🍋 The SAD Death of Yahoo

PLUS: 1 idea in 1,000 unique ways

Author

Lemon Guy
June 10, 2024

Hey, sweet welcome to Squeez Growth.

COMING IN HOT

🧠 This framework will help you say 1 idea in 1,000 unique ways

📉 The Rise and Fall of Yahoo

🔗 Useful Links and Tools

So let’s squeeze the day:

FRESHLY SQUEEZED

🍋 Squeezed resources of the week

🍋 Squeezable

This framework will help you say 1 idea in 1,000 unique ways

It's called the 4A Framework – here's how it works:

It’s simple.

It lets you talk about any topic with 4 core buckets:

  • Actionable (here's how)

  • Analytical (here's are the numbers)

  • Aspirational (yes, you can)

  • Anthropological (here's why)

Let me show you some examples:

Let's start with a huge topic: money.

Here are 4 book examples:

  • "I Will Teach You To Be Rich" (Actionable)

  • "The Changing World Order" (Analytical)

  • "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" (Aspirational)

  • "The Psychology of Money" (Anthropological)

Let's break down each bucket:

Actionable: These are tactical, implemental pieces of content.

The reader should gain some new insight or instruction they didn't have beforehand.

  • Tips

  • Hacks

  • Curation

  • Resources

  • Ultimate guides

Take your core idea and help the reader put it into practice.

Analytical: These are breakdowns involving numbers, frameworks, and processes.

Take your core idea and support it with numbers and analysis.

  • Trends

  • Reasons

  • Numbers

  • Examples

  • Teardowns

  • Swipe files

Help the reader unlock a new way of thinking.

Aspirational: These are stories of how you or others put your core idea into practice.

  • Lessons

  • Mistakes

  • Reflections

  • Personal stories

  • Stories of growth

  • Underrated traits

  • Advice to past self

Help the reader understand what's possible.

Anthropological: These are things that speak to universal human nature.

  • Fears

  • Failures

  • Struggles

  • Paradoxes

  • Observations

  • Comparisons

  • Why others are wrong

  • Why you've been misled

Help the reader understand why something is the way it is.

Now, how about combining different 4A paths?

Absolutely you can.

In fact, the most viral content is always a combination.

Some common ones:

  • Actionable + Analytical

  • Aspirational + Anthropological

  • Aspirational + Actionable

The beauty of the 4A framework is once you see it, you start to see every piece of content through its lens.

DEEP DIVE

📉 The Rise and Fall of Yahoo

the founders

Jerry Yang and David Filo founded Yahoo in January 1994. Both were Stanford graduates. At first, they developed a website named “Jerry and David’s Guide to the World Wide Web.”

It was simply a directory of other websites, in a hierarchy as a searchable index.

By April 1994, Jerry and David’s Guide to the World Wide Web was renamed “Yahoo!“ The word “YAHOO” is an acronym for “Yet Another Hierarchically Organized Oracle“.

Yahoo became enormous.

It had rapid growth throughout the ’90s. It was poised to become a giant and a high-profile company. It provided a search engine and a directory for other websites in a time when people could only log into a website if they knew the website address.

Else there was no way to search a website.

They started making money from the advertising banners. Yahoo went public in April 1996 and its stock price rose by 600% within two years. At one time Yahoo was receiving 95 million page views per day.

Yahoo came up with a series of funny advertisements to popularize its search engine.

Yahoo’s stock became investor’s darling during the dot.com bubble and once closed at an all-time high of $118.75 in 2000.

Just after the dot.com bubble crash the stuck plunged to its all-time lowest (literally) at $8.11.

Despite the tremendous performance of Yahoo at its early stages, the company started bleeding in the late 2000s due to multiple factors.

Here are the top 5 reasons which resulted in Yahoo’s downfall:

1. Yahoo refused to buy Google for 1 million dollars

In 1998 Larry Page and Sergei Brin offered to sell Google algorithm to Yahoo for $1 million. The algorithm was supposed to help the Yahoo search engine perform faster. Plus enhance the experience of web search.

Yahoo turned down the offer because it wanted its users to spend more time on Yahoo’s own platform. And the other Yahoo content so that it can make more money from the advertising banners on the website.

Again, in 2002 Yahoo rejected an offer to buy Google for $5 billion when the CEO Terry Semel refused the deal after months of negotiation.

Yahoo offered to buy Google at $3 billion but Google was keen on getting $5 billion. So the deal could never happen. (Thank God!!)

2. Failing to buy Facebook

Yahoo initially offered $1 billion to Facebook. Facebook made its mind in 10 minutes to decline the offer.

Some stories say that if the offer was submitted at $1.1 billion, the board of directors would’ve put pressure to sell.

3. Unsuccessful acquisitions

Yahoo acquired two companies in 1999. That are now ranked by Forbes as some of the worst internet acquisitions of all-time. The first was a $4.58 billion deal for Geocities, a site that enabled users to build their own personal websites.

Geocities was a pioneer in this regard, it eventually was shut down in 2009.

After failing to deliver any value to Yahoo shareholders.

The second was the famous $5.7 billion deal for Broadcast.com, an online television site that was founded by Mark Cuban. Perhaps the idea was way ahead of its time and internet connections were too slow in 1999 to run this type of video content off the web

4. Yahoo also bought Tumblr for $1.1 billion in 2013

Many Tumblr users were unhappy with this acquisition. And started an online petition which got 170,000 signatures. Yahoo had to write down more than half of Tumblr by 2016 and ultimately sold it to Verizon

5. Declining Microsoft’s acquisition

In 2008, Microsoft had shown its interest to buy Yahoo for $44.6 billion, Yahoo declined. Since then, the company market value has never reached such numbers.

In 2016 Verizon bought Yahoo in a deal worth $4.8 billion.

📊 Squeezed Data

The whole grocery store is basically owned by ~10 companies

🍋 Good Lemons

🛠️ Zesty Tools

💸 Revenue Tech

  1. Cargo > The modern data stack for revenue teams

  2. tl;dv > We take your meeting notes. You run the show

  3. The Swarm > Network relationship management

📣 Marketing Tools

  1. Tona > Easy way to automatically monitor every action of your competitors.

  2. Heygen > AI-powered video creations at scale

  3. Submagic > Create viral shorts in seconds with AI

  4. Blaze > The marketing AI tool for entrepreneurs

  5. Guideflow > Create interactive demos & step-by-step guides in seconds.

📝 Content Creation

  1. Supergrow > The only LinkedIn content creation tool you’ll ever need

  2. Shots > Craft beautiful presentations for your social media, website and more

  3. Screen Studio > Beautiful screen recordings in minutes

  4. Kleo > Helps you discover and create the best LinkedIn content

📈 Analytics

  1. Subscript > Modern way to track and analyze your B2B SaaS metrics

  2. Decipad > Create interactive data stories and foster understanding across your team

  3. June.so > Product analytics for B2B SaaS

⚒️ Productivity Tools

  1. Arc > New-generation browser

  2. Pitch > Create and share beautiful presentations that get results.

  3. Saga > Connected notes, tasks, and tools. For you and your team.

  4. Cal.com > Schedule meetings without the email tennis

  5. Morgen > Integrated calendars, tasks, time blocking, and scheduling

  6. Clay > Manage all your personal and professional relationships

✍️ Productivity Hacking

  1. Magical > Speed up repetitive tasks as you work

  2. Raycast > A command interface for apps and actions

  3. Async > Share smart voice memos with anyone, everywhere you work and create

  4. Minutes > Send voice and video messages to communicate asynchronously, on your time.

  5. Lazy > One keyboard shortcut to take notes & save information.

  6. Superwhisper > AI powered voice to text for macOS

🤖 AI Tools

  1. Krater > SuperApp for all things Artificial Intelligence

  2. Claude > Next-generation AI assistant for your tasks

  3. Wordtune > AI Assistant

That’s all for today, folks. See you next time. The Zest is yet to come.

PS: Lemon guy 🍋