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For me, at least, the rich kid part casts doubt over everything, including things we typically take for granted in stories about startups. Did he actually writ

by just2n 14y ago

For me, at least, the rich kid part casts doubt over everything, including things we typically take for granted in stories about startups. Did he actually write the software, or did he leverage his wealth to have others build it? The fact that he started "coding" at 12 and then built something at 15, then had it finely polished at 17 seems a bit odd. That's not even enough time to properly learn the basics of engineering, let alone research heavily into such a heady field that requires an enormous amount of base knowledge to begin with. It's not really clear here. Your average story about a garage or basement-based hacker coming up with an independent app or game that is ground breaking and/or makes millions is more impressive because the person didn't have the means to hire talent to build the idea, meaning they had to do it themselves or convince others that the idea was good enough to invest in (either with their money or with their time in exchange for equity). Substitute money for the talent and hard work in that scenario and it's like coasting downhill. Just about anything considered reasonable is fairly straightforward to get done. It makes everything seem a lot less impressive. Building Facebook with $10,000,000,000 in the bank wouldn't be impressive because it wasn't something you hacked up in a few weekends, instead you'd come up with ideas and throw money at people until a product appeared. I mean we certainly don't have that sense of awe when Google or Microsoft announces a new project every now and then. It feels like that's what this article is trying to build -- sensationalizing the person, his age, etc to make it feel more awe-inducing, when the reality might just be that it's just not that impressive at all.

berkut 14y ago
I disagree - I starting learning C++ at 14, and I had shareware apps for Windows I was making a fair amount of money with by the time I was 17 back in the late 90s... That included learning how the POP3 and SMTP protocols worked to write email clients and obviously socket programming.
- just2n 14y ago
  I started learning C at 11 and at 13-14 had software developed that assisted in reverse engineering and debugging of applications. These days that knowledge seems fairly trivial to me, and it isn't fundamentally complicated. Now with more understanding of theory and algorithms, it would be a lot easier to build much more useful tools like something that is as simple as dataflow analysis -- something I couldn't have fathomed at 14. Or binary instrumentation. Similarly, I had done socket work and reversing proprietary protocols, and I didn't consider any of that groundbreaking (nor was it substantially marketable). To walk into a field like AI and summarization which isn't infantile and outdo Ph.D. level experts at their own theory -- that's something you didn't do, nor did Nick, nor does anyone. It just doesn't happen, and hasn't in any subject with a similar depth of specialization as far as I'm aware. Not to say one can't make useful things and/or learn a lot very rapidly. I tend to understand the young, inexperienced people building games that sell well due to the frameworks available. And I understand how shareware could sell decently in a market that's widely open with lots of low-hanging fruit. But this situation is very different. That he built an application that grabbed parts of text and produced a shortened version by making some very rudimentary guesses about what's important perhaps. What's described -- not a chance.
- kybernetyk 14y ago
  Pretty much the same for me. +- a few years. 5 years is a lot of time. More so when you're going to high school and have a lot of free time. Yes, with 3 years of programming experience your code won't be too polished/elegant but it will be sufficient to make the application work. (Especially if you can use some 3rd party frameworks like the kid in this article possibly did.)
citricsquid 14y ago
The story really isn't that complex. He had been programming since 12. At 15 he had an idea, he developed trimit[1] and it was mildly successful. Due to his age he got press, then an investor[2] became interested in him and the product, they stuck in a few hundred thousand. The product evolved into a service for content generation and made deals with News Corp and a few other big publishers. More investors got involved, they put together an executive team[3] from industry veterans and then built an app (with Nick involved). They launched, got press because of Nicks age and because they'd got a few celebrities invested / endorsing the app. Then they sold. The original app certainly wasn't what is launched today and I doubt Nick is laying claim to the current iteration of the app but he did build the initial application and had involved in the current version, which is more than enough to rank him higher than people who had parents buy them into success. Zuckerberg built the initial Facebook but it certainly isn't most of his code running now, same deal here. [1] http://www.fastcompany.com/1772823/15-year-old-creator-trimit-app-makes-regular-old-entrepreneurs-seem-slackers http://www.fastcompany.com/1772823/15-year-old-creator-trimi... [2] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16306742 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16306742 [3] http://summly.com/about.html http://summly.com/about.html
- just2n 14y ago
  Definitely not, but the NYT article really places emphasis on him being a developer, a "programming whiz", and calling the algorithm "his". This might just be misleading out of ignorance or just as a side effect of trying to build hype. It's certainly massively unsubstantiated, especially given the back story and that the polished version came after acquiring a competent team. I am certain that any founder of any startup that has grown at least moderately would not consider the core application "his algorithm", and most certainly would not acknowledge such publicly. I highly doubt Zuckerberg would say that Facebook (as it is now) is his code. But even with more knowledge of what's happened, I think my sentiment stands. If you can't easily afford to build/fund a team, getting a project to a point that you can convince people to contribute in some way without relying on affluence or age-based hype-potential is significantly more impressive.

by just2n 14y ago

berkut 14y ago

I disagree - I starting learning C++ at 14, and I had shareware apps for Windows I was making a fair amount of money with by the time I was 17 back in the late 90s... That included learning how the POP3 and SMTP protocols worked to write email clients and obviously socket programming.

just2n 14y ago
I started learning C at 11 and at 13-14 had software developed that assisted in reverse engineering and debugging of applications. These days that knowledge seems fairly trivial to me, and it isn't fundamentally complicated. Now with more understanding of theory and algorithms, it would be a lot easier to build much more useful tools like something that is as simple as dataflow analysis -- something I couldn't have fathomed at 14. Or binary instrumentation. Similarly, I had done socket work and reversing proprietary protocols, and I didn't consider any of that groundbreaking (nor was it substantially marketable). To walk into a field like AI and summarization which isn't infantile and outdo Ph.D. level experts at their own theory -- that's something you didn't do, nor did Nick, nor does anyone. It just doesn't happen, and hasn't in any subject with a similar depth of specialization as far as I'm aware. Not to say one can't make useful things and/or learn a lot very rapidly. I tend to understand the young, inexperienced people building games that sell well due to the frameworks available. And I understand how shareware could sell decently in a market that's widely open with lots of low-hanging fruit. But this situation is very different. That he built an application that grabbed parts of text and produced a shortened version by making some very rudimentary guesses about what's important perhaps. What's described -- not a chance.
kybernetyk 14y ago
Pretty much the same for me. +- a few years. 5 years is a lot of time. More so when you're going to high school and have a lot of free time. Yes, with 3 years of programming experience your code won't be too polished/elegant but it will be sufficient to make the application work. (Especially if you can use some 3rd party frameworks like the kid in this article possibly did.)

citricsquid 14y ago

The story really isn't that complex. He had been programming since 12. At 15 he had an idea, he developed trimit[1] and it was mildly successful. Due to his age he got press, then an investor[2] became interested in him and the product, they stuck in a few hundred thousand. The product evolved into a service for content generation and made deals with News Corp and a few other big publishers. More investors got involved, they put together an executive team[3] from industry veterans and then built an app (with Nick involved). They launched, got press because of Nicks age and because they'd got a few celebrities invested / endorsing the app. Then they sold. The original app certainly wasn't what is launched today and I doubt Nick is laying claim to the current iteration of the app but he did build the initial application and had involved in the current version, which is more than enough to rank him higher than people who had parents buy them into success. Zuckerberg built the initial Facebook but it certainly isn't most of his code running now, same deal here. [1] http://www.fastcompany.com/1772823/15-year-old-creator-trimit-app-makes-regular-old-entrepreneurs-seem-slackers http://www.fastcompany.com/1772823/15-year-old-creator-trimi... [2] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16306742 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16306742 [3] http://summly.com/about.html http://summly.com/about.html

just2n 14y ago
Definitely not, but the NYT article really places emphasis on him being a developer, a "programming whiz", and calling the algorithm "his". This might just be misleading out of ignorance or just as a side effect of trying to build hype. It's certainly massively unsubstantiated, especially given the back story and that the polished version came after acquiring a competent team. I am certain that any founder of any startup that has grown at least moderately would not consider the core application "his algorithm", and most certainly would not acknowledge such publicly. I highly doubt Zuckerberg would say that Facebook (as it is now) is his code. But even with more knowledge of what's happened, I think my sentiment stands. If you can't easily afford to build/fund a team, getting a project to a point that you can convince people to contribute in some way without relying on affluence or age-based hype-potential is significantly more impressive.