YouSaid · the spoken record

Eric Jackson

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66
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2016-08-01
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2016-08-01
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  1. “To turn around that company. But at the time, again, do you feel that when she came in that it was too far gone or that it was an opportunity to me when they owned an enormous asset in Alibaba, they had goodwill, they had a lot of great products, still a lot of great executives there.”

    2016-08-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Eric Jackson, activist investor, Yahoo · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  2. “I don't remember the first thing. I mean, I don't know if you do, but I mean, I do remember being very, very supportive. And I think part of maybe part of the things that we maybe had a Twitter battle over at the time was one thing that I thought was important and would have been important for any CEO coming into that position at that time was that Yahoo was going to be a tough slog for anybody to turn around that company. And so I thought it was important to kind of set expectations and you got to give the person a chance to really show what they can do.”

    2016-08-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Eric Jackson, activist investor, Yahoo · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  3. “No. And in fact, I wasn't either because I felt like it was not, it was a perfect opportunity to revive it right then. It had the money from Alibaba. It had someone who had a lot of credibility and great PR, by the way. Do you remember the first thing you wrote about her?”

    2016-08-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Eric Jackson, activist investor, Yahoo · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  4. “They do well. Yeah. And to be fair to you, I think really, honestly, Carol, you were the only person who was, you weren't negative about her, but you were skeptical. I guess you were, I guess, realistic. You were like, well, hey, I mean, it was almost universal applause. That was the reaction. Everybody was like, I can't believe they got her. Wow, this is fantastic and all this. That was the general consensus. All these people now within the last few days, people like Chris Mims and Farhead Manju and Dan Primak, who now say, oh, well, it was destined to fail. It was a melting ice cube. What do you expect? Nobody was saying that at the time. Everybody was saying, in fact, I.”

    2016-08-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Eric Jackson, activist investor, Yahoo · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  5. “Yeah, and I was supportive of Dan and I thought that this was a commitment by an activist investor to the long run of the company because basically they were sending a message that we believe in new product development where this is the path to do it and Marissa's the person to do it and so I wanted to be supportive so you were very supportive”

    2016-08-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Eric Jackson, activist investor, Yahoo · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  6. “Marissa, to the surprise of many people, because it seemed like Ross Levinson, who was the interim CEO, was sort of in line to take that spot. And it was a big surprise hire. And I knew about as much about Marissa as most people, which was just sort of the view from afar. Star CEO.”

    2016-08-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Eric Jackson, activist investor, Yahoo · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  7. “Yeah, and people like to harp about all the mistakes Yahoo's made over the years. You know, one smart move kind of can make up for a lot of dumb ones, and that was the home run of home runs for Yahoo and Yahoo shareholders. But Dan Loeb was an activist investor. A loud one. He was a loud one. He came on the scene in 2011 when Carol was still CEO. The board actually pushed Carol out before Dan kind of formally announced himself as an activist. And then they started fighting with Dan and there was a proxy contest. And from my opinion, Dan was saying all the right things, doing all the right things. He sort of unveiled that Yahoo's temporary CEO, or they're picked for CEO, Scott Thompson, had fibbed about part of his resume. And he was gone. Dan suddenly swooped in and was put on the board. And one of the first things that he did with someone who worked with him, Michael Wolf, was hire.”

    2016-08-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Eric Jackson, activist investor, Yahoo · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  8. “Now, it just lets you for context for people. Jerry Yang and Terry Samel and Dan Rosenzweig and Sue Decker were all part of buying a piece of that large piece of Alibaba. They had tried to go into China. It didn't work, and they decided instead to invest in promising Chinese startup called Alibaba.”

    2016-08-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Eric Jackson, activist investor, Yahoo · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  9. “A very big activist investor. So he was a big activist. I had been Long Yahoo in Valdez in Yahoo. I got really excited in 2010 because I think I was over in Hong Kong when you were doing a conference over there. And I happened to meet Joe Sai, who at that time was the CFO of Alibaba. And Alibaba back then was private. It was only worth about $10 billion. Yahoo owned 40% of it from a 2005 deal. And in meeting him, I just became much more appreciative of just how big Alibaba was going to be. So that was the main reason why I was so excited. But Dan came along. No, just let you for.”

    2016-08-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Eric Jackson, activist investor, Yahoo · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  10. “Yes, right. Yes. But There's a point where you turn and decided to agree with my good sense. Yeah, I mean, I was always a critic of the company. The board and whoever the CEO was, they always seemed to be kind of doing this sort of lax job, you know, just not moving as fast as they should be, not taking advantage of all the opportunities. So I was critical of Terry and Carol. In hindsight, I think sometimes unfairly because I came to kind of respect a lot more things that they did over time and especially as the CEOs went on. They didn't seem so bad after a while. And then there was just crazy period with Tim Morris as the interim CEO and Scott Thompson and all this Ross for a time where nobody was really in charge. When Marissa came in, I was very supportive of Dan Loeb and Dan Loeb effectively with Michael Wolf. This is Dan Loeb. Explain who.”

    2016-08-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Eric Jackson, activist investor, Yahoo · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  11. “And you're still long. Yes, right. Yes. But you were a critic, but then not a critic. You liked Marissa Mayer, for example. We'll get to her, but you were a critic for Terry and Carol, or I don't remember, actually, when you turned. Because there's a point where you turned and decided to agree with my good sense.”

    2016-08-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Eric Jackson, activist investor, Yahoo · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  12. “Yeah, and so the news that it sold of Verizon in a lot of ways, you know, it's really struck me as sad because I think of the great people that have gotten a chance to meet through the years who maybe have heard about me rabble-rousing about Yahoo and then reached out and we've started chatting about the company. And it's just stunning how many great talented people have worked there. And yet they've always seemed to do their best work when they leave Yahoo. When they leave Yahweh, we'll get.”

    2016-08-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Eric Jackson, activist investor, Yahoo · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  13. “Just the thing that stands out is that it has for 10 years now it seemed to have so much potential and it's almost consistently never been able to live up to that potential like that kid.”

    2016-08-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Eric Jackson, activist investor, Yahoo · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  14. “How strong the reaction was, and it just made me curious in the company. I knew about activists investing from back in grad school and I had met some activist investors back then and some corporate governance professors and such. And the lightning struck and I thought Yahoo would be an amazing candidate for an activist investor because at that time it still was a great brand, had huge traffic. And yet Terry was doing a lot of good things, but they were also fumbling and they just missed out on Facebook and all that stuff. So I became more interested, became an activist in 2007 and kind of have never really left with rare exceptions.”

    2016-08-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Eric Jackson, activist investor, Yahoo · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  15. “Well, yeah, it's been like almost 10 years. I mean, I guess it's been 10 years. 10 years ago, I wrote a blog post. I started a blog back in 2006. And I was writing about kind of mundane stuff related to management and governance. And I was doing management consulting at the time. And I just happened to write about Terry Summel at Yahoo. And I asked a question about whether Yahoo's success at that point was due to Terry Sommel or was more in spite of Terry Sommel. And for me anyway, back then, I remember getting like tons of comments and reactions. And most of the people who reacted were ex or current Yahoo employees. And so I'd follow the company a little bit from afar. I'd worked in tech before. So I had some dealings with Yahoo. Most of the people at Yahoo that I had experience with coming out of the dot-com crash were they seemed a little bit full of themselves, at least back then. But I was really surprised at just the...”

    2016-08-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Eric Jackson, activist investor, Yahoo · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  16. “I I did, and I did a flip phone interview with you at the time, a flip camera interview. So talk about, you were a big Yahoo proponent, and I was a critic back then because I thought they were sort of running it into the wall over and over again, and it was painful to watch. Talk a little bit about sort of your involvement with Yahoo so people get a sense of how long you've been around besides me covering this.”

    2016-08-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Eric Jackson, activist investor, Yahoo · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT