Steve Jobs once put an offer in front of me, but I chose Cisco

Jerry Yang became famous too early. He is only 47 years old this year, but he is always honored as the "founder of the Internet 1.0 era" or "a former pioneer". However, Yahoo, which he founded, also ended its glory early and became a dying giant. If this Internet "veteran" looks back on his ups and downs over the past 20 years, is there anything he would like to do again?

Should it have developed its search business more vigorously to compete with Google? Or should it have accepted Microsoft's $44.6 billion acquisition offer? Or even raised its offer to acquire Facebook?

In fact, neither is true - Jerry Yang's personal answer is surprisingly related to Jobs.

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At an event held by HYSTA, the Silicon Valley Chinese Technology Association, Jerry Yang was asked this question. Although he emphasized that he always looks forward, he still half-jokingly talked about the thing he "regrets" the most:

It was around 1999-2000 - Yahoo was still pretty big at the time, so a lot of people wanted to be associated with it. Three people I respected, Chambers (CEO and Chairman of Cisco), Andrew Grove (then CEO of Intel), and Steve Jobs, all wanted me to be on their boards. So I had to choose between Cisco, Intel, and Apple.

Which company did Jerry Yang choose? Well, he chose Cisco, which was in its heyday at the time but is now declining like Yahoo. He missed Apple, which has now become the most valuable technology company on the planet. So Jerry Yang said,

"Although I had a great 12 years on Cisco's board of directors, maybe I should have accepted Steve Jobs' offer."

At this point, I feel like I should be reciting Stephen Chow’s classic line: Once upon a time, Steve Jobs put an offer in front of me, but I didn’t cherish it. I didn’t regret it until I joined Cisco…

Of course, this was just a joke. Jerry Yang no longer needed the aura of being an Apple director. In addition to building the Yahoo empire, in this era where everyone is an angel investor, he should also have a nickname, "Silicon Valley's most successful investor." Because 10 years ago, the investment in Alibaba led by him not only brought amazing returns to Yahoo, but also became the lifeline of the company.

At first, Yahoo spent $1 billion to acquire 30% of Alibaba's shares. Although Alibaba bought back 17% of Yahoo's shares for $7.6 billion in 2012, the remaining 16% of Yahoo's shares is still worth more than $37 billion based on Alibaba's current share price. The current market value of Yahoo is only over $40 billion.

Everyone is praising Jerry Yang's vision. Using the stock worth $1 billion to invest in Alibaba, which was not yet profitable, was a huge risk. So, when he decided to invest, did Jerry Yang know that it would become so huge one day?

Jerry Yang said that there is often only a fine line between madness and genius, but in his opinion, Jack Ma is the one who has crossed the line of madness and become a genius. "When we first met, Jack (referring to Jack Ma) was only focused on the expansion of Alibaba. He was very visionary and really thought about the next 100 years," said Jerry Yang. It was this extreme focus, coupled with a very good team, that made Jerry Yang decide to invest in Alibaba. "If you saw him at the time and saw his vision, you would believe him."

Since leaving Yahoo, Jerry Yang founded his own investment company, AME Cloud Ventures. AME has invested in more than 50 startups, including Evernote, Wattpad, and Tango. Now Jerry Yang's hair has turned gray, and he likes to laugh at his age. However, this legend who started the Internet 1.0 era and experienced ups and downs in the 2.0 era is re-emerging as an entrepreneur in the Internet 3.0 era through this new way.