According to reports, Yahoo’s former CEO Marissa Mayer (Marissa Mayer) admitted that if given another chance, she would make up for three major regrets, one of which is the acquisition of Netflix.
In an interview, Marissa Mayer reiterated that one of her regrets at Yahoo was hiring the wrong COO, Henrique De Castro, whom she fired after 15 months on the job.
Under Marissa Mayer’s leadership, Yahoo acquired social blogging platform Tumblr in May 2013 in an all-cash deal for $1.1 billion, and a source at the time said Marissa Mayer was “very involved in the deal,” working late into the night on several occasions to make it happen.
But nearly six years after leaving the company, Marissa Mayer told the press that it might not have been the best acquisition, especially since the company was also considering the possibility of acquiring Hulu or Netflix.
I think Netflix was valued at $4 billion and Hulu was $1.3 billion,” Marissa Mayer said. In hindsight, either of those two companies would have been a better acquisition.”
In 2016, Yahoo wrote down the value of Tumblr by a total of $712 million, which Yahoo said was due to a number of factors, “including our expected Tumblr operating results and a reduction in estimated future cash flows.”
Marissa Mayer, however, said her biggest regret was not being able to “separate the company’s assets by splitting the shares of Alibaba on a tax-free basis.
She said, “If we had done that, we could have saved shareholders $10 billion, or let them earn that money, and either way, we paid the tax.” She added, “Doing so will allow Yahoo to remain an independent company and potentially be more successful.”
Verizon acquired Yahoo in 2017 for $4.48 billion and merged it with AOL, which prompted Marissa Mayer to resign. She received a $23 million pay package upon her departure.
Just five years later, however, Verizon sold Yahoo and AOL to private equity firm Apollo Global Management for $5 billion.
Prior to joining Yahoo as CEO, Marissa Mayer was an early employee of Google. Since then, she has co-founded a startup called Sunshine, which develops artificial intelligence-based applications, including a contact manager.
