Jerry Yang's Kevo

Chief Yahoo! Chih-Yuan Yang, better known as Jerry Yang, was born in Taiwan in 1968. His father died when he was two and Yang and his brother Ken were raised by their mother Lily, an English and drama teacher. Ten-year-old Yang quickly adapted when the family emigrated to California and says he was speaking "like a native" within two years. Yang's mother said that he was inquisitive from the day he learned to speak, a trait that would certainly become useful.

With straight A's in high school, Yang attended Stanford University and received a BS and MS in electrical engineering. During this time, Yang asserts that future business partner David Filo was his teaching assistant. Filo doesn't recall but, regardless, the two met up again in 1993 while working on a doctoral research project on computer-aided design of computer chip circuitry. The two shared an office in a trailer with two computers, a sleeping bag and a litter of golf clubs. It was in this environment that Yahoo! was born.

With their faculty head on sabbatical in Italy, Yang and Filo had some leisure time to surf the newborn World Wide Web. Both were unhappy with the extreme lack of organization on the Internet. Finding it impossible to locate sites that were of interest to them, Yang and Filo designed a basic program that categorized web pages and instantly linked users to their desired site. 1994 birthed "Jerry's Guide to the World Wide Web," which was soon changed to "Jerry and David's Guide to the World Wide Web." Later that same year, their web site was hosting up to 170,000 people a day.

Friend Tim Brady, a Harvard student, used a school assignment to design a business plan for Yahoo! From here things began to move very quickly for Yang and Filo. In early 1995, they dropped out of their doctoral program at Stanford and accepted a $1 million investment from Sequoia Capital to pursue Yahoo! seriously. Disinterested in following the business paradigm, Yang and Filo named themselves Chief Yahoos!, set up a small office and hired a staff of grad students and friends. 1995 also marked the year that Yahoo! shocked Internet purists. Yang and Filo decided to sell advertising on the site, a practice not yet typically employed. Regardless of opposition, the decision was a solid one and Yahoo! has been growing exponentially ever since. Since going public in 1996, Yang and Filo have added options like Yahooligans for kids, a My Yahoo page, localized news and weather, celebrity chats and stock quotes.

Today Yahoo! receives a staggering one billion hits per month. Yang takes care of the media and managerial side of Yahoo! and Filo's focus is technical.

Yang is very close with his family and spends every Sunday with his brother and mother at her house for dinner. As of late, Yang has bought himself a house and new car. Along with Filo, Yang ranks 230 on the Forbes 400 for 1998. His estimated worth is $840 million with ownership of about 11% of Yahoo!
Work History
(1994-present) Chief Yahoo!, handles press and more managerial side of the business

(1998) begins offering Internet service through MCI

(April 12,1996) begins selling stock publicly

(1995) Yahoo! created as a company

(1994) co-founder, chief yahoo, Yahoo!

(1993-1994) began cataloging web sites as a hobby and established "Jerry's Guide to the World Wide Web" (later called "Jerry and David's Guide to the World Wide Web" and then "Yahoo!")

(1990s) taught in Kyoto, Japan