First a contacts app that bombed, and now an ai assistant? I fear she’s stuck in the past and now is in a beyond crowded space. Have any of her attempts post google worked?
> Yes. She made a tremendous amount of money for herself while failing miserably at Yahoo!.
I was at Yahoo from 2004-2011, so I've got my opinions, but I think failing miserably at Yahoo is like the default option. It was a great gig to take in 2012 --- if you do well, well then it's clearly your leadership; if you don't do well, it's that Yahoo wasn't salvageable.
August 11, 2005: Yahoo acquires 40 percent of Alibaba.com for $1 billion, and Alibaba takes over the operation of Yahoo China.
Yahoo Japan was also a joint venture between Yahoo and Softbank, with Yahoo holding about 50% of the ownership.
At some point, Yahoo stock was regularly trading at or below the estimated value of the overseas holdings. The part of the company that actually did stuff was valued at zero or less. In the acquisition, yahoo stockholders got cash for the operating business plus shares in holding company formed around the overseas holdings ... Over time, the holding company sold the holdings and distributed the proceeds to shareholders and ceased operating.
Yahoo made a $1b investment on Alibaba early on, and Alibaba was growing a lot, investors couldn't directly buy Alibaba, so they bought Yahoo hoping to eventually cash in.
Yahoo was valued at $44b at one time, and the $1b it put in Alibaba was valued at $40b. So 90% of Yahoo was the Alibaba investment. There was a whole spin off core business to separate it from the investment part drama, years and years of distraction and investors and board people who wanted their ~40x instead.
She is clearly an amazing negotiator if nothing else. She made a spectacular amount of money running yahoo even faster into the ground. Imagine being paid 100M just to go away. Inspiring in its own way.
It depends on what you think she is attempting. If you consider that she is attempting to maintain a certain standard of living, then yes, it is working. There is a strange reality where you can get other people to pay you millions of dollars a year because somebody else previously paid you millions of dollars a year. You might have to keep shuffling who pays you, though.
According to the article it’s largely self paid. I’d also be surprised anyone for a pre-product startup is being paid millions a year to run it… even her.
