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.
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." :)
That is exactly it: People whose first reaction was jealousy are now projecting jealousy onto everyone else. I'm not jealous of this individual at all (though I, like most, would love to be in the same position). But being professionals in this field we naturally do try to figure out where the money is at (trying to yield hints at how we can get some of that), and when it is irrational it confuses and potentially angers us. This ridiculous canard that we can never critique a story without being jealous is obnoxious.
Lots of the comments below read like they're full of bitterness and jealousy to me, I suspect the comment is targeted at them rather than the original article.
Simply because of the fact that in the first sentence that it mentions that he is 17 years old. Companies get acquired all of the time every day, but those don't warrant posts on HN mentioning how young the employees are. Hence the jealousy.
I think you should have the top comment - but I am willing to admit I'm jealous anyway. :) Jealous, but thankful that I was never made a millionaire at age 17...because that 17 year old will no longer get to see what the real world is like.
Actually this is a very common scheme in Silicon Valley -- public companies "throwing away" money on relatively worthless startups. It is a good way to siphon money out of the stock market and into the pockets of VCs and founders -- and I would not be surprised if the person who pushes the acquisition gets a cut of the money too, or other "favors" in the future. The company knows its going to can the product and the founders will leave after their stock vests -- why else would it make the acquisition?
That's the part I don't understand capitalism: on one hand, big corps try to save every dime by downsizing and outsourcing, and on the other hand, they pour money like this.
>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.
I regret upvoting you prior to finishing your post.
This is bullshit. Of course we can do something about it. We're members of a society, and if we collectively think something is bullshit, we can do something about it.
I'm tired of people looking at these absurd inequities and shrugging and putting their head down and hoping maybe they'll get lucky too. In the meanwhile, these people at the top are ensuring that only people like them can continue to succeed.
Let's tax everyone who didn't earn their wealth. Let's put an end to dumb gambles that only reward people born at the top.
I'm confused. Are you saying this kid should have his $30M (or whatever he gets out of the deal) taken away from him, because you perceive he didn't earn it?
This is good perspective and i think it's good to keep this in mind, but let's not forget the other end of the spectrum:
Right now, somewhere in the world, a child is being born in a farm house with a dirt floor. That child will grow up to die in a civil war before age 14.
Right now, somewhere in the world, there are people waiting in line to get food from a charity.
Right now, somewhere in the world, someone is suffering from a disease because they can't afford the cure.
Right now, somewhere in the world, a man goes to work carrying bricks for 10 hours a day to feed his 3 children.
Right now, somewhere in the world, a woman rides her bike to work in polluted air at 6am, to a factory job where she will work 12 hours a day putting together tablets that all the "unlucky people who have to work" trying to be dot com millionaires will buy one day on a whim and then discard less than 6 months later. And this is good, because she has a job.
The real interesting thing is these people generally don't complain much, not nearly as much as we do.
Actually, I've come to believe that complaining is an inherent aspect of human nature. Everybody complains; its just that you don't hear much from the above-mentioned as they do not write blogs which make the frontpage on Reddit or HN (let alone popular media) and/or are not part of your immediate circle of friends (to whom we usually air our grievances)
My Mom grew up on the wrong side of the tracks. Her biological father had a habit of staying at home just long enough to get my Grandma pregnant, then taking off. Life for single mothers (especially French Canadians) in the late 1940s/early 1950s was hard. Consequently, my Grandma worked multiple jobs just to keep food on the table and a roof over their heads. Grandma was always an incredibly hard worker - she eventually remarried and her and my Grandpa started a cleaning business. She ran that business and worked incredibly hard up until the day she died.
My life was very different from my Mom's. My Dad was a police officer and, though we weren't wealthy, I never went without. But, I got to grow up in a household where two things were valued - hard work and education. Consequently, I'd spend summers working in my Grandma and Grandpa's business - I had my first job (with an actual hourly wage) when I was 8 years old and worked every single summer and during Easter break.
Grandma never complained because she got herself in that mess and by golly, she'd get herself out. That sense of resilience carried through the generations and now, finally, my generation has the benefits of a middle class upbringing, combined with the work ethic that only comes from having been very poor one generation ago.
I think that it's wonderful you're concerned with people who are less fortunate and I respect what you wrote. However, poverty is a great motivator and frankly, I'd rather hire someone who knows hunger than someone who went to prep schools and fancy Universities with billion dollar endowments...
I agree that all of the events you've listed are probably happening somewhere in the world, but I disagree that we should all just accept this as "the world we live in" and carry on. Look back across history and consider what would have happened if at any point, the people on the losing end of any deal were to simply keep their heads down and keep working.
It's worth talking about. It's worth criticizing. It may not be worth obsessing over, but it is worth some portion of our attention.
It's laughable that a programmer would worry about how unfair the industry is on the top end. Do you get how lucky we are compared even to other engineers? To say nothing of service workers who work much harder for much less.
Every now and again, if I feel I need more money, I take a look at http://www.globalrichlist.com/ and plop in my current salary. Though the numbers are probably a bit dated by now, it's quite sobering.
One hopes selfishness and legacy, and in some cases, idealism, overcome genetics, and those billionaires give their money to others instead of their spawn.
While this has little to do with the original post (which is about the logic behind Yahoo's decision, on which I have absolutely no opinion one way or another), I think it's extremely important to adress what you're saying. You write "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". This is not only patently false, it is dangerously so. It is the thinking of the downtrodden man who accepts the hegemony's perspective on things, namely, that this is the natural order of things, and all you can do is work.
True, the world is unfair and it will remain so. But much of its unfairness is not a result of cruel nature, but as a result of our political actions. And I won't even go into what actions we should take to adress the issues you've raised, only to say that we should, and must act to change society, and that there's quite a lot we can do. We are not sheep.
> 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.
Fairness is a fictional manmade concept. That we expect some sort of fairness in life is solely due to our social contract. It's not fair to me that someone steals my car and thus we have systems in place to address that. However, nothing in our laws, norms, ethics, or philosophy says that people must get everything they deserve and no more or no less. Hence the concept of fairness does not apply to kids of billionaires or friends of politically connected.
Fairness is about mathematical expectation. Fairness means people have equal opportunity (often within a restricted domain, or ignoring certain starting conditions). There is [nearly?] always going to be a locus in which fairness is asserted outside which it is no longer the case.
* The race is fair because both runners run the same distance. Ah but the ground is uneven.
* The race is fair because the ground and distance is even. Ah but one runner is poor and hasn't eaten for days and so is weak.
* The race is fair as the runners have been nourished equally, the distance and going are controlled. Ah, but this runner's family have a genetic disposition that enables them to run faster without tiring ... et cetera.
If mankind didn't exist a situation could still be fair or unfair for a creature - a combat test for leadership is unfair because this creature had a greater opportunity for nourishment and so grew stronger than the others. That of course doesn't mean it's the wrong test, just that each creature able to take the test doesn't have equal opportunity to achieve through their own efforts.
>It's not fair to me that someone steals my car //
Everyone had opportunity to steal a car, including you, that's fair!
I don't equate fairness and just deserts [ie justice]. For example two people can compete in a fair competition but the least deserving - the one who made the least effort or the one whose lifestyle is least noble - can win; the competition was still fair though.
I agree, however it is important to consider how we pick the people we choose to hold up as examples and who we are holding them up to.
With the traditional bigCo job market in the tank there is a push right now to get young people interested in entrepreneurship so stories like these make excellent narrative supporting that.
So you hear stuff like "bootstrap your company!" , "Be your own boss!" , "Be a risk taker!" and this message is being pushed to everyone, including those on the lower rungs of society.
I know a few people who bootstrapped reasonably successful businesses and have been asked to give talks on how anybody can do it and how they started with no investment and nothing more than $50 in their bank account etc.
Problem is that most of these guys had backgrounds that allowed for risk taking. They had families who were not necessarily uber wealthy but were quite happy to subsidise them for often over a year for things like living expenses and keeping their car on the road. The narratives often don't mention these sorts of factors.
As a 17 year old I think this is awesome and stupid (at the same time). It's pretty eye opening that if a 17 year old can make an app and get bought for a lot of money, it's possible for anyone to.
As awesome as it is for the guy, this doesn't change the fact that a Summly got paid so much for a 2 employees and a founder. I mean the app hardly had traction and $30 million can you get you a nice army of talented mobile developers with signing bonus'. $30M really isn't justified in this case.
Congrats to the summly team, but it's also really sad how desperate and pathetic Yahoo is.
Bitter and jealous is no way to go through life. All of these guys executed on their project or have specialized knowledge. The pie is not zero-sum, and we live in the greatest, most fair time in human history.
The fairest time would be before [mass] land ownership, when anyone could stay with their tribal group or, should they choose, set off on their own and find land a-plenty to hunt/develop/farm as they see fit.
Hard times, sure; but that sort of situation seems most fair to me.
Well said. And I agree, sometimes when people don't realize it they are jealous and hurt. A guy I knew who was, in my experience working with him, a complete loser [1] was fired and got a job at another company and that company went public during the dot com boom and made him several million dollars. Meanwhile my company, and I personally, made no such million dollar moves. And it made me jealous and angry and I could have easily written this exact same article about how clueless that company was for hiring the loser, but the emotion was from my hurt. It took a while to get over that [2].
Yahoo may be clueless here, but we really can't say that until we see if they get $30M in value out of the deal or not. So really all we can say is that we cannot see how they came up with that valuation. Then watch what they do to see where it goes looking for insights into their thinking.
[1] I recognize that "loser" is relative to the job they were asked to do, as opposed to the individual. At the time I was much less forgiving of people who weren't in jobs they fit (or didn't fit) with.
[2] I am still incredulous but I don't get angry and jealous over it any more.
Right place right time seems to sum up all these people, and most of life is about that! But the only way to fight it is work your ass off and put yourself in a position to be at the right place at the right time (give yourself a platform for an investor to find you for a high acqui-hire price coughcough what happened here). For the many people who complain all the time on this site and critique but have never started / built or done anything except complain, you have no ground to stand on. Sitting on your computer complaining has (almost) never put someone in a right place, right time opportunity (except when blogs were first invented)
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!, much smarter than I'll ever hope to be in my life.
Sometimes you have to meet these people to believe they exist.
As a counterpoint, there are real sharp people of all ages. At local meetups, I've met a couple of retirees not orignally in the programming field, (medical doctor, aerospace tech) that have picked up Linux and programming well enough, I'd hire them to build software/hardware for me if they weren't pursuing their own projects. Or the older opera singer that helped me debug code while on a flight and joked, "Programming is music for those that can't sing...". I believe she could succeed in any field, scary, scary, scary smart.
In one of my projects, two of my team mates were in their mid forties. One of them was a mother of two (pointing this out because she didn't have lots of free time to learn new stuff). She didn't know Java, but she was probably a million times smarter than the rest of the team (4 more people, all in their early to mid twenties) combined. She didn't go to college, while the rest of the team came from pretty good schools, with good grades etc. Yet, she picked up things faster than any of us.
So yeah, some people are just sharp by nature - just like some people are cute, strong etc (not saying others can't develop, but it does give the "naturals" an advantage)
It's difficult for me to comment on something that you saw while in this room when I wasn't in the room, but I'm guessing that much of that had to do with the fact that the kid had actually put in the work and did the experimentation to build this community.
How many of the people in that room could say the same? What communities (or anything else) had they built? If they had built something, did they do it on their own as opposed to being someone brought in after the company was already successful? The kid probably ran circles around everyone because he was an expert (on this subject) among managers / developers / designers and anyone else who could probably do anything but run a successful community / e-commerce site.
I think about this sort of thing as a web developer. How many web developers who build client sites have actually built a successful site? How many designers really know how to design something which can sell? If you haven't done it, then you probably have no clue. But if you have been there, then you probably wouldn't be working for someone else either.
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.
Sometimes it's not that they are smarter it's just that they aren't constrained by current thinking, maybe even the pragmatism that comes from experience.
It's possible it's a big top line number (some press quotes even higher than $30mm), but in a way which actually makes sense.
Long earn-outs could be one factor. Giving engineers $1mm with 1/2/3/4 4-year earn-outs would even be on the low side. Doing the same with a founder would obviously be worth less (especially at Yahoo!, given how founders historically leave after acquisition)
SRI is presumably getting a big chunk for a new license. Maybe even a domain-exclusive license. That alone could be $0-100mm.
If it's equity, it is a lot better for Yahoo!
It's possible the founders and key employees have a weird incentive structure -- if they continue with the product and get 50mm users, they'd get a payout of an extra $10mm vs. otherwise, for instance. That kind of thing could add to the reported deal figure without adding much risk to Yahoo!. (I'm sure I could get a "if you turn Yahoo! into a $60b/yr business in the next 3 years, you can have an extra $100mm" on any deal.)
I'm not Marissa Mayer's biggest fan, but I don't think she's in the same vein as the previous leadership at Yahoo!, so presuming that they're throwing money away irrationally isn't the first thing I'd do.
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.
That movie should be required viewing for all ninth grade students. It's a more realistic depiction of the life for which they are being prepared than most of what they are fed.
It is so rare to see a reference to that wonderful, tragically short-lived show. Maybe it was just the right amount of pent-up angst, but that show spoke to me.
Let's ignore the hurt feelings that our employees will have about making a 17 year-old a millionaire.
The price tag for this company aside, am I the only one that detects a hint of jealousy in some of the comments that seem to imply "but he's too young to be a millionaire!"?
As someone who isn't remotely jealous for the kid (I'm happy for him actually), let's not pretend that he is an innovator. It's a link aggregator app, no different than pulse or others. In fact, the difference from Pulse is that its inferior, because it displays far less at a time. But that is my opinion, and I'm sure a lot of older folks like it better BECAUSE it displays less.
Kid: Go for it dude, and good luck.
Yahoo: WTF?? Why not just build your own version of this?
C'mon, this can't be the first time you've noticed that "innovation" has been overused to the point of meaninglessness in tech. "Disruption" doubly so. Don't harp on this kid, he is no less innovative than 95+% of "innovation" I've heard about in the last year.
Sometimes you just want to make sense of something that seems flabbergastingly stupid. Hell, it's Yahoo's money to burn, but it's not jealousy, it's confusion.
It would be interesting to read any sort of explanation, not that we'll get one.
But this acquisition is eerily reminiscent of about.me's and is getting a similar level of scorn from us.
Big, dead, web 1.0 company purchases virtually worthless startup for no apparent reason. Site is like almost any HN weekend project that pops up here on Mondays. Confused!
Normally I have a kneejerk reaction to someone calling someone else jealous. It always strikes me as someone projecting their own jealousy onto someone who very well may have legitimate criticism.
That having been said, it is a bit rich for Vibhu Norby to be concerned about the hurt feelings of employees by making a 17 year old a millionaire. That is an incredibly, incredibly, incredibly, narrow area of the social consequences of wealth to focus on. I have a hard time taking such a myopic point at face value.
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 motivation to build a valuable product of their own.
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?
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...
Yahoo just paid $30mm for an unknown technology and a fresh face to parade around, they would appreciate it if you didn't start poking holes in the narrative.
Actually it now looks more and more like some sort of elaborate kick-back scheme for the investors. "Your YHOO stock has sunk below the waterline, so here's something to sweeten the pot."
So you're assuming they didn't do their due diligence? That they threw $30MM at a company they knew nothing about? Has anyone in this thread gone so far as to even try the product?
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 as an entrepreneur and engineer within the HN community, but Nick D’Aloisio is considered just some lucky teenager.
The jealousy on display in the post and subsequent comments is, I think, glaringly obvious to anyone who would take a second to compare it to almost any other startup acquisition where the founder isn't a 17 year old.
I think the assumption is, rightly or wrongly, that the 17 year old kid is unlikely to have done anything the rest of us couldn't have done. Whereas if he were an older more experienced developer, he would get the benefit of the doubt that maybe he had special something on offer that was worth Yahoo buying.
At least, that's what's going through my head.
EDIT:
If the assumption that the Summly codebase doesn't actually contain anything worth $30 million is true, then this purchase is all about branding. It's about fooling Wall Street into thinking Yahoo is revitalized and focused on new technology and talent.
When IMHO, in reality, any sane investor should see this purchase as evidence that Yahoo is acting irrationally and I'd pull every dollar I had out of it.
Delicious in 2005 had a huge level of excitement surrounding it. It was also the beginnings of "Web 2.0" and tag-mania, and Delicious was positioned nicely. Paying $15M-$30M for Delicious in 2005 made sense. Like the OP, I don't really understand this purchase.
Frankly, I'm jealous and I don't see why that's a problem. Who wouldn't want $30m for an relatively-mediocre app? Is this not what a large portion of the entrepreneurs strive for: exits for inflated sums of money?
Delicious was actually the first social bookmarking site I was aware of (and used). So I'm under the impression that they were ahead of the curve. Saying it's just a social bookmarking site I guess is the same as saying it's just a wheel.
Unless I missed a particular story, I haven't seen Summly or Yahoo! announce the number is $30m. A reasonable point here was that relicensing from SRI for the core functionality of this app could be a large part of the purchase price. Also, not being totally familiar with taking VC money, it sounds reasonable to me that a significant portion of the monies is going back to the investor(s?).
While I think $15m would have been fine and generous, it doesn't shock me that someone important in Yahoo! got it stuck into their head that Summly was hitting on something that would "change the way people use news", a particularly neat fit if their intention is still to be the new homepage of the internet.
Readit News
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.
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." :)
I regret upvoting you prior to finishing your post.
This is bullshit. Of course we can do something about it. We're members of a society, and if we collectively think something is bullshit, we can do something about it.
I'm tired of people looking at these absurd inequities and shrugging and putting their head down and hoping maybe they'll get lucky too. In the meanwhile, these people at the top are ensuring that only people like them can continue to succeed.
Let's tax everyone who didn't earn their wealth. Let's put an end to dumb gambles that only reward people born at the top.
Right now, somewhere in the world, a child is being born in a farm house with a dirt floor. That child will grow up to die in a civil war before age 14.
Right now, somewhere in the world, there are people waiting in line to get food from a charity.
Right now, somewhere in the world, someone is suffering from a disease because they can't afford the cure.
Right now, somewhere in the world, a man goes to work carrying bricks for 10 hours a day to feed his 3 children.
Right now, somewhere in the world, a woman rides her bike to work in polluted air at 6am, to a factory job where she will work 12 hours a day putting together tablets that all the "unlucky people who have to work" trying to be dot com millionaires will buy one day on a whim and then discard less than 6 months later. And this is good, because she has a job.
The real interesting thing is these people generally don't complain much, not nearly as much as we do.
My life was very different from my Mom's. My Dad was a police officer and, though we weren't wealthy, I never went without. But, I got to grow up in a household where two things were valued - hard work and education. Consequently, I'd spend summers working in my Grandma and Grandpa's business - I had my first job (with an actual hourly wage) when I was 8 years old and worked every single summer and during Easter break.
Grandma never complained because she got herself in that mess and by golly, she'd get herself out. That sense of resilience carried through the generations and now, finally, my generation has the benefits of a middle class upbringing, combined with the work ethic that only comes from having been very poor one generation ago.
I think that it's wonderful you're concerned with people who are less fortunate and I respect what you wrote. However, poverty is a great motivator and frankly, I'd rather hire someone who knows hunger than someone who went to prep schools and fancy Universities with billion dollar endowments...
It's worth talking about. It's worth criticizing. It may not be worth obsessing over, but it is worth some portion of our attention.
It's laughable that a programmer would worry about how unfair the industry is on the top end. Do you get how lucky we are compared even to other engineers? To say nothing of service workers who work much harder for much less.
True, the world is unfair and it will remain so. But much of its unfairness is not a result of cruel nature, but as a result of our political actions. And I won't even go into what actions we should take to adress the issues you've raised, only to say that we should, and must act to change society, and that there's quite a lot we can do. We are not sheep.
Can the shareholders do anything about this? It seems incredibly stupid.
Fairness is a fictional manmade concept. That we expect some sort of fairness in life is solely due to our social contract. It's not fair to me that someone steals my car and thus we have systems in place to address that. However, nothing in our laws, norms, ethics, or philosophy says that people must get everything they deserve and no more or no less. Hence the concept of fairness does not apply to kids of billionaires or friends of politically connected.
I don't see this.
Fairness is about mathematical expectation. Fairness means people have equal opportunity (often within a restricted domain, or ignoring certain starting conditions). There is [nearly?] always going to be a locus in which fairness is asserted outside which it is no longer the case.
* The race is fair because both runners run the same distance. Ah but the ground is uneven.
* The race is fair because the ground and distance is even. Ah but one runner is poor and hasn't eaten for days and so is weak.
* The race is fair as the runners have been nourished equally, the distance and going are controlled. Ah, but this runner's family have a genetic disposition that enables them to run faster without tiring ... et cetera.
If mankind didn't exist a situation could still be fair or unfair for a creature - a combat test for leadership is unfair because this creature had a greater opportunity for nourishment and so grew stronger than the others. That of course doesn't mean it's the wrong test, just that each creature able to take the test doesn't have equal opportunity to achieve through their own efforts.
>It's not fair to me that someone steals my car //
Everyone had opportunity to steal a car, including you, that's fair!
I don't equate fairness and just deserts [ie justice]. For example two people can compete in a fair competition but the least deserving - the one who made the least effort or the one whose lifestyle is least noble - can win; the competition was still fair though.
Because other peoples' concepts of fairness certainly do consider the ultra-rich.
So not entirely manmade.
With the traditional bigCo job market in the tank there is a push right now to get young people interested in entrepreneurship so stories like these make excellent narrative supporting that.
So you hear stuff like "bootstrap your company!" , "Be your own boss!" , "Be a risk taker!" and this message is being pushed to everyone, including those on the lower rungs of society.
I know a few people who bootstrapped reasonably successful businesses and have been asked to give talks on how anybody can do it and how they started with no investment and nothing more than $50 in their bank account etc.
Problem is that most of these guys had backgrounds that allowed for risk taking. They had families who were not necessarily uber wealthy but were quite happy to subsidise them for often over a year for things like living expenses and keeping their car on the road. The narratives often don't mention these sorts of factors.
As awesome as it is for the guy, this doesn't change the fact that a Summly got paid so much for a 2 employees and a founder. I mean the app hardly had traction and $30 million can you get you a nice army of talented mobile developers with signing bonus'. $30M really isn't justified in this case.
Congrats to the summly team, but it's also really sad how desperate and pathetic Yahoo is.
I think that's far from truthful.
The fairest time would be before [mass] land ownership, when anyone could stay with their tribal group or, should they choose, set off on their own and find land a-plenty to hunt/develop/farm as they see fit.
Hard times, sure; but that sort of situation seems most fair to me.
I took it as looking objectively at the deal, something that no mainstream press coverage of the Summly aquisition I've seen does.
Yahoo may be clueless here, but we really can't say that until we see if they get $30M in value out of the deal or not. So really all we can say is that we cannot see how they came up with that valuation. Then watch what they do to see where it goes looking for insights into their thinking.
[1] I recognize that "loser" is relative to the job they were asked to do, as opposed to the individual. At the time I was much less forgiving of people who weren't in jobs they fit (or didn't fit) with.
[2] I am still incredulous but I don't get angry and jealous over it any more.
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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!, much smarter than I'll ever hope to be in my life.
Sometimes you have to meet these people to believe they exist.
So yeah, some people are just sharp by nature - just like some people are cute, strong etc (not saying others can't develop, but it does give the "naturals" an advantage)
How many of the people in that room could say the same? What communities (or anything else) had they built? If they had built something, did they do it on their own as opposed to being someone brought in after the company was already successful? The kid probably ran circles around everyone because he was an expert (on this subject) among managers / developers / designers and anyone else who could probably do anything but run a successful community / e-commerce site.
I think about this sort of thing as a web developer. How many web developers who build client sites have actually built a successful site? How many designers really know how to design something which can sell? If you haven't done it, then you probably have no clue. But if you have been there, then you probably wouldn't be working for someone else either.
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.
Long earn-outs could be one factor. Giving engineers $1mm with 1/2/3/4 4-year earn-outs would even be on the low side. Doing the same with a founder would obviously be worth less (especially at Yahoo!, given how founders historically leave after acquisition)
SRI is presumably getting a big chunk for a new license. Maybe even a domain-exclusive license. That alone could be $0-100mm.
If it's equity, it is a lot better for Yahoo!
It's possible the founders and key employees have a weird incentive structure -- if they continue with the product and get 50mm users, they'd get a payout of an extra $10mm vs. otherwise, for instance. That kind of thing could add to the reported deal figure without adding much risk to Yahoo!. (I'm sure I could get a "if you turn Yahoo! into a $60b/yr business in the next 3 years, you can have an extra $100mm" on any deal.)
I'm not Marissa Mayer's biggest fan, but I don't think she's in the same vein as the previous leadership at Yahoo!, so presuming that they're throwing money away irrationally isn't the first thing I'd do.
Bob Porter: [nods] Uh-huh.
Peter Gibbons: Wow.
E.g: http://dilbert.com/fast/2013-03-16/
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Let's ignore the hurt feelings that our employees will have about making a 17 year-old a millionaire.
The price tag for this company aside, am I the only one that detects a hint of jealousy in some of the comments that seem to imply "but he's too young to be a millionaire!"?
Kid: Go for it dude, and good luck.
Yahoo: WTF?? Why not just build your own version of this?
C'mon, this can't be the first time you've noticed that "innovation" has been overused to the point of meaninglessness in tech. "Disruption" doubly so. Don't harp on this kid, he is no less innovative than 95+% of "innovation" I've heard about in the last year.
It would be interesting to read any sort of explanation, not that we'll get one.
But this acquisition is eerily reminiscent of about.me's and is getting a similar level of scorn from us.
Big, dead, web 1.0 company purchases virtually worthless startup for no apparent reason. Site is like almost any HN weekend project that pops up here on Mondays. Confused!
That having been said, it is a bit rich for Vibhu Norby to be concerned about the hurt feelings of employees by making a 17 year old a millionaire. That is an incredibly, incredibly, incredibly, narrow area of the social consequences of wealth to focus on. I have a hard time taking such a myopic point at face value.
"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...
Thank you
The jealousy on display in the post and subsequent comments is, I think, glaringly obvious to anyone who would take a second to compare it to almost any other startup acquisition where the founder isn't a 17 year old.
At least, that's what's going through my head.
EDIT:
If the assumption that the Summly codebase doesn't actually contain anything worth $30 million is true, then this purchase is all about branding. It's about fooling Wall Street into thinking Yahoo is revitalized and focused on new technology and talent.
When IMHO, in reality, any sane investor should see this purchase as evidence that Yahoo is acting irrationally and I'd pull every dollar I had out of it.
I don't think nearly as many people here are jealous as they are aghast.
While I think $15m would have been fine and generous, it doesn't shock me that someone important in Yahoo! got it stuck into their head that Summly was hitting on something that would "change the way people use news", a particularly neat fit if their intention is still to be the new homepage of the internet.