I've had 24 hours to marinate on the news of Marissa Mayer's appointment as CEO of Yahoo. Initially I was shocked by the immediacy of it all--Mayer resigned from Google Monday and started her new post at Yahoo! today, just days after reports of Jason Kilar taking himself out of consideration and Ross Levinsohn seeming the logical next choice. It seemed a Hail Mary move to save a company that was stroking out in the press; a shot of adrenaline thrust into the heart of an Internet giant that could either save it, or leave it a near-corpse, damaged from all of the half-and poorly executed experiments of well-meaning CEOs past.
Perhaps "near-corpse" is too dramatic. Yahoo is still a content and advertising powerhouse. Mayer's selection is generally being described as a good thing. Some industry experts are even making cautious comparisons of Mayer's hire to Steve Jobs's appointment as CEO of Apple--finally a product visionary to help bring Yahoo back to its cool, techie roots.
Ah, were it as simple as following the Jobs playbook. Being a female co-founder of a digital media start-up, I know I should be dancing the Hora with my fellow entrepreneuses; another woman from our Silicon Valley hometown has tipped the "Women in Real Power" scales slightly more in our favor. But I hesitate, not because I do not have faith in Mayer's ability, but because I am a businesswoman. And I have a few reservations.
1. I do not immediately subscribe to the "product trumps all" argument. I thought Marc Andreesen was quite convincing in his enthusiasm for Mayer's appointment. But even he admitted surprise over the Yahoo! Board's selection, he diplomatically reasoned, because he was surprised they landed such a talented fish in the public spectacle that had become the search for Yahoo!'s next CEO. Still, he was surprised.
I agree that for media/tech companies product is important. Rely too much on content alone, or someone else's technology, and you become irrelevant. But (and let me just disclose my media bias right here--a professional hazard) let's not discount where Yahoo is still making money--in content. Mayer has huge chops developing cool-ass products, but there are certain mundanities that she'll also have to address, like the myriad content businesses and programming that Yahoo! serves up every day to pay the bills.
Clearly, the Yahoo board's decision to hire an engineer to helm the company indicates a larger emphasis on product. And I applaud the longer-term thinking, and the pure ambitiousness of yanking out the wiring, even the wires that work, to restore Yahoo as a tech innovator. But I had my money on Levinsohn to lead. How inside the box of me. Must be all those years having to earn revenue by quarter.
I hope that the learnings gained from Yahoo's prominence as a content company don't go to waste. Yahoo still needs partners, and content sources, and an impression base, to get it through its identity crisis. The jury was out on Scott Thompson's plan to drive consumer commerce into the mix before he had to resign as Yahoo's CEO in May, but it was a move that could have made sense, given social technology is highlighting how easy it is to corral purchase recommendations, and mobile tech is making it stupid simple to purchase on the spot. There was money being left on the table that Yahoo could easily swipe.
I think that Mayer will have to address the collective whiplash remaining employees inevitably feel from having survived multiple rounds of business strategy, and unlike in Google's early days, where there was nowhere to go but where others hadn't, Mayer will have to respect some legacy businesses, even while renovating them.
2. Being a CEO is hard. Not like I know from experience or anything. But I do have a business partner who is our CEO, who came from the product side. She is a testimony to how product geeks CAN run companies, but it ain't a day in the lab, where you get to wax philosophical about product. It's a series of painful decisions based on hard truths and counterforces, and some things you'd rather not deal with.
Before Mayer was hired, Ross Levinsohn had put some nasty lawsuit business with Facebook behind him. What fun. While I'm sure Mayer can handle icky things like investor relations, will she want to? Or will she have the presence of mind to hire the corporate talent of a few suity types to do this while she focuses on her strengths?
Also, there's a new level of mudslinging that occurs when you are the CEO that you don't necessarily experience when you are the anointed badass of product, or even when you are the 20th employee of one of the most successful companies in history. I don't dare suggest Mayer does not have thick skin; I suggest that this is another facet to leading a major corporation that requires skillz. And it remains to be seen how she will handle it.
Like I said, no Horas just yet. Just a pat on the back and a sincere "Good Luck!"
Reservations aside, I think that Mayer's decision to take the job is a no-brainer. Marc Andreesen thought it was such a coup that Mayer would be willing to helm a damaged company, but isn't that the point of taking the job? What determined powerhouse executive wants to take on a perfectly run company, where others will only compare your performance to that of the person who led before you? Here, the board, the employees, the public, is begging for change. She doesn't have legacy founders to contend with like she had at Google. Founders who provided Mayer with the opportunity of a lifetime but couldn't possibly provide the continued growth that she was ready for. Yahoo! offers Mayer the chance to implement her vision--the most meaningful thing someone who has already been successful at a successful company could want.
The best opportunity at this point is one at which she might fail, but fail her own way.
A final note, from someone about to have her second child in a month: Kudos to the Yahoo! board and the press who didn't harp on Mayer's pregnancy, or suggest that it would negatively affect her ability to lead a company. It's not easy having babies and raising small children while running any company, let alone Yahoo!, but if we women keep anticipating others' discomfort with our choice to have families, we will take ourselves out of the running for such high-profile roles completely.
I know I've taken to task the media's oversimplified interpretation of Sheryl Sandberg's "Don't Leave Before You Leave" philosophy, and applauded Anne-Marie Slaughter's assertion that maybe powerful women don't NEED to jump on every prestigious opportunity that comes our way, but for those of us who do want these opportunities AND have babies I am encouraged by how this acceptance of Mayer's choices is playing out.
