Early Life and Education
David Robert Filo was born on April 20, 1966, in Madison, Wisconsin. He spent his childhood in Moss Bluff, Louisiana, where he grew up in a communal setting. His parents, Jerry and Carol Filo, were an architect and an accountant, respectively. Filo earned a Bachelor of Science degree in computer engineering from Tulane University in 1988, supported by a dean's honor scholarship. He then pursued a Master of Science degree in electrical engineering at Stanford University, where he met Jerry Yang.
Rise to Success
In 1994, while at Stanford, Filo and Yang created "Jerry and David's Guide to the World Wide Web," a directory of websites. The directory was later renamed Yahoo!. They incorporated Yahoo! Inc. in March 1995, and the company went public in April 1996. As Yahoo!'s chief technologist, Filo oversaw the technical architecture and operations, contributing to the company's growth. His wealth primarily stems from his Yahoo! holdings; he has sold over $3.5 billion in shares since 2000.
Key Business Strategies
Filo and Yang's strategy focused on organizing the burgeoning World Wide Web. They created a user-friendly directory to help people navigate the internet. Yahoo! expanded into email, search, news, and advertising. They made pivotal investments, including a $1 billion stake in Alibaba Group in 2005. This stake yielded enormous returns. Filo oversaw the technical architecture and operations that scaled the platform to handle global traffic.
Philanthropy
David Filo, along with his wife Angela, founded the Yellow Chair Foundation (now Skyline Foundation) in 2000. The foundation supports education, civil liberties, gender equality, and environmental causes. In 2005, he donated $30 million to Tulane University's School of Engineering, and in 2024, he and his wife donated $10 million to the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism.