David Yu appointed Betfair CEO. - January 4

Chris F. Masse January 4th, 2007

That was exactly one year ago, January 4, 2006 (PDF file):

David Yu, formerly CTO and then COO of Betfair, has been appointed Chief Executive Officer for the company.

David was previously Vice President, Engineering for Alta Vista’s e-Commerce and International divisions. He has spent over 10 years working for internet-based businesses, and holds an MS Computer Science from Stanford University and a BS Computer Science and Electrical Engineering from the University of California at Berkeley.

In other organisational changes, Betfair’s Executive Chairman Sir Robert Horton and non-executive directors Nick Irens and Justin Dowley have resigned with immediate effect.

Tim Bunting has joined the Board, and takes over as Chairman.

Betfair co-founder Edward Wray said today: “We would like to thank Bob, Nick and Justin for their valuable contribution to Betfair, which continues to go from strength to strength. We’re delighted that David steps up to the leading role in the company. And we welcome Tim Bunting, one of the City’s leading and most experienced professionals, as Chairman of the Company.”

The company, which in December became the first ever to retain its title of Company of the Year at the CBI’s Growing Business Awards, now employs 650 people in offices in Hammersmith and Stevenage. Founded less than six years ago, it produced an operating profit in its last financial year of £20million on revenues of £109million, and remains on-course to hit its aggressive financial targets for this financial year-end in May.

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David Yu

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The two BetFair co-founders chose (and imposed) for CEO a man who had no business background. As you have seen in the Press release above, that appointment pissed off some insiders.

I’m linking Google and BetFair together, in that they are both actively managed by information technologists who were in the firm from day one (or almost) —Larry Page and Sergey Brin co-founded Google; David Yu was acquired by BetFair in January 2002, part of the Flutter deal.

Both firms (Google and BetFair) are leading global services and technology companies —and I would deny the “technology” label to eBay and the CME, two exchanges with network externalities.

On the Web, survival is in the hands of your technologists, first —your sales persons come as #2. At Google, product definitions is left to engineers, whose mission is to create superior products. As for BetFair, it’s clear to me, looking at all their sub-websites and associated services, that the information technologists rule this British prediction exchange.