Ex-Yahoo CEO Rues Buying Tumblr Over Netflix, Now Worth $140-B

Marissa Mayer, former CEO of Yahoo, has some regrets. Six years after leaving the role, she opened up this week about things she should have done differently.

Photo Insert: Yahoo acquired Tumblr, a social blogging platform, for $1.1 billion in 2013.

“We looked at a transformative acquisition, and we bought Tumblr,” she said in a Tech Brew interview, Steve Mollman reported for Fortune.

Yahoo acquired Tumblr, a social blogging platform, for $1.1 billion in 2013—a deal Mayer was heavily involved in. It soon became clear the price was far too high: By 2016, Yahoo had written down Tumblr’s value by more than $700 million.

But in addition to Tumblr, she said, the company had considered the possibility of buying Netflix or Hulu.

“I think Netflix was $4 billion and Hulu was at $1.3 billion at the time,” she told Tech Brew. “And either of those, with hindsight being 20/20, would have been a better acquisition.” That's something of an understatement.

Today Netflix’s market cap tops $140 billion and Disney has majority-owned Hulu since 2019. As much as Mayer might wish she’d attempted to acquire Netflix, however, the regret runs much deeper among former Blockbuster executives.

In 2000, Netflix cofounders Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph tried to sell their startup to Blockbuster for a mere $50 million—and were laughed out of the room. At the time, of course, Netflix was an unprofitable startup offering DVD rentals via postal mail, while Blockbuster stores were a fixture of American life.

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