I published this blog post on one of my old websites on June 24, 2010 — the day I resigned from my job at Yahoo. It was picked up by various news outlets. I didn’t know it then, but it would be my last corporate job. I’ve been running my own businesses ever since.

I wanted to share the text below as an example of how quickly you can decide to launch your business and how lean your model can be. I had nothing more than a name (i.e., Brilliant Forge), a simple website, and a rough business idea of providing product strategy consulting services to tech startups. That’s it.

Farewell Yahoo! The Time Has Come to Move On

By Larry Cornett | June 24, 2010

As you may have heard through the grapevine, after 4 years of an incredible roller coaster ride with Yahoo, the time has come to move on to other opportunities. I am bootstrapping my own stealth (for now) startup.

In parallel, today I’m launching a consulting practice to provide advisory services to other startups and more-established companies. After over 8 years in the big corporate worlds of Yahoo and eBay, I’m excited about taking everything I’ve learned from my experiences at those two great companies and returning to the entrepreneurial world.

Yahoo has amazing and loyal talent, and I am very proud of what my Search team accomplished over the past four years. I obviously cannot capture it all, but I wanted to share highlights of just a few great products they delivered:

• Relaunching Yahoo! Search in Oct 2007 with industry-leading Search Assist features

• Bringing structured data into Web Search for the first time with Y! SearchMonkey

• Opening up Search technology to the world like never before with the Yahoo! Search BOSS platform

• Bringing true applications to Search with Search Pad

• Launching an entirely new Y! Search experience again in Sep 2009

• Creating incredibly engaging Image and Video Search experiences

• Integrating Twitter and real-time content in Nov 2009

• An addictive entertainment Search experience that launched this March

• And finally, the truly fun Yahoo! Sketch-a-Search app on the iPhone

It has been a real pleasure to work with such a talented and passionate team. I’m going to miss everyone and I wish them the best of luck. Keep fighting the purple fight, guys!

– Larry

P.S. Now that I no longer have a free coffee bar, I had to undertake the arduous task of discovering all of the best coffee in the South Bay. Here is my list on Yelp. I work hard so you don’t have to. 😉