Founders at Work.pdf

Tim Brady 139
well, you don’t act rationally, to say the least. There’s a lot to it; it can get really
emotional because you get tired and there’s a lot of work and you’re invested in
it. All those personally motivating things—think them through before you get
things started.
Jerry was one of my best friends before we started the company, and it’s his
company, so doing business with friends—you always hear, “Don’t do business
with friends, bad idea.” So one of the things that really helped me was that he
and I had a conversation before I joined, “OK, here are the ground rules.” And
this is really what made me think about it. “OK, if this happens, I walk away.”
We had the conversation in order to preserve our friendship, having no idea
what was going to happen, but that conversation got me thinking about it and
why was I involved.
Livingston: Is there anything about Yahoo’s early days that the world should
know?
Brady: I know it’s a bit of a cliché, but the people that started it were awesome.
In every aspect of the word, not just in effort or handling the responsibility they
were given, but just good people, doing it for the right reasons. You could see it
in the product and the way we acted.
The early Yahoo team (1995): Donald Lobo (left),Tim Brady (second from left), Jerry Yang
(seated in front), and David Filo (in his Ford Pinto)