How To Build a $30M Startup Without Spending Any of Your Money 120
SpicyBrownMustard writes "Forbes has an article that follows up on the news/hype/buzz/hysteria surrounding the acquisitions of Summly and Wavii by Yahoo and Google, respectively. It's a rather comical write up with a rather sad ring of truth to it, especially that we now know that Summly was little more than a collection of existing technologies built by others. The article says, 'Stress that you have celebrity relationships, and that your app was built by a team that has several hundred successful apps in Google Play and IOS App Store. It doesn’t matter that those aren’t your team members, it is still true.' Summarization technologies are the 'big new thing' apparently. Don't miss out — make your summarization app today and hop onboard that gravy train!"
A Black Eye for Female CEOs (Score:3, Interesting)
So far, the hype around Yahoo's new CEO has been just that. So far, she's made a teenager a millionaire, turned the website and mail monochrome, and now this.
Re:A Black Eye for Female CEOs (Score:4, Insightful)
So far, the hype around Yahoo's new CEO has been just that. So far, she's made a teenager a millionaire, turned the website and mail monochrome, and now this.
As much as I'm unimpressed by her tenure so far is "CEO brought in by floundering corporation with dysfunctional management manages dysfunctionally, flounders, N=1" really useful data on "Female CEOs"?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
N=3
Carly Fiorina
Meg Whitman
When Carly Fiorina left HP, it was worth half of what it was worth with she arrived.
While Meg Whitman was CEO of eBay, revenues went up by 200000%.
There is good reason to consider Carly as incompetent. I see no reason to see Meg as incompetent. They are not interchangeable just because they are both women.
Re: (Score:3)
N=3
Carly Fiorina Meg Whitman
When Carly Fiorina left HP, it was worth half of what it was worth with she arrived.
While Meg Whitman was CEO of eBay, revenues went up by 200000%.
There is good reason to consider Carly as incompetent. I see no reason to see Meg as incompetent. They are not interchangeable just because they are both women.
Since joining HP, Meg Whitman has seen intricately been involved in every major transaction for HP. Meanwhile, the stock has halved its valuation and the blame game on purchasing has been rampant. She has no credibility in actual technology corporations any more than Fiorino. EBay is a glorified Flea Market.
Re: (Score:1)
'EBay is a glorified Flea Market'
Seriously what the fuck? A flea market is a physical location with tables and people handing over solid cash. eBay is a massively scaled, hugely busy, purely online auction and trading platform.
It may not be a good website, it may be an aggravating platform, but your criticism should be at least realistic. eBay is of course an 'actual technology corporation' and she ran it better than the average CEO.
HP is now a fuckup, and no mistake, but it was a slow-burning fuckup, and y
Re: (Score:1)
What is most significant about these three isn't that they are women, or even Republican women, although their background may be more significant for the latter, and as for Libertarians supporting either major party and Obama's security and privacy policies supporting the 1%, both parties are being leveraged by the rich.
No, the issue with these three and many more is that they are financial people and not technologists. They sit on multiple Boards of Directors of corporations where all they know is quart
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Yahoo seems to have done something with this purchase that they haven't been able to do in a long time: get some positive press. They couldn't have bought this kind of press coverage for the millions they've spent on this kid.
Gender has nothing to do with it. In this case it was age.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
the woman decided that ALL of her teleworkers should come in and work in the office EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY, after she had to work from home after pregnancy. what a crazy bitch!
Re:A Black Eye for Female CEOs (Score:4, Informative)
the woman decided that ALL of her teleworkers should come in and work in the office EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY,
No she didn't. The telecommuting is being phased out slowly, and employees have until June to transition to full time office work.
after she had to work from home after pregnancy.
Telecommuting and maternity leave are two different issues.
Re:A Black Eye for Female CEOs (Score:4, Informative)
Yahoo seems to have done something with this purchase that they haven't been able to do in a long time: get some positive press. They couldn't have bought this kind of press coverage for the millions they've spent on this kid.
Gender has nothing to do with it. In this case it was age.
Exactly. And that's the whole point so many people seem to be missing here: we nerds KNOW this "acquihire" was bogus and stupid, but the mainstream media and the 99% of non-geek population saw all the headlines about Yahoo! buying some hip startup (from a 17 year old genius no less!), said to themselves "that's cool" and MOVED ON to other issues.
IOW, Yahoo! bought "coolness" for 30 millions. I say it was a good deal.
Re:A Black Eye for Female CEOs (Score:5, Interesting)
Exactly. And that's the whole point so many people seem to be missing here: we nerds KNOW this "acquihire" was bogus and stupid, but the mainstream media and the 99% of non-geek population saw all the headlines about Yahoo! buying some hip startup (from a 17 year old genius no less!), said to themselves "that's cool" and MOVED ON to other issues.
IOW, Yahoo! bought "coolness" for 30 millions. I say it was a good deal.
Yahoo rented mild "coolness" for all of 3days or so at most in the main demographics before they, as you put it, "MOVED ON to other issues". Anyone with half a brain realized it was a dumb move. I say it was a crappy deal; Bottomless coffers be damned. Even my non-tech savvy mom said, "They paid how many millions for live-bookmarks like in Firefox? It's making the news because it's stupid, right? If I had stock there I'd sell it before they mess up big." -- While she was somewhat wrong, it does some crappy summarizing thing too (but folks who publish RSS feeds do usually provide a quick headline / summary in the titles), she was mostly right, IMO. She said it reminded her of when she got rid of AOL and then they became AOL-Warner Cable (she meant time-warner), since she doesn't use yahoo mail anymore.
All the anecdotal evidence I've come by points to their "coolness" was equivalent to tripping over nothing like a klutz then saying, "I meant to do that", except it cost $30 million to do so.
prior Art in 94/95 (Score:2)
Re:A Black Eye for Female CEOs (Score:5, Insightful)
Your post reminded me of this: http://xkcd.com/385/ [xkcd.com]
Re: (Score:2)
...and the male Yahoo! CEOs have had a good run?
Re:A Black Eye for Female CEOs (Score:5, Funny)
Call me superficial, but lack of a matte option would be a deal breaker for me.
What Forbes didn't mention... (Score:5, Interesting)
For every summarisation site that is sold for even a relatively decent amount, there are probably thousands that never made it past the initial bandwidth hit that the server fell over with.
Also, the article itself is really full of things that aren't likely to happen. Read it for a giggle or a smirk, but beyond that, it's not a formally laid out plan to make buckets of cash - and forbes smashes loads of advertising on the site (once you even get to the article that is) that is annoying.
If you ask me, Forbes is the only real one making the real kerduckets here with a wishy-washy story that displays more ads than I have fingers and toes...
Re: (Score:2)
Forbes isn't REALLY handing out a plan for getting rich quick? I...am...shocked!
Re: (Score:3)
I guess his attitude would a "Libertarian" one by today's standards.
Rich people are almost all fucking libertarians: they want absolute freedom to enjoy their money, and not pay taxes. Gosh.
Re:What Forbes didn't mention... (Score:5, Interesting)
Summly seems to have been the biggest "boy genius" swindle of the 21st century so far.
Basically, his Dad is a director at the investment arm of one of the biggest banks in the world. He got a number of well known names (Steven Fry, Ashton Kutcher, the Murdochs) to invest in the app and use their popularity (or in Murdoch's case, media wing) to publicise it.
The company itself wasn't run by the kid, it was run by a silicon valley veteran who again, his dad got on board. The complicated development (the article processing etc.) was done by a 3rd party, and the Android version was being developed by a 3rd party also. Internally, there was not much left to do apart from the iOS front end for the outsourced back end, and given that he had another veteran silicon valley dev working as a developer there (and I believe more developers on top) I'm not entirely sure whether the kid himself actually even wrote a single line of code.
His mother is a lawyer, who I understand works for, or has done some work for Yahoo too prior to the acquisition. That probably helped things along too.
So you're right, I'd say these things aren't likely to happen for most people. Unless your dad just happens to be a director at a major investment bank and just happens to know some of the most wealthy people around who also just happen to have strong media platforms to hype your product from that is.
Re:What Forbes didn't mention... (Score:5, Insightful)
So you're right, I'd say these things aren't likely to happen for most people. Unless your dad just happens to be a director at a major investment bank and just happens to know some of the most wealthy people around who also just happen to have strong media platforms to hype your product from that is.
Business has always worked that way. Why do you think CEOs get paid so much? Connections, leverage, wealth, politics -- once you're bigger than a small local company, those are the real differentiators, and behind virtually every "successful" startup is a similar story. Names and details may change, but the plot is the same.
And that's not new -- it was just as true 50, 100, 200, and 2000 years ago. Wealthy Babylonian merchants got so for the same reasons, as did ancient Greek, Roman, Chinese, etc ... you name it, that's how it has always worked.
Re:What Forbes didn't mention... (Score:5, Interesting)
Sure, this is why ability to network is more important in succeeding in the business world than any ability to produce anything useful. But hopefully we can at least stop pretending the Summly story is something it wasn't and recognise it for what it was - a kid born with a silver spoon, and no particular stand out talent, having his career set up for him very publicly by his already wealthy father.
Re: (Score:1)
Putting a cap on market capitalization of Yahoo would have prevented such scams
Re: (Score:2)
Your post sounds exactly like what some faceless prole to incompetent to even manage to be born correctly would write...
After all, totally scientific statistics, complete with numbers and intimidating diagrams, will easily demonstrate how rare and exceptional the talent for entering the world through the correct uterus is. Where most people are already making irresponsible choices even before they've grown a brain stem, this kid was already achieving at or above the 99th percentile as a blastocyst!
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
So, as usual, your skills are worth precisely dick. It's about whoever's vagina you were lucky enough to pop out of.
Warren Buffet refers to it as the "Ovarian Lottery"
Re: (Score:3)
Maybe that's why we spend so much time trying to get back in one.
I think Sigmund Freud would like a word with you.
Re: (Score:1)
The quickest way to financial wealth - be born to rich parents
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The rich get richer, that's just how it is.
Only if you don't believe in the redistribution of wealth. Progressive taxes are there for a reason, and that reason is to force rich people to contribute back into the society that made them rich. Astonishingly, relying on their charity doesn't work, whatever libertarian cheerleaders like to think.
I know socialism's unfashionable, but it's not impossible to achieve. And no, it doesn't have to involve a violent revolution. After WW2, Britain became pretty socialist (for a while) because we wanted to ma
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Glorified money laundering is exactly what Yahoo's investment in this app amounts to. It's the tech world equivalent of investing millions of dollars in concept art for the purposes of avoiding tax. Like concept art (Damien Hirst et al), everyone knows it's a crock but the art world keeps the pretence up because the gravy train is too good.
Peace,
Andy.
Re: (Score:2)
Well in any case it's too late to start building a solution now. Inventions (and I'm using that term in a very broad sense) tend to be invented by multiple people and companies within months of one another. If you start now and have something working six months from now it will be too late.
The same thing goes for other obvious ideas such as for example a Bitcoin market that actually performs well or an in-store e-payment system that works well. Some other startup is already 10+ months ahead of you on those.
Re: (Score:2)
You could try making a summarisation service or a Bitcoin market or an in-store payment service that's so awesome it'll take the market by storm even against large established competitors. But then it has to be super awesome and perfect.
Yeah, just like FaceBook!
(I'm going for funny here, just in case there's any doubt.)
Re: (Score:2)
Well, social networks are a different sort of beast because the networks are not the product. They people on them are the product. If for whatever reason popular people chose to spend their time on social network X then the ordinary, less popular people will flock to that social network too.
Summarization technology? (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3)
I read the article and all of the steps. I'm pretty sure I can make a go of it. I just have one question. What's summarization technology?
It's an algorithm for taking a readable piece of text that challenges your attention span, excising chunks of it with the same care and attention to meaning that spambots bring to the task of composing text, and then spitting it onto your smartphone; because 'Mobile' is where the sweet, sweet, VC sugar is.
Not that I'm a skeptic of this fine and worthy invention or anything.
/. on mobile==Summarization technology? + MS also? (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Fraud? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
There are ways around it. Fire them an email once asking a really simple question that can be answered in three words. If you get the to reply, BAM they helped you with your app - even if you already had that bit done. There are many ways around such fraud mate - just be choosey with your words. "You collaborated with them..." for example, rather than "He wrote the entire app..." Court-case avoided - and the same outcome.
Re: (Score:2)
If you say it in the right business-speak it isn't fraud... I.e., "Our organization leverages the talents of a world-wide network of contributors whose software is installed on millions of devices daily!" == "We use open source software." I'm sure you can come up with more.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
convince slashdot that as a waning influence on technology and the internet thats rationed off its core competencies to other players like microsoft, you'll need your own slashdot icon for stories from now on.
Audiences love a good trainwreck, usually more than they love a well-maintained and tediously reliable train.
Bullshitter makes lots of money off suckers (Score:4, Funny)
Film at eleven!!
Re: (Score:2)
Generally, it's exactly the opposite. You buy the execution and not the idea. Ideas are a dime a dozen and about as protectable as a tin of tuna in a wild cat den.
Misses the point (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Arguably it misses the point in a slightly different way: it is alleged [businessinsider.com] that the 'summly' acquisition was more or less a sideshow to the purchase, from SRI International(who built the actual summarization technology, and also a little toy called 'Siri' among a variety of other projects, some quite interesting and high powered), of some of the related technology and patents.
Still not something that Yahoo could develop internally(hence the buying of it); but SRI isn't exactly a lean and hungry startup, just a
Re: (Score:3)
This is true. But there is a VERY simple solution to this problem: fire your HR staff. All of them.
Nobody in the 21st century needs HR staff. All of the "work" they do can be covered by managers actually doing their jobs, in the same way managers in small firms do, and by utilizing one of many tech solutions for any admin (or just scrap a lot of the admin, it's mostly work for work's sake. HR staff had to be appearing to do something, after all).
With
Repeat after me: (Score:2)
"My skills are worthless. I will be much more financially successful by abandoning my ethics, falsifying relationships for the purposes of shmoozing, siphoning the hard work of others and deceptively whoring my ill-gotten 'products' for the ultimate payout to live in luxury for the rest of my life without having to lift a finger. I got mine, fuck the rest of you suckers!"
Oh, and it *way* helps if you've won the genetic lottery and are born into connections as well.
Re: (Score:2)
That is exactly how it has always been.
Why does that surprise you?
This is why some people don't believe the hard work will make you wealthy lie.
Re: (Score:2)
On welfare you would have a lot less.
I don't work that hard, I worked harder in lower paying jobs. I am happy with what I make, I don't mind paying taxes for society, I do mind the implication that I am not rich just because I am lazy.
If they took more as you made more that would be fine, but it appears that once you make enough they take less. Look at capital gains vs income rates for the clearest evidence of that.
Re: (Score:2)
I make more in IT and still, have less because they take more.
Look, I'm a socialist, but even I don't suggest we have tax rates of more than 100%.
Re: (Score:2)
Hard work can still make you "wealthy", depending upon how you personally define the term. I am living proof, and so are several of my friends, all of us in our 30s and 40s. Use your evenings and weekends wisely, take your network and your work skills (and/or you favorite hobby) and turn them into a small side business. Continue to grow that, or build additional business as bandwidth permits. If you are lucky you will flip one (I never did), but eventually the long tails of income will add up to the poi
Re: (Score:2)
Rubbish.
Yes, the more you make, the higher rate you pay on the money over a given threshold. But if we tax income up to say, $50,000 at 32% and tax income above $50,000 at 35%--which is how the tax code works (though I'm making up the actual percentages and thresholds)--and you make $50,000, you pay $16,000 in taxes and take home $34,000. If you got a $1 a year raise to $50,001, you pay 32% on the $50,000 (that's $16,000) and 35% of the $1 (or $0.35). Which means you
Money goes where money wants to go (Score:1)
Wow, 20 million. And I can't raise even 0.18% of that for my project. :-(
http://slashdot.org/journal/373333 [slashdot.org]
Mod me down, I deserve it.
Money does not want to go anywhere (Score:2)
In fact, a lot of money is simply dreamt into existence nowadays. This is how it works:
Re: (Score:1)
Don't we all build off of others. (Score:1)
Article is a bit unfair on Wavii (Score:2)
Say what you will about Summly, but Wavii is not just a hodgepodge of existing tech. They spent three years building their own natural language processing technology, and their team probably has a better understanding of machine learning than most of Google's engineers. It's not hard to see why Google would be interested.
Standard operating procedure for both companies (Score:2)
it's about business value, not tech innovation (Score:2)
in the business world, there is value in pulling together existing technologies and providing a useful service. no one is claiming the kid is an Einstein. just that he created something useful. something that yahoo may have been trying to do themselves for awhile.
anyways, even if you just chalk the sale up to $30M of advertising/branding publicity, there's value in that too. Message: "we are expanding, adding new tech, getting cutting edge, we are a hip cool place to work or to pitch your start up tech"
Re: (Score:2)
I suspect there was some short-term value in the publicity. At best, they got an install base.
See Isaac Newton for your answer here (Score:2)
Being British-Australian helps (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
What does that mean?
And who is British-Australian?
Re: (Score:2)
And who is British-Australian?
It means he whinges but he has a tan.
Bubble (Score:2)
It's not "Forbes", it's "some blogger" (Score:2)
Any URL that starts forbes.com/sites/ is an unedited blog by some bozo - it's not journalistic content produced by Forbes. It can be any old shit, and usually is.
Re:sick and dying (Score:4, Insightful)
But corporations are wonderful and Jesus will use capitalism and tax cuts to save us, right?
Re: (Score:2)
Don't forget out of control military spending, creating more enemy terrorists every time we take out innocent bystanders with drone strikes around the globe, propping up dictators with our financial support and military protection, corporate bail-out fraud and abuse, offshore tax haven fraud and abuse, physicians and hospitals that bill patients into bankruptcy - regardless of insurance renumeration - but refuse to continue treatment and let patients die after the money is gone, government meddling in the r
Re: (Score:1)
That's okay, it all balances out: We create more of them with drone strikes, they create more of us with bombs set off in civilian population centers.
Pro tip: When two people, or groups of people, are locked in a decades long deathmatch, beating the hell out of each other, it's generally retarded to attribute all responsibility for the continued violence on only one side. In your view, Western governments have some sort of moral obl
Re: (Score:2)
Welfare fraud and abuse, Medicare fraud and abuse, Medicaid fraud and abuse, food stamp fraud and abuse, Social Security fraud and abuse, illegal immigaration fraud and abuse, myriad welfare programs fraud and abuse, rampant inner city crime, massive deficits and crushing debt, homosexual marriage, on demand infanticide, corrupt politicians----this Country is sick and dying.
Dear Baby Jesus, please let the free market come and save us.
PS can you smite Iran and the Czech Republic too.
Re: (Score:2)
PS can you smite Iran and the Czech Republic too.
I think you mean Chechnya rather than the Czech Republic, but I figure that we can take 'em both out without much trouble.
Love,
Your military
Re: (Score:2)
WOOOOSH