Yahoo’s Marissa Mayer is barely recognizable for her new feature in Vogue, wearing blue Michael Kors and Saint Laurent stilettos for the two page spread in the magazine’s coveted September issue. In her first in-depth interview since taking over as CEO, she shares her thoughts on success and where the company plans to go from here. Check out a few interview highlights below!
Marissa Mayer’s Vogue Feature: An “Unusually Stylish Geek”
On her childhood: “They’re [parents] definitely in the camp of allies, not adorers. They’ll tell me when they think I did something amazing, but they’ll tell me when they think I could do better. I think like my dad, but I have a huge kinship with my mom. It was a very well-rounded childhood, with lots of different opportunities. My mom will say she set out to overstimulate me – surround me with way too many things and let me pick. As a result, I’ve always been a multitasker; I’ve always liked a lot of variety.”
On her Silicon Valley success: “I didn’t set out to be at the top of technology companies. I’m just geeky and shy and I like to code,” she says. “Once, Eric Schmidt [then Google’s CEO] pointed out to me that at Google, when you want to have an impact that’s bigger than just you, you move from being an individual contributor to managing a team. . . . And I was like, Oh, right, it would be nice to have an impact that’s bigger than just me. It’s not like I had a grand plan where I weighed all the pros and cons of what I wanted to do—it just sort of happened.”
On Yahoo purchasing Tumblr: “I’ve done now between three and four dozen acquisitions in my career and I’ve never seen this kind of lock-and-key fit between two companies. Our demographic is older. Theirs is the youngest on the Web. We pride ourselves on publishing at scale—they have some of the best publishing tools available. We’re strong in news and sports and finance. They are strong in all the different complementary pieces—fashion, food, and architecture. They need monetization. We have monetization that can be turnkey for them and not very obtrusive.”
