‘Don’t forget to be bold,’ Sergey Brin told Marissa Mayer as she walked out the door at Google
Marissa Mayer, current CEO of Yahoo and former executive at Google, received some important advice from Google founder Sergey Brin as she walked out the door to join the Sunnyvale, California company in July, 2012.
While she tends to be more iterative and careful when it comes to making decisions, long-time friend and colleague Sergey wanted to remind her that there’s also value in being bold.
“As an engineer, my tendency is to be more conservative—to be more iterative. Even on innovation, I would rather bring out an early product and slowly make it better,” she told Fortune in a recent interview.
“Right as I left, I had my hand on the door. I said “Sergey, it’s time for me to go. I gotta go.” And I had my hand on the door, and he said “Marissa, wait.” And I turned around, and he looked at me and said, “Don’t forget to be bold.””
Mayer says that this encounter has helped her make what she hopes will be truly transformational decisions at Yahoo. Especially in those big decision moments, like deciding to acquire Tumblr, she said that she hears these words replaying in her head every day.
Watch the full video interview below:
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