Sunnyvale, Calif. ? Co-founders Jerry Yang and David Filo parlayed Yahoo Inc. from a college hobby into a full-time job 10 years ago, but the Internet icon was never quite comfortable with the happy-go-lucky mood of the dot-com boom.

It’s not that Yang and Filo don’t like to have fun. After all, they gave their company a name often associated with rubes and adopted a joyful yodel as their calling card.

“We were certainly not sophisticated or civilized,” Yang joked during an interview ahead of the March 2 anniversary of Yahoo’s inception.

Profitable philosophy

What separated Yahoo’s creators from the rest of the dot-com crowd was their desire to create a profitable business as quickly as possible — a contrarian concept back in those days of economic delirium.

The philosophy enabled Yahoo to begin making money in less than 10 months, and also fueled the Sunnyvale-based company’s resounding comeback from the dot-com bust that obliterated hundreds of other Internet businesses.

Yang, 36, and Filo, 38, became billionaires long ago, but they have stuck around as the “Chief Yahoos” because they are eager to continue innovating and increasing profits.

“It’s immensely more challenging to get to $10 billion in revenue than it was to get to $10 million in revenue,” Filo said. “That’s why we are still here .”

Yahoo has grown from a handful of employees to more than 7,600 workers today.

Dot-com survivor

Yahoo’s profit-conscious approach has paid off handsomely, particularly for its founders. Filo still owns 6.4 percent of Yahoo’s stock — a stake worth $2.8 billion. Having sold more of his holdings through the years, Yang owns a 4.8 percent stake worth $2.1 billion.

Yahoo already has amassed an audience of 345 million, including 165 million registered users who rely on the company’s Web sites for e-mail, e-commerce, news, entertainment, driving directions, matchmaking, weather forecasts, job leads and search results.

Yahoo wasn’t the Internet’s first commercial success — that honor went to Web browser pioneer Netscape Communications Inc. But Yahoo remains among the small handful of still-influential survivors from the dot-com mania’s early days.

“Yahoo really defined an era,” said technology industry analyst Rob Enderle, who has followed Yahoo since it started. “They are the ones who set the tone for the Internet.”

Stopping the bleeding

Neither Yang nor Filo thought they would have such a big impact when they raised their first $1 million to fund the startup and hired technology industry veteran Tim Koogle as chief executive. Yahoo’s initial public offering of stock in April 1996 helped fuel the gold rush psychology that spawned dozens of Internet startups flush with venture capital.

Much of that money was spent advertising on Yahoo’s Web site, pushing the company’s annual sales above $1 billion and its market value beyond $120 billion.

Then came the crash. One-third of Yahoo’s revenue evaporated in a single year, saddling the company with a succession of quarterly losses. Its market value shrank to $4.6 billion at one point.

Determined to stop the bleeding, Yang and Filo recruited entertainment industry veteran Terry Semel to replace Koogle in May 2001. The shakeup included hundreds of layoffs, amplifying talk that Yahoo was being cleaned up for a desperation sale.

Semel is widely credited for engineering Yahoo’s comeback by creating new subscription services to diversify Yahoo’s revenue beyond advertising, and about $2.5 billion in acquisitions have added to the company’s arsenal. The turnaround produced an $840 million profit on sales of $3.57 billion last year, lifting Yahoo’s market value back to about $50 billion.