Yahoo’s Jim Lanzone: People ‘think that Nike happened overnight or they were just brand geniuses—it took years’
Good morning. Yahoo is an advertising business, a search engine, an email provider, a media company, an aggregator, a cautionary tale—turning down a chance to acquire Google, twice!—a comeback kid and more. And CEO Jim Lanzone is almost as ubiquitous these days as the 30-year-old brand he was hired to revive almost four years ago.
Maybe that’s because he now has something to talk about. While the Apollo-owned company doesn’t disclose revenue numbers, it’s trending up on metrics like monthly users, search traffic, and user engagement. In this week’s Leadership Next podcast, Kristin Stoller and I chatted with Lanzone about what’s next.
A leader credited with boosting brands like Tinder, CBS Interactive, Clicker Media and Ask.com, he also talks about the myth of overnight success. “The book that I go back to is Shoe Dog by Phil Knight. If anyone wants to think that Nike happened overnight or they were just brand geniuses—it took years of building that company.”
He takes inspiration from the revival of another shoe brand—New Balance—in plotting where Yahoo can go. “There’s no reason, if our products are great, that we couldn’t do the same thing,” says Lanzone. “I hope we can get the brand back on the map in a way where we reward that kind of latent love that I think that always has been out there across generations. Maybe it’s a bit of a modern, vintage brand if you are younger.”
A trip to see the San Francisco 49ers game in Levi’s Stadium gave him hope early on. “Every time the Niners scored a touchdown, up on the screen it turned into a Yahoo Sports highlight and all 80,000 people screamed Yahoo at the top of their lungs in a yodel. That’s when I knew there was something to work with here.” Click here to listen on Spotify or Apple.
Contact CEO Daily via Diane Brady at diane.brady@fortune.com
Top news
Tariff inflation shows up
The rate of inflation for the 12 months ending in June was 2.7%, according to a Bureau of Labor Statistics report released Tuesday. The inflation print was in line with economists’ expectations. There were increases in key categories such as clothing, furniture, and leisure spending, which indicate tariff-related price increases could be starting to flow through the economy.
President Trump was unfazed
“Consumer Prices LOW. Bring down the Fed Rate, NOW!!!” he said on social media.
More tariffs to come
President Trump said he would begin imposing tariffs on drug companies by August 1. “Probably at the end of the month, and we’re going to start off with a low tariff and give the pharmaceutical companies a year or so to build, and then we’re going to make it a very high tariff,” he told reporters without naming specifics. He has previously suggested the tariff should be 200%. He also mentioned tariffs on semiconductor chips. And he announced a 19% tariff on Indonesia.
Bessent signals Powell’s ouster is coming
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Tuesday that “there’s a formal process that’s already starting” to replace Jerome Powell as chair of the Federal Reserve. Afterwards, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon told reporters during a conference call that “I think the independence of the Fed is absolutely critical.”
Port of LA sees busiest June on record
The Port of Los Angeles just had its busiest June in history following a 9% year-over-year drop in imports in May. However, Port of Los Angeles Executive Director Gene Seroka warns that companies are just trying to import as much as possible before President Trump’s Aug. 1 tariff cutoffs.
ASML stock down 7.45% after CEO declines to promise growth
It should have been a blowout quarter for semiconductor chip supply chain maker ASML. It beat analysts expectations and gave guidance of 15% revenue growth for the year. But then CEO Christophe Fouquet made this statement: “We continue to see increasing uncertainty driven by macro-economic and geopolitical developments. Therefore, while we still prepare for growth in 2026, we cannot confirm it at this stage.” The stock plunged nearly 8% in early trading.
The markets
S&P 500 futures were down this morning 0.19% after the index itself fell yesterday by 0.4%. STOXX Europe 600 was down marginally in early trading and the UK’s FTSE 100 was flat. Japan’s Nikkei 225 closed flat, China’s CSI 300 was down 0.3%. South Korea’s Kospi lost nearly a full percentage point.
From the analysts
Pantheon Macroeconomics: “Tariff costs are strikingly visible in June’s CPI data. Core goods prices, excluding autos, rose by 0.5%, the most since June 2022,” per Samuel Tombs.
EY-Parthenon: “Strategies used by companies to avoid passing on cost increases to consumers – inventory front-loading, using bonded warehouses and foreign trade zones, reducing margins – are not eternal. As such, we should expect a muggy inflation summer. We expect headline and core CPI inflation to accelerate toward 3.2% y/y by year-end—entirely a function of the administration’s tariff-centric trade agenda,” per Gregory Daco.
Oxford Economics: “Another upside risk to core inflation through the remainder of this year and next is the trade-weighted dollar. A weaker dollar takes a few months to show up in stronger imported nonfuel goods prices before they feed through to final consumer prices. In our Global Economic Model, a 10% depreciation increases inflation by almost 0.5ppts this year and by 1ppt in 2026,” per Ryan Sweet.
Around the watercooler
The attacks on Tim Cook are half-baked—despite Apple stumbling over AI by Jeffrey Sonnenfeld and Steven Tian
Trump’s DOJ sues to oust Hollywood movie CEO and 2 others from broadcasting board, citing medieval legal tool by Amanda Gerut
Top economist Mohamed El-Erian says Trump’s in a ‘question mark’ moment—and it could go the way of Ronald Reagan or Jimmy Carter by Nick Lichtenberg and Fortune Intelligence
Google’s head of Android once cold-emailed the $2 trillion tech giant’s cofounder Sergey Brin for graduate school advice—he got a job offer instead by Preston Fore
CEO Daily is compiled and edited by Joey Abrams and Jim Edwards.
