October 15, 2025 • 41 mins
From Ask.com to Tinder to CBS Interactive, Jim Lanzone has spent his career redefining how we connect online. In this episode, he joins Michael to share how he’s reimagining a 30-year-old internet icon for a new era, leading Yahoo through a bold new chapter defined by innovation, trust, scale, and cultural impact.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Good Company is a production of iHeartRadio. In our industry,
it's like a shark. You know you're going forward or
you die, and you have to and you can't get distracted.
You have to be an expert understand what that really
needs to look like so you can prioritize what should
get done versus you know, the shiny objects.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
I'm Michael Cassen and this is Good Company. Together we'll
explore the dynamic intersection of media, marketing, entertainment, sports and technology.
I'll be joined by visionaries, pioneers, and yes, even a
couple of disruptors for candid conversations as we break down
how these masters of ingenuity are shaping the future of business,
culture and everything in between. My bet is you'll pick
(00:45):
up a Lessen or two along the way. As I
like to say, it's all good. Welcome back to Good Company.
Today's guest is a force in the digital world as
someone who has shaped the intersection of media and technology
throughout his career, from reinventing ask dot com to building
CBS Interactive into a streaming powerhouse, to running Tinder at
(01:09):
a moment when culture itself was swiping right. Jim Lanzone
has built rebuilt and redefined the way people connect online,
and now is the CEO of Yahoo. He's leading the
transformation of one of the Internet's most iconic brands. An
industry insider has likened Yahoo to a thirty year old startup,
(01:29):
and that tells you everything about the way Jim has
approached his role optimistic, entrepreneurial, rigorous, and drawn to unexpected innovation.
He sat at the center of the search wars, the
streaming wars, and he's now championing Yahoo at the front
lines of AI, ad, tech, and most importantly, cultural relevance.
(01:51):
This episode is more than a conversation about Yahoo. It's
about how you win in a world where scale, trust,
and passions collide. And if anyone one can show us
the way forward, it's Jim land Zone. And what I
will add to that is Jim and I share a
massive passion for music, probably different times, so I may
edit this podcast to have some music in the background,
(02:13):
but I'd like to welcome Jim Lanzone to good company.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
Thank you for having me. Michael. It's not gonna be
the Grateful Dead, is it?
Speaker 2 (02:19):
No?
Speaker 1 (02:20):
No?
Speaker 2 (02:20):
In my case, Jim, It'll probably be Frank Sinatra.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
Tribe called Quest we're not going to get there.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
Yes, I don't know that. We'll make it.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
Frank's notata right over your shoulder right now? That is correct, It's.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
You know, it's funny. It's a famous picture. Can I
tell you the story of that picture?
Speaker 1 (02:35):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (02:35):
For our listeners without the visual, it's a picture of
John F. Kennedy and Frank Sinatra at the nineteen sixty
one presidential inauguration. Why that picture means something? I happen
to be a big fan of Peggy Noonan, who's a
wonderful columnist in the Wall Street Journal. I look forward
to her column every week, read it religiously, and I
generally align with what she says. She wrote a piece
(02:58):
about The Crown, the TV show years ago, and she
talked about particular season where John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline
Kennedy visited the Queen of England, and so it was
from that perspective, and there's a scene in the Joe
on the Crown where John F. Kennedy goes outside and
smokes a cigarette. And in her column about The Crown,
(03:18):
she said the thing, I love The Crown, she says,
and it's a great show, but they were factually incorrect
because John Fitzgerald Kennedy never smoked. And when I read
the column, I said, no, that's wrong. I have proof.
I was fortunate enough to meet Peggy once in person
and I told her. I said, Peggy, I'm a religious
reader of your column, love it. But I caught you
(03:40):
on this one.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
You showed her the photo.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
I showed her the photo.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
Technically, we don't know what he's smoking in the photo,
so that thing's a little blurry at that spot.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
You just jumped on the punchline, Jim Lanzone because you
know what she said to me. Oh, Michael, I'm aware
of that photo. But he's not smoking a cigarette. He's
smoking a cigarrillo.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
That's a real technicality.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
Ah, that is a technic. And for those of you
who don't know what a cigarillo is, when I grew up,
it was a combination of a cigarette and a cigar
and they called it a cigarillo. I have no idea
why or where it came from.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
On the same topic or similar topic, have you seen
over the past two weeks it was floating around the internet.
The writer for Frank Sinatra for one of his concerts,
No I did, It's it's gone everywhere, virally, on everywhere,
just for one show, he is asking for the entire
grocery store and liquor store.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
No, I did see it. What does he need in
his in his apparently everything in his rehearsal he was
going to stay for a week.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
I did it had every brand, everything we had, Jack Daniels,
get drunk, smoke everything. It was crazy.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
I did see it. It was his request list in
his dress. Ever, Yes, I did notice it. So what
I'd like to do is go back to where we should,
which is you somebody I've known for quarter of a century. God,
that seems like a long time. But you've been involved
with some iconic consumer Internet brands, as I said, Gas
(05:00):
dot Com, CBS, Interactive Tender. What was it about Yahoo
at that particular moment in time that got you to say, yeah,
I think I'm up for that challenge?
Speaker 1 (05:10):
Well I ran towards it. I mean I've I always
thought Yahoo had the great bones of you know, something
I love to do, which is a turnaround. I've been
a part of a few of those. It always had
the thing that you just cannot replicate, which is incredible distribution.
You know, hundreds of millions of views, a month. I
can always work with that, and I'd competed against them
(05:31):
for years. I knew every management team, you know, going
back to the nineties, and you know, I think our
team always had an eye to what we would have done,
perhaps differently with some of the properties. Fast forward to
twenty twenty one and talking to the Apollo guys who
are buying it at the time, you know, I thought,
if you could get it at the right price and
have some upside, that there was still a ton you
(05:54):
could do with it. You just had to put to
bed a lot of what had been through through the
years as a brand and as a business, especially as
a public company, and just look at the good parts,
right being number one or number two and all these
super important categories still in twenty twenty one. So yeah,
I left it the challenge.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
So Jim, I want to talk about and I'll come
back to it later because you've had what I believe,
and I know this firsthand, but I want to hear
it from your perspective. You've had a great journey with
private equity, and you're just not with any private equity.
Your partners with Apollo, one of the most important and
powerful private equity firms in the world close to a
trillion dollars under management. So when you think of private equity,
(06:34):
Apollos at the top of everybody's ranking, certainly or certainly
in the top three or four in the world. So
I do want to talk about that because you said
something there. It's nuanced as well, public versus private, so
it's not only private equity back, but having been a
public company becoming a private company. So I do want
to come back to that, But I want to focus
on your career again for a moment. There's obviously been
(06:55):
a thread in your career, but I read something recently
where you said you didn't actually map it out. Now,
in this case, you said you ran towards y'a whoso.
I understand that was purposeful. Yeah, But the interesting thread,
you know, I know my career has been here, there,
and everywhere in different industries. That thread has been pulled
through the sewer internet. But you didn't write this down
(07:17):
at the beginning. How did it happen? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (07:20):
I went to UCLA as you did, and you had
no idea what I wanted to do.
Speaker 3 (07:23):
There's two bruins on this podcast, and the long story
short is I right at the beginning of the Internet.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
I got an internship with a company that wanted to
put itself online and I for my summer internship was
in charge of that. So bam, I'm a product guy
now all of a sudden, and had to organize the
engineering team, design team, do all the advertising, do the
pr We got the product and Time magazine, I mean
all kinds of stuff, and some classmates had raised money
for a startup. I joined that as the head of product.
(07:51):
So that was my nineties experience. We raised fifty million
dollars plus, which was a lot back then. We went
up and down with the web one point zero boom
and crash written the S one, but we never filed
it because market crashed and we went on fumes for
a while. We went up at Ask Jeeves right as
that company was bottoming out, and that was my first
grade turnaround opportunity. I joined there and as had a product,
(08:13):
and we had an incredible run, you know, fifty xiting
the stock selling to IC and Barry Diller. When that happened,
my boss was recruited to run all of Internet for Microsoft,
Sacha Steve Birkwood. Sacha I think report to him, and
I was promoted to CEO as part of that. So
I worked for Barry for three years, left to do
another startup, so we gat no plan, but Bill Gurley
(08:34):
and Jeff Yang were my I'M big investors, and we
wound up selling that to Lesson CBS, where I joined
the CEO of their internet group. That wound up being
eight years in almost nine years. So and that was
a whole run, you said, the streaming wars. Yet we
were right right in the middle of that. That was
two decades, just right there, of two startups, kind of
two turnarounds.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
And it's not lost on me, Jim. I had the
good pleasure this summer of reading listening to actually Barry
Diller's book. I loved it. And I said this to Barry.
I was fortunate to see him last week actually, and
I said, you know, listening to the book was a
treat because when you know the person who's narrating the book,
it's as if they're talking to you. So I said, Barry,
(09:14):
I felt like for this summer, you know, for a
good part of the summer, I was talking to you
because you were talking to me.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
I couldn't agree more. And especially having spent so much
time with him for the three years I worked for him.
You can really hear him in it. But the part
you know that I and I said this to him.
It was interesting to hear some of his insecurities about
his own pathway. And I remember in the mid two
thousands him wondering out loud to me like, oh, do
you think we would have it? Would you know? He
(09:41):
wondered whether they would have done it if it was
during the internet era? And I said, and now that
was almost twenty years ago now, and you see everything
he did in the Internet, and like, of course he's
just a badass at everything.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
Right, what's so interesting? And I have to ask you this, Jim.
And again, this wasn't anything I thought about in advance.
But Barry was very gracio to several people in the book.
He was pretty direct about certain other people in the book,
but he was very gracious. And one person in particular
said he worked for Barry for quite some time early
early in his career, and the accolades that he was
(10:13):
given in the book surprised him because he didn't ever
get them directly from Barry. What was your experience? Again,
this is apropos of nothing that I want to talk
to Jim Lanston.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
I probably because he was always focused on progress, and
he'll say curiosity absolutely. It was always, you know, running
a million miles an hour towards the thing he was
trying to achieve. So I think he set himself in
the book People, Management was not what he was in
this for. It was creativity and innovation and progress. And
so I think in the Fog of War that that's
(10:45):
what he was focused on. And I know that if
you think about the bench that he created over time,
how many people went who worked for him over time,
You know, it had to be something special.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
And I digressed only for one more moment. Peter Rice
said this to me years ago when he was working
within the news organization. He said, if you put Rupert
Murdoch's picture in a center and did concentric circles from
Rupert Murdoch out, and you look across the entertainment industry today.
This was several years ago, but I think it's still
(11:15):
true today. Although some of the names are not there.
Virtually everybody that has been successful expanded their horizons in
the media and entertainment somehow started a long time ago
working for Rupert Murdoch, including Barry Diller. But when you
look at that and you see names like Peter Chernan
and Barry Diller, and you mentioned less moonvez he did
(11:37):
at some point in his career work for early in
his career. So you think of the people who, for
better or for worse, went on to greatness in our industry.
And what you just said about Barry Diller is similar.
Lots of people went through the Barry dillar machine.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
Look, and everyone should read or listen to this book.
But I mean the different chapters in his life, you know,
in television and movies, in the I mean, it's incredible.
He did it over and over again. Right, He wasn't
just lucky once.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
Well, you were lucky to be at the foot of
a leader like that for several years. Jim Let's come
back this year was pivotal for Yahoo. It's crazy for
me because I was around when Yahoo launched and it's
thirty years So how do you balance that thirty year
legacy at the same time as having to day by day,
(12:26):
hour by hour reinvent in yet another new era of media.
I mean, you talked about the dot com explosion and implosion.
Yahoo's been through that entire journey and you've got the opportunity,
and you're obviously succeeding at that opportunity in terms of
reinventing as you go.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
Yeah, easy answer. We don't think about it. We celebrate it.
It's our thirtieth anniversary this year. We put a lot
of work into understanding the mission of the company and
why we still had a right to exist, Why did
we exist, why were we still so popular in this
new era going forward? So and you know, we've had
Jerry Yang back to speak to the company several times.
(13:04):
So we embrace the history of the company. But if
you walk into our office, it is a worker hive
of people innovating for the future. And in our case,
that's not one product, right. I've worked to companies where
it's one product, one search engine, one dating app. In
our case, it's a conglomerate, and every one of these
groups has a different leader, a different head of product,
a different head of engineering, oftentimes a different head of content,
(13:26):
et cetera. And they are heads down just innovating their
tails off. In our industry, it's like a shark. You
know you're going forward or you die, and you have
to and you can't get distracted. You have to be
an expert understand what that really needs to look like
so you can prioritize what should get done versus you know,
the shiny objects. And that's what Yahoo is today.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
But Jim, it's interesting. I've had the opportunity and the
pleasure of observing you as a leader, and you inspire
greatness in your teams because you also have a unique
eye to spot talent in each place that we've worked together,
which I'm happy to say is several the people you've
surrounded yourself with. And maybe this comes as a lesson
(14:07):
you learned from a Barry Diller or another mentor, because
I'm going to get to that in your career, but
you've you've been You've been expert at finding really top
talent and nurturing it.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
You know, I will say I'm definitely not an expert
at a lot of things, but I am a consumer
Internet and the revenue models around it. I've done it
for a long time. I know what good looks like
at this point, I know what to look out for.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
Well, you know, let's make this clear, sir, you are
a bold face name in that's.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
Well a lot look a lot of people, you see it, right?
They people will hire a hockey coach to coach a
basketball team. I'm a basketball coach. I've only I've only
worked in basketball. Sorry to use the sports a nowsie,
but that's the trick. And so you know, at this point,
I understand business, and I could make my way around
other things probably, but in this thing, I know what
(14:54):
good looks like. And that's that's not just the capabilities
to do the job and product and grow both and
content and all that. It's also the types of people
that we want around us, which is high EQ. People
who are great teammates to the people around them. They
understand how to prioritize, They understand what to make a
big deal out of what not to. They know how
to move a team forward. So if you marry those
(15:17):
two things, you can get a great team.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
You know. Jeffrey Katzenberg taught me a great lesson years ago,
and you just said it in different words. He says,
it's always important to remind people they shouldn't major in
the minor. Don't major in the minor, pay attention to
what's really important. We're going to hit pause for a moment,
but stay with us after the break. We've got more
insights to share. You said the word consumer internet several times, Jim.
(15:53):
When we talk about the consumer internet, let's talk about
consumer brands. Yaho Sought Sports, Yahoo Finance, if Y'aho news.
I mean, these are some of the most important and
powerful brands in the industry. You've taken like stallwarts and
I don't want to say they were more abound, but
you've taken stallwarts that were on fire and you've lit
(16:14):
even a bigger fire and turned what was pretty static
into growth.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
YEP.
Speaker 2 (16:21):
Talk about that, because the Yahoo Media group, as you
put it together, rivals any brands on the Internet and
probably is.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
In the top. And to clarify of people, that's a
new group. That Ryan Spoon, who he brought in to
run Yahoo's sports, who you know over the years. He's
a very well known figure in our industry. He was
a deba and who was an investor and everybody knows Ryan,
but he also spent many years at ESPN, BET, MGM.
He knows sports better than anybody, but he's more than that.
And so now Yahoo Finance is also now under him.
(16:51):
We will be building out things in streaming and other
verticals over time, but just to use sports as an
example if you treat a product right and treat your
audience right. After twenty eight years of existence or twenty
nine years of existence, we just had the biggest year
of fantasy sports ever. Every day leading up to it
was a new record. And that all comes from people
(17:13):
who know what they're doing, innovating, you know, for their users.
We've also done some amazing partnerships, right We launched Guillotine
Leagues this year in partnership with Liquid Death, not something
that people would have thought as a partner for Yahoo.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
God blessed Peter fam That's right, we did.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
He's probably selling it to somebody on the street right now.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
I guarantee it, and he's dancing on his way there.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
Or the orange sunglasses. And you know, we did a
partnership with mister Beast, and so, you know, there's always
new things to do, and in some ways we're I
mean this really literally, we're only thirty years into it.
If you you know, think about New York Times one
hundred and fifty years old. I mean there's Google is
only two or three years younger than we are. So
you know, Yahoo's been around a long time. I think
a lot is made of its heritage, but every one
(17:55):
of these products has been redone over the past year
or so and they're fresh new again.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
I mean, let's talk about that Yahoo Male. Obviously, it's
still a very important tool in the marketplace, and you're
rebuilding it.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
I mean, yeah, again, just getting started there because Kyle Miller,
who came over with me from Tenders, now running it.
You know, think about mail, it's the secret sauce of Yahoo.
It's hundreds of millions of users a month. It's number
two to Gmail and personal mail. We don't compete in
enterprise mail. But again, if you get an innovative product team,
there's just so much you can do, and there's a
lot you have to do in a turnaround. Also, i mean,
(18:30):
like it wasn't in the cloud when we got here,
so there's so much work on the back end that
we had to do to get things right. But you know,
Yahoo Male creates a direct relationship with hundreds of millions
of people a month for you know, really their personal lives,
and so that first party relationship then is part of
the secret sauce of performance for advertisers throughout the Yahoo network.
(18:51):
It's not personally targeted, it's it's aggregated, but it really
creates a situation where we can deliver performance at scale,
which is insanely rare in our industry.
Speaker 2 (19:01):
So, Jim, I'm a big fan of Hamilton, and this
past week Disney released it as a tenth anniversary movie
at a couple of theaters on a limited basis. They
did one in Central Park, apparently in an outdoor theater,
and they did him here in La I guess other places,
and we took some of the grandkids to see it.
I've seen the show seven times, so I can recite
(19:21):
the lyrics. But I almost was one of the people
at the movie theater standing up and performing, but I didn't,
but I thought about it. But there's a line in
the show that talks about Alexander Hamilton not getting credit
for the credit that he gave us. The point is
he invented the US Treasury and created the credit system
for the federal government and doesn't get the credit for it.
(19:44):
Felt a Yahoo moment there, because so much of what
Yahoo should be getting credit for in the marketplace isn't
necessarily and I think this is an opportunity getting credit.
And I guess that leads to the question about when
you have a legacy company that's constantly evolving. The storytelling
has to happen. And you know you did something at
(20:06):
the Super Bowl with Bill Murray. Talk about that because
that was a big move and a big statement.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
I'll just say first that Yahoo is the pioneer in
the space. It was the original way after Netscape was created.
You know, you could get on the Internet, but you
didn't have any way to navigate around to find things
to use. And that was Yahoo's job and where we
are still strong today. That's still the job we're doing,
being people's trusted guide to help them get things done
on the Internet. Yahoo is a struggling public company for
(20:34):
many years. That sticks to your brand over time. Another
thing that stuck to the brand was this perception that Google,
you know, kick its butt and search, which is funny
because it's not what actually happened. If you do the
forensics and I actually understand what happened, it is fascinating.
You know, Yahoo and I was in search at the time.
Yeahoo never did search so they couldn't lose it. They
(20:54):
never actually had their own search engine. They used Ink
to me, they switched to Google to get a better
deal for Google at a time, when you know, the
market had crashed and everything. To get a cheaper price,
they gave Google a link on their results page with
Google's logo on it that linked to Google. I mean,
one of the pure value you know, destruction by doing that.
(21:15):
But they did it for the right reasons and that
at the time. But the perception that Yahoo did something
wrong product wise is interesting because that actually never happened.
Speaker 2 (21:23):
I want to remind you, Jim, I was pretty involved
in the Microsoft Google Yahoo.
Speaker 3 (21:30):
Search battle right later and later yeah, yeah, so that
you know, look, and then that that created many years
of trying to try different things during the search wars
and the height of search to make up for that
thing that had happened.
Speaker 1 (21:43):
And so the company went off in many different directions,
tried to be a media company, tried to do all
these things, you know, rationally because they were losing search
at the time. So our team had the benefit of
not having to worry about any of that. We picked
up after that was all done, spinning it back into
a standalone private company. So part of it is you
lean into the heritage, and you know, people do remember
certain interesting things. Like I was speaking at a conference,
(22:05):
someone mentioned the famous Yahoo billboard that was in downtown
San Francisco, New York, and the whole crowd cheered. I
was super surprised. I remember, well, yeah, it was an
Axios event and they were like, I said, who wants
us to bring it back? And this is in San Francisco.
Ninety five percent of the hands went up, so people
loved that. But you also to do new things. So
the Liquid Death partnership, the Mister Beast partnership, and our
(22:25):
Super Bowl ad was not some retrospective heritage, feel good
about the history of Yahoo. It was just totally new
and different. It was a fifteen second ad featuring Bill
Murray showing his Yahoo email address just for fifteen seconds
and asking people to email him to help him out
in this mystery that was created in the ad, and
the point there was to get people using Yahoo mail
(22:48):
to interact with Bill to then see the other video
vignettes that have been created to tell the story. So
it was super innovative and different, as one of the
top five most viewed ads on YouTube the next day,
but had nothing to do with the heritage of you,
who was just pushing to get people integrated with yahumel
and just one thing that we did, among many that
we need to do over time to engage people with
(23:11):
the brand.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
But it's a smart move because it's a thought starter.
It's a crowd pleaser. It's got viralbl love Bill. People
love Bill Murray. I mean, you know, and I'm sure
knowing you, you and Bill are probably best friends by now.
Speaker 1 (23:25):
So it's funny and we did. We definitely connected and
bonded through it. He's an amazing interesting guy.
Speaker 2 (23:31):
Yeah, no doubt about.
Speaker 1 (23:32):
He's on tour right now speaking to music. I mean
he has been touring all year with his band and
in Europe and the US. He's gonna want to play
in the Ryman in Nashville. I mean, he's it's pretty incredible.
Speaker 2 (23:43):
I just you know, so many Bill Murray moments. One
of my closest friends and I since that movie. We
will bump into each other, We'll look at each other
and go Ned Ned Ryerson, Well, it just always brings
Bill Murray back back to my mind.
Speaker 1 (23:59):
It was a little real. He's one of my Chevy Chase,
one of my two you know, gen X comedy heroes.
Speaker 2 (24:04):
There you go. Let's turn the page here, Jim and
talk about advertising and client value. You said it, and
you've looked pretty good with no worse for the wear
going through the search wars and the streaming wars. Now
we've got retail media networks exploding. Now we've got consumer
habits are shifting, and god knows. I don't want to
(24:26):
say dreaded but AI because it's not dreaded, it's just
it's impacting everything. What do you see as the biggest
disruptors right now with all of these elements.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
I absolutely think that the biggest disruption right now is
the threat to the open web by AI companies. You know,
historically the relationship between publishers and search engines was, you know,
an agreement that you, yes, you would crawl for our content,
but then you would be linking to us, in Yahou's case,
(24:59):
putting search a side where we do that as well.
You know, the Yahoo homepage we have for two plus
decades had relationships with thousands of publishers where we share
revenue and send them traffic. So Yahoo News is number one,
but as an aggregator right for the most part, we
are partnering and linking to people. So the sense that
(25:20):
you would take that content and not link back, and
as you know, you know, from zero click to almost
no clicks. You know, that's been wave one of AI.
And if that happens, you know you're going to wind
up in a world of purely synthetic data, and you
know there will be no incentive for publishers to exist.
And so I think for the advertising world, but also
(25:40):
just for the for the consumer Internet world, it's extremely
important that the next wave of this consider publishers, consider
advertisers as part of that because they need traffic to
and so I think a lot about that.
Speaker 2 (25:54):
Rich Frank who was a real important industry figure back
in the day running Parts of the World company, and
I think was chairman of the Walt Disney studio. At
one point, he stood up at an event and he says,
you know, I've been around for a long time. He said,
I remember when water was free and you paid for music,
and it was an interesting current because what you've just
(26:15):
said is bringing us back to that moment. This isn't
a free society in that way. You have to compensate
people full their stuff.
Speaker 1 (26:24):
Danny Sullivan, who as you know, is the godfather of
search engine optimization, and you know, for many years was independent.
He now works at Google He just gave a speech
at a search engine conference where he was talking about
the importance of the open web to Google. I think
the challenge is that the first wave of AI companies
defined the playing field for the user interface of AI search,
(26:48):
and Google has had a little bit of play catch
up to that. And so you know, again you asked
about like what was disruptive. I think we need to
figure that out. I also don't think agentic solutions that
require nine steps to a conversion are going to scale,
So I don't I don't think that's probably going to
work either.
Speaker 2 (27:04):
What are we going to get to an agent to
agent world? I mean, is that core that going to
be here? I think so, of course.
Speaker 1 (27:08):
But again a lot of that is enterprise. When it's consumer,
you hear the same example every single time travel, right.
It's the one that people can imagine, you know, the
multiple steps that could get done. You know, for the
average consumer is not there yet. I mean, if you
see chat Chipti's growth this year, it's because you know,
you're just starting to hit mainstream. I remember streaming when
(27:30):
I rewwned, when I understood that only fifty percent of
people had a DVR. This is when I first started
at CBS, I was like, oh, I thought, ninety nine
percent of people out of DVR. It just takes a
little bit of time. It's happening now. I just think
there's a lot still to be written about what the
future experiences and search and otherwise with agents. Agents will
be a core part of what you're discovering, you know,
(27:50):
to find the best ones the one is you know,
and then you match with personal data the best one
for you like. So sure that is all coming. But
at the end of the day, if we don't have
publishers creating the content to use for the expertise for
us to be educated by absolutely or to use as
an agent for none of it's going to work. And
so we're putting a lot of thought, you know into that.
Speaker 2 (28:10):
There's a cart and a horse there and that them. Jim,
you made an acquisition of a company called Artifact for
personalization for your news and finance. How do you make
or keep the content fresh and feel bespoke without creating
an echo chamber? Because one of the challenges in our
society today is we get our information through echo chambers.
(28:32):
In most cases, we think a lot about that, so
we take our role as being purple, you know, not
red or blue. Very seriously, and again, as a user,
you might be one or the other or some shade
of it. Right, It's not as extreme as it seems
when you're dealing with most people. But the algorithm will eventually,
over time be tailored to you.
Speaker 1 (28:54):
But we think our job is not to put a
thumb in the scale. We don't want to be read
string opinions ourselves on hot button topics. I will say
that when the media gets criticized, I do find it interesting,
like are they talking about the food media? Are they
talking about the sports writers? It's politics, right, there's some
extent current events in a non factual way if they're
(29:15):
put through some kind of blender for reporting. So we
try really hard in those categories to have our results
be factual. And you know not with things there are
two leading or opinionated one way or the other in
the headline, and then we you know, again we link
to the best publishers in any given category. That is
our job.
Speaker 2 (29:35):
That's the bespoke curture.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
That's what yeah doing good at. That is what we do.
We curate where the guide to each category. In the
case of news, we want to be purple as we
do it.
Speaker 2 (29:46):
Good company will be right back after the break. I
(30:07):
have to tell you a personal story. Years ago, I
was going on a Sunday and this became a joke,
especially because you'll remember seventeen or eighteen years ago, I
brought Wende Millard over to be a partner with me
at my previous company, and she had obviously spent a
lot of her career Yahoo and it was very purple.
And so one day I was going to a Laker
(30:27):
game with my kids and we stopped at a place
over on Third Street called Jones on Third and I
was wearing a purple polo shirt with a purple sweater
thrown over my shoulder, very preppy. And one of my
kids friends from high school, looked at me in front
of my two sons and said, Michael, I'm loving you
in purple. That has become a thing in our family.
So it just when I hear purple, I just think
(30:49):
of my boys standing there. When this girl says I'm
loving you in purple.
Speaker 1 (30:53):
It definitely happens when you work here. Yeah, yeah, a
lot of purple happens.
Speaker 2 (30:56):
Let me come back to something that we started, and
I digress today, when you're sitting across you Yahoo, are
sitting across the table from a chief marketing officer. I
learned this from Andrea Bremer, the CMO of Ali Bank.
She said to a group of folks in an industry
event last summer. She said, you think you're pitching me,
(31:18):
but I did something special for you today. I brought
my CFO to be here because today, when you are
pitching me as a CMO, you're actually pitching me and
my CFO because I have a much higher bar to
hit now in terms of ROI because the CFO is
looking over my shoulder on every decision I make in
a good way, in a partnership way, not in a
(31:39):
big brother way. So, Jim, if you or your sales
leadership rob will your teams, if you're sitting across from
a CMO today and their CFO, either in the room
or in the ether, why would you tell them that
it's a good time to be making a bed on
Yahoo here in twenty twenty five.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
Think about in two ways. The easiest one is if
it's for branding, because we are still one of the
three largest properties on the Internet in the US.
Speaker 2 (32:08):
To if I have globally but I want to remind
you I created a word a couple of years ago
called brand formance, so branding performance.
Speaker 1 (32:17):
So we have that scale for something like that and
something people don't realize about. YEAHO, over fifty percent of
our audience is Gen Z and millennials. So Yahoo actually
has crossed the chasm from the old is to a
brand new audience that include younger people. And that's true
because of all of our products.
Speaker 2 (32:34):
And you weren't at CBS GYM at a time when
CBS was carrying that mantle around about great if you
want to, you know, get that age group.
Speaker 1 (32:42):
Well, the network was older, we were the streaming divisions.
You were Cools much younger. Yeah, we're the cool guys.
But most people these days care about performance and conversion,
and to get that at scale is extremely rare. So
many times I don't need to convince them. I just
need them to test, because when they test, we convert
extremely well, whether it's on our sites with our ads
(33:05):
directly that you can buy to advertise on Yahoo or
through our DSP which most people make the mistake of
thinking is Yahoo inventory, but actually the vast majority of
it is not our inventory. It's using our data.
Speaker 2 (33:16):
To go as a standalone d including.
Speaker 1 (33:20):
With CTV where were growing sixty percent, and we have
a huge footprint and in the case of that we
win ninety percent of head to head tests. Right we
have over five hundred patents with our DSP. We're very
out in front with using AI to help for targeting.
But what you can never make up for is this
first party relationship that we have with our users that
forms the foundation of why we convert a scale and
(33:43):
if you can again take that to go through the DSP,
it's even better. So across categories, we are ascendant with
that DSP. It's still brand new. This is actually our
first full year of independent existence with it because it
used to be part of a much more kind of
bundled offering with an old SSPNA to business and whatever.
But now as a standalone business, we're an upstart in
(34:04):
that space.
Speaker 2 (34:05):
And experiencing some strong broad The hardest.
Speaker 1 (34:08):
Thing because it is a pain to switch DSPs or
to add one, and we know that it's a longer
lead time sale, but once people do, they see it
in the numbers, and so we're not going away in
that in that category.
Speaker 2 (34:19):
Jim, I want to come back to what we started
with talking about having been public private and again, you know,
you hear many good stories, but you hear a lot
of horror stories about private equity owned companies. Your experience
has been different. And you know, I'm fortunate to know
your primary sponsor, Read Raymond pretty well. And he's one
of the smartest, quickest on his feet people I've encountered, absolutely,
(34:43):
especially you know at his stage. He blows me away
every time I have the chance to talk to him.
But what's it like for you having a strong but
a you know, powerful but smart private equity partner.
Speaker 1 (34:55):
Look, my experience of the Pollo is mostly through through
Read and David Sambers that are private equities on our
board and their teams who are amazing. You know, Read
and I got off to a great start because I
was one of the people he called to determine whether
he should buy Yahoo. And then eventually he was visiting
me in Lake Tahoe in the summer of COVID and
we wound up in a casino and reno Johnny Rockets
(35:16):
for our lunch and walked out with our arms around
each other, you know, ready to go do this thing.
Speaker 2 (35:21):
It must have been those great Hamburger.
Speaker 1 (35:22):
Time, it was the only thing open. There were six
of us with masks on.
Speaker 2 (35:26):
I'm fortunate to have known the founder of Johnny Rocket,
so you've picked a good one.
Speaker 1 (35:29):
But look, they were really creative with the deal, and
Yahoo is a great asset, so we returned a lot
of capital really quickly, and I think they've just really
believed in need. Yeah, there's not that many things that
have this kind of asymmetric upside. The base case is
really conservatively great because it's a really good business that's
growing really well, and you know has done it for
a long time, so it's a trusted baseline. But you know,
(35:53):
we're going to take some shots on goal here, and
so it really has some upside and so I think
Apollo has treated it with respect because of that, and
they've been amazing partners.
Speaker 2 (36:02):
That's a great story, and they're fortunate to have you
as a partner, and I think in this case, you've
been fortunate to have that as a partner. Jim, let's
get to the lightning round. I'm gonna throw some stuff
your way, and you haven't seen any of this, So
if you could give your younger self you're not that old,
I'll add that. But if you could give your younger
self one piece of advice or guidance, what would it be.
Speaker 1 (36:23):
Don't go to law school? Oh good, Although there's one
major problem with that is I met my wife in
the very first minute of law school and we've been
together for thirty one years ever since. Else so I
need that needed to happen. But then I needed to bail,
and I probably should have just gone to work at
Yahoo at that point, you know that you could have
gone purple, or I would have I should have done that.
Speaker 2 (36:41):
Is there an industry buzzword that you wish would disappear forever?
Speaker 1 (36:46):
I don't know about buzzword. But back to my point
about someone need to keep the torch alive for publishers,
I think that this first wave has also seen the
attempt for those publishers whose content has been taken from
them try to counter that by getting paid for it,
(37:07):
but in my mind not in a sustainable way. So
taking a big check from an AI company is a
real short term bargain, and you know, eventually to have
you go away. So I actually think, while I understand
companies taking that money, you know we all need to
band together to figure out a way that is sustainable
for the future of content.
Speaker 2 (37:26):
Well, it's it's interesting. And that's a great point because
as we talked about the streaming wars, you've been in them.
Some of those deals upfront to give Netflix all that
content that was a short. You talked about it with
Yahoo and Search. Yeah, we can think back to I
was in my Space and you know the upfront payment
of nine hundred million dollars with Google. I mean, go
(37:48):
back to some of those moments when you took the
money up front in our industry, and you've been around
for all of that as I have.
Speaker 1 (37:55):
I don't think that all the media companies truly understood
the bargain they were striking. That's all dramatic, I mean,
because obviously they're all a lot of these companies are
still doing really well in certain ways. But they created
a monster with with Netflix with their own content.
Speaker 2 (38:09):
For sure, they did. They did. I told our audience,
you're a music guy. What was your first concert?
Speaker 1 (38:16):
John Denver Rocky Mountain High, Let's hear it. Bob and
Barbara land Zone took me to a John Denver concert,
and I believe the second one was Barry Manilo.
Speaker 2 (38:29):
I'm going to leave that alone. But then I will say,
your very interesting taste in music, what's your favorite concert?
Speaker 1 (38:37):
Look, I'm an old school, grateful Dead fan. My cousin
got me into it in the eighties and I but
I have like extremely eclectic taste of music. I loved
new wave in the eighties. I was I was in
on Wrap early in the eighties and nineties, you know,
the Dead of Now I have now passed the baton
to a band called Goose, who's amazing. Rob Wilk is
their biggest fan, so I've seen a lot of their concerts.
(38:58):
But I go to music time on the board of
the Newport Folk Festival, which is not just folk, it's
all kinds of things. Public Enemy actually played at the
there this year and it was great on folk music. No,
but you know, you'll you'll, you know, get Jonny Mitchell
and we'll come back or it's my favorite three days
of the year and my passion project Newport Folks.
Speaker 2 (39:16):
So, Jim, I think I might have already covered this
because we spent a lot of time on somebody who
I think will be in this category for you. But
was there a particular mentor earlier in your career, and
if so, or could be more than one. Was there
any particular bits of advice or something that you could
point to and say that mentor gave me this bit
of advice or direction.
Speaker 1 (39:37):
I mean a ton of them, right Steve at ask Buried.
I see Bill and Jeff with my startup. Blake Kreyan
who passed away to factively sling Box was I was
very close with Dave Goldberg, who passed away. I was
very close with and I got not just great advice,
but they were both intricately involved in my startup that
I did. Advice wise, I've said this to my team
(40:00):
all the time. Barry's advice to us as a group.
I cannot remember the issue we were debating, but he
said that we came into some roadblock and he said,
there's always another way around the mountain, and so I
always think about it. There really is no problem that
if you're creative about it, you can't figure out and
keep going.
Speaker 2 (40:17):
There's always another way around the mountain. Jim Lanzone, that's
a great place to leave us as we look around
the mountain. This has been a great pleasure for me.
I hope our audience agrees, but I know they will
spending this time with you has been a privileged.
Speaker 1 (40:31):
Yet great to be here. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2 (40:37):
I'm Michael Casson. Thanks for listening to Good Company.
Speaker 1 (40:41):
Good Company is brought to you by Three C Ventures
and iHeart Podcasts.
Speaker 2 (40:45):
Special thanks to Alexis Borgier Pudeo, our executive producer and
head of Content and Talent, and to Carl Catle, executive
producer at iHeart Podcasts.
Speaker 1 (40:55):
Episodes are produced and edited by Mary Doo. Thanks for
joining us. We'll see you next time.
Good Company is a production of iHeartRadio. In our industry,
it's like a shark. You know you're going forward or
you die, and you have to and you can't get distracted.
You have to be an expert understand what that really
needs to look like so you can prioritize what should
get done versus you know, the shiny objects.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
I'm Michael Cassen and this is Good Company. Together we'll
explore the dynamic intersection of media, marketing, entertainment, sports and technology.
I'll be joined by visionaries, pioneers, and yes, even a
couple of disruptors for candid conversations as we break down
how these masters of ingenuity are shaping the future of business,
culture and everything in between. My bet is you'll pick
(00:45):
up a Lessen or two along the way. As I
like to say, it's all good. Welcome back to Good Company.
Today's guest is a force in the digital world as
someone who has shaped the intersection of media and technology
throughout his career, from reinventing ask dot com to building
CBS Interactive into a streaming powerhouse, to running Tinder at
(01:09):
a moment when culture itself was swiping right. Jim Lanzone
has built rebuilt and redefined the way people connect online,
and now is the CEO of Yahoo. He's leading the
transformation of one of the Internet's most iconic brands. An
industry insider has likened Yahoo to a thirty year old startup,
(01:29):
and that tells you everything about the way Jim has
approached his role optimistic, entrepreneurial, rigorous, and drawn to unexpected innovation.
He sat at the center of the search wars, the
streaming wars, and he's now championing Yahoo at the front
lines of AI, ad, tech, and most importantly, cultural relevance.
(01:51):
This episode is more than a conversation about Yahoo. It's
about how you win in a world where scale, trust,
and passions collide. And if anyone one can show us
the way forward, it's Jim land Zone. And what I
will add to that is Jim and I share a
massive passion for music, probably different times, so I may
edit this podcast to have some music in the background,
(02:13):
but I'd like to welcome Jim Lanzone to good company.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
Thank you for having me. Michael. It's not gonna be
the Grateful Dead, is it?
Speaker 2 (02:19):
No?
Speaker 1 (02:20):
No?
Speaker 2 (02:20):
In my case, Jim, It'll probably be Frank Sinatra.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
Tribe called Quest we're not going to get there.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
Yes, I don't know that. We'll make it.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
Frank's notata right over your shoulder right now? That is correct, It's.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
You know, it's funny. It's a famous picture. Can I
tell you the story of that picture?
Speaker 1 (02:35):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (02:35):
For our listeners without the visual, it's a picture of
John F. Kennedy and Frank Sinatra at the nineteen sixty
one presidential inauguration. Why that picture means something? I happen
to be a big fan of Peggy Noonan, who's a
wonderful columnist in the Wall Street Journal. I look forward
to her column every week, read it religiously, and I
generally align with what she says. She wrote a piece
(02:58):
about The Crown, the TV show years ago, and she
talked about particular season where John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline
Kennedy visited the Queen of England, and so it was
from that perspective, and there's a scene in the Joe
on the Crown where John F. Kennedy goes outside and
smokes a cigarette. And in her column about The Crown,
(03:18):
she said the thing, I love The Crown, she says,
and it's a great show, but they were factually incorrect
because John Fitzgerald Kennedy never smoked. And when I read
the column, I said, no, that's wrong. I have proof.
I was fortunate enough to meet Peggy once in person
and I told her. I said, Peggy, I'm a religious
reader of your column, love it. But I caught you
(03:40):
on this one.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
You showed her the photo.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
I showed her the photo.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
Technically, we don't know what he's smoking in the photo,
so that thing's a little blurry at that spot.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
You just jumped on the punchline, Jim Lanzone because you
know what she said to me. Oh, Michael, I'm aware
of that photo. But he's not smoking a cigarette. He's
smoking a cigarrillo.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
That's a real technicality.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
Ah, that is a technic. And for those of you
who don't know what a cigarillo is, when I grew up,
it was a combination of a cigarette and a cigar
and they called it a cigarillo. I have no idea
why or where it came from.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
On the same topic or similar topic, have you seen
over the past two weeks it was floating around the internet.
The writer for Frank Sinatra for one of his concerts,
No I did, It's it's gone everywhere, virally, on everywhere,
just for one show, he is asking for the entire
grocery store and liquor store.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
No, I did see it. What does he need in
his in his apparently everything in his rehearsal he was
going to stay for a week.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
I did it had every brand, everything we had, Jack Daniels,
get drunk, smoke everything. It was crazy.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
I did see it. It was his request list in
his dress. Ever, Yes, I did notice it. So what
I'd like to do is go back to where we should,
which is you somebody I've known for quarter of a century. God,
that seems like a long time. But you've been involved
with some iconic consumer Internet brands, as I said, Gas
(05:00):
dot Com, CBS, Interactive Tender. What was it about Yahoo
at that particular moment in time that got you to say, yeah,
I think I'm up for that challenge?
Speaker 1 (05:10):
Well I ran towards it. I mean I've I always
thought Yahoo had the great bones of you know, something
I love to do, which is a turnaround. I've been
a part of a few of those. It always had
the thing that you just cannot replicate, which is incredible distribution.
You know, hundreds of millions of views, a month. I
can always work with that, and I'd competed against them
(05:31):
for years. I knew every management team, you know, going
back to the nineties, and you know, I think our
team always had an eye to what we would have done,
perhaps differently with some of the properties. Fast forward to
twenty twenty one and talking to the Apollo guys who
are buying it at the time, you know, I thought,
if you could get it at the right price and
have some upside, that there was still a ton you
(05:54):
could do with it. You just had to put to
bed a lot of what had been through through the
years as a brand and as a business, especially as
a public company, and just look at the good parts,
right being number one or number two and all these
super important categories still in twenty twenty one. So yeah,
I left it the challenge.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
So Jim, I want to talk about and I'll come
back to it later because you've had what I believe,
and I know this firsthand, but I want to hear
it from your perspective. You've had a great journey with
private equity, and you're just not with any private equity.
Your partners with Apollo, one of the most important and
powerful private equity firms in the world close to a
trillion dollars under management. So when you think of private equity,
(06:34):
Apollos at the top of everybody's ranking, certainly or certainly
in the top three or four in the world. So
I do want to talk about that because you said
something there. It's nuanced as well, public versus private, so
it's not only private equity back, but having been a
public company becoming a private company. So I do want
to come back to that, But I want to focus
on your career again for a moment. There's obviously been
(06:55):
a thread in your career, but I read something recently
where you said you didn't actually map it out. Now,
in this case, you said you ran towards y'a whoso.
I understand that was purposeful. Yeah, But the interesting thread,
you know, I know my career has been here, there,
and everywhere in different industries. That thread has been pulled
through the sewer internet. But you didn't write this down
(07:17):
at the beginning. How did it happen? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (07:20):
I went to UCLA as you did, and you had
no idea what I wanted to do.
Speaker 3 (07:23):
There's two bruins on this podcast, and the long story
short is I right at the beginning of the Internet.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
I got an internship with a company that wanted to
put itself online and I for my summer internship was
in charge of that. So bam, I'm a product guy
now all of a sudden, and had to organize the
engineering team, design team, do all the advertising, do the
pr We got the product and Time magazine, I mean
all kinds of stuff, and some classmates had raised money
for a startup. I joined that as the head of product.
(07:51):
So that was my nineties experience. We raised fifty million
dollars plus, which was a lot back then. We went
up and down with the web one point zero boom
and crash written the S one, but we never filed
it because market crashed and we went on fumes for
a while. We went up at Ask Jeeves right as
that company was bottoming out, and that was my first
grade turnaround opportunity. I joined there and as had a product,
(08:13):
and we had an incredible run, you know, fifty xiting
the stock selling to IC and Barry Diller. When that happened,
my boss was recruited to run all of Internet for Microsoft,
Sacha Steve Birkwood. Sacha I think report to him, and
I was promoted to CEO as part of that. So
I worked for Barry for three years, left to do
another startup, so we gat no plan, but Bill Gurley
(08:34):
and Jeff Yang were my I'M big investors, and we
wound up selling that to Lesson CBS, where I joined
the CEO of their internet group. That wound up being
eight years in almost nine years. So and that was
a whole run, you said, the streaming wars. Yet we
were right right in the middle of that. That was
two decades, just right there, of two startups, kind of
two turnarounds.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
And it's not lost on me, Jim. I had the
good pleasure this summer of reading listening to actually Barry
Diller's book. I loved it. And I said this to Barry.
I was fortunate to see him last week actually, and
I said, you know, listening to the book was a
treat because when you know the person who's narrating the book,
it's as if they're talking to you. So I said, Barry,
(09:14):
I felt like for this summer, you know, for a
good part of the summer, I was talking to you
because you were talking to me.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
I couldn't agree more. And especially having spent so much
time with him for the three years I worked for him.
You can really hear him in it. But the part
you know that I and I said this to him.
It was interesting to hear some of his insecurities about
his own pathway. And I remember in the mid two
thousands him wondering out loud to me like, oh, do
you think we would have it? Would you know? He
(09:41):
wondered whether they would have done it if it was
during the internet era? And I said, and now that
was almost twenty years ago now, and you see everything
he did in the Internet, and like, of course he's
just a badass at everything.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
Right, what's so interesting? And I have to ask you this, Jim.
And again, this wasn't anything I thought about in advance.
But Barry was very gracio to several people in the book.
He was pretty direct about certain other people in the book,
but he was very gracious. And one person in particular
said he worked for Barry for quite some time early
early in his career, and the accolades that he was
(10:13):
given in the book surprised him because he didn't ever
get them directly from Barry. What was your experience? Again,
this is apropos of nothing that I want to talk
to Jim Lanston.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
I probably because he was always focused on progress, and
he'll say curiosity absolutely. It was always, you know, running
a million miles an hour towards the thing he was
trying to achieve. So I think he set himself in
the book People, Management was not what he was in
this for. It was creativity and innovation and progress. And
so I think in the Fog of War that that's
(10:45):
what he was focused on. And I know that if
you think about the bench that he created over time,
how many people went who worked for him over time,
You know, it had to be something special.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
And I digressed only for one more moment. Peter Rice
said this to me years ago when he was working
within the news organization. He said, if you put Rupert
Murdoch's picture in a center and did concentric circles from
Rupert Murdoch out, and you look across the entertainment industry today.
This was several years ago, but I think it's still
(11:15):
true today. Although some of the names are not there.
Virtually everybody that has been successful expanded their horizons in
the media and entertainment somehow started a long time ago
working for Rupert Murdoch, including Barry Diller. But when you
look at that and you see names like Peter Chernan
and Barry Diller, and you mentioned less moonvez he did
(11:37):
at some point in his career work for early in
his career. So you think of the people who, for
better or for worse, went on to greatness in our industry.
And what you just said about Barry Diller is similar.
Lots of people went through the Barry dillar machine.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
Look, and everyone should read or listen to this book.
But I mean the different chapters in his life, you know,
in television and movies, in the I mean, it's incredible.
He did it over and over again. Right, He wasn't
just lucky once.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
Well, you were lucky to be at the foot of
a leader like that for several years. Jim Let's come
back this year was pivotal for Yahoo. It's crazy for
me because I was around when Yahoo launched and it's
thirty years So how do you balance that thirty year
legacy at the same time as having to day by day,
(12:26):
hour by hour reinvent in yet another new era of media.
I mean, you talked about the dot com explosion and implosion.
Yahoo's been through that entire journey and you've got the opportunity,
and you're obviously succeeding at that opportunity in terms of
reinventing as you go.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
Yeah, easy answer. We don't think about it. We celebrate it.
It's our thirtieth anniversary this year. We put a lot
of work into understanding the mission of the company and
why we still had a right to exist, Why did
we exist, why were we still so popular in this
new era going forward? So and you know, we've had
Jerry Yang back to speak to the company several times.
(13:04):
So we embrace the history of the company. But if
you walk into our office, it is a worker hive
of people innovating for the future. And in our case,
that's not one product, right. I've worked to companies where
it's one product, one search engine, one dating app. In
our case, it's a conglomerate, and every one of these
groups has a different leader, a different head of product,
a different head of engineering, oftentimes a different head of content,
(13:26):
et cetera. And they are heads down just innovating their
tails off. In our industry, it's like a shark. You
know you're going forward or you die, and you have
to and you can't get distracted. You have to be
an expert understand what that really needs to look like
so you can prioritize what should get done versus you know,
the shiny objects. And that's what Yahoo is today.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
But Jim, it's interesting. I've had the opportunity and the
pleasure of observing you as a leader, and you inspire
greatness in your teams because you also have a unique
eye to spot talent in each place that we've worked together,
which I'm happy to say is several the people you've
surrounded yourself with. And maybe this comes as a lesson
(14:07):
you learned from a Barry Diller or another mentor, because
I'm going to get to that in your career, but
you've you've been You've been expert at finding really top
talent and nurturing it.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
You know, I will say I'm definitely not an expert
at a lot of things, but I am a consumer
Internet and the revenue models around it. I've done it
for a long time. I know what good looks like
at this point, I know what to look out for.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
Well, you know, let's make this clear, sir, you are
a bold face name in that's.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
Well a lot look a lot of people, you see it, right?
They people will hire a hockey coach to coach a
basketball team. I'm a basketball coach. I've only I've only
worked in basketball. Sorry to use the sports a nowsie,
but that's the trick. And so you know, at this point,
I understand business, and I could make my way around
other things probably, but in this thing, I know what
(14:54):
good looks like. And that's that's not just the capabilities
to do the job and product and grow both and
content and all that. It's also the types of people
that we want around us, which is high EQ. People
who are great teammates to the people around them. They
understand how to prioritize, They understand what to make a
big deal out of what not to. They know how
to move a team forward. So if you marry those
(15:17):
two things, you can get a great team.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
You know. Jeffrey Katzenberg taught me a great lesson years ago,
and you just said it in different words. He says,
it's always important to remind people they shouldn't major in
the minor. Don't major in the minor, pay attention to
what's really important. We're going to hit pause for a moment,
but stay with us after the break. We've got more
insights to share. You said the word consumer internet several times, Jim.
(15:53):
When we talk about the consumer internet, let's talk about
consumer brands. Yaho Sought Sports, Yahoo Finance, if Y'aho news.
I mean, these are some of the most important and
powerful brands in the industry. You've taken like stallwarts and
I don't want to say they were more abound, but
you've taken stallwarts that were on fire and you've lit
(16:14):
even a bigger fire and turned what was pretty static
into growth.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
YEP.
Speaker 2 (16:21):
Talk about that, because the Yahoo Media group, as you
put it together, rivals any brands on the Internet and
probably is.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
In the top. And to clarify of people, that's a
new group. That Ryan Spoon, who he brought in to
run Yahoo's sports, who you know over the years. He's
a very well known figure in our industry. He was
a deba and who was an investor and everybody knows Ryan,
but he also spent many years at ESPN, BET, MGM.
He knows sports better than anybody, but he's more than that.
And so now Yahoo Finance is also now under him.
(16:51):
We will be building out things in streaming and other
verticals over time, but just to use sports as an
example if you treat a product right and treat your
audience right. After twenty eight years of existence or twenty
nine years of existence, we just had the biggest year
of fantasy sports ever. Every day leading up to it
was a new record. And that all comes from people
(17:13):
who know what they're doing, innovating, you know, for their users.
We've also done some amazing partnerships, right We launched Guillotine
Leagues this year in partnership with Liquid Death, not something
that people would have thought as a partner for Yahoo.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
God blessed Peter fam That's right, we did.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
He's probably selling it to somebody on the street right now.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
I guarantee it, and he's dancing on his way there.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
Or the orange sunglasses. And you know, we did a
partnership with mister Beast, and so, you know, there's always
new things to do, and in some ways we're I
mean this really literally, we're only thirty years into it.
If you you know, think about New York Times one
hundred and fifty years old. I mean there's Google is
only two or three years younger than we are. So
you know, Yahoo's been around a long time. I think
a lot is made of its heritage, but every one
(17:55):
of these products has been redone over the past year
or so and they're fresh new again.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
I mean, let's talk about that Yahoo Male. Obviously, it's
still a very important tool in the marketplace, and you're
rebuilding it.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
I mean, yeah, again, just getting started there because Kyle Miller,
who came over with me from Tenders, now running it.
You know, think about mail, it's the secret sauce of Yahoo.
It's hundreds of millions of users a month. It's number
two to Gmail and personal mail. We don't compete in
enterprise mail. But again, if you get an innovative product team,
there's just so much you can do, and there's a
lot you have to do in a turnaround. Also, i mean,
(18:30):
like it wasn't in the cloud when we got here,
so there's so much work on the back end that
we had to do to get things right. But you know,
Yahoo Male creates a direct relationship with hundreds of millions
of people a month for you know, really their personal lives,
and so that first party relationship then is part of
the secret sauce of performance for advertisers throughout the Yahoo network.
(18:51):
It's not personally targeted, it's it's aggregated, but it really
creates a situation where we can deliver performance at scale,
which is insanely rare in our industry.
Speaker 2 (19:01):
So, Jim, I'm a big fan of Hamilton, and this
past week Disney released it as a tenth anniversary movie
at a couple of theaters on a limited basis. They
did one in Central Park, apparently in an outdoor theater,
and they did him here in La I guess other places,
and we took some of the grandkids to see it.
I've seen the show seven times, so I can recite
(19:21):
the lyrics. But I almost was one of the people
at the movie theater standing up and performing, but I didn't,
but I thought about it. But there's a line in
the show that talks about Alexander Hamilton not getting credit
for the credit that he gave us. The point is
he invented the US Treasury and created the credit system
for the federal government and doesn't get the credit for it.
(19:44):
Felt a Yahoo moment there, because so much of what
Yahoo should be getting credit for in the marketplace isn't
necessarily and I think this is an opportunity getting credit.
And I guess that leads to the question about when
you have a legacy company that's constantly evolving. The storytelling
has to happen. And you know you did something at
(20:06):
the Super Bowl with Bill Murray. Talk about that because
that was a big move and a big statement.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
I'll just say first that Yahoo is the pioneer in
the space. It was the original way after Netscape was created.
You know, you could get on the Internet, but you
didn't have any way to navigate around to find things
to use. And that was Yahoo's job and where we
are still strong today. That's still the job we're doing,
being people's trusted guide to help them get things done
on the Internet. Yahoo is a struggling public company for
(20:34):
many years. That sticks to your brand over time. Another
thing that stuck to the brand was this perception that Google,
you know, kick its butt and search, which is funny
because it's not what actually happened. If you do the
forensics and I actually understand what happened, it is fascinating.
You know, Yahoo and I was in search at the time.
Yeahoo never did search so they couldn't lose it. They
(20:54):
never actually had their own search engine. They used Ink
to me, they switched to Google to get a better
deal for Google at a time, when you know, the
market had crashed and everything. To get a cheaper price,
they gave Google a link on their results page with
Google's logo on it that linked to Google. I mean,
one of the pure value you know, destruction by doing that.
(21:15):
But they did it for the right reasons and that
at the time. But the perception that Yahoo did something
wrong product wise is interesting because that actually never happened.
Speaker 2 (21:23):
I want to remind you, Jim, I was pretty involved
in the Microsoft Google Yahoo.
Speaker 3 (21:30):
Search battle right later and later yeah, yeah, so that
you know, look, and then that that created many years
of trying to try different things during the search wars
and the height of search to make up for that
thing that had happened.
Speaker 1 (21:43):
And so the company went off in many different directions,
tried to be a media company, tried to do all
these things, you know, rationally because they were losing search
at the time. So our team had the benefit of
not having to worry about any of that. We picked
up after that was all done, spinning it back into
a standalone private company. So part of it is you
lean into the heritage, and you know, people do remember
certain interesting things. Like I was speaking at a conference,
(22:05):
someone mentioned the famous Yahoo billboard that was in downtown
San Francisco, New York, and the whole crowd cheered. I
was super surprised. I remember, well, yeah, it was an
Axios event and they were like, I said, who wants
us to bring it back? And this is in San Francisco.
Ninety five percent of the hands went up, so people
loved that. But you also to do new things. So
the Liquid Death partnership, the Mister Beast partnership, and our
(22:25):
Super Bowl ad was not some retrospective heritage, feel good
about the history of Yahoo. It was just totally new
and different. It was a fifteen second ad featuring Bill
Murray showing his Yahoo email address just for fifteen seconds
and asking people to email him to help him out
in this mystery that was created in the ad, and
the point there was to get people using Yahoo mail
(22:48):
to interact with Bill to then see the other video
vignettes that have been created to tell the story. So
it was super innovative and different, as one of the
top five most viewed ads on YouTube the next day,
but had nothing to do with the heritage of you,
who was just pushing to get people integrated with yahumel
and just one thing that we did, among many that
we need to do over time to engage people with
(23:11):
the brand.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
But it's a smart move because it's a thought starter.
It's a crowd pleaser. It's got viralbl love Bill. People
love Bill Murray. I mean, you know, and I'm sure
knowing you, you and Bill are probably best friends by now.
Speaker 1 (23:25):
So it's funny and we did. We definitely connected and
bonded through it. He's an amazing interesting guy.
Speaker 2 (23:31):
Yeah, no doubt about.
Speaker 1 (23:32):
He's on tour right now speaking to music. I mean
he has been touring all year with his band and
in Europe and the US. He's gonna want to play
in the Ryman in Nashville. I mean, he's it's pretty incredible.
Speaker 2 (23:43):
I just you know, so many Bill Murray moments. One
of my closest friends and I since that movie. We
will bump into each other, We'll look at each other
and go Ned Ned Ryerson, Well, it just always brings
Bill Murray back back to my mind.
Speaker 1 (23:59):
It was a little real. He's one of my Chevy Chase,
one of my two you know, gen X comedy heroes.
Speaker 2 (24:04):
There you go. Let's turn the page here, Jim and
talk about advertising and client value. You said it, and
you've looked pretty good with no worse for the wear
going through the search wars and the streaming wars. Now
we've got retail media networks exploding. Now we've got consumer
habits are shifting, and god knows. I don't want to
(24:26):
say dreaded but AI because it's not dreaded, it's just
it's impacting everything. What do you see as the biggest
disruptors right now with all of these elements.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
I absolutely think that the biggest disruption right now is
the threat to the open web by AI companies. You know,
historically the relationship between publishers and search engines was, you know,
an agreement that you, yes, you would crawl for our content,
but then you would be linking to us, in Yahou's case,
(24:59):
putting search a side where we do that as well.
You know, the Yahoo homepage we have for two plus
decades had relationships with thousands of publishers where we share
revenue and send them traffic. So Yahoo News is number one,
but as an aggregator right for the most part, we
are partnering and linking to people. So the sense that
(25:20):
you would take that content and not link back, and
as you know, you know, from zero click to almost
no clicks. You know, that's been wave one of AI.
And if that happens, you know you're going to wind
up in a world of purely synthetic data, and you
know there will be no incentive for publishers to exist.
And so I think for the advertising world, but also
(25:40):
just for the for the consumer Internet world, it's extremely
important that the next wave of this consider publishers, consider
advertisers as part of that because they need traffic to
and so I think a lot about that.
Speaker 2 (25:54):
Rich Frank who was a real important industry figure back
in the day running Parts of the World company, and
I think was chairman of the Walt Disney studio. At
one point, he stood up at an event and he says,
you know, I've been around for a long time. He said,
I remember when water was free and you paid for music,
and it was an interesting current because what you've just
(26:15):
said is bringing us back to that moment. This isn't
a free society in that way. You have to compensate
people full their stuff.
Speaker 1 (26:24):
Danny Sullivan, who as you know, is the godfather of
search engine optimization, and you know, for many years was independent.
He now works at Google He just gave a speech
at a search engine conference where he was talking about
the importance of the open web to Google. I think
the challenge is that the first wave of AI companies
defined the playing field for the user interface of AI search,
(26:48):
and Google has had a little bit of play catch
up to that. And so you know, again you asked
about like what was disruptive. I think we need to
figure that out. I also don't think agentic solutions that
require nine steps to a conversion are going to scale,
So I don't I don't think that's probably going to
work either.
Speaker 2 (27:04):
What are we going to get to an agent to
agent world? I mean, is that core that going to
be here? I think so, of course.
Speaker 1 (27:08):
But again a lot of that is enterprise. When it's consumer,
you hear the same example every single time travel, right.
It's the one that people can imagine, you know, the
multiple steps that could get done. You know, for the
average consumer is not there yet. I mean, if you
see chat Chipti's growth this year, it's because you know,
you're just starting to hit mainstream. I remember streaming when
(27:30):
I rewwned, when I understood that only fifty percent of
people had a DVR. This is when I first started
at CBS, I was like, oh, I thought, ninety nine
percent of people out of DVR. It just takes a
little bit of time. It's happening now. I just think
there's a lot still to be written about what the
future experiences and search and otherwise with agents. Agents will
be a core part of what you're discovering, you know,
(27:50):
to find the best ones the one is you know,
and then you match with personal data the best one
for you like. So sure that is all coming. But
at the end of the day, if we don't have
publishers creating the content to use for the expertise for
us to be educated by absolutely or to use as
an agent for none of it's going to work. And
so we're putting a lot of thought, you know into that.
Speaker 2 (28:10):
There's a cart and a horse there and that them. Jim,
you made an acquisition of a company called Artifact for
personalization for your news and finance. How do you make
or keep the content fresh and feel bespoke without creating
an echo chamber? Because one of the challenges in our
society today is we get our information through echo chambers.
(28:32):
In most cases, we think a lot about that, so
we take our role as being purple, you know, not
red or blue. Very seriously, and again, as a user,
you might be one or the other or some shade
of it. Right, It's not as extreme as it seems
when you're dealing with most people. But the algorithm will eventually,
over time be tailored to you.
Speaker 1 (28:54):
But we think our job is not to put a
thumb in the scale. We don't want to be read
string opinions ourselves on hot button topics. I will say
that when the media gets criticized, I do find it interesting,
like are they talking about the food media? Are they
talking about the sports writers? It's politics, right, there's some
extent current events in a non factual way if they're
(29:15):
put through some kind of blender for reporting. So we
try really hard in those categories to have our results
be factual. And you know not with things there are
two leading or opinionated one way or the other in
the headline, and then we you know, again we link
to the best publishers in any given category. That is
our job.
Speaker 2 (29:35):
That's the bespoke curture.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
That's what yeah doing good at. That is what we do.
We curate where the guide to each category. In the
case of news, we want to be purple as we
do it.
Speaker 2 (29:46):
Good company will be right back after the break. I
(30:07):
have to tell you a personal story. Years ago, I
was going on a Sunday and this became a joke,
especially because you'll remember seventeen or eighteen years ago, I
brought Wende Millard over to be a partner with me
at my previous company, and she had obviously spent a
lot of her career Yahoo and it was very purple.
And so one day I was going to a Laker
(30:27):
game with my kids and we stopped at a place
over on Third Street called Jones on Third and I
was wearing a purple polo shirt with a purple sweater
thrown over my shoulder, very preppy. And one of my
kids friends from high school, looked at me in front
of my two sons and said, Michael, I'm loving you
in purple. That has become a thing in our family.
So it just when I hear purple, I just think
(30:49):
of my boys standing there. When this girl says I'm
loving you in purple.
Speaker 1 (30:53):
It definitely happens when you work here. Yeah, yeah, a
lot of purple happens.
Speaker 2 (30:56):
Let me come back to something that we started, and
I digress today, when you're sitting across you Yahoo, are
sitting across the table from a chief marketing officer. I
learned this from Andrea Bremer, the CMO of Ali Bank.
She said to a group of folks in an industry
event last summer. She said, you think you're pitching me,
(31:18):
but I did something special for you today. I brought
my CFO to be here because today, when you are
pitching me as a CMO, you're actually pitching me and
my CFO because I have a much higher bar to
hit now in terms of ROI because the CFO is
looking over my shoulder on every decision I make in
a good way, in a partnership way, not in a
(31:39):
big brother way. So, Jim, if you or your sales
leadership rob will your teams, if you're sitting across from
a CMO today and their CFO, either in the room
or in the ether, why would you tell them that
it's a good time to be making a bed on
Yahoo here in twenty twenty five.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
Think about in two ways. The easiest one is if
it's for branding, because we are still one of the
three largest properties on the Internet in the US.
Speaker 2 (32:08):
To if I have globally but I want to remind
you I created a word a couple of years ago
called brand formance, so branding performance.
Speaker 1 (32:17):
So we have that scale for something like that and
something people don't realize about. YEAHO, over fifty percent of
our audience is Gen Z and millennials. So Yahoo actually
has crossed the chasm from the old is to a
brand new audience that include younger people. And that's true
because of all of our products.
Speaker 2 (32:34):
And you weren't at CBS GYM at a time when
CBS was carrying that mantle around about great if you
want to, you know, get that age group.
Speaker 1 (32:42):
Well, the network was older, we were the streaming divisions.
You were Cools much younger. Yeah, we're the cool guys.
But most people these days care about performance and conversion,
and to get that at scale is extremely rare. So
many times I don't need to convince them. I just
need them to test, because when they test, we convert
extremely well, whether it's on our sites with our ads
(33:05):
directly that you can buy to advertise on Yahoo or
through our DSP which most people make the mistake of
thinking is Yahoo inventory, but actually the vast majority of
it is not our inventory. It's using our data.
Speaker 2 (33:16):
To go as a standalone d including.
Speaker 1 (33:20):
With CTV where were growing sixty percent, and we have
a huge footprint and in the case of that we
win ninety percent of head to head tests. Right we
have over five hundred patents with our DSP. We're very
out in front with using AI to help for targeting.
But what you can never make up for is this
first party relationship that we have with our users that
forms the foundation of why we convert a scale and
(33:43):
if you can again take that to go through the DSP,
it's even better. So across categories, we are ascendant with
that DSP. It's still brand new. This is actually our
first full year of independent existence with it because it
used to be part of a much more kind of
bundled offering with an old SSPNA to business and whatever.
But now as a standalone business, we're an upstart in
(34:04):
that space.
Speaker 2 (34:05):
And experiencing some strong broad The hardest.
Speaker 1 (34:08):
Thing because it is a pain to switch DSPs or
to add one, and we know that it's a longer
lead time sale, but once people do, they see it
in the numbers, and so we're not going away in
that in that category.
Speaker 2 (34:19):
Jim, I want to come back to what we started
with talking about having been public private and again, you know,
you hear many good stories, but you hear a lot
of horror stories about private equity owned companies. Your experience
has been different. And you know, I'm fortunate to know
your primary sponsor, Read Raymond pretty well. And he's one
of the smartest, quickest on his feet people I've encountered, absolutely,
(34:43):
especially you know at his stage. He blows me away
every time I have the chance to talk to him.
But what's it like for you having a strong but
a you know, powerful but smart private equity partner.
Speaker 1 (34:55):
Look, my experience of the Pollo is mostly through through
Read and David Sambers that are private equities on our
board and their teams who are amazing. You know, Read
and I got off to a great start because I
was one of the people he called to determine whether
he should buy Yahoo. And then eventually he was visiting
me in Lake Tahoe in the summer of COVID and
we wound up in a casino and reno Johnny Rockets
(35:16):
for our lunch and walked out with our arms around
each other, you know, ready to go do this thing.
Speaker 2 (35:21):
It must have been those great Hamburger.
Speaker 1 (35:22):
Time, it was the only thing open. There were six
of us with masks on.
Speaker 2 (35:26):
I'm fortunate to have known the founder of Johnny Rocket,
so you've picked a good one.
Speaker 1 (35:29):
But look, they were really creative with the deal, and
Yahoo is a great asset, so we returned a lot
of capital really quickly, and I think they've just really
believed in need. Yeah, there's not that many things that
have this kind of asymmetric upside. The base case is
really conservatively great because it's a really good business that's
growing really well, and you know has done it for
a long time, so it's a trusted baseline. But you know,
(35:53):
we're going to take some shots on goal here, and
so it really has some upside and so I think
Apollo has treated it with respect because of that, and
they've been amazing partners.
Speaker 2 (36:02):
That's a great story, and they're fortunate to have you
as a partner, and I think in this case, you've
been fortunate to have that as a partner. Jim, let's
get to the lightning round. I'm gonna throw some stuff
your way, and you haven't seen any of this, So
if you could give your younger self you're not that old,
I'll add that. But if you could give your younger
self one piece of advice or guidance, what would it be.
Speaker 1 (36:23):
Don't go to law school? Oh good, Although there's one
major problem with that is I met my wife in
the very first minute of law school and we've been
together for thirty one years ever since. Else so I
need that needed to happen. But then I needed to bail,
and I probably should have just gone to work at
Yahoo at that point, you know that you could have
gone purple, or I would have I should have done that.
Speaker 2 (36:41):
Is there an industry buzzword that you wish would disappear forever?
Speaker 1 (36:46):
I don't know about buzzword. But back to my point
about someone need to keep the torch alive for publishers,
I think that this first wave has also seen the
attempt for those publishers whose content has been taken from
them try to counter that by getting paid for it,
(37:07):
but in my mind not in a sustainable way. So
taking a big check from an AI company is a
real short term bargain, and you know, eventually to have
you go away. So I actually think, while I understand
companies taking that money, you know we all need to
band together to figure out a way that is sustainable
for the future of content.
Speaker 2 (37:26):
Well, it's it's interesting. And that's a great point because
as we talked about the streaming wars, you've been in them.
Some of those deals upfront to give Netflix all that
content that was a short. You talked about it with
Yahoo and Search. Yeah, we can think back to I
was in my Space and you know the upfront payment
of nine hundred million dollars with Google. I mean, go
(37:48):
back to some of those moments when you took the
money up front in our industry, and you've been around
for all of that as I have.
Speaker 1 (37:55):
I don't think that all the media companies truly understood
the bargain they were striking. That's all dramatic, I mean,
because obviously they're all a lot of these companies are
still doing really well in certain ways. But they created
a monster with with Netflix with their own content.
Speaker 2 (38:09):
For sure, they did. They did. I told our audience,
you're a music guy. What was your first concert?
Speaker 1 (38:16):
John Denver Rocky Mountain High, Let's hear it. Bob and
Barbara land Zone took me to a John Denver concert,
and I believe the second one was Barry Manilo.
Speaker 2 (38:29):
I'm going to leave that alone. But then I will say,
your very interesting taste in music, what's your favorite concert?
Speaker 1 (38:37):
Look, I'm an old school, grateful Dead fan. My cousin
got me into it in the eighties and I but
I have like extremely eclectic taste of music. I loved
new wave in the eighties. I was I was in
on Wrap early in the eighties and nineties, you know,
the Dead of Now I have now passed the baton
to a band called Goose, who's amazing. Rob Wilk is
their biggest fan, so I've seen a lot of their concerts.
(38:58):
But I go to music time on the board of
the Newport Folk Festival, which is not just folk, it's
all kinds of things. Public Enemy actually played at the
there this year and it was great on folk music. No,
but you know, you'll you'll, you know, get Jonny Mitchell
and we'll come back or it's my favorite three days
of the year and my passion project Newport Folks.
Speaker 2 (39:16):
So, Jim, I think I might have already covered this
because we spent a lot of time on somebody who
I think will be in this category for you. But
was there a particular mentor earlier in your career, and
if so, or could be more than one. Was there
any particular bits of advice or something that you could
point to and say that mentor gave me this bit
of advice or direction.
Speaker 1 (39:37):
I mean a ton of them, right Steve at ask Buried.
I see Bill and Jeff with my startup. Blake Kreyan
who passed away to factively sling Box was I was
very close with Dave Goldberg, who passed away. I was
very close with and I got not just great advice,
but they were both intricately involved in my startup that
I did. Advice wise, I've said this to my team
(40:00):
all the time. Barry's advice to us as a group.
I cannot remember the issue we were debating, but he
said that we came into some roadblock and he said,
there's always another way around the mountain, and so I
always think about it. There really is no problem that
if you're creative about it, you can't figure out and
keep going.
Speaker 2 (40:17):
There's always another way around the mountain. Jim Lanzone, that's
a great place to leave us as we look around
the mountain. This has been a great pleasure for me.
I hope our audience agrees, but I know they will
spending this time with you has been a privileged.
Speaker 1 (40:31):
Yet great to be here. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2 (40:37):
I'm Michael Casson. Thanks for listening to Good Company.
Speaker 1 (40:41):
Good Company is brought to you by Three C Ventures
and iHeart Podcasts.
Speaker 2 (40:45):
Special thanks to Alexis Borgier Pudeo, our executive producer and
head of Content and Talent, and to Carl Catle, executive
producer at iHeart Podcasts.
Speaker 1 (40:55):
Episodes are produced and edited by Mary Doo. Thanks for
joining us. We'll see you next time.
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