Yang, Jerry (1968– )

Taiwanese entrepreneur and co-founder with David Filo of the Yahoo! Internet navigational guide, which was launched as a simple collection of his own favourite Web sites, while he was a graduate university student. US magazine Forbes estimated his net worth at US$2.2 billion in 2007.

Studying for a PhD in Stanford, California, USA, in 1993, he and Filo 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, and was later renamed Yahoo! (Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle) in 1994. Their hobby very quickly turned into a business as Yahoo! became synonymous with finding information on the Web. Yahoo! Inc. was incorporated in 1995 and went public in 1996.

Yang works with Yahoo's chief executive officer as a strategist. In 1999 the company acquired Geocities and Broadcast, and then in 2000 it acquired Kimo, a Taiwanese Web site, and set up the business information portal Corporate. Also the corporate spokesperson, Yang has addressed prestigious industry conferences, including Internet World and Spotlight, and has been featured in leading business publications and broadcast programmes.

Yang was born in Taiwan and raised in San Jose, California. He emigrated to the USA aged ten, with his mother and brother, his father having died when he was two. He was educated at Piedmont Hills High and graduated from Stanford University with a BS and an MS degree in electrical engineering. He started his friendship with Filo on a six-month academic exchange programme in Japan in 1992.

Yang was the youngest entrepreneur to endow an engineering chair at Stanford University in 1997 (he remains on leave of absence from Stanford). He is a director of Ziff Davis Inc., Yahoo! Japan, and the Asian Pacific American Community Fund.