Gideon Yu has been a recurring figure in the decadelong resurgence of the San Francisco Bay Area. In 2006, he was the chief financial officer of YouTube and orchestrated its $1.6 billion dollar sale to Google (GOOG). A year later, he became CFO of Facebook (FB), where he solicited key investments from Microsoft (MSFT) and Russian investor Yuri Milner. The latter deal essentially opened the floodgates of foreign capital into Silicon Valley’s Internet companies.
Yu later spent time as a partner at Khosla Ventures, where he funded the payment startup Square. From 2011 until this past January, he served as chief strategy officer and president of the San Francisco 49ers, helping the NFL team finance and build Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif.
Now Yu has a new title: CEO. He has raised $20 million from a small group of backers, including the investment fund Formation 8, Yahoo (YHOO) co-founder Jerry Yang, Alibaba (BABA) Vice Chairman Joe Tsai, Hong Kong investor Li Ka-shing, and YouTube founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen. His startup, for the moment, is called Eva Automation.
Yu wouldn’t provide many details about the company before it has something to show but says broadly that “We want to bring a fantastic user experience to the control of your A/V devices,” suggesting that it’ll focus on smartphone apps that can control home appliances. He says the idea “grew out of a personal use case. I was trying to buy something in the market that didn’t exist.”
Eva’s website trumpets the motto, “A/V reimagined,” and job listings proclaim, “At EVA, we’re making devices that will change how you interact and think about the home. We’re building a world class engineering team from the best in the consumer electronics industry.” The site lists job openings in hardware, software, and firmware engineering, which likely means the five-month-old company is building a device as well an online service.
Eva Automation has 20 employees and offices in downtown San Bruno, across the street from the first YouTube headquarters. Even after all his years advising and supporting other Valley startups, running Eva is a big change for Yu. “It is exhilarating, incredibly rewarding, incredibly fun, and incredibly stressful, all at once,” he says. “I’m having the time of my life now doing it.”
