Yahoo

Yahoo appears in Trevor Blackwell on Viaweb, Robots, and Early Y Combinator as the acquirer of Viaweb and the company where Trevor Blackwell worked after the sale. The episode says Yahoo initially felt startup-like and gave the Viaweb team room to operate, but later became slower and more formal as it grew into a large company.

The source’s most important Yahoo story is an ad-buying prototype for Yahoo Store merchants. Blackwell wanted small merchants to buy online ads by credit card in smaller amounts, but Yahoo’s sales organization was oriented toward large ad buys and imposed pricing assumptions that made the prototype unattractive.

Connections

• Viaweb and Yahoo Store - acquisition and ecommerce product context.
• Trevor Blackwell - builder of the small-merchant ad prototype.
• Web-Based Software - Viaweb product model Yahoo acquired.
• Large Company Organizational Inertia - adjacent wiki concept for missed opportunities inside large companies.
• Founder-Investor Learning - Viaweb experience later feeding into the YC model.