
Dear Yahoo, hire me as your next CEO - icey
http://stu.mp/2011/06/dear-yahoo-hire-me-as-your-next-ceo.html
======
true_religion
Yahoo's past notable problems which are usually mentioend are that they had
competiting divisions of the same company.

They had Geocities and Yahoo webhosting.

They had Flickr and Yahoo Photos.

\---

Their current problem is poor execution.

They've wanted to go into social media for a long time, and failed in many
efforts.

Years ago Yahoo Profiles existed with explicit tie in with Yahoo Messenger.

Then Facebook came onto the scene and social became the new 'in thing'.

Yahoo Profiles was redesigned.

Then Yahoo Buzz was launched and poorly integrated with the above.

At the same time they had a stealth platform with _its own_ social networking
features.

They shut down the above stealth platform and redesigned Yahoo Profiles as
Yahoo Pulse.

Now they're shutting down many of the features of Yahoo pulse--guest books,
photos, blogging. Yahoo Buzz is gone as well.

\-----

I question:

1\. Why didn't Yahoo Profiles integrate with Flickr?

2\. Why didn't they integrate with delicious? At one time Yahoo Profiles
allowed you to add links to other pages, but these bookmarks were never
replicated to delicious.

3\. Why is Yahoo Profiles poorly integrated with Yahoo Groups? Will Yahoo
groups get the axe next?

In the end, Yahoo's problem is though they have all the pieces of the puzzle ,
they have no clue how to put it together. Their divisions compete rather than
provide synergy for one another.

They're not a vertically or even horizontally integrated product. Rather they
are more like an amorphous conglomorate that sadly locks down its own internal
products so that they aren't allowed to integrate even where it would be
useful.

~~~
jmathai
I worked on Profiles and Pulse so here are some answers.

1\. Roadmaps. It wasn't high on Flickr's roadmap. Profiles integration
provided little to no value to them. Plus the way Yahoo! works it would have
taken months just to figure out what an "integration" meant. It was talked
about (several times).

2\. Probably similar reasons as above. This wasn't really talked about.
Delicious was kind of a red headed step child internally. Not sure many execs
realized it's value - hence the dwindling of the team and eventual selloff.

3\. Roadmaps. Yahoo Groups! is huge and understaffed. Even if both sides
wanted to do an integration it would take months to decide what that would
look like. Given the rate of attrition the people involved might not even be
around long enough to see it through.

Interesting blog post but Yahoo!s problems run real deep. You almost have to
gut the company to salvage it. Makes me sad :(.

~~~
true_religion
YQL goes a little way in this direction, but I think all yahoo products should
have a public API.

Then we can have mashups created by the public, and then Yahoo can pick and
choose.

~~~
jmathai
I always said that YQL is the most underutilized technology at Yahoo!
(internally and externally). It has/had the potential to do what it claimed,
select * from internet;.

~~~
damncabbage
It's great, but I don't want to build anything that relies on it in case they
suddenly pull a Y! BOSS on it, or just shut it off completely. It is good for
prototyping, though.

(There's always a risk when integrating with third-party services, but Yahoo!
seems is a bit too shaky and capricious for my liking.)

~~~
jmathai
Agreed. My statements assumed a Yahoo! which wasn't optimizing itself to shut
down services.

------
scrame
> I’d buy the NYT (for a mere $1.5bn!) and recruit John Gruber to be Editor in
> Chief of the “Yahoo! News” division.

Are you kidding? I get Gruber is a popular blogger in some circles, but in
what way does he have the kind of insight, ability, or experience needed to
run the new york times and yahoo news?

~~~
codexon
If I learned anything from reading Hacker News, it would be to never
underestimate the fanaticism people here have with Gruber, Erlang, Haskell,
Node.js, etc..

------
CoffeeDregs
Hmm... I understand the post's point, but it starts off so flawed that it's
difficult to take any of it seriously. Yahoo _does not_ have a super-duper
market cap; Alibaba does and Yahoo owns 40% of Alibaba [1]; Yahoo certainly
isn't a small company, but it's more like a unhealthy, unhappy, declining $6B
company.

Big companies have big company issues because managing huge groups of people
is a complex process. I like startups and bloggers as much as the next
g(uy|al), but startups are not wonderful tonics that larger companies can buy
to cure their ailments. One of the exact reasons lots of folks like startups
is that we can avoid those issues. The post suggests that you can take a bunch
of people who probably _don't want to work in a big company_ , pull them in to
a big company and have everything go well...

[1] [http://www.quora.com/If-Yahoo-owns-40-of-Alibaba-and-
thats-w...](http://www.quora.com/If-Yahoo-owns-40-of-Alibaba-and-thats-
worth-30B-then-why-is-Yahoos-market-cap-only-20B)

------
benihana
Oh, this web webdeveloer can be the CEO? And his plan is to buy a bunch of
companies that make pretty things and give their founders free reign over
their entire section of Yahoo! so that Yahoo! would just become a huge
collection of brightly colored products with no real strategy? Well, I'm sold.

~~~
yuhong
>Oh, this web webdeveloer can be the CEO?

Read the bottom of the page.

------
ojbyrne
So the plan is to basically throw a bunch of money at the biggest egos on the
planet, then give each of them 100% autonomy over divisions like "Photos", "PR
& Marketing", "Social", and "Mobile." I'm not sure Joe understands the phrase
"100% autonomy." No overlap between those areas at all.

------
kprobst
Looks like this guy is looking for a job at Yahoo and decided to augment his
resume with this in hopes of impressing someone over there.

Doesn't look like he's even remotely qualified to be CEO of a startup, let
alone a $20B publicly traded corporation. Never mind the 'strategy' he
outlines, which sounds like something out of a Starbucks brainstorming
session.

~~~
mgkimsal
I know Joe (well, knew, we haven't talked in a few years), but he's a great
hustler (in the best sense of the word). Frankly, Yahoo needs someone who
_doesn't_ have experience running a $20B company. All the CEOs since Yang have
run the company in to the ground.

Key among Yahoo's bad decisions: let's abandon search and become a 'media'
company (based on 30 year old concepts of 'media' from a 'media' insider, all
of which were rapidly becoming obsolete even 10 years ago).

Failing to get the internal groups to cooperate. Yes, it's hard. So what?
That's what a CEO's job should be - do the hard stuff. The example about
"well, integration wasn't on Flickr's roadmap'. Probably 110% true, but _so
what_? Yahoo bought Flickr. Flickr's roadmap should have been Yahoo's roadmap,
and Yahoo needed a coherent roadmap.

It's been so disheartening to see Yahoo move from an innovative company to
"the place companies get acquired then die at".

Yahoo needs someone like Joe _far_ more than it needs another Silicon Valley
"insider board member" type. Yahoo's had a decade plus of "business types" who
were going to "turn things around" and all that typical business BS. It's time
for a _real_ change. Not saying Joe specifically, but they _need_ an outsider.
I fear the shareholders are just too timid to demand real change.

The only place I'd disagree with Joe on in his list is the '100% autonomy'
bits. It's the "100% autonomy" which got Yahoo in to problems, with no
department being forced to integrate with another. I suspect with the right
people in place, "100% autonomous decisions" may still mesh nicely with a
focus on across the board integrated experiences, but I'd still want that to
be a priority.

~~~
yuhong
Yea, I was thinking about considering startup executives in big company
executive recruiting for a while new.

~~~
yuhong
For example, I was thinking about why it took so long for Eric Schmidt to be
chosen as CEO of Google.

------
waterside81
I've always been struck by the juxtaposition of Yahoo's commercial efforts and
their developer-friendly efforts. YUI was kickass (until jQuery came along).
YSlow is the benchmark for measuring site performance, smushit etc. etc. their
developers have contributed so much. Just doesn't seem to be parlayed into
greater commercial success.

~~~
jmathai
The only valuable asset Yahoo! has doesn't call the shots. Amazing technology
and engineers stifled by poor product folks and clueless executives.

~~~
dsl
I wish I could upvote this a million times.

------
prostoalex
This is a very parishiltonesque approach to management. Also, why would the
acquisitions listed work out for Yahoo!, while Broadcast.com, Geocities, Kimo,
HotJobs, Flickr (Ludicorp), Delicious, Dialpad, Konfabulator, Upcoming and
Zimbra did not?

~~~
true_religion
Flickr is one of the few places where Yahoo gave them autonomy, and its paid
off in their retaining profitability.

Yahoo unfortunately doesn't let Flickr innovate so they've fallen behind now
adays.

------
neworbit
I find it hard to believe that the keys to Yahoo's turnaround are a better
experience in photos, news, branding, and PR. Mobile and social, maybe.

~~~
ckenst
Agreed

------
heyrhett
Nobody would be a better CEO than "Shpigler the shark":
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=650U4-9CPew>

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taylorwc
Awesome services that anyone would want to acquire. Who's paying for them,
again? Yahoo's cash balance doesn't even scratch the surface of the cash
required for this list...and something's telling me that they won't want Yahoo
stock in exchange for their blossoming and valuable companies.

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simonpreed
haha brilliant, what Yahoo needs is to buy more services that aren't even
approaching break even. As brilliant as these companies might be at product as
a public company Yahoo needs to make profit not promises ;-)

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csomar
Is him serious? He doesn't have experience running Big Companies, and his plan
is _just_ buying other start-ups and integrating them in Yahoo.

It's like he wants to solve problems by throwing money at them. If this works,
then the previous CEO would have probably done the same and the start-ups he
mentioned would have already been acquired by some Big Names.

------
jchonphoenix
I just graduated from college and even I can see how short sighted and naive
this statement is.

Does he really think you can just waltz around and "buy" companies?
Remember...Morin and Dorsey are already rich. Why would they sell to you?

CEOs also do way more than just buy things. This post just shows how naive and
sheltered the poster really is.

------
edo
I think the real differentiator in your policy is not the acquiring of talent,
but the giving of autonomy to employees (which is something that can be done
without spending money).

If only Yahoo would give autonomy to their own (I bet also pretty talented
engineers); it would go a long way to a better Yahoo.

------
brianbreslin
To diverge a bit, I'd love to see what jack ma from alibaba could do with
yahoo. Yahoo still has impressively valuable assets, even if their tech isnt
cutting edge on many products, they have users and traffic up the wazoo.

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cambriar
I don't care much for the financial aspect of this, but if it's the thought
that counts, I think it's great.

If you can, take in some of the great talent (not just individuals) and
rebuild! And the idea that

"They would have 100% autonomy over the entire “Yahoo! [Photo, Mobile, Social,
News]” division."

seems great! Especially from the AOL/TechCrunch content posted here about who
has the upper hand.

------
rwtaylor
Letting talented people build something innovative and making money are two
very different things.

~~~
raganwald
True, but if it's hard to let your talented people innovate and make money,
it's _even harder_ to hamstring your talented people and make money.

------
mrpollo
downside of bringing all that people from the outside would be to loose the
current talent thats on board, imagine the people that have stayed with yahoo
through the worst being limited in creativity not having much freedom hoping
for a chance to lead being shut down again by putting someone else from
outside in charge, i know i would quit.

on the other hand i do agree that they could have done better if they'd
remained an operations level leads type of company, kinda like all the cool
cats are doing right now.

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AmericanOP
Let's hire the smartest people we can find to improve our crappy products and
bring them to market- rarely works for startups and certainly won't work for a
corporation.

------
Tichy
I'd like to see some mad genius infographics of the new kind of job
application "i want to be your ceo". That could be fun.

------
tvaughan
I like that he wants to be a CEO and thinks that "market cap" = "money in the
bank".

------
therandomguy
pssshhh.. that's not what they are looking for. Hire me. I have the talent to
acquire successful startups and either destroy it out right or stagnate it for
4 yrs while competitors get miles ahead. Thanks.

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initself
I don't think Jack Dorsey is going to be on board.

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instakill
Let instagram - 4 people - run Flickr?

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pitdesi
Unfortunately, this isn't how finance works, so I can't hire you as CEO.

Yahoo has $1.5Bn in cash. Companies usually get bought for cash and stock that
the company owns, or they can issue more stock if it's a merger that gets
broad approval. YHOO doesn't have $20Bn to buy companies with, and if they
did, they still couldn't make the investments you're talking about. Twitter
alone is worth $8.5Bn on the secondary market... It would sell for more than
$10Bn. And buying the New York Times for $1.5Bn would incur another bil in
debt.

~~~
quellhorst
Yahoo's stock is worth 20 billion. You can acquire companies for stock and
cash. When a company is public, you can acquire more easily in exchange for
stock.

Mark Cuban became a billionaire from his Yahoo stock he got from the
acquisition of broadcast.com.

~~~
pitdesi
Yahoo's stock is worth 20 billion... and is mostly owned by shareholders.
Yahoo can't give it to someone else, because people like me own it.

Edit: Suking is right, they could issue new shares... IF people actually
wanted Yahoo shares and a target company would actually accept them. (would
not happen)

~~~
agotterer
Not mention even if they had the $20B to buy all those companies. You now have
a portfolio of companies that really don't make much/any money. Those smart
people aren't going to work for free!

------
sabat
The hard part: making people (like Jack Dorsey and the rest) believe they
should do their best work for your company.

