“You’re doing what?” “With whom?” “Wait, is that the chocolate drink company?”

Today more than 15 years later, I’m proud to announce my graduation from Yahoo! employee to Yahoo! user. No blog post can capture the density of this experience, the richness of what I’ve learned, and the profound gratitude I’ll always have — for David and Jerry taking that leap of faith in me, and for the thousands of Yahoo! employees who have made this a place where magic happens. And above all, nothing I write can convey how humbled and inspired I’ve been by the hundreds of millions of you who share your time, extend your trust, and make Yahoo! a part of your lives. I’m glad to count myself among you.

When we started, Yahoo! was a directory of websites. We couldn’t wait to see the amazing things people would do when they discovered the Web. We pioneered a new profession: Web Surfer. Categorizing sites of every stripe was hardly a perfunctory exercise; we understood that the sum total of our myriad, minute choices — what we include, what we call things, where we put things, how we describe things — reveals a point of view. The mere act of aggregation is creation; aggregation has a voice. In our aim to be a helpful guide to the Web, we confronted the politics of classification, and how it can illuminate human conflict.

In embarking on the task of bringing order to so much information, we established foundational principles for the voice of Yahoo!, which are as relevant today as they were when the Web was new: Be simple, clear, direct. Be useful, inclusive, and provide context, not judgment.

This has never been about us or the technology, but about helping people tap into the transformative power of this medium. It’s about what interests you, what entertains you, what informs you, what helps you express yourself. It’s about what connects you to other people, what connects you to something bigger — and ultimately, what inspires you to recognize and expand your own creative capacity to make the world a better place.

We spend every day in service to those goals. I’ve stayed at Yahoo! with an abiding passion to embed those core values in our work. I leave with the satisfaction of knowing they’re firmly established in our DNA.

As I turn in my employee badge, I’ll be devoting more time to my longstanding love for jazz. I chair the board of SFJAZZ, a nonprofit in San Francisco in the midst of an exciting phase of growth. On the opposite side of the country, my partner Josh and I are developing a performance and production center for creative music in Brooklyn. At Yahoo! I’ve witnessed the kinds of circumstances that give rise to great creativity, and I find the same holds true in music: bringing together diverse perspectives in a collaborative spirit, allowing each voice individual expression in service to the collective whole, striking just the right balance between structure and freedom, being mindful and respectful of the past but relentlessly looking forward to what’s next.

With deepest respect and thanks for the past, I’m looking forward to what’s next.

-Srinija Srinivasan, aka Ninj
from Ontological Yahoo to Vice President, Editor in Chief

Earlier this week, Yahoo! participated in the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in New York City.  The conference brought together web innovators, thought-leaders and executives to talk about the constantly changing web and how to turn this “disruption” into opportunity.  Even our fearless leader, Carol Bartz, spoke in a fireside with TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington.

Most fascinating was the Startup Battlefield, where 20 new companies competed in front of influential judges over the course of three intense days for the chance to win $50,000. Yahoo!’s Chief Architect, Raymie Stata, was on the judging panel. While there were many interesting start ups, it was art.sy, a place to discover and share fine art online, which deserves the Yahoo! Rookie Award!

Yahoo! is a company that was started fifteen years ago by two rookies, Jerry and Dave, who created Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle during their graduate days at Stanford.  They were two people who saw a need, jumped in and created something that worked for an ever growing group of people. Today, Yahoo! is a multi-billion dollar media company that uses technology to push the boundaries of the digital landscape, creating captivating experiences, content and programming.  We support innovators with big ideas and determination; we’ve been there!

During TechCrunch Disrupt we wanted to find a startup that showed promise to succeed where others have tried and failed.   This industry is about success and yes, failure.  Creating technologies and products that allow people to do things they didn’t know they wanted to do and to do things online that they traditionally did offline – like buying fine art.

We believe the marrying of online and offline behavior is one huge area for disruption. Carter Cleveland, founder of art.sy, has demonstrated a passion and a purpose for his startup.  It’s evident that he has passion for art, as does everyone on his team, and the product they’ve created demonstrates a new approach to tap into an industry that has traditionally resisted disruption AND that shows great promise to marry online and offline behavior.

Congratulations to Carter and the art.sy team who received the Yahoo! Rookie Disrupter Award and the opportunity to exhibit at the next TechCrunch event in San Francisco. Disrupt away!

I had the privilege today to speak at the Presidential Summit on Entrepreneurship.

I ultimately consider myself an entrepreneur – from the time David Filo and I started Yahoo! in a small campus trailer parked at Stanford, and even more so today. David and I had a dream fueled by the entrepreneurial spirit and a love for technology.

The gathering of delegates at the Summit represents an appreciation for the critical role entrepreneurs play in advancing the global community. The Summit follows the President’s commitment during his June 2009 speech in Cairo, and is an effort to join existing efforts and inspire new efforts to promote entrepreneurship and innovation, with a focus on Muslim-majority countries and Muslim communities around the world.

Many renowned experts in the U.S. and globally are speaking, and President Obama addresses the group this evening.

I spent most of my talk discussing what it takes for regions, countries and societies to create a “high growth entrepreneurship” environment – one that is ripe for technology entrepreneurs.  Later today, I will share a link to view my speech.

While entrepreneurship may be an individual’s pursuit, a “high growth entrepreneurship” environment where technology entrepreneurs can thrive doesn’t happen by accident.

You need to have the right foundation to enable entrepreneurship to flourish.   A foundation that includes: a commitment to research and development; investment in education (including fundamental science at the University level); access to capital funding; and a culture that encourages an entrepreneur ecosystem – from immigration and technology access to online communities and mentors who encourage our youth.

Over the years, the U.S. has addressed much of the foundational elements of high-growth entrepreneurship, and as a result, we see a steady stream of entrepreneurs, technology innovation and economic opportunities.

Let me share two powerful stats.

· According to the Kauffman Foundation, between 1980 and 2005, virtually all net new jobs created in the U.S. were created by firms that were 5 years old or less. That is about 40 million jobs.

· In 2008, research from the National Venture Capital Association showed that VC backed companies in the U.S. employed 12.1 million people generating $3 trillion in revenue.  This represents the equivalent of 21% of the U.S. GDP.

But the power of the Internet, innovation and ideas, and entrepreneurship is borderless.  People around the world, especially young people, are increasingly enthusiastic about chasing new opportunities and starting their own businesses.

And for any entrepreneur, whether they’re in Cairo, Egypt or Cairo, Illinois, or India or Indonesia, the challenge becomes building the bridge and foundations that will enables high-growth entrepreneurship and technology to flourish.

The Middle East shows signs of a growing number of budding entrepreneurs.

The Silatech Index: Voice of Young Arabs study conducted with Gallup in June 2009 found that the majority of Arab youth surveyed believe entrepreneurship is the key to future job creation in the region.  Underscoring that fact was the fact that 26 percent of the young Arabs surveyed in the region were planning to start their own business within the next 12 months.

From my perspective, what is particularly encouraging about these results is how they highlight an emerging willingness to consider new approaches and pursue new ideas.

Let me share an example. The founders of Maktoob.com, a company Yahoo! acquired last year, pursued a new idea 10 years ago.  Co-founders Samih Toukan and Hussam Khoury noticed there were few online services that offered content in Arabic, their native language.  In their spare time, they began to work on an email service that would support Arabic, later adding others online content services.

They were fortunate to have education, mentors (including Fadi Ghandour, a successful CEO/entrepreneur in the Middle East) and funding, which would help make this dream possible.  Samih and Hussam ultimately created the world’s largest Arab online community.  Today, with more than 19 million users in the Middle East region, Yahoo! Maktoob is committed to increasing Arabic content and helping youth and entrepreneurs in the region.

Just last week, Yahoo! Maktoob, in partnership with NGO Nahdet El Mahrousa, launched a social entrepreneurship campaign in Egypt called, “Social Innovation Starts with YOU!”.  Individuals from across Egypt will be invited to become the next social entrepreneurs of the year by developing new ideas in the fields of education, health and the environment.  Ten winners will receive monetary grants and technical and management support for three years to help bring their ideas to life.

Samih and Hussan’s journey highlights what is possible for today’s entrepreneurs.  There are plenty of other examples of successful entrepreneurs in emerging markets, and opportunities for others with a desire to create future companies or ideas  – in mobile technology, software, clean technologies, biotech or social networking, to name but a few.

In this “flat world”, there is a tremendous opportunity for countries around the globe to participate in high-growth entrepreneurship and further technology advancements. It is critical for everyone – public officials, private industry, NGOs, educational institutions, entrepreneurs and others – to help build a foundation to help support this.

Collectively, we can make an impact, and help ensure entrepreneurship and technology continues its remarkable progress in emerging economies and around the world … so that future generations will see their dreams come to life.

Jerry Yang
Co-founder, Yahoo!

We’ve had the unique opportunity to help create an industry and shape the online world, and will continue to focus on the values that brought us here —working hard, having fun, being passionate about your ideas, believing in each other, and always trying to invent the future.  And as we celebrate 15 years today, we are even more excited than ever about what lies ahead, and the potential of Yahoo! and the Internet.

Of course, we didn’t set out to start one of the world’s largest Internet companies or be leading a movement that has changed the world. We were just a couple of Stanford graduate students doing our research (supposedly) while our professor was on sabbatical.

More interesting than our research was our total fascination with the web and all the cool stuff it suddenly made available. But it was incredibly hard to keep track of the thousands of great websites sprouting up everywhere.  We thought it would be fun to catalog the sites by developing a simple directory. So all this began with nothing more than a hobby to help other early Internet users.

Amazing things happen when we’re doing what’s fun.

We soon learned a huge lesson just as relevant today as then: change and growth on the Internet happen at warp speed—especially if you’re filling a need. With the proliferation of websites and with hundreds of thousands of people accessing our guide, it was simply impossible for us to continue doing this on our own.

Taking big steps takes belief in yourself—and in others.

After many late nights and a lot of pizza, we decided to take the big leap, turn our hobby into a business, raise money and devote ourselves totally to building a company.  This was no sure thing.  For example, 15 years ago, we wanted a free service that was ad-supported. But the conventional wisdom was that our business needed to be subscription-based. Few people thought that advertising could be the key revenue generator for the Internet. Of course, the conventional wisdom was wrong and so today we know that August, 1995, the month our first ad went live, was a critical milestone in the history of Yahoo!, as well as the history of the internet.

Focus on the future: it still looks phenomenal.

Internet growth continues to be simply phenomenal, and we’re nowhere near done.  Fifteen years ago, there were 18,000 web sites and fewer than 10 million people globally on the Internet—less than one third of a single percent of the world’s population at the time. Today there are more than 200 million websites with 90,000 created daily. There are estimated to be 1.6 billion people on the internet today—about 25 percent of the world’s population.

These numbers are astonishing, but even more important and more exciting is the impact that the Internet is having on so many people around the world.  From socio-economic opportunities to more accessible health care to educating the next generation and beyond, the Internet has changed the way we live, work and learn.  It has overcome geographic and political barriers and has made it possible for people to raise their voices as they seek greater economic opportunity and freedom.  And Yahoo! has been a leader in enabling these tremendous technological advancements every step of the way.

Let’s aim to be even prouder fifteen years from now than we are today!

All this in just 15 years. Yahoo! has been built by thousands of dedicated employees, hundreds of millions of loyal users and scores of advertisers who envisioned a future that was exciting, challenging and at times daunting.  To work in the sandbox that is Yahoo! and the evolution of the Internet is truly amazing.

And yet as fast as the Internet and Yahoo! have grown and as remarkably our lives have changed, we are just at the beginning of this great transformation.

The Internet still has enormous and untapped potential.  There are billions of more people we need to drive online, and then provide them with relevant content and opportunities that they’ve never dreamed about before.

We are confident that 15 years from today, we will look back in marvel  at how far you, and the Internet have traveled in such a short time. Just as we are doing today.

Jerry Yang and David Filo

Co-Founders & Chief Yahoos

Much to my wife’s delight, among other things I contributed were five pairs of sneakers and athletic shoes and I was able to actually watch people pick them up and give them a new home. (Yes, people WILL wear other people’s shoes…) Hopefully they will get some great use and their new owners will think hard about what THEY could give up to turn their personal trash into someone else’s treasure.

I’m told Yahoos brought in more than 2,000 items from closets and basements throughout the Bay Area that might otherwise have been destined for landfills. The more interesting things I saw included a vintage map of Silicon Valley businesses from 2000, a red lacy bra (which seemed to disappear quickly), last-generation Tivos, Rockem Sockem Robots, vacuum cleaners, a complete set of Star Trek: Next Generation VHS tapes, bunny slippers, fleeces galore, Yahoo! schwag (Yahoo! Chicago stickers, anyone?), and gently used sporting equipment. Items that had not seen the light of day for years were suddenly adopted by new guardians, who promised to put them into immediate use. Although I think the snow skis might have to wait until next season…

We duplicated this fair in six California, New York, and Oregon offices. And whatever wasn’t claimed was carted away by local charities like the Salvation Army.

So if you see me around campus with size 10.5 Adidas shell-toes, know that they will be well cared for and infused with the spirit of giving.

Hmm… I wonder what size Jerry wears?…

Here are some photos and a video recap:

Lucas Mast
Senior PR Manager
Connected Life

Past gifts have included free coffee for all (a tradition I cash in on every morning), a purple sleeping bag (presumably to get more work out of us), a purple gym bag (to offset all that work), an MP3 player (I think it fit 20 songs, but it was so newfangled back in 2001), a Yahoo!opoly game (a clever adaptation of the Milton Bradley favorite, complete with awesomely relevant metal game pieces), more jackets (they’re clearly a crowd-pleaser), and a $100 charity gift certificate (a favorite for many).

Over the last week, Jerry and David (and their many elves) personally helped employees zip up into their new duds. We threw together this little video of the handout process to get everyone into the holiday spirit. And notice the intrigue surrounding the “bonus” gift that came along with the jackets.

We’ll be home watching our video yule log next week, as I’m sure will you, so let me take this opportunity to thank all of our readers for continuing to read, comment, and repeat. Here’s to a yodelful 2008!

Nicki Dugan
Blog Editor