Rob's article discusses how Yahoo was instrumental in creating everything that came after.

Many years ago, I had the good fortune of working for Jeff Weiner, who has become one of the top managers in the world. At one of his staff meetings back in 2003, I said to him, “Yahoo is the GE of the Internet.” He gave me a puzzled look, a wry smile, and without a word, made my statement seem like the ramblings of a madman. Many years later, I saw him again, and he brought up that comment. I was blown away that he remembered it, but more floored when he said, “You were spot-on with the GE comment.”

Building the first special Internet company prepared the folks who toiled in the trenches at Yahoo to know exactly what to do when they left Yahoo to help create the next phase of special companies. Before Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Groupon, Zynga, YouTube, Dropbox, Pinterest, Yelp, Cloudera and many more of the rare unicorn companies that exploded in the past decade, their founders and investors called upon a special breed of managers to help … the Yahoo Bosses.

Fun fact: Paul Graham had the money to start YCombinator because he sold his company to Yahoo.