The $50 million division is just a fraction of the Sunnyvale tech giantâs business, but by the end of the year, Akhtar will help lead the transition of Yahoo Small Business into a separate company. Another challenge as the company breaks away from Yahoo will be explaining to skeptical business owners â some of whom have used Yahooâs services for nearly two decades â what the switch means for their bottom lines. Some small businesses that use Yahoo are multimillion-dollar operations, others are tiny shops that make less than $100,000 a year in sales, and still others are entrepreneurs getting their first start. Since joining Yahoo, Akhtar has met with many of those small businesses, observing how they use the companyâs services and soaking in their suggestions on improving them. Behind the scenes, Yahoo is spinning off its small business division â along with 384 million shares in Chinese e-commerce conglomerate Alibaba â to avoid paying $16 billion in taxes. When Yahoo bought the business, known as Viaweb, in a deal valued at $49 million in 1998, it was touting products like a search engine for online shopping and hosting online stores. [...] Akhtar said, he wants the division to sell services that help small firms expand their businesses, and to become their âtrusted adviser.â Small-business owners shouldnât need to worry about finding the best shipping provider or e-mail marketing service, he added. Snell had been using the management software for 18 years, before it was even part of Yahoo, and he credits the software and service with saving his parentsâ dog collar business. At the March meeting at Yahoo headquarters, Snell listened to Akhtarâs explanations while sipping fruit-infused water and eating what he described as âhippie foodâ in a large corporate cafeteria (Snell says heâs more of a Diet Coke kind of guy). Before taking the job at Yahoo in November, Akhtar was an adviser at GSR Ventures and worked in executive positions at ADP, which makes human resources and accounting software. Yahooâs sales have been dwindling since 2009, but it sees a glimmer of hope in going after mobile users, focusing its efforts on increasing its sales in mobile, video, native and social advertising. Sameet Sinha, an analyst with B. Riley & Co., recalls people asking CEO Marissa Mayer why small businesses were not a priority to her, considering she previously was a Google executive overseeing local, maps and location services. Firms can also get their merchandise featured on Market St., Yahooâs specialty shopping site. [...] there are mobile storefronts for small businesses, a key move when Google changed its algorithm to favor mobile sites when customers search for things on their cell phones. Some analysts speculated whether Alibaba will buy the spin-off company to get back its shares, but the company may not be interested in taking on mostly American small business clients.
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