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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 ag

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.

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.