Niners Nation After Dark: 49ers Santa Clara Stadium "Developments"

Welcome back to Niners Nation After Dark, where we might have some reason to party a little bit. Although yesterday was a fairly quiet day in normal terms for the 49ers stadium efforts, the team may have made a fairly key hiring decision. The 49ers confirmed that they have hired Gideon Yu to be their Chief Strategy Officer (tip of the cap to Tim Kawakami and Sam Lam for their initial articles on the hiring).

In his role as CSO, Yu will be helping the business operations maximize current revenue streams and research new revenue streams to maximize the "strategic and business prospects" of the San Francisco 49ers. As TK wrote in his story linked above, Yu is apparently a major player in the tech and finance world. I've posted his resume since 2000 after the jump (courtesy of LinkedIn, posted after the jump) and to say it is impressive would be a gross understatement. Sam Lam linked to this Business Insider article, which briefly describes Yu's involvement in YouTube's $1.6 billion sale to Google, as well as his role in convincing Microsoft to invest $16 billion in Facebook. It's safe to say Gideon Yu has done OK for himself.

Kawakami goes into the potential long-term implications, speculating about the possibility that Yu could eventually form a group to buy some or all of the 49ers from the York family. Anything is possible, but as Kawakami himself points out, "Where it heads from here, I don't think anybody quite yet knows." We're all speculating at this point, but I wouldn't be surprised if he was brought in to secure a serious naming rights deal for the new stadium.

While PSL's and public money can be a big help, a strong naming rights deal could remove a lot of those obstacles. The tentative LA stadium has already sold a naming rights deal to Farmers Insurance worth potentially upwards of $700 million. Then you look at the Oakland Coliseum, which just sold naming rights to Overstock.com for a whopping $7.2 million over six years. Obviously those are extreme situations, but the 49ers are probably hoping they can find some solid Silicon Valley financing for a naming rights deal. The Giants/Jets and Cowboys new stadiums have yet to sell naming rights, although the faltering economy was the initial problem. Given California's precarious financial situation, a nice chunk of change for naming rights would be huge for getting this project moving forward.

WORK EXPERIENCE

Board Member

Square

Privately Held; Financial Services industry

November 2009 - Present (1 year 6 months)

www.squareup.com

General Partner

Khosla Ventures

Venture Capital & Private Equity industry

August 2009 - Present (1 year 9 months)

www.khoslaventures.com

Chief Financial Officer

Facebook

Privately Held; Internet industry

August 2007 - April 2009 (1 year 9 months)

Chief Financial Officer

YouTube (acquired by Google)

Public Company; GOOG; Internet industry

September 2006 - August 2007 (1 year)

SVP & Treasurer

Yahoo

Public Company; 10,001+ employees; Internet industry

May 2002 - September 2006 (4 years 5 months)

Chief Financial Officer

NightFire Software (acquired by NeuStar: NSR)

Computer Software industry

July 2000 - May 2002 (1 year 11 months)

Broadband services provisioning software provider primarily focused on telecom carriers and ISPs

EDUCATION

Harvard Business School

MBA

1999

Stanford University

BS, Industrial Engineering

1993