10 BIG THINKERS FOR BIG BUSINESS
With new CEO Terry Semel, Decker also brought the company back into the search business, which it had outsourced to Google. She calculated that every percentage point of market share in search translated into $200 million in revenue (that number is closer to $400 million today, she says). She pushed the company to acquire search firms Inktomi and Overture, without which Yahoo would almost certainly be doomed. She also guided the acquisition of 21 other firms over the past five years.
Decker is a rising star not just at Yahoo but in the Silicon Valley business community. Last year she was appointed to the board of directors at both Pixar and Costco after turning down a handful of similar offers. Former associates rave about her. Mary Meeker of Morgan Stanley calls her a "financial taskmaster, but she does it with a wink and smile." Jack McDonald, the Stanford business professor who once taught her at Harvard, says, "She thinks deeply about business strategy. She knows how to create value in the Warren Buffett sense." And industry analysts agree: if Decker ever wants it, a CEO chair is waiting somewhere for her.
--Brad Stone
He's not your typical middle-aged rock-and-roller. On a late sunny afternoon last week in San Francisco's Union Square park, Roger McNamee's band, the Flying Other Brothers, serenades an audience with earnest original songs and lively covers. But a closer look at the guitarist and lead singer reveals an unusual pedigree. His hair isn't quite as long as his band mates', and--the biggest giveaway--he's still wearing a pair of well-pressed khakis.
McNamee has another life far from the elevated soundstages and Best Western motels where his band spends 40 nights a year. He's one of the best-known venture capitalists in Silicon Valley, with a record of straying from the pack and placing prescient bets. Back in 1997, McNamee worried about the future of the dot-com boom and returned money to investors from his private-equity firm, Integral Capital Partners. In 1999, McNamee cofounded Silver Lake Partners to bet on unpopular, undervalued firms like disk-drive maker Seagate. "If you want to be really successful in the investment business, you have to spend a material amount of time swimming against the tide," McNamee says from his nonmusical stage--the office of his third investment firm in 15 years, Elevation Partners.
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