Molly O’Shea@MollySOShea5d ago

NEW: In 2021, Apollo acquired a massive internet business for ~$5B. Just 5 years later, it's become *one of the fastest-returning deals in the firm's history.* 700M monthly users. Billions in revenue. And an enormous distribution advantage that would be nearly impossible to replicate today. Apollo's Reed Rayman recruited Jim Lanzone (@jlanzone) to lead the turnaround. The company? @Yahoo. I sat down with CEO Jim Lanzone, one of the internet industry's most accomplished turnaround executives, to go inside @apolloglobal's PE M&A playbook for Yahoo, the economics of the acquisition, & why this may be one of the most underrated assets in tech. The numbers: › ~$5B acquisition › 700M monthly users, including 100M+ each across Yahoo Finance & Sports › 75% direct traffic, with ~75% of daily users logged in › Hundreds of millions in annual ad-tech losses addressed through restructuring › Major divestitures including AOL, TechCrunch & Edgecast › One of Apollo's fastest-returning deals, with Jim saying they're now "playing with house money" › Newer search companies valued at 6X Yahoo despite having a fraction of its users, revenue & profitability But the most interesting part of this deal is the operator. Before Yahoo, Jim helped drive a 50X stock increase at Ask Jeeves, grew CBS Interactive from 70M to 220M users, and led Tinder. And unlike the traditional PE playbook of aggressive cost extraction, PE micromanagement, Apollo backed an experienced product executive to restructure the business, rebuild its leadership, & reinvest in growth. Now Yahoo is moving from turnaround to comeback, with an entirely rebuilt product ecosystem, its own AI search engine through Yahoo Scout, and a potential path back to the public markets. We get into what it's really like operating under Apollo, the leadership decisions behind the turnaround, the value of internet distribution at scale, and why some startups with less than 0.1% of Yahoo's users command higher valuations. 𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐌𝐏𝐒 (00:00) Jim Lanzone, CEO of Yahoo (01:33) How Apollo bought Yahoo for $4.8B (04:16) Taking over a company in the middle of COVID (07:22) Is private equity really the villain? (12:42) The mistake that handed Google the internet (16:09) Where Yahoo's 700M monthly users come from (17:07) Why Yahoo sold AOL & TechCrunch (21:21) "You can't skip levels of the video game" (27:58) Why people still trust Yahoo in the AI era (30:26) How Yahoo Scout competes with ChatGPT & Perplexity (33:48) Saying no to the AI gold rush? (37:31) From turnaround to comeback (39:42) One of the fastest paybacks in Apollo history (42:50) The biggest mistake companies make at scale (44:21) Silicon Valley startups are now worth more than Yahoo with 0.1% of its users (46:25) Why Yahoo is ready for the next crash (48:57) Barry Diller, Tinder & the tweet that predicted Yahoo (54:36) Is Yahoo finally back?