Zhiyuan Yang: Chief YAHOO emerged in ten years

“In just 10 years, the Internet has changed the way netizens deal with everything. This is an extraordinary Wonderful experience. From beginning to end, we hope that our products can meet the needs of users and help them realize their dreams. But we are not limited to this - we hope to help everyone discover, practice more and share. More, more communication. ”

After Wang An, who is the Chinese person who excites Wall Street analysts the most? If I had to single out one person, it would be Jerry Yang, Chief YAHOO!

In 1978, when Jerry Yang, who was only 10 years old, and his younger brother Ken Yang immigrated to the United States holding their mother's clothes, he was still a shy little boy. Just because he lost his father when he was 2 years old, Jerry Yang looks more mature and stable than other children of the same age, but no one who has seen him can imagine that he can become a miracle on Nasdaq at the age of 28.

There is no shortage of miracles on Wall Street!

YAHOO!

Yahoo was created by Jerry Yang and his friend David Filo.

Before the age of 10, Jerry Yang spent his childhood in Taiwan. His father unfortunately passed away when he was two years old. His mother, an English and drama professor, raised Jerry Yang and his younger brother Ken Yang alone. Jerry Yang's aunt was living in the United States at the time. For the children's education and future development, the family moved to the United States and settled in San Jose, California.

As a boy, Jerry Yang entered mainstream American culture and his personality gradually became more cheerful.

Jerry Yang studied very hard and was admitted to Stanford University in 1990. He liked the rigor of engineering courses and was heavily influenced by "Silicon Valley." Although the school curriculum is very tight, Jerry Yang still participated in many social activities, which inadvertently exercised his social skills, laying the foundation for him to be independent in the future and control a vigorous media company. In addition, Jerry Yang also took economic courses. His idea at the time was that these might come in handy if he started a company in the future.

It took Jerry Yang four years to complete his undergraduate and master's degrees, and he met Ferro when he was studying for his Ph.D. They became close friends during their studies, work and later entrepreneurship.

Jerry Yang is extroverted and likes to socialize; while Ferro is an introvert who never wants to be interviewed by reporters. He is only interested in technology. Jerry Yang said that he and Ferro are the best combination. "In a business sense, it is difficult to find a better complementary partner than us. We can understand each other. Although we are very stubborn by nature, we can understand each other at critical moments." , showing no stubbornness at all.” They have similar views on the world, affairs, and technology. They even have the same doctoral supervisor, and Ferro lives in the dormitory next to him.

When facing graduation, both Jerry Yang and Ferro searched for a lot of information for their studies. "Actually, our original idea was a very common idea, which was to collect a lot of websites on the Internet and make a search engine to make it easier for people to find and search."

Jerry Yang and Ferro They named their software "Jerrr's Guide to the World Wide Web." In the fall of 1994, its visits exceeded 1 million for the first time. In 1995, Jerry Yang and Feiler named their site Yahoo (YAHOO!) based on the beast in Swift's "Gulliver's Travels".

Regarding entrepreneurship, Jerry Yang believes that it originated from such a simple idea. In fact, anyone can think of it now. However, it was in 1994 that I came up with such an idea. Then I met someone who was willing to invest in venture capital, invested US$1 million in this investment, and then found a way to make money. It was not too easy.

However, Yahoo did catch up with the good times of the Internet. The company established in 1995 had revenue of US$18 million in 1996 and was successfully listed that year.

Not to be a CEO

Unlike Wang An, the founder of Wang An Computer, who has absolute control over the company and a Machiavellian management culture, Jerry Yang and his partners put Yahoo under control from the very beginning. It has become a very open company.

In April 1995, with funding from Sequoiu Capital, they established their own company with assets of approximately US$4 million. At the same time, Sequoia Capital also found a suitable general manager candidate-Tim Kuger, who is also a Stanford alumnus. As a result, Yahoo was left in charge of management by Kugel, and Ferro and Jerry Yang could focus on research. Later, Ferro was responsible for technology development and Jerry Yang was responsible for external public relations.

Of course, Yahoo’s most valuable assets are Jerry Yang and Filo. Jerry Yang is more outgoing and often dwells on the past. Ferro is just the opposite. He is very introverted and always tries his best to politely refuse interviews from reporters.

In the autumn of 1995, Yahoo had to launch a second round of investment war. Although it had a lot of advertising revenue before, the amount converted into cash was extremely limited. At this time, Softbank, a large Japanese consortium, began to invest in Yahoo, which brought Jerry Yang's company to a new stage.

Softbank got to know Yahoo through Sequoia. Jerry Yang was very excited when he learned that Softbank was going to invest. This was the best time to create a local Yahoo in Japan.

On March 7, 1996, Yahoo stock was officially listed. Although its two major competitors, Lycos and Excite, had already been listed first, this day was still rated as a "Wall Street event." The official transaction will be on April 12, which is Friday. Shares were initially priced at $13. However, trading was frenzied, with an average of 6 changes of hands per hour, once soaring to $43, and finally closing at $33. Yahoo's market value reached US$850 million, 200 times what it was when Sequoia Capital invested.

"When we started the business, we knew that neither of us would be the CEO. We knew that neither of us would listen to the other, so we had to have a third party to arbitrate." They were prepared. Find a professional CEO. Someone knocked on the door, but he said: "The first thing I did when I took office was to change my name." Upon hearing this, the two people immediately opened the door to see the guests away. Today, both of them are "YAHOO Chiefs".

Ten Years' Road

On March 2, 2005, Eastern Time, Yahoo celebrated its 10th birthday. As one of the celebrations held around the world, Yahoo founder Jerry Yang, chairman and CEO Terry Semel, and Filo and other management teams attended the opening of the Nasdaq stock market in the morning. market ceremony and rang the trading bell together.

Looking back on the past, Yahoo started out as a small company with a simple idea of ??making the Internet world more orderly and once lived in a trailer at Stanford University. After 10 years of rapid development, it is now It has grown into a globally recognized Internet brand with more than 345 million loyal users around the world.

In the past 10 years, Yahoo has gone from the peak of the Internet to the trough, but it has persisted. In the past 10 years, many Internet companies that are far better than Yahoo have disappeared, such as Netscape, Infosys...

Jerry Yang said: "In just 10 years, the Internet has changed the way netizens deal with The way everything works, it's a wonderful experience. From start to finish, we want our products to meet our users' needs and help them realize their dreams. But we don't stop there - we want to help everyone. A person to discover, to practice more, to share more, to communicate more."

As part of Yahoo's 10th anniversary celebration, Yahoo also launched a special website called "Yahoo Network Retrospective".

The website tells the major stories of the development of the Internet in the past 10 years through 99 directories. These catalogs will include every moment of the Internet, both great and small, to celebrate the media and industry as a whole, as well as Yahoo itself, over the past 10 great years.

Each unit of these directories has a free communication forum. Here, Yahoo users can communicate with each other and with Yahoo to share their memories and opinions. The 100th directory module will be left to Yahoo users, asking them to write their own vision for the future development of the Internet. After all, the path Yahoo has taken so far is still in its infancy.

Optimistic about the Chinese market

Yahoo has been in China for five years, but has been operating poorly. When eBay acquired eBay and Amazon was preparing to enter China, Jerry Yang couldn't sit still. He also hopes to complete Yahoo's layout in China through acquisitions.

In November 2003, Jerry Yang and Zhou Hongyi reached an agreement in Hong Kong to acquire the entire business of 3721 Company for US$120 million, and promoted Zhou Hongyi, a "native" faction, to the position of president of Yahoo China. At that time, Jerry Yang hoped to achieve the "catfish effect" through Zhou Hongbao, so as to develop Yahoo's business in China.

Jerry Yang delivered a speech at Yahoo China’s employee meeting and said that in a sense, China represents the future of the entire Internet industry.

After acquiring 3721, Jerry Yang came to China for the second time. Every time, we go deep into the grassroots level to see what the Chinese market is like.

When Yang Zhiyuan arrived in China for the first time, he took Zhou Hongbao directly to the Internet cafe and looked at it carefully for a long time. The second time, when Jerry Yang and his entourage came to Beijing to attend the Fortune Global Forum, they also made a special trip to the Pacific Computer Market in Shanghai to watch China's electronics retail industry.

Even so, Jerry Yang is still not satisfied with China's business. Yahoo's portal plan in China has also been shelved indefinitely.

When Google and MSN entered China one after another, how could Jerry Yang not be anxious?

With the help of SoftBank President Masayoshi Son, Jerry Yang and Jack Ma of Alibaba came together.

Development history of YAHOO

In January 1994, founders Jerry Yang and Davidfilo founded the Internet Guide Information Database;

In March 1995, YAHOO company was established;

In September 1995, it received investment from Reuters and SoftBank;

In April 1996, it was successfully listed on NASDAQ;

In March 2000, it was launched B2B business;

In January 2004, 3721 was acquired for US$120 million;

In August 2005, the China business was sold to Alibaba, and the two companies formed a strategic partnership.

Since 2001, Microsoft, Yahoo and Google have started an acquisition competition. Although Google at that time was still just a search engine in the eyes of Yahoo and Microsoft, it was not worth mentioning. But now Google has surpassed Yahoo in its IPO and is closely following Microsoft in popularity. In the Web 1.0 era, these three companies operated the same business, operating systems, network services and search engines. But now times have changed. Web 2.0 has made the Internet an open network operating system. The old model and concepts are no longer applicable now. The so-called ten years in Hedong and ten years in Hexi. The evolution of the Internet has caused these three giants to fight with each other. In addition to strengthening the development and strategic deployment of our own products, we also acquire small companies from time to time to improve our product lines. Below is a timeline of the acquisition history of the three companies from 2001 to the present.

(Click on the picture, drag the mouse left and right in the opened webpage, and browse continuously in Timeline)

From 2001 to the present, three companies have acquired 85 companies in one *** , the highest price should be considered YouTube acquired by Google in October 2006, for US$1.6 billion (stock, not cash). Among these acquisitions, the development strategies of these three companies can be clearly seen: Google prefers search and statistical technology companies, and recently it also prefers online collaboration (Online Collaboration), such as Writely and Jotspot; Yahoo prefers large communities and I am more interested in social network services, such as delicious, flickr and the recently purchased Bix; when it comes to Microsoft, the two basic lines of operating system and Office cannot be changed. How to network them (without being confused by the ever-changing Internet) Elimination) is the most critical, so Groove Networks, ProClarity (Intelligent Business) and DesktopStandard (Web Content Management) will be purchased.

If this continues, the products and services we need for our daily lives and work will basically be taken care of by the three Internet giants in this new era. However, the architecture of the Internet is inherently destined to provide equal opportunities for all participants. New models and standards are not formulated by any commercial company. Any concepts and applications must be subject to the collective screening of all Internet users. When the results of these screenings accumulate to a certain extent, a new wave of change will arrive. So there’s no telling who will become the next Google.

I found some information on the Internet, please sort it out