Chapter 216 Yahoo CEO and the Opportunity to Invest in Google

Li Xiaofan said to Yang Zhiyuan who was far away in Silicon Valley on the phone: "Jerry, if there is anything urgent, can we communicate on the phone first?"

Jerry Yang introduced on the phone: "Afan, a more important issue for the board of directors this time is that Mr. Moritz from Sequoia Capital recommended a CEO candidate to us. Previously, Mr. Moritz has been helping us find A suitable manager would be able to free Ferro and I from the day-to-day management..."

"Well, it's a very good suggestion. I support Mr. Moritz's idea. Let a professional manager be responsible for managing daily affairs, and you and Ferro, the two founders, can focus on technical research and grasp the company's major strategies. Direction. Jerry, who is the candidate for CEO?”

"His name is Tim Koogle. Tim Koogle is also an alumnus who graduated from Stanford. He now works for the famous Motorola Company and has very management experience. Together with Mr. Moritz, we have privately found Tim Koogle. We had an exchange with him, and Tim Kuger was very interested in Internet entrepreneurship and expressed his willingness to serve as CEO of our company, so we were eager to hold a board meeting to finalize this matter. It will take time for Motorola to resign..."

Tim Kuger, whom Jerry Yang mentioned, was the first Yahoo CEO after Yahoo received venture capital from Sequoia Capital in his previous life.

In Li Xiaofan's memory, when he was taking an MBA course in his previous life and his teachers and classmates discussed Yahoo's case analysis, the industry's evaluation of Yahoo's first CEO, Tim Kuger, was mixed.

Later people commented that Yahoo has lacked a strong leadership team since its birth. Yahoo has always lacked its own goals and often blindly followed the trend, resulting in rapid decline after its glory...

A common saying in the industry is: "Tim Kuger, Yahoo's first CEO, could only spend money but not make money." This is because he led dozens of acquisitions when he was CEO of Yahoo, most of which were loss-making transactions. Many projects have since been rated as the worst acquisitions in the history of the Internet.

During his tenure as CEO of Yahoo, in 1997, there were two Stanford University students, one named Sergey Brin and the other named Larry Page. Together they worked on a project called BackRub, which is called Network in Chinese. reptile. They came to the door and wanted to sell it to Yahoo for US$1 million, but were ruthlessly rejected by Tim Kuger and Jerry Yang.

As a result, the BETA version of this BackRub project was launched in 1998 and was renamed Google. Later, the Google company developed rapidly, and at its most glorious time, the market value exceeded an astonishing one trillion US dollars! In 2019, Google acquired Yahoo’s headquarters for US$1 billion. History has made a big joke!

However, Li Xiaofan believes that, to be fair, Tim Krug did not make a big mistake. People always have their limitations, and Tim Krug is not a prophet. Unlike Li Xiaofan, who is a reborn person, he can predict in advance that the BackRub project will hatch into the global Internet giant Google, but the later merger and acquisition projects turned out to be so bad. …

Li Xiaofan believes that the Internet at that time was a new thing after all, and everyone was trying to cross the river by groping for stones. It was already very impressive for a professional manager like Tim Kuger with a background in Motorola to serve as an executive in an Internet company that was just emerging at that time. . If there was a mistake he made, it might be that Yahoo spent too much money on acquisitions. Tim Krug's major acquisitions during his tenure include Four11 (the predecessor of Yahoo Mail), (the predecessor of Yahoo Games) and other projects, especially the acquisition and valuation of 3Cities after Yahoo went public with a valuation of US$5.7 billion. Two acquisitions later ranked among the top five worst acquisitions in Internet history.

But in that era when pigs could fly, money was too easy for the Internet. After Yahoo went public at that time, its market value easily exceeded 10 billion US dollars, and later exceeded 100 billion US dollars. In that era of crazy Internet bubbles, who could make the money? What about Tim Kuger? Li Xiaofan believes that to some extent, because Tim Krug is the CEO and has become a scapegoat, he has suffered too much infamy, while the two most influential decision-makers, Jerry Yang and Ferro, are hiding behind very few Someone scolded them...

Li Xiaofan believes that as long as he is still a shareholder and director of Yahoo in the future, he can exert influence to persuade Jerry Yang and Tim Kuger to make cautious decisions on major mergers and acquisitions!

As for the BackRub project, the predecessor of Google, he could have made angel investment in advance in 1997... (Haha, he started to feel secretly happy!)

Thinking of this, Li Xiaofan said to Yang Zhiyuan on the phone: "Jerry, if you two founders and the three major shareholders of Sequoia Capital have reached an agreement, I, the small shareholder, have no objection. I support Tim Ku. Jerry, if I don’t fly here to attend the on-site board meeting, can I vote by fax?”

Jerry Yang thought for a moment and replied: "Okay, think about it, it is really troublesome for you to fly from far away Singapore to attend our company's board of directors. Then I will ask the secretary to fax you the board issues and voting matters. !”

After talking to Yang Zhiyuan on the phone, Li Xiaofan called a Comfort Taxi and took him directly back to the terraced house dormitory.

When I entered the living room, I found Guo Hanyue and Liu Mengchen lazily lying on the sofa in the living room watching TV. The TV screen was playing a TV series called "End of Fate in This Life".

This TV series was starred by Fann Wong, a famous female star in Singapore at the time. In this play, Fann Wong's acting skills were challenged. From a girl to an old woman, from a weak woman to a famous woman, she struggled between the grievances of the rich and powerful and could not extricate herself...

After Li Xiaofan entered the door, the TV series ended, and the theme song "Extinguishing Fate" sung by Hsin Xiaoqi was playing:

"Looking back at my life,

I found that the journey of love was incomplete,

I would rather love only one person,

than be trapped by love for a lifetime..."

"Hey, don't you two have to go to work?" Li Xiaofan asked curiously.

Liu Mengchen immediately became energetic when he saw Li Xiaofan coming in. He sat up and said with a smile: "Afan, I have good news for you. Recently, the hospital has recruited a group of new nurses from mainland China. The two of us finally don't have to work night shifts for the time being!"

"Wow, that's great, congratulations! Have you two had enough dinner? Are you interested in inviting you to the market for a midnight snack to celebrate?"

Liu Mengchen said happily: "Okay, I'm a little hungry!"

But Guo Hanyue didn't react. She was wearing an old yellow pajamas and continued to lie half-lying on the sofa, looking listless.

Li Xiaofan asked curiously: "Yueyue, what's wrong with you? Are you feeling unwell?"