Yahoo CFO Ken Goldman says a CEO must be decisive, say no to things, and understand technology deeply enough to set product strategy. Financial literacy matters too. He points to rapid leadership changes at Yahoo as proof that recruiting top talent and making bold staffing calls separate good CEOs from bad ones.
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There's a variety of things I'm going to talk about CEOs before I give you some advice and some stuff. But CEOs and teams matter. People ask me, what do I look for in a CEO? And there's a few things that I say, and they're not always intuitive to what you might think or what others think. One is sort of obvious. You want someone who's decisive, who can make decisions, not afraid to make decisions, realize that's where the buck stops. And I realize it very well. CFO, that is where the buck stops. But the number 2 thing I say is knows how to say no. It is the easiest thing for us, like we're going through planning and budgeting right now. Easiest thing for a CEO to say, geez, yeah, your expense increases all look, make sense, I approve that. Trouble with all that is if you approve everything, you don't want to have a company. You need to say, you need to prioritize, you need to say yes to some things, You need to say no to some things, 'cause people tend to wanna spend more than you can afford. And the ability to say no, ability to say no in the planning process, ability to say no in various products, not to release products before they're really ready, and realize you may take some hit on that because you were supposed to announce a product, and all of a sudden you're not gonna announce it because you don't think it's quite right, the features aren't there, the quality's not there, and you know you're gonna take a hit, but again, how do you say no? Saying no to certain employees in terms of benefits, and everyone has 401 match and all this stuff, and maybe we should do it, we actually do, but again, the example is how do you say no? Really, really important. I think in this valley, technology, in technology companies, they should be run, in my opinion, by CEOs that are very knowledgeable in technology. There's a few exceptions I can point to, but generally, great technology companies in this valley are run by technologists. It's just the way it is. Because the primary role of a CEO is the vision, the vision and strategy, the marketing, and a little bit of marketing sales, which you get. And the only way you understand the products, which ones, where you're gonna go, what's your product roadmap, you're making the key decisions, where we are now, we're going forward. is you really need to understand the technology. And I'm decent, but I could not run Yahoo. I don't know enough of technology. I couldn't hire the right people. I couldn't motivate them. I couldn't make some of the key decisions on our hiring and retention. And I certainly couldn't be helping to develop the strategy. I could help develop the strategy, but I couldn't be the final arbitrator of the strategy, the product direction, and so forth. So So technology is really important in CEOs. They have to understand finance. I happen to work for someone who's extremely facile in numbers, picking things up, just, I've never seen her study as quick. She didn't come from finance, but she's very good at it. She listens, she understands the impact of numbers, 'cause again, I come back to it, it is all about, at some point everything does boil down to numbers. You have to have an eye for recruiting top people. Yahoo, there are, I think, 4 of us, let me add up. I came in new, head of HR and BD came in new, head of sales and COO came in new, head of marketing came in new. 4 key posts came in within 6 months of Marissa coming over. So you have to have, and she made the conscious decision that she had to change out, if you will, some of the folks with the company and bring in new ones. That's what I call CEO leadership, and it is all about leadership. I think charismatic, I do say charismatic, not every CEO is charismatic, it obviously helps. It's certainly a— Marissa would say that she is a little bit an introvert, I don't quite believe it. She is actually quite charismatic in front of folks. Particularly on things that she really enjoys talking about. But you know, you do need to motivate, you need to find a way that motivates the team and they believe in you and you're candid with the team, that's really, really critical. I say good listener, none of us know everything, so the ability to be a great listener, I can't overestimate. You know, it's amazing, I talk, from all the time I see people and they just can't stop and listen. It's just really, really important to be a listener. This is a hot button of mine, not to be arrogant. I don't know where I had this, somewhere else I wanted to say, but I'll just say it now. And I actually come back to a couple of things I gave my kids, which I think is gonna be helpful as you think about it. But yeah, I've done okay. Many of us in the Valley have done okay. But it's just not appropriate to ever be arrogant. Confident, yes. A driver, yes. But there's just no place— humble is important. There's just no place in arrogance. There was an article in the Journal, I don't really actually agree with the article per se, a couple of days ago about arrogance in the Valley. And I think there maybe is some little over-arrogance in the Valley right now. I think valuations are getting a little steeped and people can start thinking they sort of drove the valuations and you get sort of caught up in that. Our stock has doubled since I've been there. I could get caught up in that. We know there's a lot of hard work and there's a lot of reasons why our stock has gone up, not always because of things we have done. So I would just say arrogance is a killer. It makes you unmindful of what's really going around. around you. And I just would tell you, it just gnaws on me when I see people that are arrogant. Leadership, you know, companies is all about leadership and passion. So people always say, what do I look at when I go into a company? And, you know, if I go on a board, I look at who are the other directors, I look at the product, is it exciting to me? But fundamentally, I look at is what's the passion? Because that you can't put on paper. And so, and there's a lot of great companies out there, but you always, when you have a leader, particularly a leader who was a founder of a company that has that just killer passion, that's what I really, that just, and you don't have to push them to come to work. They just come to work and they want to motivate and they're just so excited about their products and dreaming up new products and stuff. That's what really, that's what this value is all about. That's why I love being here. It's why I do what I do, why I keep on doing what I do, even though many folks, given where I am, would be taking time off and frankly going out to pasture and just doing boards. But it's what I like doing when I have a chance to meet some very, very passionate folks.
