Unleashing the Ideavirus

Unleashing the Ideavirus
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 www.ideavirus.com
As a result, stock ideaviruses spread much more often and much faster. In one case, the
public markets knew about a CEO’s plan to quit before his board of directors did. Because
the individuals who post these notes are anonymous and possess unknown motivations, the
chances that they’ll develop into powerful sneezers is slight. But the sheer number of posts
(more than 100,000 a day on Yahoo!’s bulletin boards alone) means that they have influence.
An astute CFO or CEO can look at the key factors in the creation and spread of a stock
ideavirus and launch a campaign to move the virus with a velocity and vector they’re
comfortable with, and more important, aim it at the appropriate hive.
Note, for example, that some stocks, like Iomega, are the darlings of online stock bulletin
boards. As a direct result, those stocks are far more volatile than the average. Live by the
sword…
Yahoo! has worked hard for years to manage the story about its stock. Gary Valenzuela, the
legendary former CFO at Yahoo!, was obsessed with three things:
1. Become a blue-chip stock, one that institutions would happily own.
2. Become profitable, to distinguish the Yahoo! story from its competitors.
3. Underpromise and overdeliver, always beating the “whisper numbers” that analyst
established for the company’s quarterly earnings.
As a result, Yahoo! stock has consistently and regularly outperformed its competitors. And
due to the success in labeling Yahoo! an Internet blue chip, the stock is much less susceptible
to swings due to rumors.
Was that expensive in the short run? No doubt. When the market was looking for good news
and hype, Yahoo! often refused to deliver. Short term gains were forsaken for building a
story, a story that could become an ideavirus to be delivered by analysts and other powerful
sneezers.
One way to predict the future of a stock, then, is to see beyond the story and understand
whether the company is actively managing the ideavirus, and doing it in a way that will move
it to the right hive.

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