Rare public photo practically a 'who's who' of Silicon Valley

An unusual photo was posted to Facebook showing a CEO dinner gathering -- hosted by Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer -- that included a significant number of tech CEOs from a wide array of companies, and notably included Sir Jonathan Ive, Apple's SVP of Design. Ive was perhaps the only non-CEO at the table, but was seated next to Mayer in the rare, candid shot. Attendee Mike Cassidy -- of Google X, the experimental project arm of Google -- posted the photo, which includes executives from Dropbox, Path, Twitter, Yelp and more.

One of the more unusual aspects of the picture -- apart from the sheer diversity and average wealth of the guests -- is that the main course appears to be pizza. Aside from Mayer and Ive, Twitter's Dick Costolo and Drew Houston (CEO of Dropbox) both have well-known relationships with Apple. Also in the part is Dave Morin, the CEO of Path -- which ran afoul of Apple when it revealed that it was collecting address book and other personal data on users without informing them. The publicity over the flap led to considerably changes and strengthening of Apple's guidelines, though Path was allowed to continue being offered after revising its own policies.

Other companies represented in the photo include Traina Interactive (founder Trevor Traina); Nirav Tolia, CEO of Nextdoor social network; Yelp's CEO Jeremy Stoppelman; Bebo cofounder Michael Birch (who sold Bebo to AOL); education startup CEO Dion Lim, who hasn't yet revealed the name of his latest company, but who cofounded Epinions with Tolia), and CEO of Quip (and former CTO of Facebook) Bret Taylor.

BusinessInsider reported on the event, noting that Mayer's deep connections (both social and business) in Silicon Valley was one of the reasons she got the Yahoo job. The sheer number of business connections between the attendees (Apple once tried to buy Dropbox; Mayer wanted Google to acquire Yelp when she worked there) makes the photo remarkable and the viewer wonder about the conversations that ensued.

By Electronista Staff

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industry, Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Twitter, Jonathan Ive, Apple, Yelp, Dropbox, Google X