Name: Marissa Mayer on how her Yahoo days inspired her new company Sunshine
Uploaded: 2023-06-15
Duration: 17 min 28 s
Description: And what she thinks about work from home and A.I.

And what she thinks about work from home and A.I.

Marissa Mayer on how her Yahoo days inspired her new company Sunshine

Conferences

Marissa Mayer’s Yahoo days inspired her new company Sunshine

Hi. Hi, I'm Mikhail. I, I'm editor at Large and Fortune MP W co-chair. Um It is great to see you all and I'm very excited to kick off our evening conversation. So this year we always have a theme for MP W and this year it is rising to the occasion. Um It's not just marketing BS, it's real. Um taking on a big new challenge is not only a personal achievement. Um It can also have great meaning to those you lead and to your industry as a whole as I think we know. And tonight's featured speakers is one of the first tech MP W S an investor and now a founder and a disruptor. We're going to talk about her company Sunshine. Um Plus, get her take on the recent explosion in A I and the changes in Silicon Valley over the last few years in particular. It's an honor to have her with us tonight. So please join me in welcoming to the stage, Sunshine co founder and CEO and MP W Marissa Meyer. No. Oh, ok. So Marisa, I'm gonna dive right into, to Sunshine and um if you all have questions for Marisa as well. We can hopefully take one or two at, at, at the end. Um If you're good with that, that you can't really say no now, right? Um, but, uh but I want to start out with just, you know, you've done so much in your career. We all know about your career employee number 20 at Google. You, you led Yahoo difficult time. There had been several difficult errors at Yahoo at that point. Um You could have gone on to do so many different things and you chose to focus on the phone book, uh the address book and your phone. So um tell us a little bit about sunshine and what is it about this particular problem that piqued your interest? Well, I think at a broad level, um you know, I mean, you're starting a company, it has to be at the right time, the right idea, the right partner. Um And, you know, I was lucky in that I, I've always been really interested in everyday tasks. When you think about my career. It's always been search maps, email things that you do for a small amount of time every day. And I like to think about those, those mundane tasks that kind of get in the way and how do you optimize them and how do you make them that much better? And so I had some ideas around that, found a great co-founder and my co-founder Enrique Munoz Torres. And we have similar ideas. And it was kind of interesting. I joked that it was like a business affair to remember because we were at Yahoo and when, during this nine month, close period, when we were selling the company, you've got to sign a contract. It's kind of like having your house in escrow. It's just not a great time to like remodel the bathroom because the new owners won't appreciate it and you won't have access to it after you're gone. And, and so like we have, but we have to still run the annual ST strategy process and all these different planning processes as if the transaction isn't happening. So when we got up and had all these interesting ideas about groups and events, how to make everyday communication among families and, and you know, colleagues work better and a lot of the ideas had the synergies of my ideas. And so I had to like, you know, take in all these kind of presenting their initiative and I'm always going to get funded and not funded. And I said to him, like, you know, we're not going to fund that initiative. It would be kind of a change from the journey, but Yahoo is doing and I grabbed him afterwards and I said, you know, I have a bunch of ideas in that space too. So if we're ever both, not here and we both want to start a company, maybe we should get together and talk and So that's what we're, you know, about a year later or so you got to build your dream house. He, he came like, you know, were you serious? And we started talking and when we first started, we were called labs because we knew with the space we wanted to be in, we were interested in events and groups and contact management and scheduling, but we didn't really know where to start. And then we started studying the problem. We arrived at contacts because it's an everyday task. Uh And as we started digging into it, everyone's contacts are a mess. Um I've now talked to like, probably more than raise your hand show of hands. How many of you, how many people are actually expecting to like, is anyone in the room happy with the standard or contacts? Because you are like the first person, about five or 6000 people that I've met for them. That's true. But I mean, it's, it's this problem that's hidden in, in plain sight and everyone has gotten just very used to dealing with the mess. And we're like, look some of the current modern technologies, basic algorithms. Some A I can be really good at this. And one of the things is nobody manages their contacts because like, there's just, you know, it's just, there's no point like why would you spend the time doing it? But it turns that computers can actually manage your contacts pretty well. And if you can get that piece, right? It starts to make all the things that we want to build on top of it, events, groups, family sharing, photo sharing, because you can actually start to understand people's relationships. You know, one way I think about it is there's a lot of companies that are social, but if you look at what they're doing, they're actually learning a lot about you in order to advertise to you. Right? As opposed to saying, wait, I actually want to understand who is a colleague, who is a friend who is a friend who became a colleague or vice versa. Is this relationship on the upswing where you're interacting more and more or less? Um And so those are the types of things that we really want to pay attention to because we think once you have that level of understanding, being able to provide for like a personal relationship manager and or like a personal assistant that gives you interesting ideas like, you know, what should you do? Like who should you invite to your children's birthday parties? Things like that. And, and that's where the generative A I piece can come in, right? Or, or what, what does that look like? Well, I mean, for right now, we're not necessarily using generative A I because what we're doing a lot of is some facial recognition, profile photos that are wildly different things like that name similarity. It turns out there's so many different ways that people talk about their companies that they put their name on the web trying to understand are these two people the same or different? Um, is a really hard problem. And, you know, we've had a lot of fun just digging into contacts because it seems simple on the surface. But it's actually really, it's really quite complicated underneath and it's fun to kind of make sense of it all. So, so what, what kind of um what have you gleaned from the, the data that you have? Like how many contacts on average do you, people have? The average person has about 2000 contacts. We have one person, you on board with 130,000 contacts. But when you de duplicate it, people have a lot of duplication. So when you do duplicate that came down to about 50,000, um but it was actually, it was a former accountant at, I think it was a former accountant at KPMG who has like lots and lots of accounting clients at different touch point at different companies. Um And the other thing that we found this really interesting is 18 to 21% of your contact book that's sitting in your phone today uh is stale and it won't work. And if you go to use it, if you try to email that person at that email address or that phone number, um you won't reach them. Uh And so figuring out that those numbers don't work anymore, figuring out where they moved to and, and how to actually keep people in touch. Um is a big part of what we want to do and, and going back to just deciding to do this, not only to focus on this product, this problem in particular, but also to become a founder. You, you know, I think we all associate you with very entrepreneurial companies. You know, you were again early on at Google Led Yahoo. But making that taking that plunge to become a founder yourself, why did you want to do that versus continue to invest or, you know, build companies that way. A couple of things. One, my whole career has been based around and built behind interactions with great entrepreneurs. I felt like I got to witness and work with the best in terms of Larry and Sergey and you know, and Yang at Yahoo and you know, I bought about 30 companies when I was at Google um on the product side and about 50 companies when I was at Yahoo. So I got to work with, you know, all kinds of entrepreneurs, um big and small. And so that was a piece where I was always interested in it. But when I looked at how I wanted to spend my time, I love working on design problems. I like the products I design. I actually found Yahoo so fascinating because it was just the biggest design problem I've ever worked on where you're designing, like the culture, the people, the team, the structure, the product line. I like it was just so much design happening on so many different levels that I thought that was really, really fun. And so I wanted to see, you know, how do you build that? How do you experience that um from, from the ground up? And so, you know, that was one of the things that, that really drew me to it. I wanted to have that, that experience. So you, you at, at Google um that Yahoo as well, I'm sure, especially earlier on, you were really known for um working your butt off. I think there was something like 100 and 40 all nighters in your first five years at, was it more than about one a week for the first five years? Ok. Um Do you feel like today running sun? And by the way, you also, you led thousands and thousands of people, you've got 25 employees, something like that, right? Uh So it's a little bit different to begin with, but do you feel like your approach uh to work to leadership to how you pour yourself into, to what you're building has shifted? Um I mean, of course, it's a, it's a much smaller and different scale. Um And there's just many more types of, you know, problems, issues, things to think through that bubble up to you as the founder or the CEO at this at this time. Um But I think some of the core values of uh management and leadership are very much the same. Like, one of things I've always tried to say, you know, I do, I never asked someone to do something I wouldn't do. Right. Things like that. And I think that's a good principle as a good principle at a big company. Um It's a good principle at a small company. Um And I think that, you know how hard you're working, like leadership comes from the top. And you know, you, I think that, you know, a lot of those values translate regardless of company size. Um You were an early adopter of return to office because you kind of did that at Yahoo. And I remember I had a friend who worked at Yahoo back when you became CEO and I remember him complaining because he could no longer windsurf every afternoon. So, and, and you were criticized for it, you know, back back then because people like the flexible, some people at least like the flexible um work life balance. But um today at Sunshine, you, my understanding is you, you guys are in office, you're there pretty much every day. What's, what's your explainer for? Yeah, for, for different reasons. So, I mean, you might say, well, it was worth, you know, have to be in the office at Yahoo, have to be in the office at Sunshine, like they have to be in the office. Um, uh, I have nothing against working from home. We all had to do it for three years. By the way, sometimes I did two. My brother worked from home from over, for over a decade. Like I have no issues. Um, with work from home at Yahoo. It was really our moment. Right. We were trying to turn the company around. We actually had about 100 people who legitimately worked from home, had work from home status officially of the company. But we had about another 1000 that just stayed home when they felt like it, uh, wind and, or windsurf. And so, um, and I had, you know, it wasn't like I really even brought the philosophy, obviously I stand behind it, but I had a lot of really high performing Yahoos. They have a big banquet every fall called, um, the, the All Stars. Right? And where they, the, the Yahoos would vote for their, you know, the best performing people I think was one of them one year. Um, and so, you know, there's, you know, there's really healthy people and they would come and they'd say, you know, look, we're here, we love the energy, we love what you're trying to do. And once a week we have to stop and call our colleague who doesn't come in and keep them up to date on what's going on. Like, can you do something about this? And they're like, it's not really the formal work from home. That's the problem. It's the informal work from home. That's the problem. And it is really hitting and dragging on productivity. And we just said, look, it's not for all companies all the time, but for this moment for this company, this is what we need. Um at Sunshine, you know, we did the work from home thing and we did it, I think as well as any startup could. But it was funny because I was at and dinner with other powerful CEO S and I was sitting between Mark Benioff and Drew House and who obviously grew their companies from like a couple of people to like tens of thousands. And we all went around and we were talking about COVID. It was during the pandemic outdoor dinner and that kind of era and when they talked about it, they were like, they were, you know, we're gonna work from forever and like sales person and drop box were really developed enough. And when they got to me, I was like, you know, I don't want to be the counter, you know, intuitive voice here at the table, but I'm just like, I have this tiny little company and just, it feels like, you know, we might need to be an off and they were like, totally right, like for your 1st 100 employees, they're like the number of decisions and conversations that have happen every day where if you have to stop and schedule formal time and hop on a zoom that don't happen and ultimately hold your company back. They're just big. And I was like, ok, like, it's really about the phase that your company is in and what it can and can't do. And obviously there was times when the circumstances like the pandemic forced the issue one way or the other. But for us, I had to say, I thought we executed well during the pandemic. But now we're back and now we're like, yeah, like now we launch things every week. Like one week is Android, right? Like the next week is our groups be like, you know, it's just like we've got features and things going out all the time and it's just, it's just undeniable. The cadence is different and that notion just like, yeah, we have an idea and we can talk about it quickly and decide if it's good or bad and just move on. It just has a completely different vibe than it did when we were sitting, you know, in the Hollywood Squares on Zoom. Yeah. No. Um If you have a question for Marisa, please raise your hand. We'll bring a microphone over to you and I'll get to you in just a second. But um uh on, on the subject of a I um you've said you're an A I optimist obviously with a lot of um excitement and, and hype um and them for what we're seeing. Um and also a lot of concern. So, explain to us, you know, first, I guess a two part question why you're an A I optimist. And I also want to ask, are you a Google optimist? Because obviously we've seen the company be a little bit late. We've seen some flubs. Um but a lot of incredible technologists there and incredible technology. So, so tell us your, are you an A I optimist? And are you a Google optimist? I'm definitely an A I optimist. I have been, I've been fascinated by it my whole life. I actually my two, my undergraduate degree and my master's degree from Stanford are both the special specializations in A I. Um And so I've always been interested in, it is obviously a very different era now. And I think that there's definitely dangers and things that we need to look out for. But I think by and large, what this can do for humanity and the way that this can assist us all help people make better decisions, just overall helps us flow in big ways and in small ways I think is going to be really profound. And so I'm excited to be part of this moment and present at this moment where, you know, generative A I really, I think has surprised everyone, right? My undergraduate degree was something called symbolic systems. And people were always like, what is that? And it was cognitive psychology. How do people learn philosophy, logic how do they reason? A linguistics, how do they express themselves? And computer science, can you make a computer, the address book? And the phone is actually like the perfect product for you. Like, you just weaved it all together. So it's got all these different pieces. But I think it's interesting. A lot of us who watched a I for a long time, people thought it would be in the learning that model building or in the logic is where we would really see the big burst. Think it was, it's been fascinating as generative ai movement. It's really an expression, right? As high as what's happening with linguistics or with the visual components. I think that that's really fascinating. But I, I think that there's a lot to be very optimistic about a blind optimism. I do think we endorse things we have to be careful of. But I think by and large, I think it's going to be a huge step forward and just help a lot of people. And I'm definitely a Google optimist. I think they've had, you know, some stumbles that I think in my view have been overblown, like, you know, the bar demo that, you know, everyone kind of loved to hate on um by 100 and $8 billion 100 billion dollars off their market cap for, for one demo that was just poorly fact checked. Um But I think overall if you look at Google has just so much talent, particularly in A I, if you started to look at, you know, the top 102 100 experts in the world in A I, you know, I would even say it goes surprising the majority of them or a very large chunk of them work at Google. And so I think that, you know, overall, obviously I'm very much a Google loyalist given my career, I still feel, even though I haven't been there for a long time, I still very, very much a part of it. And, and I think that, you know, the, the ideas are going to have an A I and the execution ability and the talent that they have there is noteworthy and I don't think, but I think it's a mistake to count them out in any way. I think that they ultimately will end up being a very big leader in this movement. Can we take one very, very quick question? No, we don't have time dinner. All right, we can you have to come up to, to after? All right. Um Real quick before we wrap. Um I mentioned at our table that you did this dinner back in 2012. It was your first interview as CEO of Yahoo at the time. And I remember I covered the interview then there was this great quote from you that kind of paraphrasing Vince Lombardi. Um And at the time it was uh God family Yahoo. What, what is your, your Holy Trinity today, I think for me, I think it's really family and all right. Ok. All right. Thank you so much, Marissa.