David Filo was born on 20th April 20 1966, in Wisconsin, USA He is an executive and a tech entrepreneur. He became known at the beginning of the `90s, when he and his colleague Jerry Yang founded Yahoo!
So just how rich is David Filo? Sources estimate the entrepreneur`s net worth at $3.1 billion, wealth that ranks him number 279 on the “Forbes 400” list. One of the first 1000 richest people on the planet, David Filo owns a 7.5% stake of Yahoo, being the largest individual shareholder in the company.
David Filo Net Worth $3.1 Billion
David Filo moved to Louisiana with his family when still young, and matriculated from Sam Houston High School, then graduated with a BS degree from Tulane University, where he studied computer engineering. Afterwards, he completed his master’s degree in electrical engineering at Stanford University.
David Filo met Jerry Yang in 1989, while being a student at Stanford. Working on a project together, they realized the internet was disorganized, being difficult to find any website. The two students came up with a search engine project, so they created software that allowed them to group sites in various categories. Initially, their list of websites was called “David and Jerry’s Guide to the World Wide Web”.
As the number of users started to grow, they had to move their site into the commercial area. In 1995, they started the company Yahoo – an acronym for “Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle” – and within a year David Filo and his business partner became millionaires, as their company – one of the most important high tech companies at the time – went through its initial public offering(IPO) on the stock exchange. At the end of the first day, Yahoo! shares closed at $33, meaning that the company was valued at $850 million.
Today, Yahoo is a leading brand in the internet industry; in 2015, it registered over $950 million in earnings, having a total value of $30.4 billion. However, the media has been writing about a possible sale of the company, as the giant’s core business is worth nothing and investors avoid it because Yahoo’s market cap is almost $1 billion smaller that its net worth. The California-based Yahoo Company holds significant parts of the companies Alibaba in China and Yahoo Japan.
David Filo was a board member of the company from 1995 to 1996, and then he continued working as a key technologist, being the head behind technical operations inside the web properties. In 2014, shareholders asked him to join the board again, as they hoped that his ideas and experience could help increase the company’s market value.
In his personal life, David Filo is married to Angela Buenning, a teacher and a photographer; the couple lives in Mountain View, California. The entrepreneur and his wife have been involved in various charity projects, which include the launch of their Yellow Chair Foundation in 2000. They are contributors to the Stanford Interdisciplinary Graduate Fellowship, a program that awards doctoral students who are performing in interdisciplinary research. Since 2013, David Filo and Angela Buenning have been supporting the K12 Start Fund, which invests in education technology companies.
