Lanzone: First startup raised $50M before crashing and selling to Ask Jeeves
Jim Lanzone · Yahoo CEO Jim Lanzone: The Yahoo Turnaround Plan | 20VC #911 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings · Jul 29, 2022 · at 1:29
Yahoo CEO Jim Lanzone discusses his early career during the late 1990s dot-com bubble and subsequent market crash.
0:00 / 0:10exact quote · 10.6s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“We raised fifty million dollars. We're going to go public. And then we crashed like you wouldn't believe with the crash. We sold what was left to ask Jeeves which is pretty much the only company that wanted us.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Jim Lanzone
Lanzone: Startup with 10k users demanded $150M Yahoo acquisition
“We just came through this period where I swear to God, a company with only 10,000 registered users wanted me to pay one hundred and fifty million dollars for them. A company with 79,000 users want someone to pay five hundred million dollars for them.”
Lanzone: Twitter was my 'white whale' company that got away
“For a long time, you know, Twitter was that company for me. It's always been my white whale. I love the product, but I always felt it could have been a lot more than it was. And so I've, I always, you know, look side-eye at Twitter as the one that, that got aw…”
Lanzone: Standard interview questions signal interviewers don't know what they want
“So I think people hide behind standard interview questions if they don't really know what they're looking for.”
Lanzone: Company values are defined by hires and tolerated behavior
“I truly believe your company values are the people you hire. Like that is 90% of it. It's also, you know, what you accept and condone, what you criticize and don't allow it's, it is.”