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February 12, 2008

Brickhouse Head Leaves Yahoo

Michael Arrington

33 comments »

Salim Ismail, who has led Yahoo Brickhouse since since March 2007, left the company today as part of broader layoffs at Yahoo. Layoff packages were being offered, he said, and he left voluntarily.

Brickhouse is based in San Francisco and shares office space with Chad Dickerson’s Advanced Products Group, which creates new products based on market research (the distinction between the two groups has always been a little hazy to me). Both groups fall under Bradley Horowitz, who runs Yahoo’s Advanced Technology Division. Ismail says Dickerson will be taking over Brickhouse.

Examples of Brickhouse products include: Pipes, Bravo Nation and the unlaunched FireEagle. Advanced Products Group Products include KickStart and Yahoo Live, which launched last week.

Ismail, who previously cofounded PubSub, says he is considering a number of startup opportunities. He also says he reviewed over 3,000 ideas at Yahoo, and has some thoughts on his own startup as well.

  • Sphere It

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 12th, 2008 at 5:28 pm and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Trackbacks/Pings (Trackback URL)

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Comments

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  1. Morgan

    February 12th, 2008 at 5:40 pm

    That does not inspire confidence in the ‘new’ Yahoo or whatever they’re trying to be. That guy seemed pretty badass, no skin off his nose.

  2. Rob Abbott

    February 12th, 2008 at 5:44 pm

    It’s sad to see Salim departing from Yahoo, but I am glad to see him outside corporate walls.

    Chad Dickerson just made the move over to Brickhouse and did a fantastic job with Yahoo Hack Day and YDN, but it will be interesting to see what happens with the two organizations…one of them now ‘headless’

  3. Steve M.

    February 12th, 2008 at 5:45 pm

    Mr. Horowitz: Why not enable us to enter our traits & characteristics (keytraits) into the Yahoo SE…with the resultant SERPs being a list of GoTo.com-like, monetarily-ordered, exactly targeted, clearly relevant products and services?

  4. The Hater

    February 12th, 2008 at 5:56 pm

    @2: “I have made a couple breakthroughs around how we communicate as well as how we manage communication.”

    Christ. Love yourself much? You’re why the Valley hates designers.

  5. TheDuhMoment

    February 12th, 2008 at 5:56 pm

    So the Brickhouse is crumbling?

  6. anon

    February 12th, 2008 at 6:09 pm

    The two become one

    @TheDuhMoment: hardly

  7. TheDuhMoment

    February 12th, 2008 at 6:20 pm

    #6, Definitely.

  8. Salim Ismail

    February 12th, 2008 at 6:26 pm

    Hey Mike, Brickhouse won’t be headless… Chad Dickerson is going to be taking over and we’re doing a planned transition…

    (and thanks for the nice comments from various folks - I had a total blast at Brickhouse and will miss the place immensely)

  9. Michael Arrington

    February 12th, 2008 at 6:30 pm

    Salim - updating post. An hour ago you said on the phone that you had no idea. :-)

  10. Michael Arrington

    February 12th, 2008 at 6:32 pm

    also kind of made my title incorrect. changed that too.

  11. moe

    February 12th, 2008 at 6:32 pm

    The idea of Brickhouse was pretty good. It seems Yahoo never really grasped and ran with it.

  12. Shane Mc Allister

    February 12th, 2008 at 6:44 pm

    Salim,

    Sorry to hear the news - no doubt you’ll move to pastures new and greener swiftly - but you know you’ll always have welcome in Ireland should adventures take you this way - except perhaps not Fermoy 2nd time around eh? Look us “Paddy’s Valleyer’s” up should you make it this way…

    Shane

  13. jeffrey

    February 12th, 2008 at 6:59 pm

    If Brickhouse was the answer to Google Labs, then where does that leave Yahoo? It seemed like the Brickhouse idea/concept was a great one….take raw entrepreurial energy and churn out products. What the hell happened, and am I the only one who wants more of an answer to what’s going on over there?

  14. Mindless observation

    February 12th, 2008 at 7:03 pm

    No that this is relevant, but Salim looks like UFC hall of famer Randy Couture.

  15. Tom Coates

    February 12th, 2008 at 7:06 pm

    Salim, I and the Brickhouse/Fire Eagle teams will miss you too.

  16. John Furrier

    February 12th, 2008 at 8:01 pm

    Bummer about Yahoo. I hope they can pull together and survive.

    Open call for Yahoo entrepreneurs who know social networks and social graph technology: I’m looking for product managers and engineers for my new social advertising startup.

    For info go to http://furrier.org - information on the startup is buried in the blog.

  17. YDRIVE

    February 12th, 2008 at 8:09 pm

    It’s time for Yahoo! to roll out, or buy into, something bold and of significance and readily loveable by the layman end users… had been too many baby steps, really.

  18. Jonathan

    February 12th, 2008 at 9:32 pm

    I think Yahoo! will continue to own all 3000 of the ideas that Salim reviewed, which means he can’t make a new startup that uses any of them without risking legal trouble. When Yahoo launched their employee idea submission site (which fed ideas to Salim’s group, I assume) the legal restrictions were so tough that I opted out to and never looked at the list of ideas.

  19. Loic

    February 12th, 2008 at 9:37 pm

    wew Salim it was my first visit at the Brickhouse last week for the Israel tech tour and now you left. Good luck my friend. See you soon.

  20. Joel

    February 12th, 2008 at 10:31 pm

    I used to work for Salim and I know he’s a great executive. I’m kind of glad he left Yahoo so now he can pursue interesting projects with more speed and less bureaucracy.

  21. G. Chai

    February 12th, 2008 at 10:44 pm

    I have used pipes.yahoo.com and I have seen kickstart in use. They suck. If the layoff was performance-based, I think Yahoo! did a good job letting Mr. Ismail go (if he had any leadership role in pipes and kickstart). However, having read about some others at Yahoo! that were laid off, I think it wasn’t just performance-based.

  22. YDRIVE

    February 12th, 2008 at 10:50 pm

    Yahoo! these days lacks the wow! factor(s)… mightbe they’re in the pipeline, yet plans not catching up with changes, and never will… :-D

  23. Lynx

    February 13th, 2008 at 4:11 am

    “He also says he reviewed over 3,000 ideas at Yahoo, and has some thoughts on his own startup as well.”

    Am I the only one slightly worried about this sentence?

    If some of those ideas came in from outside of Yahoo by individuals looking for Yahoos help but got turned away they may well be getting their ideas stolen by an employee with access to the ideas that no longer works for Yahoo.

    Bit worrying for those that submitted ideas and didnt get them approved.

  24. pwb

    February 14th, 2008 at 2:13 am

    I tend to believe the argument that having an “innovation group” tells the rest of the organization they aren’t innovative.

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