#194 CEO & Founder Sunshine, Marissa Mayer: Innovative Instincts

Guest: Marissa Mayer, CEO and Founder of Sunshine and former CEO of Yahoo

When Marissa Mayer was first hired as the CEO of Yahoo, the company had lost nearly a quarter of its workforce in the preceding six months. Early on, she was chatting with employees in the cafeteria and one of them got her attention by smacking her tray. “Is it go time?” he asked. He was asking if the board and C-suite were ready to lead the company forward, but Marissa thought he had one foot out the door. “I had just come out of this meeting where they were like, ‘Everyone’s leaving!’” she recalled. “And I was like, ‘Oh no, please don’t go, I’ve only been here for four days!’”

In this episode, Marissa and Joubin discuss the number 12, contacts and photo sharing, fear of AI, soccer moms, maternity as a “disability,” mothers’ rooms, Jim Citrin, Project Cardinal, HTML5 vs. native apps, Ross Levinsohn, Lori Puccinelli Stern, Joe Montana, David Karp, Mark Zuckerberg, Taylor Swift, hiring at Google, Amit Patel, Hamilton, John Doerr, and the Google APM program.

Chapters:

• (00:52) - Reading your own press
• (04:55) - Marissa’s lucky number
• (07:19) - Her latest startup, Sunshine
• (15:03) - Burnout, resentment, and rhythm
• (21:46) - The opportunity to become CEO of Yahoo
• (27:00) - Inverting maternity leave
• (31:14) - The big interview
• (36:44) - An epic dinner party
• (42:51) - The voicemail
• (47:18) - Farzad “Zod” Nazem and David Philo
• (50:25) - Last day at Google
• (53:52) - “Is it go time?”
• (59:03) - Buying Tumblr
• (01:04:46) - Alibaba and Verizon
• (01:06:24) - Larry and Sergey bucks
• (01:11:05) - Eric Schmidt’s advice
• (01:12:59) - In the room at Google
• (01:18:36) - Teaching and identifying talent
• (01:24:32) - Who Sunshine is hiring

Links:

• Connect with Marissa
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
• Connect with Joubin
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Email: grit@kleinerperkins.com
• Learn more about Kleiner Perkins
• This episode was edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm