Back in 1993 when Jerry (Yang) and I were at Stanford, the web was non-commercial and was mainly used by universities and research labs. It was a totally different world all together. That is until we experienced the web using Mosaic, which had the capability to render rich graphics and support data and forms. This inspired me and Jerry to think, “Wow! there are a lot of possibilities here!”.
As we started to use the web more and more, we realised how difficult it was to find the stuff we were looking for. There were no directories or search services. This led us to start organising the web for ourselves. Eventually, we went on to catalogue the stuff that we were interested in. We categorised the links into a directory structure and loaded it on to a webpage. An unintended outcome of this effort was that other people could come and visit the webpage and find stuff they were looking for quite easily. Our friends started using it and slowly the word spread —here was a tool that you could use to find things that you need on the web.
Within a month people from around 30 countries started visiting our directory page. We started receiving submissions for useful things around the web and building on our list. And that was how we began to build a property as we know it today — looking at w e b - sites, cataloguing them and categorising them based on where they fit in the hierarchy.
We were quite passionate about our work to make the web more practical and usable. Eventually in 1994, what began as a tool that was meant to be used by me and Jerry became Yahoo! — a customised web database that thousands of people from across the world began to use regularly.
In the early days, none of us realised where things at Yahoo! were headed and how quickly we could unleash the potential of the web. We saw it as a once in a lifetime opportunity to participate in the revolution the web was creating, though we did not yet know how to make it a viable business. While there were a lot of people who were looking at web ventures with business models in mind, we were really focused on the consumer experience — how can we create the highest value for the consumers who visited our site, how do we listen to what they want and deliver it to them.
Soon, we saw a rapid increase in the users visiting our site. We had managed to secure one million dollars in funding. While this was a big feat, we quickly realised that we would need more to keep pace with the highly dynamic and fast growing environment of the web. We needed more people to maintain the momentum. This motivated us to pause and think how we could generate revenues. So eventually, it was sometime in late 1995 that we signed up our first five advertisers and since then there was no looking back. Today, Yahoo! is one of the leading internet brands in the world and one of the most visited site on the web.
The author is the co-founder and Chief Yahoo, Yahoo!
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