Erin Miller Weibel

VP Comms @yahoo. Recent alum of @joinhandshake, @meta, previously @nbcnewspr. mom, reader, runner, cook, eater & lover of all things NYC.

[Jim Lanzone @jlanzone]

Yahoo Scout is officially out of beta and ready to rock. @FastCompany with the scoop and first review. Scout still puts publishers from and center compared to others - and we do it in the most useful and thoughtful way. Great job @efeng and squad yet again. Keep going!

“Google keeps shuffling AI pieces around a page built for blue links. Yahoo’s new search results page, by contrast, feels like a clean, well-lighted place. The organization of the information in the search is clearer. And the Pivot Search feature is more intuitive to use than Google’s approach, which mostly puts its AI Mode at the same level as its other search types.”

https://t.co/UARA9Cf5ha

[Molly O’Shea @MollySOShea]

NEW: In 2021, Apollo acquired a massive internet business for ~$5B.

Just 5 years later, it's become *one of the fastest-returning deals in the firm's history.*

700M monthly users. Billions in revenue. And an enormous distribution advantage that would be nearly impossible to replicate today.

Apollo's Reed Rayman recruited Jim Lanzone (@jlanzone) to lead the turnaround.

The company? @Yahoo.

I sat down with CEO Jim Lanzone, one of the internet industry's most accomplished turnaround executives, to go inside @apolloglobal's PE M&A playbook for Yahoo, the economics of the acquisition, & why this may be one of the most underrated assets in tech.

The numbers:
› ~$5B acquisition
› 700M monthly users, including 100M+ each across Yahoo Finance & Sports
› 75% direct traffic, with ~75% of daily users logged in
› Hundreds of millions in annual ad-tech losses addressed through restructuring
› Major divestitures including AOL, TechCrunch & Edgecast
› One of Apollo's fastest-returning deals, with Jim saying they're now "playing with house money"
› Newer search companies valued at 6X Yahoo despite having a fraction of its users, revenue & profitability

But the most interesting part of this deal is the operator.

Before Yahoo, Jim helped drive a 50X stock increase at Ask Jeeves, grew CBS Interactive from 70M to 220M users, and led Tinder.

And unlike the traditional PE playbook of aggressive cost extraction, PE micromanagement, Apollo backed an experienced product executive to restructure the business, rebuild its leadership, & reinvest in growth.

Now Yahoo is moving from turnaround to comeback, with an entirely rebuilt product ecosystem, its own AI search engine through Yahoo Scout, and a potential path back to the public markets.

We get into what it's really like operating under Apollo, the leadership decisions behind the turnaround, the value of internet distribution at scale, and why some startups with less than 0.1% of Yahoo's users command higher valuations.

𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐌𝐏𝐒
(00:00) Jim Lanzone, CEO of Yahoo
(01:33) How Apollo bought Yahoo for $4.8B
(04:16) Taking over a company in the middle of COVID
(07:22) Is private equity really the villain?
(12:42) The mistake that handed Google the internet
(16:09) Where Yahoo's 700M monthly users come from
(17:07) Why Yahoo sold AOL & TechCrunch
(21:21) "You can't skip levels of the video game"
(27:58) Why people still trust Yahoo in the AI era
(30:26) How Yahoo Scout competes with ChatGPT & Perplexity
(33:48) Saying no to the AI gold rush?
(37:31) From turnaround to comeback
(39:42) One of the fastest paybacks in Apollo history
(42:50) The biggest mistake companies make at scale
(44:21) Silicon Valley startups are now worth more than Yahoo with 0.1% of its users
(46:25) Why Yahoo is ready for the next crash
(48:57) Barry Diller, Tinder & the tweet that predicted Yahoo
(54:36) Is Yahoo finally back?

[WOLF @WOLF_Financial]

YAHOO HAS ITS OWN SEARCH ENGINE AGAIN FOR THE FIRST TIME IN 17 YEARS

And CEO Jim Lanzone @jlanzone says it's built to send traffic back to publishers.

Yahoo reaches 700 million people a month, and it's using its own data and publisher relationships going back 25 to 30 years to build an AI search engine that gives clear, trustworthy answers. It's in beta now and will come out of beta later this year.

Every answer comes with blue links back to the sources, so you can check where the information came from and the publishers who created it get the traffic.

"It should be a two-way street. I don't care if we're copied by the other engines in the future. This is essential to the future of the internet in general."

[Erin Miller Weibel @Frost418]

@DylanAbruscato So glad you could come. Your talk was a hit!

[Sara Fischer Knight @sarafischer]

NEW: @TheAthletic, @YahooSports partner on new women's sports content hub
https://t.co/5ZtmrutUs6

[Erin Miller Weibel @Frost418]

Yahoo taps 30-year ad vet Rob Wilk as new head of sales https://t.co/8tDZFCCfDI

[Mike Krieger @mikeyk]

Really fun to see the ideas and insights from Artifact live on with the updated Yahoo News — also it was super cool to see the Y! team take what we’d built and sprint to get the revamp out in just 2 months.

[Jim Lanzone @jlanzone]

It’s alive. Yahoo+Artifact app launches today. Thanks @kevin and @mikeyk for helping us make it happen. Killer roadmap ahead - so much more we can do here.

[Chris Harihar @ChrisHarihar]

🟪@yahooads is the largest DSP testing Google Privacy Sandbox. Also, Yahoo's Gio Gardelli (@ggardelli) is one of the smartest experts on alt-ID/post-cookie addressability.

See his POV on GPS testing in this new @adage interview with @GarettSloane. 🍪

https://t.co/QoCgJRE1uM

[Ad Age @adage]

Despite delays in cookie timeline, Yahoo tests Privacy Sandbox with 10 advertisers. https://t.co/KBxTZw6Mrr

[ADWEEK @Adweek]

Yahoo Advertising struck a data-sharing deal with retail media network Kroger Precision Marketing, ADWEEK can exclusively reveal. This will let advertisers target the national grocer’s audiences programmatically through Yahoo’s demand-side platform. https://t.co/oCxn63abts

[Chris Harihar @ChrisHarihar]

Good panel at @sharethrough’s Green Media Summit with @Adweek's @catherineperlo1 + @yahooads' Chandra Cirulnick, VP of Global Supply Partnerships.

Green buying + performance must be linked for green solutions adoption. Direct supply boosts efficiency + performance + cuts carbon.

[The Verge @verge]

Yahoo is buying Artifact, the AI news app from the Instagram co-founders https://t.co/SPO5V5qisn

[San Francisco Business Times @SFBusinessTimes]

Yahoo's long-term lease at 901 Mission St. expired last year. Now it's opening a new office in downtown San Francisco in a deal that saw it sublease space from another subtenant. https://t.co/Q1D0FO56gt

[Handshake @joinHandshake]

New year, new way to launch your career.

Get ahead and get hired with inside intel and inspiring career content from the community of students, companies, and schools on Handshake.

[WIRED @WIRED]

Idaho’s capital city is seeing an influx of young people as they apply for tech jobs away from big coastal cities amid massive layoffs and a disillusion with Big Tech. https://t.co/T78bY9hzQ9

[Handshake @joinHandshake]

Federal agencies are doubling down on recruiting early-career talent—and it’s paying off. Our latest #HandshakeNetworkTrends report shows job posts from federal employers on Handshake increased 22% over the past year, and applications are up 55% 🧵⤵️

[Arianna Huffington @ariannahuff]

Let's talk about burnout and college students.

[Yahoo Finance @YahooFinance]

According to a recent Handshake survey, the majority of 2024 college graduates say student loans will influence their job decisions.

Handshake’s @ccruzvergara joins Yahoo Finance to discuss:

[Erin Miller Weibel @Frost418]

Construction turns college students’ heads from tech https://t.co/zzTH57Bn0S via @constructdive