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Staff post about: David Filo Jerry Yang Become an Author

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Two Yahoos on a Roll: The Early Years of Jerry Yang and David Filo

They started off as two graduate students at Stanford University. Today, they have a combined personal net worth of $5.1 billion. That is all thanks to Jerry Yang’s and David Filo’s attempts to find anything they could do to avoid working on their doctoral theses. Bored one day, the two decided to play around with the newly emerging Internet and create a list of their favourite sites. That list has since grown into Yahoo!, one of the world’s most popular online search portals, with more than 130 million visitors each month and revenues in excess of $6.7 billion.

Riding the Wave: Yang and Filo Turn Surfing into a Success

“It was a really gradual thing, but we'd find ourselves spending more and more time on it,” says Yang of his and Filo’s newly created online directory. “It was getting to be a burden.”

Lesson #1: Go With Your Growth

“Thousands of people were producing new Web sites every day,” recalls Filo of Yahoo!’s early days. “We were just trying to take all that stuff and organize it to make it useful. As it became more popular, it became pretty clear we would have to get more people involved.”

Lesson #2: Sharpen Your Organization’s Goals

In 2007, Yahoo! was the setting for a major Silicon Valley shakeup. The company’s then CEO Terry Semel was ousted and replaced by its original co-founder, Yang. It was a tumultuous time for the company, which was suffering from much shareholder criticism in the face of rising competition from Google. But Yang was determined to rise to the challenge.

Lesson #3: Focus On the Inside Out

“I believe that Yahoo! is too often defined by the competitive landscape, rather than by what we can accomplish with our assets,” says Yang. “I’m determined for us to define our own path.”

Lesson #4: Give Your Business a Little Brand Aid

“Originally, it was Jerry’s Guide to the World Wide Web, but we settled on Yahoo!,” says Yang. “It is a pretty recognizable brand name.” Despite Filo’s admission that he was “not crazy about the name at first,” he now concedes that they made the right choice. “It grew on me,” says Filo, who is now grateful they selected a name that is “so memorable and that conveys the sense of fun involved in all this, the sense of adventure. This is what really distinguishes our site.”

Lesson #5: Create a Company Culture Worth Caring About

“You have to realize when David and I were doing this it was just for fun,” says Yang. “We never thought it would even become a business.”

Searching for the Stars: How Yang and Filo Took Their Business to New Heights

“I think that it's always possible to have a great company if you have great ideas,” says Yang. “I will say that since the web has become more commercialized, it also takes some good financial resources to build a great business, but as I always say, you have to have the idea first.”

David Filo and Jerry Yang Quotes

David Filo and Jerry Yang Quotes

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