Yahoo had to fix its core products before launching new ones

Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

1. 21:20

   In the conversation with Bending Spoons, the biggest misconception with the AOL transaction was, you know, it's actually, it was a really healthy asset. You guys got it to a really healthy point. So let's talk about the transformation within the company. What, because you joined during the height of this AI hysteria and like invention. No, it wasn't on the map yet. That was November of 22. We were, you know, we had no idea in September of 21.

2. 21:47

   I don't know how you manage it. But like now we're in this crazy world of AI, whether it's transforming your company or your business model or competing with you and challenging everything around. Like, how did you think about rebuilding the company over that time period and then incorporating more technology? Well, look, the first thing is in a transformation job is you, I always tell the team, you can't skip levels of the video game, right? You have to go level by level and win each level to earn the right to the next one. It always comes down to product. We're a consumer internet company.

3. 22:18

   that's what we do for a living building great products if you're not doing that it's like you know you're either it's like shawshank redemption you're either get busy living or get busy dying that's how it is with this and some of these products had not been worked on in in like 10 years some of these things have not really been improved yeah and so it was get back to work so hire great product people and we have an amazing team now that i would say would is a great product team relative to you know any other big consumer internet company we brought great people in who share our passion for putting this brand back on the map who all of all of whom have entrepreneurial backgrounds every general manager from me on down has been entrepreneur at least once and started companies so we take that approach improve the products is definitely

4. 23:02

   game one if you can do that and you can start getting growth going again well now you can actually get to you know building brand new things like yahoo scout our search engine we launched earlier this year. Yahoo hadn't had its own search engine in 17 years. That's so crazy. So, or college fantasy football, which, which we kind of broke the internet with when we announced it this summer and has been amazing. And 40% of the people who have been coming to the platform, uh, where, you know, fancy Yahoo fantasy is huge. We had our three biggest days ever this year for NFL, but college 40% of those users are brand new to Yahoo. So doing these brand new things has been you know is the reward you get for doing the hard work and the turnaround work you know in the first place and then the next step is is actually the brand which has been one

5. 23:48

   of the most surprising things about this you know having been through the ringer with some other brands through the years that uh it has been incredible to see that yahoo has a lot of latent brand love in there for it. And especially with younger audiences. So I think we've talked about this, but over 50% of our audience is Gen Z and millennial. We have 75% of Gen Z is using Yahoo and are one of our products. And when we market, we've done a lot of really interesting marketing. We have a great social media team. We have a really creative brand advertising team. We have seen like 31% absolute point lift in brand love, which is one of the things that you track with Gen Z. And that's, again, from our Cardi B campaign, from our Kyle Cook the Weather Boy campaign, from Summer House, for all the

6. 24:40

   social media things that we've done. It really is met with great reception. And so that really gives me hope that the more we turn that dial, the more there is to do there. Again, if you don't have great products, you have no business even trying. This is going to be a theme that comes