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The Summly deal makes no sense

philosophically.com

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Re: The Summly deal makes no sense

#101

Post by ilamont »

joeblau wrote: post #92
IanDrake wrote: post #77

Right after college I started consulting at an eCommerce company that had bought a 17 year old's website for over 1M. Had had built a gaming community site that had become very popular and they wanted the traffic. I thought the kid was just lucky until I was in a meeting with him. His thought process basically ran circles around everyone else in the room, some twice his age. I realized then, that there are kids, KIDS…

You have a very good point. Thought process and vision are what make or break a product. As close as it is to other news aggregators, there may be a perspective that the Founder has that Yahoo team doesn't.

Thought process and vision are what make or break a product.

I would put far more emphasis on execution. Lots of founders with "vision" can spin great stories to investors but can't execute quickly enough, or are unable to deviate from their original vision when the market or other evidence suggests they should.

Re: The Summly deal makes no sense

#102

Post by dpcx »

justanother wrote: post #23
jval wrote: post #18

I feel this would be an appropriate subject for a Dilbert comic. Storyline is that someone accidentally left the dot out of $300000.00 to make it $30000000 and then everyone else went along with it for fear of looking stupid.

A decimal point? I always mess up some mundane detail!

It's not a mundane detail Michael!

Re: The Summly deal makes no sense

#103

Post by naunga »

You know if the kid really wanted some press for his app...he should have turned down Yahoo's and state that he values his company too much to allow them to be used as a PR stunt.

...and then the dump truck full of money pulled into his drive way.

Re: The Summly deal makes no sense

#105

Post by bertomartin »

ilamont wrote: post #101
joeblau wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have a very good point. Thought process and vision are what make or break a product. As close as it is to other news aggregators, there may be a perspective that the Founder has that Yahoo team doesn't.

Thought process and vision are what make or break a product. I would put far more emphasis on execution. Lots of founders with "vision" can spin great stories to investors but can't execute quickly enough, or are unable to deviate from their original vision when the market or other evidence suggests they should.

I'd say Thought process, vision AND execution. He's obviously executed well, so what's left is his vision and thought process behind that vision.

Re: The Summly deal makes no sense

#106

Post by pfarrell »

jimzvz wrote: post #33
_chrismccreadie wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did find that sentence a little strange myself. I didn't think jealousy from the writer, my first thought was "why should the employees be jealous?" Is it the employees of Summify, didn't they all receive a nice payment ($1m each)? And I can't imagine any of the Yahoo employees being jealous, well, perhaps, but I doubt it is the first time Yahoo have made a millionaire teenager. Even if they are, let them use it as…

Obviously the writer means yahoo employees. Maybe not jealousy but certainly frustration. Wouldn't you feel frustrated if your company spent $30 million on what is basically the face of a hype machine especially when your company wants to integrate the hype machine's "tech" into your products even though it would probably take a few days to get similar results in house?

When I read things like this, I assume the software has nothing to do with the hire. This guy has shown, at an early age, that he is a real player. He has the right[1] kind of people backing him which has caused his name to be talked about in the right circles.

A major viewpoint that separates me from "when I was a kid" was the realization that the continuum of everything (talent, intellect, potential for evil, charisma, etc) exists. One judges the world by the people around oneself, but those are not limits of human capability, those are the friends one keeps. That realization took a long time to sink in.

Good on this guy. Nice play :)

1: "right" in the sense of a situation like this occurring, not in the sense of moral or intellectual superiority

Re: The Summly deal makes no sense

#107

Post by sp332 »

jval wrote: post #18

I feel this would be an appropriate subject for a Dilbert comic. Storyline is that someone accidentally left the dot out of $300000.00 to make it $30000000 and then everyone else went along with it for fear of looking stupid.

Not exactly the same storyline, but there's a very topical one from just 10 days ago. http://dilbert.com/2013-03-16/

Re: The Summly deal makes no sense

#108

Post by dirtyaura »

harel wrote: post #97

Good on him. Doesn't matter if it makes sense to us (it doesn't to me but hey, its not my money!). The kid got minted, his employees probably got a good deal out of it, his mum must be proud as punch. All in all, congratulations kiddo, don't spend it all at once. What baffles me most though, is that Yahoo would conduct a CS type interview to the employees, failing some of them in the process (if that bit is true). I…

Of course Yahoo will do at least similar level interviews for expensive acquihires as to their normal hires. It's a standard practice, Google does this too. They are looking to acquire people that fit to their culture and standard interviews are their procedure to try to ensure that.

I'm personally of the opinion that a little bit of diversity (more designer-type front end devs without academic background) would do good for Google's (or Yahoo's) internal culture, but if they have decided that they only want CS people, it totally makes sense to interview acquihires too.

Re: The Summly deal makes no sense

#110

Post by scrumper »

harel wrote: post #97

Good on him. Doesn't matter if it makes sense to us (it doesn't to me but hey, its not my money!). The kid got minted, his employees probably got a good deal out of it, his mum must be proud as punch. All in all, congratulations kiddo, don't spend it all at once. What baffles me most though, is that Yahoo would conduct a CS type interview to the employees, failing some of them in the process (if that bit is true). I…

It's not about excellence. It's additional leverage for Yahoo in the deal. Only 2 of the 5 employees passed it, so they were able to argue for a lower number for the company. Likely they guessed that only a couple would have been able to pass the interview before making that part of the deal.
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