David Filo

Cofounder of Yahoo!

• Born: April 20, 1966
• Place of Birth: Madison, Wisconsin

Primary Company/Organization: Yahoo!

Introduction

While he was pursuing a Ph.D. in electrical engineering at Stanford University, David Filo cofounded the Internet directory that soon became Yahoo, Inc. Perennially listed as a billionaire high-tech entrepreneur, he is not fond of publicity and maintains a very private life.

Early Life

David Filo was born to Jerry and Carol Filo on April 20, 1966, in Madison, Wisconsin. When he was six years old, his family moved to Moss Bluff, Louisiana, a suburb of Lake Charles, Louisiana. There they lived a partially communal life in an alternative community. His father, an architect, and his mother, an accountant, shared a kitchen and garden chores with six other families. After graduating from Sam Houston High School, Filo matriculated to Tulane University, where he earned a bachelor's degree in computer engineering in 1988. His studies at Tulane were made possible by a dean's honor scholarship. Following Tulane, Filo decided to continue his computer studies at Stanford University. He earned a master's degree in electrical engineering from Stanford in 1990 and began work on a doctoral degree in the same subject. However, he left Stanford to concentrate on Yahoo! and never earned his doctorate. During a panel discussion held by the London newspaper The Guardian in 2007, Filo remarked that initially he did not view what he was doing (focusing on Yahoo!) as a business. He was spending so much time on the lists of websites that would become Yahoo! that he had to choose between continuing to work toward his doctorate and focusing on the Yahoo! project. In the early days of Yahoo, Netscape let Filo and cofounder Jerry Yang use a bit of their rack space at their data center. When asked whom in technology he most admired, Filo named Steve Jobs, citing Apple's culture of innovation, design, and savvy marketing. Interestingly, Filo also admitted during the panel discussion that he believed that he and Yang had grossly underestimated the business potential Yahoo! presented and consequently had made some bad short-term decisions.

Life's Work

Filo met Yang when they were both pursuing doctoral degrees in electrical engineering at Stanford. They shared a makeshift office in a campus trailer. There they worked together on electrical engineering research, publishing at least one academic paper together. Fascinated by the nascent World Wide Web, Filo and Yang sought a website that listed all websites then in existence. They wanted something like a telephone book for the Web and when they could not find one decided to build it themselves. Both had accumulated lists of websites that they liked, so the natural next step was to combine their efforts and produce a guide to navigating the Internet.

“Jerry and Dave's Guide to the World Wide Web” was launched in the February 1994. As their list of websites grew, it became unwieldy and had to be organized into categories. When the categories grew too large, they were broken into subcategories. This became the basis of Yahoo!'s hierarchical design. By this time, after consulting a dictionary, Filo and Yang had also renamed their guide Yahoo!—both as an acronym for “yet another hierarchical officious oracle” and for the dictionary meaning of the term yahoo (which Yang especially liked): a rude, unsophisticated, somewhat wild person (or in this case, entity).

By the autumn of 1994, the site had its one-millionth hit. The response to the guide was so strong that Filo and Yang chose to leave school and devote themselves to their endeavor. Initially the web browser company Netscape allowed them to use some of its computers to access lines in exchange for plugging Netscape on their site. In March 1995, Filo and Wang incorporated their business and met with venture capitalists from Silicon Valley. They accepted $2 million in financing from Sequoia Capital in April 1995.

After Yahoo!'s lucrative 1996 initial public offering (IPO), personality differences between Yahoo!'s cofounders became apparent. Although both Filo and Yang made business cards that announced their titles as Chief Yahoo, Filo's more reserved demeanor seemed at odds with the exclamation point. Typically barefoot and clad in khaki shorts and an old silkscreened white T-shirt, Filo gave the impression that he is much more comfortable in a room full of servers than a room full of reporters or Wall Street stock analysts. For many years, the more extroverted Yang was the face of the company, whereas Filo was rarely spotted by the media.

Beginning in its early days, rumors circulated about buyers interested in Yahoo!, including America Online and Microsoft. Filo, Yang, and the board repeatedly rejected any offers. However, in 2011, Yang wanted to take Yahoo!, then worth $20 billion, off the public markets. He failed to persuade Filo and the Yahoo! board, and the company remained public. In 2012, the more gregarious Yang resigned and sold all his stock in the company.

As Yahoo! struggled to compete with the likes of Google, which dominated the market among Internet service providers, a new chief executive officer attempted to revive the company but ultimately failed to refocus amidst a number of acquisitions. In 2017, as Filo stepped down from the board of directors, Verizon bought Yahoo!'s core internet business, and what remained of Yahoo! became Altaba. Altaba was liquidated in 2020 and, a year later, the investment funds group Apollo Global Management bought a 90 percent controlling share of Yahoo!

Personal Life

Filo is married to Angela Buenning Filo, a teacher and photographer from East Palo Alto; they dated thirteen years before marrying. Together they have one child. While not a recluse, Filo is intensely private. Predictably, information on his personal life is sparse. It is known that Filo donated $30 million to the engineering faculty at his alma mater Tulane University in 2005. Together with Yang, he has also endowed a $2 million professorship at Stanford. As of 2024, Forbes estimated Filo’s net worth to be $3.5 billion.

Bibliography

"David Filo." Forbes, 6 Mar. 2024, www.forbes.com/profile/david-filo/?sh=63650cc73167. Accessed 6 Mar. 2024.

Himelstein, Linda, Heather Green, Richard Siklos, and Catherine Yang. “Yahoo! The Company. The Strategy. The Stock.” Business Week 7 Sept. 1998: n. pag. Print.

Lardner, James. “Search No Further.” U.S. News and World Report 18 May 1998: 49–53. Print.

Lunden, Ingrid. "Verizon Closes $4.5B Acquisition of Yahoo, Marissa Mayer Resigns [Memo]." TechCrunch, 13 June 2017, techcrunch.com/2017/06/13/verizon-closes-4-5b-acquisition-of-yahoo-marissa-mayer-resigns-memo/. Accessed 28 Oct. 2019.

Moritz, Michael. “TechCrunch40: Michael Moritz Interviews Marc Andreessen, David Filo, and Chad Hurley.” 17 Sept. 2007. AllThingsD. Web. 6 Aug. 2012.

Sherman, Josepha. Jerry Yang and David Filo (Techies). Brookfield, CT: 21st Century, 2001. Print.

Weston, Michael R. Jerry Yang and David Filo: The Founders of Yahoo! New York: Rosen, 2006. Print.