Was just asked by a blogger what I thought about Kara Swishers report that Jon Miller, and his partner in crime Ross Levinsohn, might be taking over Yahoo. Big disclaimer: I'm completely biased obviously since Jon Miller is a mentor, bought my last company, invested in my current company and sits on its board. Jon Miller would be amazing for Yahoo because he is extremely good at building display advertising businesses and buying young startups. Remember, when they let him go he was coming off back to back 40%+ gain quarters in advertising revenue--second only to Google (and well ahead of Yahoo). His biggest strength at AOL--in my mind--was buying promising startups and giving them tons of support, no red tape, and breathing room. Yahoo needs new blood and a focus on display advertising, with Ross at his side you would have a very potent operator and M&A team.
Yahoo's best strategy right now is probably to build display advertising while buying and growing promising startups. Yahoo needs growth, Jon and Ross are growth guys (i.e. MySpace, Advertising.com, Weblogs, Inc, etc). As a bonus you have hundreds of VP/SVP/EVP level executives out there who are loyal to Jon and Ross, so you might see a talent influx with them at the helm, and talent wins.
1. "Yahoo's best strategy right now is probably to build display advertising while buying and growing promising startups."
agree with the second part (buying and growing startups) but disagree with the first. IMO display advertising is not much of a growth opportunity as i suspect it is going to get disrupted by an advertising model that breaks us out of CPC/CPM pricing. this will be fundamentally disruptive, and yahoo, an established incumbent, just doesnt have the resources and value system to get it done (or so it seems from my external perspective). similar to how msft doesnt have the resources or value system to play the software as services game, which is fundamentally disruptive to the desktop software world (although msft keeps deluding themselves into thinking they can play the game, though at this point their track record shows they are not very good at it).
just my two cents. on another note, your mahalo "experts" reverted my 9/11 changes back to the lies that were previously on the mahalo 9/11 page, so looks like the jason calacanis game is back on. bummer. i really thought you and your crew were ready to pull a marc andreessen and drop truth, but i guess not. oh well. whenever you are ready, feel free to embrace the truth. remember it is the truth that sets you free (meaning free from war, tyranny by lies, and hyperinflation....not sure about you but i am a big fan of money so i dont like hyperinflation too much).
Posted at 5:46PM on Jul 1st 2008 by kid mercury