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The Summly deal makes no sense

philosophically.com

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Re: The Summly deal makes no sense

#121

People are on the threshold of really good text analysis algorithms. I know of teams all over the place who have bits of the puzzle solved amazingly well. SRI is a world leader at this technology, it already spun off Siri to Apple, and they've got patents on key technologies in this system, so a $50 M valuation is about right. I know another guy from New York who sold a company of the same size for $30 M or so and wh…

I don't think anything was acquired from SRI except a license.

Re: The Summly deal makes no sense

#122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With 17? Hardly.

Wait til you are 60. Then you will start saying "With 25/30/35 hardly". He just sold a company at the age of 17 to a huge corporation for a truck load of money. Unless he's got loans up to his ears I reckon he must be a lot smarter at business than I am.

There were apparently a lot of temporary dotcom gazillionaires that were temporarily very good at business circa 1999 too.

Welcome back to the stock market being at all time highs again, with Yahoo's stock now back to the highest levels since the crash (nearly five years).

Re: The Summly deal makes no sense

#123
For some who need perspective:

Right now, somewhere in the world, a child is being born into an uberly rich family. That child will grow up to inherit millions for absolutely no work. He'll live the good life full of yachts and private jets.

Right now, somewhere in the world, there is a party happening full of gorgeous wealthy people who need not lift a finger to attain the luxuries that they have. Their success is only a matter of genetics and luck.

Right now, somewhere in the world, is an investment banker who is making literally millions after clicking a few buttons and making a few phone calls to a few friends. He knows the right people and is in the right place, and that's all that matters.

Right now, somewhere in the world, is a 20-some year old guy who is worth billions because of a website he started. He was born into a family that sent him to the right high school. He then went on to one of the best universities in the country, built his website, moved, met the right people, and raised $500+ million in funding. He and likely generations down the line are set for life.

Right now, somewhere in the world, is a 17yr old teenager who started a company with some money from his parents, built a product, with help from friends and family, and got acquired for $30 million.

There's always someone becoming richer than you for much less work, every second of the day. Look past that and just keep working. I get down about how unfair that is from time to time, but there's nothing you can really do about it, other than focus on your work.

Edit: Others are asking where in the article is jealousy mentioned. It isn't, but I took the entire post as one rooted in envy and bitterness. There certainly wouldn't be any of this type of reaction had the guy been a 40-year old who finally got acquired after years of failed attempts. If anything, I'm sure people would be applauding him and the whole affair.

Re: The Summly deal makes no sense

#124

In 2005 Yahoo buys Delicious, a bookmarking site, for between $15MM - $30MM. Summly was acquired for a reported $30MM. Delicious had 5MM users, and let's face it how much "CS beef" goes into a bookmark sharing site. Summly claims to have 1MM downloads. The difference between Delicious' 5MM users and Summly's 1MM is a factor of five but the order of magnitude is roughly the same. Joshua Schachter is highly respected a…

Your comment does a lot to make the point that Summly was a horrific acquisition on any count.

I don't think nearly as many people here are jealous as they are aghast.

Re: The Summly deal makes no sense

#125
post #66

Any open source equivalents to Summly's "pure rocket science" summarization technology?

Good discussion on this subject here:

https://www.linkedin.com/groupItem?view=&gid=131222&...

And here

http://www.quora.com/What-are-some-good-open-source-text-sum...

The best candidate is MEAD

http://www.summarization.com/mead/

Re: The Summly deal makes no sense

#127
post #58

Last year's press release had quotes from Daniel Ek (Spotify) and Mary Meeker, and said: "Summly is backed by several investors, including Horizons Ventures, Ashton Kutcher, Betaworks, Brian Chesky, Hosain Rahman, Joanna Shields, Josh Kushner, Mark Pincus, Matt Mullenweg, Stephen Fry, Troy Carter, Yoko Ono and many more." Not exactly a teen-programmer-in-mother's-basement story...

Yoko Ono...?

Re: The Summly deal makes no sense

#128
post #123

For some who need perspective: Right now, somewhere in the world, a child is being born into an uberly rich family. That child will grow up to inherit millions for absolutely no work. He'll live the good life full of yachts and private jets. Right now, somewhere in the world, there is a party happening full of gorgeous wealthy people who need not lift a finger to attain the luxuries that they have. Their success is o…

I thought the point was that Yahoo, a public company, was throwing away 30 million for no apparent gain.

Re: The Summly deal makes no sense

#129
post #123

For some who need perspective: Right now, somewhere in the world, a child is being born into an uberly rich family. That child will grow up to inherit millions for absolutely no work. He'll live the good life full of yachts and private jets. Right now, somewhere in the world, there is a party happening full of gorgeous wealthy people who need not lift a finger to attain the luxuries that they have. Their success is o…

Where did the article make any mention of jealousy or bitterness (other than the "hurt feelings" of Yahoo's engineers)? The article describes the stupidity of this acquisition from a business perspective.

The fact that your comment has received the most upvotes indicates that people generally agree with your sentiment that nobody should be bitter or jealous. Yet nobody is suggesting any bitterness or jealousy... So who exactly is this directed at? Hey HN... I think you're "projecting." :)

Re: The Summly deal makes no sense

#130
The Summly deal makes sense as much as any Yahoo! acquisition over the years has made sense. Yahoo! is a frankenstein of almost 2 decades of acquisitions. If the CEO of this particular acquisition wasn't a teenager, nobody would bat an eye at $30M for this company.
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