2012-GameRelease-Divisional

49ers' York connecting team, Silicon Valley
By Darren Rovell, ESPN.com
Front Office Feature Story
If you're shocked by how quickly Jim Harbaugh turned around the San Francisco 49ers, wait until you see
what 31-year-old Jed York does.
Yes, he's the son of former team president John York and the nephew of former owner Eddie DeBartolo
Jr., but don't make the mistake of associating this guy with the likes of Tommy Callahan.
The Notre Dame graduate was working as a financial analyst at Guggenheim Partners -- yes, the same
group that later bought the Los Angeles Dodgers -- in New York, but in the middle of the 2008 season,
York headed across the country to begin the process of ascending to the top of the 49ers business
hierarchy, where he is now chief executive officer.
Today, he's worrying about the team's record, the new $878 million stadium -- which, six months in has
already seen 60 percent of its 16,000 total steel pieces installed -- and trying to assemble the smartest
team in the business world.
York, who has been named to both SportsBusiness Journal's Forty Under 40 list and Fortune's Hottest
Young Business Stars Under 40 this year, sat down with me to talk shop.
This past week, you scored your third executive from Facebook in Cipora Herman, who was the vice
president of finance there. What are the synergies between Facebook and the San Francisco 49ers?
We're looking to put the right team together, not only on the field but off of it, too. There just happened to
be three very good people that were working at Facebook. I think what's attractive about social media is
that it's organic. So we're definitely exploring how to bottle it up and have something have that organic
feel so that we can get it when we need it.
Your team is 5-2 heading into Monday night; what is keeping you most busy?
From a competitive standpoint, you want to be smarter than your competition, whether you are building a
new stadium or managing the clock in the final two minutes of the game. How do you do things like
Coach Harbaugh does, like not taking that safety at the end of the game? Vegas didn't like that, but it's
like chess. The goal is not to take as many pieces as possible, it's to get checkmate. We're thinking about
how do we outthink our competition down the road. How do we generate the most revenue with our new
stadium? How do we have the best stadium environment? How do we get fans to cheer loudest at the
right points of the game to give our team momentum? We're trying to figure that all out.
How often do you really think you can "create" an advantage like that?
Well, realistically, I think you're looking to change the outcome 1 to 2 percent of the time. There has to be
things that can give you that extra advantage. And we're lucky in the fact that we have a ton of talent in
the Silicon Valley and some of those people have a worthy goal of wanting to work for us.
I've heard crazy stories about what companies have offered engineers in the area. How can you compete
with that?
We can't pay the engineers as much as the tech giants can, but within a 15-mile radius, we have so many
of what you might call the best entrepreneurs of our day. There are people at Facebook and Apple and
Google who have a passion for the 49ers, and working in sports is really something special. I don't think
we have traditional people working for us to begin with. Our COO, Paraag Marathe, is a Cal undergrad,
who went to Stanford Business School and worked at Bain Consulting. He's the guy doing our contract
work.