Loosely held
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The sharpest people I’ve ever sat across from are the ones who hold their opinions the loosest.
In February of 2008, Microsoft offered to buy Yahoo for $44.6 billion. It was a 62 percent premium over Yahoo’s market value at the time. The board had ten days to consider it.
They said no.
Jerry Yang, Yahoo’s co-founder and CEO, told Microsoft the offer “substantially undervalues” the company. Then something strange happened. Weeks went by with no response from Yahoo at all. Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer issued an ultimatum, giving Yahoo three weeks to come to the table. The deadline passed. Microsoft’s chief counsel called Yahoo’s bankers and offered $33 a share to get the deal done quickly. Yahoo never called back.
On May 3rd, Yang and co-founder David Filo flew to Redmond to sit down with Ballmer in person. They came with a number: $38 a share. Their own board of directors had already come down to $37. Yang was holding one dollar tighter than the people who were supposed to be running the company alongside him.
Ballmer walked away convinced that Yahoo would rather destroy its own brand than let this deal go through.
Eight years later, Yahoo sold to Verizon for $4.83 billion.
Years afterward, Yang said it wasn’t that he didn’t want to sell. “That’s the way the media portrayed it.” But the timeline tells a different story. Weeks of silence. Ignored calls. A personal price higher than his own board’s. That pattern looks like a founder who experienced every offer as something being taken from him rather than something being given. He had data and a vision and a case for independence. It all felt rational. It was emotional, dressed up in numbers.
