David Filo
David Filo is Co-Founder of Yahoo! with partner Jerry Yang. Both partners started out developing the popular search engine as a student hobby which later evolved into a billion-dollar business. Yahoo! is a top producer of directories and search engines on the World Wide Web as well as exciting content and services like shopping, online dating, and web hosting. David Filo was director for Yahoo! since the firm’s inception until February 1996. Currently, he remains actively involved in many of Yahoo!’s strategic and operational concerns as its key technologist and Chief.
As Co-creator of one of the world’s most exciting Internet businesses, David Filo is an instrumental figure in the company’s employee culture and morale. He is credited for developing the technology behind Yahoo!’s status as one of the most highly trafficked sites on the Internet. Filo and Yang designed Yahoo! initially as a tool to help them organize the thousands of websites they find on the Internet so they could easily share it with friends. From there, they developed software that categorized the websites further until it grew and became more capable for online searches. Eventually, Yahoo! became a household name and emerged as the first online navigational guide to the Internet.
Born in 1966 in Wisconsin, David Filo graduated from Sam Houston High School in Louisiana and proceeded to Tulane University for his undergraduate degree in Computer Engineering on a Dean’s Honor Scholarship. He eventually obtained his Master of Science degree in Electrical Engineering at Stanford University. After deciding with Jerry Yang to make a business out of Yahoo!, they decided to take a leave of absence from the Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering program in Stanford.
David Filo was ranked as the 240th richest in the world with an estimated net worth of $2.9 billion in 2006. In 2005, he donated $30 million to Tulane University’s School of Engineering. He is married to Angela Buenning.