Yahoo Taps Its Inner Startup
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Yahoo Taps Its Inner Startup
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Re: Yahoo Taps Its Inner Startup
#2How does this compare to Google's 20% time for your own projects?
Re: Yahoo Taps Its Inner Startup
#3How does this compare to Google's 20% time for your own projects?
How does it compare?
Well, the objectives may be similar but Yahoo's execution is much more deliberate.
While Google's 20% time is a corporate policy that encourages side-projects (that may see see the light of day in the form of a beta product), Brickhouse is Yahoo's full-fledged effort to develop novel ideas in-house that it has been historically purchasing at premium prices.
It seems that Brickhouse, as a division, is able to pursue small, "startup-like" ideas that might stray from Yahoo's corporate vision.
Re: Yahoo Taps Its Inner Startup
#4How does this compare to Google's 20% time for your own projects?
How does it compare? Well, the objectives may be similar but Yahoo's execution is much more deliberate. While Google's 20% time is a corporate policy that encourages side-projects (that may see see the light of day in the form of a beta product), Brickhouse is Yahoo's full-fledged effort to develop novel ideas in-house that it has been historically purchasing at premium prices. It seems that Brickhouse, as a division…
What are the restrictions? I somehow doubt that you can do whatever you want.
Re: Yahoo Taps Its Inner Startup
#5Earlier quoted context omitted.
How does it compare? Well, the objectives may be similar but Yahoo's execution is much more deliberate. While Google's 20% time is a corporate policy that encourages side-projects (that may see see the light of day in the form of a beta product), Brickhouse is Yahoo's full-fledged effort to develop novel ideas in-house that it has been historically purchasing at premium prices. It seems that Brickhouse, as a division…
What are the restrictions? I somehow doubt that you can do whatever you want.
I don't know; I don't work there. :)
It's still a company, after all. They pursue interesting, and even perhaps daring, ideas as a team. I didn't see any implications of a chaotic operation.
Re: Yahoo Taps Its Inner Startup
#6So what's the consensus on how well this will work?
It definitely seems like a step in the right direction; Yahoo probably has a great deal of internal talent that they are not tapping into. Giving that talent freedom and incentive should make Yahoo more competitive.
But so many of the advantages of real startups are unlikely to apply. What strikes me as one of the biggest factors is that this seems unlikely to draw in too much external talent. The pool of people likely to start successful startups don't want to work for Yahoo until they're getting paid a lot to do so. As the yahoo vp said "It is generally cheaper to incubate these things than to buy them"
Re: Yahoo Taps Its Inner Startup
#7Great idea; it sounds like someone at Yahoo is taking Christensen's advice.
This will only work well if the division is given enough autonomy. If a small division is trying to help meet the massive revenue goals of mainstream Yahoo, it's just not going to work. They're not going to get the resources or motivation that they need.
That's the problem with Google's 20% time. You're not really encouraged to do little projects, something that a startup might do. Instead, you're encouraged to contribute to the bottom line of Google, which severely limits the kind of things you can work on (i.e., "do search or you're wasting your time"). This is compounded by the fact that your 20% time is inconsistently factored into your employee evaluation (for better or for worse).
Re: Yahoo Taps Its Inner Startup
#8So what's the consensus on how well this will work? It definitely seems like a step in the right direction; Yahoo probably has a great deal of internal talent that they are not tapping into. Giving that talent freedom and incentive should make Yahoo more competitive. But so many of the advantages of real startups are unlikely to apply. What strikes me as one of the biggest factors is that this seems unlikely to draw…
I agree, I have long thought that Yahoo was getting "blown out of the water" and they must to *something* to breathe a little life back into their once dominant company.
I have been battling myself over the issue of who to go to with my idea. I believe from my incredibly fortunate and diverse upbringing, lifelong experiences with computers, social networks, MMO interactions, I have come up with a web application that will organize the worlds information in a better way. As a result it will not only appeal to everyone, but help everyone in the world with a computer live more productive and "better" lives. Ambitious? yes. But in case you didn't know.. Facebook, Myspace, Wiki, and Reddit are represent the infant stage of how we will organize the worlds information.
The problem I face now is who to go to... Do I find team of great "Hackers" (not so easy to find in Madison but I will be graduating in May) and start working on a beta and focus on angel/seed/Ycom funding? Do i go to the Bill and Melinda gates foundation and go though probably years of red tape in order to get my idea noticed. Or do I go to a company like Yahoo and tell them "your whole web philosophy and yahoo pages are flawed and I can show you how you can regain the Internet power you once had" Or do I just apply to their "brickhouse" division and hope they give me stock if my idea is successful.
The dilemma as I see it is that because this will be my lifelong endeavor, I want to give it the best chance to succeed. It is not even about the money, even though the most powerful information browsing tool (google currently) will always be the most powerful and profitable company in the world. I just want to make sure Rupert's empire doesn't get a hold of these ideas because it could be used for real evil if all the worlds information was in his hands...
Re: Yahoo Taps Its Inner Startup
#9Yahoo has bigger problems than the lack of innovation. It's insanely bloated as a company now. Why Yahoo Photos and Flickr? Why My Yahoo and My Web and Delicious? Why can't I log in to Delicious with my Yahoo login? Why is their web page so cluttered? They really need to cut it down. Dump Yahoo Photos, dump My Web and Yahoo 360. Streamline into 5 areas: Media (News, TV, Commercial Video), Search (Panama), Social Media (Flickr, Delicious, My Yahoo, Music), Email (most critical) and Hosting (I'd drop hosting too but I don't have an MBA and 5 is a much nicer number than 4). Thats my opinion, but I don't have an MBA... just some common sense.
Re: Yahoo Taps Its Inner Startup
#10This reminds me a bit of the Bell Labs west-coast startup program. Back in the 1990s, they created their internal startup area.
While it did do was create a lot of hostility, and keeping of secrets from other divisions. It divided the company up, and most of the internal groups didn't end up doing well..
Check out "Bell Labs: Life in the Crown Jewel", it's an interesting read on the history of the labs.
It seems that independent (external) funding sources can do much better- They can fund any group that shows promise, no matter where it originated.. They put the risk into the hands of the founders, and they have a wider market to choose from.
-C