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.
