Marissa Mayer Tells The Story Of Why She Became Yahoo CEO, Even Though She Was About To Have A Kid (YHOO)

Marissa Mayer told the story today of how she became Yahoo's CEO, even though she was pregnant.

It was part of Sheryl Sandberg's "Lean In" series, which promotes women talking about succeeding in life and business.

On June 18, Mayer says she got a call: "I’m doing a CEO search. It’s a Fortune 500 company. It’s in the consumer Internet space. It’s in Silicon Valley—you wouldn’t even have to move. It’s the perfect job for you. The board is asking for you by name. Are you interested? It’s Yahoo."

She says she had gotten calls like that before, and always turned them down. "But this time it was Yahoo, and that changed everything," says Mayer, because, "Yahoo defined the Internet."

While she was excited about the job, she had one giant apprehension. She was pregnant.

"After 13 years of really hard work at Google, I had been envisioning a glorious six-month maternity leave," she said. If she became CEO of Yahoo, "a long leave couldn’t happen."

She decided to forego the long leave and take the job.

To take on the CEO role, and have a child at the same time, Mayer realized, "that there wouldn’t be much time beyond my job and my family for anything else," but, "I decided I was fine with that, because my family and my job are what really matter to me."

On July 11, she got another call: "You… should be smiling. You are the next CEO of Yahoo."

She says she knew it was risk, but, "New beginnings – professional, personal, or come what may – are always uncomfortable, but being open to them is the only way to grow. In the end, we are all capable of so much more than we think."

While this is an inspirational tale, we should mention that Mayer was in a unique position. She was able to build a nursery in her office. And she's a multi-multi millionaire from her days at Google. Taking on a new, challenging job isn't always an option for women about to give birth.

However, the moral of the story remains the same: Don't be afraid to get outside of your comfort zone when once-in-a-lifetime opportunities present themselves.

Read her full story here.

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The 17-Year-Old That Yahoo Paid $30 Million Was Renting His Startup's Core Technology

Yahoo's weird-looking Summly acquisition is looking weirder by the minute.

Yahoo made big news this week when it bought Summly, a startup with a 17-year-old CEO named Nick D'Aloisio, for $30 million.

The acquisition was led by Yahoo HR boss Jackie Reeses.

Before Yahoo shut it down, Summly was an app that skimmed the world's sources of news, edited it all down to fewer words, and distributed it to readers in a personalized way.

Yesterday, we pointed out that the deal was odd for several reasons:

• Summly never had many users or any revenues. Yahoo is shutting the app down. Yahoo is saying the point of the deal is to have Summly's CEO help lead the company in mobile.
• But Summly's CEO lives in London, where he is staying to finish school
• The CEO has only promised to stay at Yahoo for the next 18 months.  
• The CEO is 17-years-old. We don't buy that he's going to be able to lead or inspire adult Yahoo engineers and designers.

Now, Cornell professor Emin Gün Sirer points out another glaring issue with the deal: Summly's didn't invent or own its core technology. 

Sirer writes: "Summly licensed its core technology from SRI, which, previously, spun out Siri and sold it to Apple."

"They licensed the core engine from another company. They are the quintessential bolt-on engineers, taking a Japanese bike engine, slapping together a badly constructed frame aligned solely by eyeballs, and laying down a marketing blitz."

So let's review: Yahoo bought a startup to acquire its talent.

But that talent lives 10,000 miles away, is still finishing high school, and is not actually responsible for the startup's core technology.

This has us suspicious that they are other reasons Yahoo bought Summly.

Some possible explanations:

• Summly has an impressive list of angel investors, including Brian Chesky, Mark Pincus, Matt Mullenwegg, Li-Kai Shing, and Josh Kushner. These people are influential with lots of startups that Yahoo will want to acquire some day. Maybe Yahoo has decided spending $30 million to give one of their disappointing startups a safe landing is a way to get on their good side. Certainly Yahoo has some rehabilitation to do with Silicon Valley investors and entrepreneurs.
• Yahoo is getting tons of press in the mainstream media for making a teenager a millionaire. The CEO is on the Today Show this morning. $30 million is not a lot of money to spend for so much "earned media," as marketing people call mentions in the press.

Big picture it's important to remember that $30 million is not that much for Yahoo to spend.

It's less than .75% of Yahoo's available cash.

Still…$30 million here and $30 million there starts to add up in a way that will eventually make bigger deals less possible.

By the way: None of this is meant to take anything away from what founder Nick D'Aloisio did with Summly. That guy is a pure hustler, and he earned every penny of his millions.

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So … Marissa Mayer Is Paying A 17-Year-Old $30 Million To Be Yahoo's Spokesman For 18 Months? (YHOO)

Yesterday, Yahoo announced it bought a startup called Summly. Summly made a news aggregation app. According to All Things D, Yahoo paid $30 million – 90% cash. $30 million isn't much for Yahoo, which has more than $4 billion in cash (and access to much more). But there are some elements to this deal that make even that small price seem strange. Summly never really set the world on fire. It had fewer than one million downloads.&Yahoo is shutting Summly down. So basically, Yahoo is acquiring Summly's talent. Summly's talent is &founder Nick D'Aloisio and two other people. Yahoo is saying D'Aloisio's&is to lead Yahoo more boldly into the world of mobile.& A source tells All Things D his job is to "be a great person to put in front of the media and consumers with Mayer to make Yahoo seem like it is a place that loves both entrepreneurs and mobile experiences." But D'Aloisio lives in London, which is 10,000 miles away from Yahoo's Sunnyvale, California headquarters. Also, D'Aloisio&is 17-years-old. He still has to finish high school. Last year, gadget blog Gizmodo made him cry when it wouldn't write about Summly.& He's supposed to lead grown-up engineers? Finally, according to All Things D, D'Aloisio&only required to work at Yahoo for the next 18 months. He's already talking about getting into angel investing. Again…Yahoo has $4 billion, and maybe throwing $30 million at a 17-year-old in hopes of seeming cool with the kids is a fine use of .75% of that money, or .12% of Yahoo's market cap. & Maybe it'll help Yahoo get the right kind of press, and show other enterpreneurs like&D'Aloisio that Yahoo is a decent place to land. Maybe it'll make Yahoo seem cutting edge to consumers. Certainly its a cheaper marketing stunt than a horrible ad campain like "It's Y!ou," which is how ex-Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz tried to accomplish the same goal. Please follow SAI on Twitter and Facebook.Join the conversation about this story »

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