PROFILE: Chief Yahoo - Jerry Yang Co-Founder YAHOO!

The trouble is, it’s hard not to like Jerry Yang. But in theory, he

should be the sort of accidental entrepreneur who makes anyone’s blood

boil - the archetypal ’hey, we were just messing around with computers

and suddenly we were millionaires!’ type of millionaire. The kind who,

while professing a lack of interest in the business side of things, has

an exact knowledge of who spent what on paper clips in Q4.

With his partner, David Filo, Yang founded Yahoo! when they were both

writing their college theses. Just like proto-nerd Bill Gates, he has

recently married. He doesn’t wear ties, he does wear glasses and, also

like Bill, he’s still pretty enthusiastic about IT. But there are some

crucial differences.

For one thing, Jerry’s not a billionaire. Despite the gush of enthusiasm

on Wall Street and in the press about this ’red-hot technology stock’,

Yahoo! went into profit for the first time this autumn, with a modest

dollars 222,000 (pounds 134,500) operating profit on revenues of dollars

17.3m (pounds 10.5m). While the company was building, Yang and Filo paid

themselves salaries ’in the dollars 40,000 (pounds 24,200) range’.

Since it was founded in 1994, Yahoo! has vied with Netscape for the

title of most hyped loss-making company in the world. But what Yahoo!

offers is promise - the promise of a share of the growing market for Web

advertising which should be worth dollars 5bn (pounds 3bn) by the turn

of the century. Then Yahoo!

will be a dollars 1bn (pounds 600m) turnover company with shockingly low

overheads and an unassailable brand. Looked at that way, Yang is the

first 21st century media owner. Already, Yahoo!’s revenues have tripled

year-on-year, and there’s no sign of a slow-down.

’Yahoo! as you see it now is just the tip of the iceberg,’ says

Yang.

’The level at which people are building up connectivity is growing by

leaps and bounds. As a commercial medium, the Net hasn’t yet been

tapped.’

That’s quite a statement from a man whose product notches up 50 million

page views every day, a global reach most press barons would kill for,

with an audience skewed toward youth, affluence and early adoption of

new products.

Already, Yahoo! has developed from a simple listing of good Web sites

into a sophisticated compendium of Web content, including news, sports

and other information. There are rivals, of course, with different

business models: AOL recently took over CompuServe to create an

information giant which charges users for access to the information it

controls, whereas Yahoo! relies entirely on advertising for revenue.

As the Yahoo! formula looks likely to work, the company is

expanding.

More countries are getting their own Yahoo! sites and advertising sales

offices to match. So new is the London office that the door buzzer

doesn’t work yet and visitors have to wave frantically at the door

camera until someone lets them in. Our interview takes place in a sparse

glassed-in space, with Yang chewing on a sandwich. There’s an air of

deliberate casualness, a feeling that Yahoo! is as much a public service

as a business operation.

Perhaps some of the origins of the decision to stay free to the user and

as un-corporate as possible lie in Yang and Filo’s own wish to create

something genuinely useful. As Yang himself says: ’David and I were

going to finish our thesis. We’d have spent countless hours writing it

and maybe 200 people would ever have seen it. Today, ten million people

look at what we do.’

Certainly, the lust for profit isn’t something Yang wears on his

sleeve.

His business card describes him as ’Chief Yahoo’, and the corporation he

helped create now employs such sober-sided business people as Heather

Killen, managing director of European operations, and European marketing

director Iain Osbourne to do the selling bit. For Yang - who still logs

on to the Net first thing every morning before brushing his teeth -

creativity counts, and so does the other side of his life.

’I’m very big on families - I want one of my own. When I’m 80 it doesn’t

matter how much money I have - I want a family around,’ he says.

So, what is still driving the preposterously young media mogul to carry

on? After all, he’s already admitted that ’surfing the Net isn’t fun -

it’s work’.

’I can’t say what my ambitions are,’ he answers after a pause. ’I’ve

already done more than I ever expected.’ Jerry Yang will be 29 in

November.

Yahoo! is at www.yahoo. com

Jerry Yang’s original personal Web page is still online at http://

akebono.stanford.edu/users/jerry/ jerry_yang.html

BIOGRAPHY

1968: Born Taiwan

1978: Family emigrated to US

1990: Graduated from Stanford University

1991-1994: PhD programme, Stanford University

1994: Founded Yahoo! with David Filo

1995-1997: Chief Yahoo.

This article was first published on Marketing