I don't know how true this is, but I've heard it from several independent people so there may be a glimmer of truth behind it. Back in '93, I started making a "cool links" page, and stuffing it with whatever I could find. (I froze it in 1995.) I'm told that the Yahoo people were inspired by my page to try to make a full-blown service. Of course, I was inspired (as were lots of other people) by Tim Curry's mtv.com, which I think was one of the first "cool" pages out there.