
Yahoo Taps Its Inner Startup - Harj
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/feb2007/tc20070209_179924.htm?chan=search
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veritas
Yahoo has bigger problems than the lack of innovation. It's insanely bloated
as a company now. Why Yahoo Photos and Flickr? Why My Yahoo and My Web and
Delicious? Why can't I log in to Delicious with my Yahoo login? Why is their
web page so cluttered? They really need to cut it down. Dump Yahoo Photos,
dump My Web and Yahoo 360. Streamline into 5 areas: Media (News, TV,
Commercial Video), Search (Panama), Social Media (Flickr, Delicious, My Yahoo,
Music), Email (most critical) and Hosting (I'd drop hosting too but I don't
have an MBA and 5 is a much nicer number than 4). Thats my opinion, but I
don't have an MBA... just some common sense.

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e1ven
This reminds me a bit of the Bell Labs west-coast startup program. Back in the
1990s, they created their internal startup area.

While it did do was create a lot of hostility, and keeping of secrets from
other divisions. It divided the company up, and most of the internal groups
didn't end up doing well..

Check out "Bell Labs: Life in the Crown Jewel", it's an interesting read on
the history of the labs.

It seems that independent (external) funding sources can do much better- They
can fund any group that shows promise, no matter where it originated.. They
put the risk into the hands of the founders, and they have a wider market to
choose from.

-C

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philc
Great idea; it sounds like someone at Yahoo is taking Christensen's advice.

This will only work well if the division is given enough autonomy. If a small
division is trying to help meet the massive revenue goals of mainstream Yahoo,
it's just not going to work. They're not going to get the resources or
motivation that they need.

That's the problem with Google's 20% time. You're not really encouraged to do
little projects, something that a startup might do. Instead, you're encouraged
to contribute to the bottom line of Google, which severely limits the kind of
things you can work on (i.e., "do search or you're wasting your time"). This
is compounded by the fact that your 20% time is inconsistently factored into
your employee evaluation (for better or for worse).

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wensing
I have friends that work at Y! that are the most talented programmers I know--
however, when they recently had a startup idea, there was definitely a 'should
we tell our parents?' consideration that wasn't shaken off until the startup
had already been built (at least the beta).

That said, the code coming out of Y! lately has been excellent in quality and
in pushing the web developer community forward (e.g. Yahoo! User Interface
Libraries, Yahoo! Pipes) . . . but at such a massive company, that code is
coming from a very small percentage of its employees, and features such as
'360' seem very uninspired IMHO.

At the end of the day, there is a disturbing theme throughout this article:
give some of our best talent the opportunity to leave the mill and work on
something revolutionary, and maybe they won't leave in the first place or keep
their ideas secret, and just maybe they won't mind if the compensation is
rather dismal compared to what it could be--after all, we can protect them
from what so many of them consider the greatest risk: jobless with an
unsuccessful startup.

Maybe they should ask themselves why they are a mill in the first place?

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aglarond
It seems like a good move on the surface. Digging a little deeper, though, one
notices a couple of quotes:

"But he compares what he and Fake are doing to what record label executives
do, searching out the best talent."

Someone who compares himself favorably to a record label executive in today's
world is out of touch with how the target demographic for Brickhouse products
feels about such things. I don't know how much trust I could place in
Horowitz's decisions regarding this new internal "startup".

"Horowitz...said the figure would be somewhere between a pat on the back and
an acquisition-size bonus."

If I were a Yahoo employee, I don't think I'd feel too reassured that my hard
work would get appropriately recognized. That "pat on a back" may be for an
excellent idea, well executed, but unfortunately not able to be capitalized
upon within Yahoo's current structure.

It seems to me that the idea of Brickhouse is good, but it may be a case of
too little, too late. I don't get the feeling that it will be able to achieve
its potential.

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brett
So what's the consensus on how well this will work?

It definitely seems like a step in the right direction; Yahoo probably has a
great deal of internal talent that they are not tapping into. Giving that
talent freedom and incentive should make Yahoo more competitive.

But so many of the advantages of real startups are unlikely to apply. What
strikes me as one of the biggest factors is that this seems unlikely to draw
in too much external talent. The pool of people likely to start successful
startups don't want to work for Yahoo until they're getting paid a lot to do
so. As the yahoo vp said "It is generally cheaper to incubate these things
than to buy them"

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jimream
I agree, I have long thought that Yahoo was getting "blown out of the water"
and they must to *something* to breathe a little life back into their once
dominant company.

I have been battling myself over the issue of who to go to with my idea. I
believe from my incredibly fortunate and diverse upbringing, lifelong
experiences with computers, social networks, MMO interactions, I have come up
with a web application that will organize the worlds information in a better
way. As a result it will not only appeal to everyone, but help everyone in the
world with a computer live more productive and "better" lives. Ambitious? yes.
But in case you didn't know.. Facebook, Myspace, Wiki, and Reddit are
represent the infant stage of how we will organize the worlds information.

The problem I face now is who to go to... Do I find team of great "Hackers"
(not so easy to find in Madison but I will be graduating in May) and start
working on a beta and focus on angel/seed/Ycom funding? Do i go to the Bill
and Melinda gates foundation and go though probably years of red tape in order
to get my idea noticed. Or do I go to a company like Yahoo and tell them "your
whole web philosophy and yahoo pages are flawed and I can show you how you can
regain the Internet power you once had" Or do I just apply to their
"brickhouse" division and hope they give me stock if my idea is successful.

The dilemma as I see it is that because this will be my lifelong endeavor, I
want to give it the best chance to succeed. It is not even about the money,
even though the most powerful information browsing tool (google currently)
will always be the most powerful and profitable company in the world. I just
want to make sure Rupert's empire doesn't get a hold of these ideas because it
could be used for real evil if all the worlds information was in his hands...

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dfranke
Is this essentially different from being an incubator? I thought those died
out with the bubble.

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amichail
How does this compare to Google's 20% time for your own projects?

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danielha
How does it compare?

Well, the objectives may be similar but Yahoo's execution is much more
deliberate.

While Google's 20% time is a corporate policy that encourages side-projects
(that may see see the light of day in the form of a beta product), Brickhouse
is Yahoo's full-fledged effort to develop novel ideas in-house that it has
been historically purchasing at premium prices.

It seems that Brickhouse, as a division, is able to pursue small, "startup-
like" ideas that might stray from Yahoo's corporate vision.

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amichail
What are the restrictions? I somehow doubt that you can do whatever you want.

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danielha
I don't know; I don't work there. :)

It's still a company, after all. They pursue interesting, and even perhaps
daring, ideas as a team. I didn't see any implications of a chaotic operation.

