Q of the Day: Is a start-up the 'Hotel California'?
Can a founder every really leave the company (s)he creates?
By Carleen Hawn, June 19, 2007 — 4 CommentsThe “departure yesterday of Terry Semel as CEO”:http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyId=16&articleId=9025200&intsrc=hm_topic was newsworthy for sure, but more interesting to us was that Yahoo! co-founder Jerry Yang took up the helm, again.
It is noteworthy that Yahoo!’s board didn’t give Jerry the common title of “interim CEO” (which would have indicated that the company was hunting for another professional outsider to run the company), or name Susan Decker CEO, as some on Wall Street have been expecting. (She gets the new title of President.) Read the “full press release here”:http://yhoo.client.shareholder.com/ReleaseDetail.cfm?&ReleaseID=249882.
Anyway, Yang’s heroic return to save his struggling Yahoo! made us wonder: can a founder ever really leave the company he created?
About Carleen Hawn
Carleen Hawn is a business journalist based in San Francisco. Prior to editing Found|READ, she was an Associate Editor with Forbes, and the West Coast Bureau Chief and a Senior Writer for Fast Company magazine. Today you can find Carleen's articles in the pages of Financial Week, Business2.0, and Outside magazines, among others.
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Talk About This Story
(96 points)
June 19, 02:06 pm
I am not sure as a founder you can ever give up on your baby. It is just that – your baby. Despite all the money, all the success and all the fame – when there is crisis you are bound to react emotionally. Dads do it all the time even with their most errant kids.
(114 points)
June 19, 02:06 pm
I think the return of Yang is mostly about giving a boost of morale to Yahoo! employees and signal to everyone else that Yahoo! is ready to kick ass.
I heard many times that people werent really happy about the job Semel did at Yahoo!, while he did bring Yahoo! to a better market capital and expanded it. Their competitors performed better, and this is all about beating your competitors.
I’m not sure if Yang will be able to lead Yahoo! to a better future like returning Steve Jobs did at Apple.
But I’m sure Yahoo! employees morale will improve and we should see a kicking company.
Good luck to Yahoo!
(42 points)
June 19, 05:06 pm
it bugs me—you read the story of Semel taking Yahoo from $4 a share to $48 yet all you hear is people whining about Google….
Even so, I’m happy Yang is in the saddle. I know as a founder, there is no way he could have ever turned down that opportunity. Founders believe they can do anything (or else why start a company) and as Om points out, you never stop loving your baby.
(114 points)
June 20, 03:06 am
I think this is natural to hear people whining aboug google, a company performance isnt measured by its growth only but also how well she performed in the market.
Yahoo! might have maintained its stream of visitors (known to be the largest in the web), but they failed to enter growing market and understand future trends.
In the long run, this strategy of late adopter will cost them in revenues and in loss in stock prices. As many know this, the stock prices arent always fixed based on how well you perform but almost of how well you will perform in the future.
I remember once i’ve put some money in Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd, (they are leader in generic drugs), after they loss around 30% last year, they’ve shown very good perfomance 2 quarters, outnumbering the highest prices by analysts in the market. Yet they failed to go up and the stock prices were going down.
The stocks prices were down because there was a negative sentiment in the market regarding their ability to grow in the future (2008-2009), because they were about to loose their exclusivity on some of their cash cow drugs. The fact they did amazing sum of money during 2006 and had their monster quarters didnt really bother the market.
I think Yahoo! is suffering from a negative sentiment aswell, Google is pioneering in everything they are doing, while yahoo! is like an old company who failed to adopt new technology and push the innovation.
You succeed only after you fail numerous time, which is the concept leading in google who are working on hundreds of small projects.
Maybe Yahoo!’s Brickhouse (an incubator for projects within yahoo, who works in the same model of startup) will bring back the innovation. who knows.
Anyway, its clear that Yang couldnt refuse to “come back” and “save” yahoo!
Time will tell if he will be able to lead Yahoo! to a brighter future.