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What's Actually Wrong with Yahoo's Purchase of Summly

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Re: What's Actually Wrong with Yahoo's Purchase of Summly

#21

Post by flyosity »

snaky wrote: post #8
omellet wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article's main point is that the founders didn't do anything really noteworthy, technologically speaking, and so Yahoo overpaid for the talent in question.

>the founders didn't do anything really noteworthy 1M+ downloads for an app with licensed technology is noteworthy.

A million downloads of a free app is not really that noteworthy. My friend made a simple, free iPhone game in a weekend where you tap on a soccer ball and keep it from dropping and routinely gets 10s of thousands of downloads a month with absolutely no marketing.

Re: What's Actually Wrong with Yahoo's Purchase of Summly

#22

Post by georgemcbay »

michaelpinto wrote: post #2

Yahoo didn't buy the technology, they purchased the talent. Talent that knows how to reach an audience. You can always get high quality engineers to figure out the rest...

But if you're Yahoo in 2013, where are you going to find high quality engineers?

Re: What's Actually Wrong with Yahoo's Purchase of Summly

#23

Post by richardjordan »

Ouch. Still, hard to find fault with the analysis, no matter how unpopular it may be with much of the readership of HN. Many folks here would love to sell a company to Yahoo! for $30MM after 18mo with minimal engineering effort and download numbers probably below those of many folks reading the news on HN.

Re: What's Actually Wrong with Yahoo's Purchase of Summly

#24

Post by theklub »

richardjordan wrote: post #23

Ouch. Still, hard to find fault with the analysis, no matter how unpopular it may be with much of the readership of HN. Many folks here would love to sell a company to Yahoo! for $30MM after 18mo with minimal engineering effort and download numbers probably below those of many folks reading the news on HN.

We should all be very happy. This is a sign that easy money is still out there for the clever individual. I applaud the kid for what he has done. Yahoo might be stupid, but we've known that for a long long time.

Re: What's Actually Wrong with Yahoo's Purchase of Summly

#25

Post by pron »

jpdoctor wrote: post #17

> By definition, Yahoo's directors know how to spend Yahoo's cash reserves best. This is absolutely incorrect. There are many instances in which there is a personal financial connection between a board member and an acquired company. For example, a board member is a limited in a VC fund. Didn't bother reading after that.

Ironic. The post says: "But it's really not ok to act functionally illiterate when you're not actually illiterate, when an advanced society that once put a man on the moon worked so hard to educate you."

If you'd read the text more carefully you wouldn't have missed the sarcasm of the passage you were so quick to dismiss. He was being sarcastic!

Re: What's Actually Wrong with Yahoo's Purchase of Summly

#26

Post by richardjordan »

jpdoctor wrote: post #17

> By definition, Yahoo's directors know how to spend Yahoo's cash reserves best. This is absolutely incorrect. There are many instances in which there is a personal financial connection between a board member and an acquired company. For example, a board member is a limited in a VC fund. Didn't bother reading after that.

I think you're supposed to have read irony into that comment. If you had bothered reading after that you would have seen that. That and the author's critique of people who can't be bothered reading more than a few paragraphs - in your case presumably because your default assumption is that you must know more than the author of the article and that he cannot possibly have been making a sophisticated point that would take more than that single sentence to unpack.

Re: What's Actually Wrong with Yahoo's Purchase of Summly

#27

Post by powertower »

I dont understand why the current wave of criticism is leaving the market penetration (and 1st mover advantage), brand, and million users (and climbing) out of the picture - like it's not important. And are assuming that Yahoo must of paid it all to hire 3 people.

Re: What's Actually Wrong with Yahoo's Purchase of Summly

#29

Post by richardjordan »

gesman wrote: post #7

That's a deal between Yahoo management and Summly investors. Lucky young guys got themselves warmed up in the middle of big guys hugging each other.

Yes. Yes it is. +1

So much of what goes on in transactions in Silicon Valley has little to do with the headlines and a lot to do with power brokers and their interests.

It's a shame we don't have investigative journalism in Silicon Valley any more - partly because it's out of vogue nationally, and partly because Silicon Valley journalists love to hob-nob with investors. I'd love to see a follow-the-money on this deal.

Re: What's Actually Wrong with Yahoo's Purchase of Summly

#30

Post by notahacker »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #5

I think the author makes this comment: "Summly's entire business model seems to revolve around catering to this demographic. Frankly, it pains me." I reads like a critique of Chubby Checker's "Twist" from a professor a Julliard. Perhaps, and I say that because I can't know what they were really thinking, but perhaps that was the point. This company had successfully "catered to this demographic" (which was defined as…

I've got to say that people who can quickly assemble appealing MVPs from existing markets are exactly the sort of people Yahoo need, but the reported purchasing figures is a hefty price to pay for three staff, especially if all the available evidence points to them being productive startup generalists rather than visionary corporate project managers

Imagine how many MVPs Yahoo's existing staff could create if allocated $30 million of development time for skunkworks projects...

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