Adam Cahan (born December 30, 1971) is an American consumer technology executive who was Senior Vice President of Mobile and Emerging Products for

Yahoo! Yahoo! (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web services provider. It is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California and operated by the namesake company Yahoo Inc., which is 90% owned by investment funds managed by Apollo Global Man ...

, where he oversaw the company's global mobile effort. In this role, he was responsible for leading product, engineering and design for Yahoo’s mobile products, Flickr and Smart TV. Cahan joined Yahoo in April 2011 through the acquisition of his start-up IntoNow, a patented consumer application, which he sold to Yahoo for between $20 million and $30 million. When Marissa Mayer became CEO of Yahoo in 2012, she appointed Cahan to lead the company’s mobile initiatives, and he grew the division from 50 employees to over 900. From less than $11 Million in revenue to $1.8 Billion Since the company's mobile unit went live in October 2012, Yahoo has refreshed its Flickr and Mail apps, introduced News Digest, and bought nearly 40 companies. As of June 2014, Yahoo Mobile had 430 million monthly users. In 2017, Cahan left Yahoo as the company was acquired by

Verizon Verizon Communications Inc., commonly known as Verizon, is an American multinational telecommunications conglomerate and a corporate component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The company is headquartered at 1095 Avenue of the Americas in ...

. Prior to building IntoNow, Cahan's first start-up company was Auditude, a video infrastructure and ad serving company, which was later acquired by

Adobe Adobe ( ; ) is a building material made from earth and organic materials. is Spanish for ''mudbrick''. In some English-speaking regions of Spanish heritage, such as the Southwestern United States, the term is used to refer to any kind of e ...

in 2011. Cahan began his career as an associate producer and wildlife filmmaker for

National Geographic Television National Geographic (formerly National Geographic Channel; abbreviated and trademarked as Nat Geo or Nat Geo TV) is an American pay television network and flagship channel owned by the National Geographic Global Networks unit of Disney General En ...

, based in

Zaire Zaire (, ), officially the Republic of Zaire (french: République du Zaïre, link=no, ), was a Congolese state from 1971 to 1997 in Central Africa that was previously and is now again known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Zaire was, ...

, Africa, from 1993 to 1996. He later became an executive vice president of strategy and business operations at MTV Networks, and held leadership roles at

Google Google LLC () is an American multinational technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics. ...

McKinsey & Company McKinsey & Company is a global management consulting firm founded in 1926 by University of Chicago professor James O. McKinsey, that offers professional services to corporations, governments, and other organizations. McKinsey is the oldest and ...

and

NBCUniversal NBCUniversal Media, LLC is an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate corporation owned by Comcast and headquartered at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, United States. NBCUniversal is primari ...

. He holds two technology patents.

Background and personal life

A New York native, Cahan holds an undergraduate degree from

Brown University Brown University is a private research university in Providence, Rhode Island. Brown is the seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, founded in 1764 as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providenc ...

and an MBA from

Columbia Business School Columbia Business School (CBS) is the business school of Columbia University, a Private university, private research university in New York City. Established in 1916, Columbia Business School is one of six Ivy League business schools and is one ...

with

Beta Gamma Sigma Beta Gamma Sigma () is the International Business Honor Society. Founded in 1913 at the University of Wisconsin, University of Illinois and the University of California, it has over 980,000 members, selected from more than 600 collegiate chapters ...

Honors. His father, Dr. Amos Cahan, was a hematologist and the owner of Knickerbocker Biologicals, a medical diagnostics company that became part of

Pfizer Pfizer Inc. ( ) is an American multinational pharmaceutical and biotechnology corporation headquartered on 42nd Street in Manhattan, New York City. The company was established in 1849 in New York by two German entrepreneurs, Charles Pfizer ...

. He married Alice Larkin, a British fashion designer, in 2002 and had two daughters with her. They divorced in 2014. On June 25, 2015, he welcomed daughter Alaska with Russian-American model

Anne Vyalitsyna Anna Sergeyevna "Anne" Vyalitsyna (russian: А́нна Серге́евна Вьяли́цына; born 19 March 1986), also known as Anne V, is a Russian-American model best known for her 10-consecutive-year appearances (2005–2014) in the ''Spor ...

. Cahan lives in San Francisco. Adam Cahan was a member of the Supervisory Board of

ProSiebenSat.1 Media AG ProSiebenSat.1 Media SE (officially abbreviated as P7S1, formerly ProSiebenSat.1 Media AG) is a German mass media & digital company. It operates in three segments: Entertainment, Dating and Commerce & Ventures. The company is listed on the Fran ...

from June 2014 until the completion of the SE conversion in July 2015. Since completion of the conversion, he has been a member of the Supervisory Board of ProSiebenSat.1 Media SE. His current term of office will regularly end with the conclusion of the Annual Shareholders' Meeting in 2019.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Cahan, Adam 1971 births Living people Yahoo! employees American technology company founders American technology chief executives Brown University alumni Columbia Business School alumni National Geographic (American TV channel) Google employees McKinsey & Company people NBCUniversal people MTV executives