8 Year Old Love Affair With Yahoo! Is Over - Part 1

When someone first showed me this new thing "Internet" in 1995 one of the first pages I saw was www.yahoo.com. My friend showed me this page and told me, that it was the biggest site and like a guide to the rest of the Internet. I was sold..

Seeing the Yahoo! site back then my initial thought was: If these guys just keep executing and delivering - they could become the most valuable company the world has ever seen. I didn't know much about the Internet, but I was very certain, that this new media with all its capabilities once broadband would be more widespread would change the world. Internet has already changed the world a lot, but I still believe that we are still just on step 2 of a long journey.

Yahoo! was not a listed company on the stock exchange, so there was no means of buying into what I thought would become a real powerhouse and extremely valuable company. In the meantime I stopped thinking about Yahoo! (since there was no money for me to be made there). Instead I sort out any opportunity to learn more about the media in general and started to work on different projects, that could give me some valuable insights into Internet. Basically so I could position myself well for a job with Internet, where I saw the future, once my bachelor and masters would be finished.

Just started my masters in the autumn 1997 I read an article in the Danish business paper Børsen about the early success on NASDAQ of the first and largest portals: Yahoo!, Excite, Infoseek and Lycos. Being a believer in economies of scale and firstmover advantages there was no doubt in my mind but to buy into Yahoo! of the four. I was an extremely strong believer in the Internet and a very strong believer that Yahoo! could and should pull of a formidable growth. I sold all other shares I had (not as much as I would have liked) and gathered all the cash I could and put everything into Yahoo! shares.