Filo, David (1966- )

US entrepreneur who co-founded the Yahoo! Internet navigational guide with Jerry Yang. It began as a simple collection of favourite Web sites while Filo was a graduate university student. Forbes magazine estimated his net worth at US$2.2 billion in 2004.

Beginning a PhD in Stanford University in 1993, Filo co-created a Web site called ‘Jerry's Guide to the World Wide Web’. This classification of Web sites became a navigational guide for Web surfers, later renamed Yahoo! (Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle) in 1994. The hobby turned into a business overnight as Yahoo! became synonymous with finding information on the Web; Yahoo! Inc. was incorporated in 1995 and went public in 1996. Filo is widely credited with creating the easy-to-use interface for the service, and with being the key technologist responsible for the management of the Web site.

Filo was born in Moss Bluff in Louisiana. He obtained a BS degree in computer engineering from Tulane University and an MS degree in electrical engineering from Stanford University. He began his friendship with Yang on a six-month academic exchange programme in Japan in 1992.

He remains on leave of absence from Stanford's electrical engineering PhD programme. He was the youngest entrepreneur, with Yang, to endow an engineering chair at the university in 1997, and has endowed a fund at Tulane University.