Venture capitalist Brian McAndrews, the former CEO of Seattle online advertising powerhouse aQuantive, and Jason Kilar, a former Amazon.com executive who now runs Hulu, are among the technology executives being targeted by Yahoo for the CEO post.
Kara Swisher at All Things D — who is well-sourced on Yahoo matters — reports that the company’s board has placed both McAndrews and Kilar on a “wish list.”
The news comes as Yahoo attempts to find a replacement for Carol Bartz who stepped down as CEO in September. The company is currently being run by interim CEO Timothy Morse, the company’s CFO.
McAndrews would be an especially interesting choice given his expertise in both online advertising and traditional media. (He’s a former executive with ABC). He’s also familiar with the Bay Area having graduated from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
McAndrews joined Madrona in 2009 after a stint at Microsoft, which gobbled up aQuantive for $6 billion in 2007. He’s invested in a few companies since joining Madrona, but has kept a relatively low profile in the role.
In addition to McAndrews and Kilar, Swisher reports that Juniper CEO Kevin Johnson is also on the wish list for Yahoo. Johnson is a former Microsoft vice president, having worked at the software giant for 16 years.
Yahoo boasts a market value of $18 billion, and the stock is down 10 percent on the year. The company has been discussed as a potential acquisition target, with reports late last month that Microsoft was joining with private equity firms to invest as much as $3 billion for a 15 percent equity stake in the struggling company.
Interestingly, Yahoo also was discussed as a possible acquirer of Hulu, the company that Kilar runs. Swisher notes that the hiring of the technology executive is a “long shot” and that he’s actively being solicited for the role rather than pursuing it on his own. Kilar is the former vice president and general manager of Amazon’s North American media businesses where he reported directly to Jeff Bezos.
Swisher reports:
The concept in short, said people familiar with the situation: Hire some compelling and entrepreneurial CEO to get the company moving again from a product point of view, do a massive organizational overhaul and help settle Yahoo’s thorny Asian issues.
We’ve reached out to McAndrews for comment, and we’ll update the post if we hear more.
