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20-something and rich!
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September 24, 1997: 4:00 p.m. ET
Yahoo! co-founder Jerry Yang is a model for young business people
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NEW YORK (CNNfn) - One of the defining characteristics of the '90s has been the seriousness with which 20-somethings have stormed the business world. Technology has been the big enabler, and Jerry Yang, co-founder of Yahoo!, is one of the prototype models of the young business person who has used technology to make it big.
Yang joined anchor Valerie Morris on CNNfn's "It's Only Money." Here is a transcript of that interview.
MORRIS: Some people say that you and your partner, David Filo, are somewhat of the poster children, if you will, for the Internet and striking it rich. That, in another word, says that you're role models. How do you feel about that?
YANG: Well, we always get a chuckle out of it because we're not the prettiest people you'll ever meet. So, we're pretty ugly poster people, if that's what we are. But, as far as role models go, I think both Dave and I feel like we're just really trying to do what we love doing and when you're doing something as much as we love doing it and we end up doing well, people ultimately look at that and say, well gee, how do we become more like them?
But, we don't really look at ourselves as role models because I think at the end of the day, we have to compete and we have to keep looking to the future to stay competitive and as you know, it's a very competitive market out there and we've just got to keep doing what we've been doing and stay in love with what we're doing.
MORRIS: So that people can understand how it began, because you know so often people will say this is just an overnight success story, talk about the concept of Yahoo! (YHOO) from concept to business, what it was like.
YANG: I think that any business, any success story has got a long past to it, and it's those hard hours of late nights that people don't remember or don't overlook. For us, even as fast as we've sort of come on the scene, we did take about a year and a half developing this, not as a business but as a hobby while we were graduate students at Stanford. So David and I really took this as a hobby, a labor of love if you will, for about a year and a half before we decided that we should take some venture capital and try to do this as a business ourselves.
MORRIS: Let's talk a little bit about how you feel now with the great success of your company, and your responsibility to your shareholders. You went on to the IPO when it was a good and popular thing to do, before it kind of took a hit. Talk a little bit about that process and what it's like now being responsible to shareholders.
YANG: Well, we went public in April of 1996 and at the time, even though for a lot of entrepreneurs it is sort of the ultimate dream, for us, it wasn't as clear cut of a choice as it might have seemed to other people. We felt like we were still a very young company. We weren't profitable at that point, and there was a lot of hype on the Internet at that time.
But, we also felt like we didn't have a choice but to take the opportunity and go public, primarily because all of our competitors in our space were going public at the same time. And we didn't want to miss the window of opportunity.
But, the biggest sobering thought that we had on the day we went public was, to say, 'wow, we now have shareholders that we have to be responsible for,' and it's one of those things where, not only do we have to run a company under a very dynamic environment, but we now also have Wall Street, who's checking on this on a quarterly basis and we have to be very, not only strategic but also make sure that we stay on track -- what we promised Wall Street.
So those are sort of added pressures to any company that goes public and looking back, so far, knock on wood, we've done really well. But you know, it's still a very early stage in the game.
MORRIS: But at least now, Yahoo! is profitable. Is it coming up in about a year of profitability?
YANG: Yes. Excluding some of the one-time charges that we took non-cash, last quarter. We have been profitable since December of last year and that is one thing that, despite the sort of fun and creative image of the company, we try to be very financially conservative and run our company very disciplined. And we were one of the first in our space to become profitable.
MORRIS: Jerry, I'm going to have to ask you a personal question and then you'll understand it in just a moment. How old are you now?
YANG: I am going to be 29 this year.
MORRIS: All right, so still, as a 20-something, let's address the issue of being a paper millionaire and doing this in somewhat of an overnight setting. A lot of young people would like to know -- older people as well --psychologically, to be under the age of 30 and to be a millionaire, what's that like? How do you manage that?
YANG: Well, you know I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that it is just on paper and in fact, both David and I are looked at as people who not only are founders of the company but still, the holders of what we believe, an Internet. And I think from day one, we believed the potential that of what we created to be huge. Even today, with the kind of market cap that we have, we still believe that the best is yet to come.
So, we don't really pay attention to where the stock is at on a daily basis. We hope, it's one of those things that the rest of the community believes that it's still a long-term potential that's still got a lot of legs left. Our lifestyles really haven't changed that much because primarily we're still living the Yahoo! life. We spend a lot of time at work. We think about work, and we do try to get out more. I got married, personally, but you know, it's one of those things where you just take it a step at a time and try not to think about it in too big of a context.
MORRIS: Well, congratulations on your marriage. I was actually going to get to that. Congratulations, and indeed.
YANG: Thank you.
MORRIS: And talk a little bit about, a little bit more if you will, about the environment of your office. It is very much 20 and 30-something, right?
YANG: Yes. We have a fairly young workforce and the environment is one where we try to create a lot of dynamism and not a lot of hierarchy. So we have all cubes and it's a very Silicon Valley environment. People go there and just sort of assume that it's going to be totally hip and cool, but actually it's just a lot of cubes and people working with each other in a very dynamic basis.
MORRIS: Alexa, a utility software which rates websites and it also suggests other websites for users to go to. That's just been announced. Do you view that as competition? Are you at all concerned about something like an Alexa?
YANG: No. One of the things that we've really tried to do, in the past and going forward, is to form technology partnerships and application partnerships with people who provide those sort of tools and in fact, one of the things that we've done really well is not to create in-house technology to the extent possible, and really, try to partner. And Alexa and software like that are things that we would certainly consider in terms of embedding it into the Yahoo! experience in allowing our users to have access to the best of breeds of services that are out there.
MORRIS: Going international, and what's happening on that front. What's next for Yahoo!?
YANG: Well, we've been very aggressive going internationally. We now have seven or eight countries that we have not only operations, but in their local language. We're going to continue to be very aggressive, both in Europe and in Asia and start looking at some of the other areas around the world where the Internet becomes a very large factor in terms of their growth. And we believe, going forward, internationally it's going to grow faster than here in the U.S.
So, you'll see us continue to put a lot of focus on those areas.
MORRIS: We'll keep watching. Jerry Yang, co-founder, Yahoo!. Thank you very much for spending time with us today.
YANG: Thank you very much.
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