Not much information has emerged in the wake of Yahoo’s executive all-day meeting, other than the attendance of Apple CEO Steve Jobs as inspirational speaker.
Yahoo Missing That Vision Thing
One detail has been mentioned, that being Yahoo’s horde of executives, over 300 people bearing the title of vice-president or higher. Kara Swisher noted the highlight of the day, where Jobs addressed the crowd.
Tim O’Reilly has followed up on that, in noting a difference he sees between Yahoo and Google:
Yahoo! is a great company, but I don’t think they embrace their greatness, or even know what it is. Steve Jobs knows what matters to him. Larry and Sergey and Eric know what matters to them. I don’t get the same feeling of innate conviction that I get from Apple and Google, where the company is a reflection of who its leaders are, what they value, and how they think.
Now, I’m not saying that’s it’s an easy task to build a huge company that stays true to the vision of its founders. There are very few companies that can really pull that off.
O’Reilly then brings up a name that one really doesn’t hear all that much when it comes to Yahoo’s daily affairs. That would be David Filo, the other co-founder of Yahoo.
Yahoo’s execs may have felt better about what Jerry Yang and Sue Decker want to accomplish, but whether or not they feel the vision and believe it is another matter. In a day where they wanted to bring a sense of vision back to the upper ranks, and have it filter down the company, we have to wonder if Filo has a place in helping with this.
If Yahoo is missing vision, maybe it’s because they are missing one of the visionaries who got things going. We would be interested in what Filo could bring to the equation. The question is, does Filo want to do that?
