Marissa Mayer is starting the next phase of her career exactly where she began nearly 20 years ago.
The embattled former CEO of Yahoo, who began her career at Google in 1999 after graduating Stanford University with bachelor’s and master’s degrees in computer science, is now renting Google’s old office in Palo Alto, California, Mayer told The New York Times (paywall):
This is also where PayPal started, so there’s a lot of good juju here.
Coming back here, it reminds me of what Google felt like in those early moments. I remember running up those steps, because if you didn’t get here fast enough on Saturday morning, someone in the world was going to get worse search results, and it might change their life for the worse.
Mayer left Google for Yahoo in 2012, after 13 years at Google in which she oversaw various products including its most profitable business, Search. She was heralded after her departure as a “geek goddess” and savvy leader who would return Yahoo to its former glory. “In 1999, Yahoo was the internet,” Mayer reminded the Times. But, ultimately, she wasn’t able to return it to relevance, though investors did see a higher return during her helm. Her tenure there was also marred by a massive data breach. She sold the business to Verizon and stepped down from her post last year.
As for her next bet, Mayer is playing it close to the vest. She told the Times she has a “little lab” called Lumi Labs in the old Google space where her team is dabbling with consumer-facing ideas. “So I’ve been meeting with different founders and just seeing what’s happening in the industry.”