Who is Yumio?

Hi. I’m Yumio Saneyoshi. 

I started this blog to see if there is anything left to say about social media and remnants of economics I remember from my graduate school days. But as most blogs are - its random thoughts disguised as a social media communication vehicle.

What do I do?

I currently run Product at FixYa.  Its a community Q&A site for technical support of everything you own.  Its the best kept secret in town - the site has more traffic than Yelp (9 million uniques per month), but the word is just getting out….

Before FixYa, I ran Product & Marketing at MyThings.com. Before that, I launched and ran Yahoo! Answers, one of world’s biggest Q&A forum, and the only product that Yahoo! has ever launched that beat Google hands down (Google Answers closed down after a year).  A perk of working on Social Media at Yahoo! between 2004-2006 was working alongside Flickr co-founder, Caterina Fake, and del.icio.us founder Joshua Schachter.  At Yahoo! I also worked on Japanese Web Search technology, and mobile search apps for Nokia.

I got my start in software at Plumtree Software, which was founded by Glenn Kelman, who is now the founder of Redfin. At Plumtree I started their Tokyo office from scratch - fighting against competitors like IBM, Oracle & Microsoft - and miraculously winning sometimes.  Then I moved into Product & Program management when I returned to the US.

What is my identity?

I was born in Tokyo - and forever will be Japanese in culture & spirit (will always cheer the Japanese team in the Olympics & World Cup Soccer) - but have an American attitude. Being Japanese, I liked anime & manga before they were cool in the US - and actually understand what is going on with those random Japanese TV series videos that ends up on YouTube.

Don’t you have a Economics PhD from Harvard?

Yes, I do. And then so what the hell am I doing working for a random startup in the valley, instead of working as Obama’s economic adviser? Early on I found myself more adept at doing business, rather than studying how businesses work. So here I am.