What happened to the 53 companies that Yahoo bought under the management of Marissa Mayer
In the early 2000s, Yahoo’s stock price was $ 118.75, and by 2012 it had fallen to $ 14–19. At this point, Marissa Mayer, a former Google top manager and search engine giant, came to the company as a new CEO. At 37, she became the youngest woman to head a Fortune 500 company. Engineers in Silicon Valley are loved and respected. Many believed that Mayer could save the company. By the end of the first year of its management of the company shares soared almost doubled, to $ 31.
Now Yahoo’s position is not stable. Shareholders demand that the board of directors be replaced because the company does not live up to expectations. Yahoo's search business, the foundation of the company, is rated negatively . In February 2016, the company fired15% of employees.
Despite this, Marissa Mayer, over the years as CEO, bought 53 startups for a total of $ 2.3 billion. Let's see what happened to these companies after deals with Yahoo.
How to return to the company of the person who left and founded his own startup? Marissa Mayer knows the answer: you need to buy this startup together with your employees, and then transfer them to the necessary units. In 2013, Yahoo bought Ztelic, a company that analyzed data from social networks. Founder startup founder Hao Zheng, a former employee of Yahoo, joined the company along with eight other team members. The founders of the startup Tomfoolery, bought by Yahoo in 2014, had the same fate.
The products that startups have created are often forgotten after absorption. Some of these transactions were conducted only for the sake of hiring talents for the company in order to enhance the competence of Yahoo. Let your company not earn, your product is not interesting to us, but we see your talent - so thought in Yahoo. Startup Stamped, which developed the social recommendations application, was closed immediately after the acquisition. Startup OnTheAir, which made a video chat, stopped working on the project - employees joined the Yahoo mobile technology division. Google Docs analogue developers called Docspad started working on Yahoo Mail. Journalists of Gizmodo calculated that in order to get new employees, Yahoo bought 33 startups.
Part of the Yahoo acquisitions list
Meyer took away not only the teams formed around the creation of a single service or application, but also eight operating companies that developed several products before the transaction. Mobile game developers Loki Studios have joined the mobile division of Yahoo. The Ghostbird Software team, creators of photo processing applications, now work with Flickr.
Startup Jerry Shen Bignoggins Productions, which developed sports mobile applications, has become one of the smallest acquisitions of Yahoo in terms of the number of people. The founder had no chance to consult with co-founders or even with employees - the company consisted of one person. As a result, two years later, Shen was fired for the phrase in the corporate correspondence “Wuddup my n *****, Ice Cube here”.
In an effort to compete with Google, Mayer bought a streaming startup RayV. The platform was closed, and most of the team joined Yahoo in Israel.
There were also startups that joined Yahoo as separate divisions, branded by the company, or continued to work as subsidiaries. The developers of smart home screen for Android - Aviate - have promised to make the application better and faster, and changed the name to Yahoo Aviate Launcher . The same platform was given to the BrightRoll video advertising platform and the German company Media Group One, which sells advertising on 800 partner sites.
The diamond in the crown of Marissa Mayer is Tumblr, a platform for blogging and content sharing. At the time of the deal with Yahoo, it counted 105 million blogs, the number of which increased to 301 million today. When she bought the service in 2013, Mayer promised to “not screw it up” , not to go into management, and only monetization by Yahoo would be involved. The company is trying to negotiate with Facebook so that the social network can sell ads inside the application and share revenue with Yahoo.
In 2012, Tumblr earned $ 13 million, and Yahoo bought it for 1.1 billion. The company planned revenues of $ 100 million for 2015, but it was not possible to achieve such a result. However, this service continues to work.
The second company that continues to operate unchanged even in the name is Polyvore. For it, Yahoo paid $ 230 million. The acquisition of this company, founded by another former employee of Google, has angered Eric Jackson, the manager of the SpringOwl hedge fund: he sent the board of directors a 99-page presentation explaining why the company urgently needs to remove Mayer from his post as CEO and appoint a new management.
In just a few years, under the leadership of Marissa Mayer, Yahoo made 53 acquisitions totaling $ 2.3 billion according to the company itself and $ 3 billion according to other estimates.. Of these, thirty-three created one product, which was closed after the transaction. The other eight companies developed several products that also disappeared from sites and app stores. Five companies continued to operate as divisions or subsidiaries of Yahoo. Two - work: Tumblr, which does not bring the planned profit, and Polyvore - a zombie company of a former Google employee. The fate of the remaining five companies is vague - for example, websites do not work for Wander and Leaf SR.
The slide from Eric Jackson’s presentation outlined in red by companies created by former Google employees. Jackson noted that acquisitions in the past three years have not added value to the company.
Now Yahoo’s position is not stable. Shareholders demand that the board of directors be replaced because the company does not live up to expectations. Yahoo's search business, the foundation of the company, is rated negatively . In February 2016, the company fired15% of employees.
Despite this, Marissa Mayer, over the years as CEO, bought 53 startups for a total of $ 2.3 billion. Let's see what happened to these companies after deals with Yahoo.
How to return to the company of the person who left and founded his own startup? Marissa Mayer knows the answer: you need to buy this startup together with your employees, and then transfer them to the necessary units. In 2013, Yahoo bought Ztelic, a company that analyzed data from social networks. Founder startup founder Hao Zheng, a former employee of Yahoo, joined the company along with eight other team members. The founders of the startup Tomfoolery, bought by Yahoo in 2014, had the same fate.
The products that startups have created are often forgotten after absorption. Some of these transactions were conducted only for the sake of hiring talents for the company in order to enhance the competence of Yahoo. Let your company not earn, your product is not interesting to us, but we see your talent - so thought in Yahoo. Startup Stamped, which developed the social recommendations application, was closed immediately after the acquisition. Startup OnTheAir, which made a video chat, stopped working on the project - employees joined the Yahoo mobile technology division. Google Docs analogue developers called Docspad started working on Yahoo Mail. Journalists of Gizmodo calculated that in order to get new employees, Yahoo bought 33 startups.
Part of the Yahoo acquisitions list
Meyer took away not only the teams formed around the creation of a single service or application, but also eight operating companies that developed several products before the transaction. Mobile game developers Loki Studios have joined the mobile division of Yahoo. The Ghostbird Software team, creators of photo processing applications, now work with Flickr.
Startup Jerry Shen Bignoggins Productions, which developed sports mobile applications, has become one of the smallest acquisitions of Yahoo in terms of the number of people. The founder had no chance to consult with co-founders or even with employees - the company consisted of one person. As a result, two years later, Shen was fired for the phrase in the corporate correspondence “Wuddup my n *****, Ice Cube here”.
In an effort to compete with Google, Mayer bought a streaming startup RayV. The platform was closed, and most of the team joined Yahoo in Israel.
There were also startups that joined Yahoo as separate divisions, branded by the company, or continued to work as subsidiaries. The developers of smart home screen for Android - Aviate - have promised to make the application better and faster, and changed the name to Yahoo Aviate Launcher . The same platform was given to the BrightRoll video advertising platform and the German company Media Group One, which sells advertising on 800 partner sites.
The diamond in the crown of Marissa Mayer is Tumblr, a platform for blogging and content sharing. At the time of the deal with Yahoo, it counted 105 million blogs, the number of which increased to 301 million today. When she bought the service in 2013, Mayer promised to “not screw it up” , not to go into management, and only monetization by Yahoo would be involved. The company is trying to negotiate with Facebook so that the social network can sell ads inside the application and share revenue with Yahoo.
In 2012, Tumblr earned $ 13 million, and Yahoo bought it for 1.1 billion. The company planned revenues of $ 100 million for 2015, but it was not possible to achieve such a result. However, this service continues to work.
The second company that continues to operate unchanged even in the name is Polyvore. For it, Yahoo paid $ 230 million. The acquisition of this company, founded by another former employee of Google, has angered Eric Jackson, the manager of the SpringOwl hedge fund: he sent the board of directors a 99-page presentation explaining why the company urgently needs to remove Mayer from his post as CEO and appoint a new management.
In just a few years, under the leadership of Marissa Mayer, Yahoo made 53 acquisitions totaling $ 2.3 billion according to the company itself and $ 3 billion according to other estimates.. Of these, thirty-three created one product, which was closed after the transaction. The other eight companies developed several products that also disappeared from sites and app stores. Five companies continued to operate as divisions or subsidiaries of Yahoo. Two - work: Tumblr, which does not bring the planned profit, and Polyvore - a zombie company of a former Google employee. The fate of the remaining five companies is vague - for example, websites do not work for Wander and Leaf SR.
The slide from Eric Jackson’s presentation outlined in red by companies created by former Google employees. Jackson noted that acquisitions in the past three years have not added value to the company.
