Jerry Yang: The Twilight of an Idol In the early morning of January 18, 2012, Beijing time, news that came even earlier than the progress of negotiations to privatize Yahoo or divest its Asian assets was the complete resignation of the company’s founder, “Chief” Jerry Yang.
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Yahoo suddenly announced that Jerry Yang not only resigned from Yahoo's board of directors and all other company positions, but also resigned from the board of directors of Yahoo Japan and Alibaba Group.
The relevant changes are effective immediately.
Yahoo has long been unable to compete with Google, Facebook and other new generation Internet star companies, and its main business is in decline.
Investors' speculative psychology towards Yahoo is far greater than their long-term optimism about its future performance, so the conflict with Yang Zhiyuan has intensified.
In recent years, Jerry Yang has been determined to avoid the fate of the company being disintegrated.
In addition to owning less than 4% of the equity (current market value of US$800 million), Jerry Yang was ruthlessly expelled by the company's investors this time, without leaving any position, leaving Yahoo without its last protector.
On the day the news was announced, Yahoo's stock price rose more than 4% after hours.
The scene of market celebration added a layer of tragedy to the founder's sad departure.
"Zhiyuan Yang founded Yahoo and was a true pioneer of the Internet. He is proficient in technology product strategy, is humble, and is respected by employees at Yahoo." Kai-fu Lee, chairman of Sinovation Ventures, paid tribute to Jerry Yang during his 17 years at Yahoo from entrepreneurship to establishment.
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He believes that "Jiyuan Yang led the cooperation with Alibaba and has now become the company's most valuable asset. Although he made mistakes in the Microsoft acquisition, it should not erase his remarkable achievements in half his life." The disaster started "moderately" According to the Wall Street Journal
, Jerry Yang did not notify other Yahoo board members before announcing his resignation.
Two weeks ago, the company just announced that its new CEO, former PayPal president Scott Thompson, had taken office.
The board of directors hurriedly reviewed Yang Zhiyuan's resignation report on the morning of January 18 and announced it to the public.
Although in the official press release, the current chairman and CEO were full of praise for Yang, the phrase "effective immediately" showed that the company was impatient.
"This is obviously a positive move. Jerry Yang has always been seen as a stumbling block to corporate transactions or restructuring. I hope his departure can bring more fresh blood to the board of directors." A Wall Street analyst wrote in a report.
There is always a calm and simple smile unique to engineers on his face - this is the warm and deep impression Yang Zhiyuan left on many people.
Jerry Yang, who was born in Taipei in 1968, grew up in a family of intellectuals.
When he was ten years old, his family immigrated to San Jose, California, USA.
The initial problem with English communication did not prevent Yang Zhiyuan from becoming a top student.
He completed his bachelor's and master's degrees in electrical engineering at Stanford University in just four years.
In April 1994, Jerry Yang and David Filo, who stayed at school to engage in research work, founded Yahoo Internet Navigation Guide, and registered Yahoo in April of the following year.
This product collects and categorizes various sites to solve the problem of users not knowing where to go online in the early days of the Internet.
Stanford University's network was once overcrowded by countless users who logged in to the Yahoo site and started surfing the Internet.
The school was furious about this, but Yahoo became famous in one fell swoop.
With star products in hand and tens of thousands of visits every day, the two young founders quickly found Sequoia’s investment.
The investors also recommended an experienced professional manager to serve as CEO to take the helm of the company.
In March 1996, Yahoo listed on Nasdaq and raised US$134 million. It surged 154% on the first day of listing. 28-year-old Jerry Yang gained personal assets of US$170 million.
In the late 1990s, for those Chinese netizens who first entered the Internet, being able to register a Yahoo mailbox or use Yahoo's IM tool Yahoo Messenger to chat online with friends was the most fashionable Internet experience.
Without Yahoo pioneering the portal model, there would not have been the rise of a number of Chinese local portals such as Sina, NetEase, and Sohu.
Yang Zhiyuan, who lives in the United States and is also Chinese, has become the unique idol of a generation of Chinese Internet entrepreneurs.
Until the first Internet bubble burst, Yahoo was making rapid progress in the capital market - after completing its stock split in 1998, its stock price jumped to more than 100 US dollars, with a price-to-earnings ratio of more than 300 times. As a representative of established IT companies, Microsoft
The price-to-earnings ratio at that time was only 52 times; on January 3, 2000, Yahoo's stock price surged to US$237.5, and its market value reached an astonishing US$128 billion in the industry.
Although Yahoo became an early benchmark company in the Internet field with its portal, mailbox and search products, as Google, a search engine company with the core of a new generation of Internet technology, knocked on the door of the capital market in 2004, Yahoo began to be gradually
Marginalized, its golden age lasted less than ten years.
Google listed on Nasdaq in April 2004 and raised US$1.66 billion, becoming a new generation of Internet star companies sought after by investors. Two years later, Google overtook Yahoo in market value and became the world's largest Internet company.
After Google, Facebook, with its social network products as its core, became the new Internet star in the world.
Yahoo has increasingly become a bystander, and its market value has dropped to less than US$20 billion, less than one-sixth of its highest value.