Barefoot millionaire boys

November 10, 1997, Jerry Yang and David Filo Barefoot millionaire boys By Margie Wylie Staff Writer, CNET NEWS.COM The Internet is a wilderness of information, and Jerry Yang and David Filo are its Lewis and Clark. Almost three years ago, the then-Ph.D. students indulged a passion for the Internet by creating a directory of their favorite Web sites. The glibly named Yahoo was run out of a trailer office at Stanford University for a year, until it started taking up more time than their studies. Today, that hobby is arguably one of the most successful Internet companies around. The now-public company has holdings strung over the globe. By December of last year, Yahoo properties were averaging 20 million page turns per day. In 1996, the company's advertising revenues grew more than 1,000 percent. And, at ages when both are still too young to run for the U.S. Senate, Yang and Filo are cofounders of an accidental Internet empire. When Yahoo first caught the eye of venture capitalists, the laid-back Stanford students became poster children for achieving the Silicon Valley dream. Appearing on covers of magazines, often as they worked, barefoot and in T-shirts and jeans, the pair became icons for all those with a modem and a dream. These days, the legendary casualness and esprit de corps at Yahoo and between Filo and Yang is looking a little strained. With nearly 200 employees, even the seven-foot-tall stuffed Gumby doll downstairs and the fooz ball machine upstairs can't hide the fact that Yahoo is turning into a big company. While both still make a point of padding around sans shoes, the gregarious Yang has gravitated toward the limelight while Filo has dug deeper into Yahoo's workings, burying himself in the minutiae of operations. On the day we visited, Yang had a camera crew in tow. In a moment of media saturation, a documentary film crew from Stanford filmed our team's videotaped interview. His office white board was covered in Japanese writing, kanji, in preparation for working with Yahoo Japan, the company's joint venture with Softbank. And Yang seems to thrive on talking to Wall Street analysts and reporters, when the newlywed's not traveling far more than he'd like. Filo, on the other hand, has retreated to a programmer's comfort zone, giving up his director's title in February 1996. He has even changed his official title from chief Yahoo to cheap Yahoo, a nickname that stuck after he insisted on off-the-shelf, no-frills PCs. In fact, the cheap Yahoo has so plunged himself into the operation of the site that even he is missing sleep, play, and a social life. Surfacing to give an interview seems an excruciating experience for the soft-spoken Filo. While Yang hobnobs with Vice President Al Gore, Filo can't remember if he's met the veep. But if the pressure of success has accentuated their differences, the money seems equally uninteresting to both. They insist they've made no major purchases, they still fly coach class, and the money just doesn't mean that much. News.com chatted with Filo and Yang in their Silicon Valley offices. The competition in Yahoo's space has become pretty intense. Yang: Right. Two things: [the competition] validates, obviously, the space. We sit around at night and say, "Geez, if nobody competed with us we wouldn't be a real company." So there's the sort of the pat-yourself-on-the-back answer, right? The second principle is that you never, ever want to compete with Microsoft. And even if they want to compete with you, you run away and do something else. We don't want to compete with Microsoft. We believe that we bring a service that Microsoft can use. We bring them customers and we help them sell software. It's likely that they will also venture into the space, but we also believe the space has opportunity for more than one player. It's not equivalent to the software industry; it's much more analogous to the media industry and where any media that you look at--whether it's magazines or TV channels or cable networks--there's always more than one choice. We believe that there are multiple choices for this sort of stuff. So that's why you sort of see multiple players jostling and juggling for position. Having alternatives for the end-user is always positive. From that end, we want to just really focus on being an alternative for the end-user, no matter what the landscape is like. NEXT: Yang: Just for fun

Stats Age: Yang, 28; Filo, 31 Claim to fame: Creators of Yahoo Title: Yang, Chief Yahoo; Filo, Cheap Yahoo Image: Yang, loves the spotlight; Filo, runs the spotlight Grew up: Yang, San Francisco Bay Area; Filo, Louisiana Favorite Beatle: Yang, Paul McCartney; Filo, John Lennon Footwear: Yang, dress socks; Filo, bare feet