“One of the most spectacular new leaders in our industry and maybe one of the most spectacular new leaders ever.” And that’s just how salesforce.com Chairman CEO Marc Benioff describes her. Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer has certainly been a force to be reckoned with, from her 13 years at Google, to taking the top job at Yahoo in July 2012.

Employee Focus

Benioff sat down for a fireside chat with Mayer at Dreamforce ’13, with the goal of showing “everyone in this room and online what a phenomenal new leader” Mayer is. 

Mayer shared that she spent much of her career as a product manager and understood how hard it is to design for global in that role, if the person hasn’t been there. She believes you have to sit down with a user and see what motivates them. Thus she often traveled with her product managers all over the world to help them get the pulse and vibe of users everywhere. At Yahoo, she prioritizes transparency to employees.

User Focus

To Mayer, it’s all about the user. She aims to design for the expert user. “I think you should build products that are really fast to understand so in a matter of days a user can be an expert.” At Yahoo, the focus is to build a core pathway through the product that benefits users.

Mayer also emphasizes the importance of design, and even dropped that her one “to-be-hired is an SVP of design,” for anyone with a resume that fits that description. And while Mayer doesn’t design Yahoo’s products, she does get to design the organization, and “how it feels to be a Yahoo user and employee.” She appreciates the value now placed on design, but always keeps in mind that a product must be useful, not just be designed well. 

Mobile Shift

Yahoo’s emphasis now is to write the platform shift to mobile. Mayer says that Yahoo products are what people use everyday on their phones: mail, maps, news, weather, stock quotes, games, photo sharing. The company now has almost 400 million monthly users on mobile, which is “one of the things I’m most proud of,” says Mayer. She wants Yahoo to be one of the best application developers and added “when you look at our applications, they’re beautiful.”

Personal Life

Benioff praised Mayer for her personal development, and emphasis on family, networking, and charity. Mayer said her life is about ebbing and flowing, and sometimes she is forced to change her clothes in the backseat of a car, like she did on her way to the Dreamforce appearance. “My priorities now are my family and Yahoo. Anything else is just a bonus.” 

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