now (Hello, E!), some who have come and gone with the wind. Seventeen years is a long time, and Yahoo! has not had the smoothest of sailing for at least 8 or 9 of the most recent, turning over CEOs, as though testing the return guarantee on a pair of Uggs from Zappos. Not good, to be sure. And Mr. Yang’s been there the entire time, the Chief Yahoo!. He bears a significant brunt of the responsibility for the current state of Yahoo! and today was his day of atonement.
But by the same token, he’s largely responsible for Yahoo!’s current state.
In 1995 he and David Filo co-founded the company. Back when we old geeks were whining about how the World Wide Web was opening our private darpanet/arpanet/uunet/internet playground to the unkempt masses, these guys were indexing it, creating a massive new industry in completely uncharted territory. Were they alone? No. But how did they fare compared to others? Here’s a quick inventory:
- HotBot.com
- Excite.com
- WebCrawler.com
- Ask Jeeves.com
- About.com
- Dogpile.com
- AltaVista.com
- Lycos.com
- Infoseek.com
- Metacrawler.com…
Anyone remember theglobe.com? Not a search engine, but the poster child of things dotcom that came and went. But who stands tall on the web today?
Google. Microsoft (Bing). Yahoo! And a couple other hangers on, crouching in the small alleys of niche market segments that aren’t as enticing as mobile payments or social media.
Yeah, Yahoo! doesn’t rule the web like it once did. Yeah, you can scoff at them for turning down Microsoft’s $40B+ offer a few years back.
However, despite all this,Yahoo!, stands pretty damned tall just the same. The company has a current market cap of $20B. To those proclaiming, “it’s about time you got out, Jerry”, yeah, I understand what you’re saying. Shareholders know that there’s opportunity on the table and Yahoo!, while well-positioned, has repeatedly failed to capitalize on it. Sure. True.
But this is my point: Have you built a $20B company? Did you recognize and capture massive value from a greenfield opportunity? David and Jerry saw a rapidly changing landscape. They saw enabling technologies making rich information previously inaccessible. They saw a way to seize that moment, access it, and then BUILD A LONG-STANDING BUSINESS on it. This is not trivial. This is hard. This is very hard. Technology keeps advancing. New competitors are around every corner. The technology business is kill or be killed, unfolding in some areas, at the speed of light and at a size of 12 atoms. Staying competitive, much less at the head of the pack of any sector in this industry is a heroic feat. Ask these guys:
- Eagle Computer
- Netscape
- Digital Research
- Kodak
Jerry, you da man.
You are an entrepreneur’s hero.
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Jerry Yang – An Entrepreneur’s Hero
People love to jump on a fallen hero.
I’ve never worked with Mr. Yang, though I’ve met him a couple of times over the years. You don’t play start up in Silicon Valley for over a decade and not bump into both luminaries and lunkheads – we’re fairly inbred, whether kings of the hill or still climbing it. By the way, in this racket you’re often, but not always, a lunkhead until you’re a luminary.
I know people who have worked at Yahoo!, some from very early on (Wendy, are you listening?), some who are there now (Hello, E!), some who have come and gone with the wind. Seventeen years is a long time, and Yahoo! has not had the smoothest of sailing for at least 8 or 9 of the most recent, turning over CEOs, as though testing the return guarantee on a pair of Uggs from Zappos. Not good, to be sure. And Mr. Yang’s been there the entire time, the Chief Yahoo!. He bears a significant brunt of the responsibility for the current state of Yahoo! and today was his day of atonement.
But by the same token, he’s largely responsible for Yahoo!’s current state.
In 1995 he and David Filo co-founded the company. Back when we old geeks were whining about how the World Wide Web was opening our private darpanet/arpanet/uunet/internet playground to the unkempt masses, these guys were indexing it, creating a massive new industry in completely uncharted territory. Were they alone? No. But how did they fare compared to others? Here’s a quick inventory:
Anyone remember theglobe.com? Not a search engine, but the poster child of things dotcom that came and went. But who stands tall on the web today?
Google. Microsoft (Bing). Yahoo! And a couple other hangers on, crouching in the small alleys of niche market segments that aren’t as enticing as mobile payments or social media.
Yeah, Yahoo! doesn’t rule the web like it once did. Yeah, you can scoff at them for turning down Microsoft’s $40B+ offer a few years back.
However, despite all this,Yahoo!, stands pretty damned tall just the same. The company has a current market cap of $20B. To those proclaiming, “it’s about time you got out, Jerry”, yeah, I understand what you’re saying. Shareholders know that there’s opportunity on the table and Yahoo!, while well-positioned, has repeatedly failed to capitalize on it. Sure. True.
But this is my point: Have you built a $20B company? Did you recognize and capture massive value from a greenfield opportunity? David and Jerry saw a rapidly changing landscape. They saw enabling technologies making rich information previously inaccessible. They saw a way to seize that moment, access it, and then BUILD A LONG-STANDING BUSINESS on it. This is not trivial. This is hard. This is very hard. Technology keeps advancing. New competitors are around every corner. The technology business is kill or be killed, unfolding in some areas, at the speed of light and at a size of 12 atoms. Staying competitive, much less at the head of the pack of any sector in this industry is a heroic feat. Ask these guys:
Jerry, you da man.
You are an entrepreneur’s hero.
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