Joshua Schachter

The piece of writing, Tag sale, pages 34 and 37 talks about Joshua Schachter that became a multimillionaire, a Yahoo employee and soon-to-be a Californian. Yahoo transformed his life. He was a 31-years-old New Yorker, the CEO of a rapidly growing but revenueless social software outfit and a hard-core geek. He has the reputation of a pioneer of “tagging”. Even if his fans are disappointed with his choice. Fred Wilson, the New York venture capitalist who ultimately baked the company of Sachachter believed that Del.icio.us had a good probability to make it a stand-alone business. He was looking forward to building “a monetization system for the service that was as natural and effective as the Overture/Google model in search”. For Del.icio.us’s next phase of development, they were in need of money. They found investors eager to join but Microsoft came calling with an acquisition that had to be taken seriously. Schachter is the founder of Del.icio.us. A system for letting users label webpages with searchable keywords of their choice. In reality, Schachter is an electrical engineering graduate working at Morgan Stanley at the time that was trying to get a handle on his vast collection of bookmarks. His primary motivations were pecuniary when he builded Del.icio.us in 2003. By November 2004, a year after Del.icio.us release, the site had already 40 000 users. Schachter had than be notice by Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and Amazon.com but at the time none of the offers he had from those major players were tempting enough to him. After, he left Morgan Stanley and put in place a financing round: 1$ million most of it was from Wilson firm. At the end of the year, the number of users on the site was near 300 000 and was the hottest startup in the industry. The risks struck Schachter when they were looking forward to the next phase. “It was becoming clear that getting distribution for Del.icio.us in the future was going to be a challenge… and it was likely that Goolgle, Yahoo, and Microsoft would have all been down my throat within a year”. Schachter choosed Yahoo because “they understood my vision, and they didn’t argue with it… they have all this technology we can use to accelerate our plans…”. Schachter realy believe that it was the best thing to do for Del.icio.us and for him. He thinks that Yahoo is a “more conducive place for a geek like him to flourish”.


I think that it was a good idea for him to sell. He is not a business man. He is more a creator. He has to do what is best for him and that is what he is saying in this magazine. He had to take a choice and he took the best one. Yahoo offers him money, a lot of money but also respect for him and his work. I think that Yahoo was the best choice. Even if his friend and his fans are sad about this. The choice has his to take.