7 ms·

From the article, 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,

by mtoddh 14y ago

From the article, 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!"?

jgrahamc 14y ago
I read the entire thing as someone being jealous and trying to explain that away by picking at the deal.
- mattmanser 14y ago
  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!
  - nefasti 14y ago
    Heck, I read HN and had no idea about Summly, went trough my radar.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - freyr 14y ago
    "Big, dead, web 1.0 company" You do realize, Yahoo remains one of the most-visited sites on the Internet? It drives an enormous amount of traffic. By our standards, Yahoo may not be an exciting or innovative company. But it's in no way dead.
_chrismccreadie 14y ago
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.
- jimzvz 14y ago
  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?
  - _chrismccreadie 14y ago
    That's their job though. Don't forget, the face of that new hype machine is also an employee at Yahoo now. I am sure if he stays at Yahoo long enough he will also be asked to integrate other acquisitions into software he is working on. You make a valid point about Yahoo being able to produce similar results in house but the software alone doesn't get you a client base, publicity (certainly not the same level of publicity the Summify purchase has received) and the 3 guys they have hired. So what if he's only 17? If he has good ideas about how to take Yahoo's mobile news presence forward then the problem should disappear. Of course if he's a poor developer then other employees have the right to be frustrated but it should only be based on his competency and not what he is worth.
  - mgkimsal 14y ago
    More to the point, I've no doubt that some Yahoo employees have likely investigated this sort of tech and built prototypes, only to get shot down by middle management. I've no special insight at Yahoo (had a couple friends work there) but for any sufficiently large company with employees as talented as Yahoo (YUI, YQL, etc) this has surely happened. So... to have your idea/prototype/demo shot down, then later $30m spent on essentially what you'd offered the company for free... that's gotta be frustrating. Again, pure speculation that this had happened, but I'd be surprised if no one internal to Yahoo had floated/demos something like this before. They certainly could have bought some of the hype (stephen fry, etc) during a rebrand. But... instead, they buy from outside vs using and promoting internally. Once more - just speculation, but that's were I would suspect frustration would come from.
JPKab 14y ago
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?
- cbs 14y ago
  let's not pretend that he is an innovator 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.
cbs 14y ago
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.
Evbn 14y ago
He can't be too young to be a millionaire, as he was born a millionaire.

by mtoddh 14y ago

jgrahamc 14y ago

I read the entire thing as someone being jealous and trying to explain that away by picking at the deal.

mattmanser 14y ago
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!
- nefasti 14y ago
  Heck, I read HN and had no idea about Summly, went trough my radar.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- freyr 14y ago
  "Big, dead, web 1.0 company" You do realize, Yahoo remains one of the most-visited sites on the Internet? It drives an enormous amount of traffic. By our standards, Yahoo may not be an exciting or innovative company. But it's in no way dead.

_chrismccreadie 14y ago

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.

jimzvz 14y ago
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?
- _chrismccreadie 14y ago
  That's their job though. Don't forget, the face of that new hype machine is also an employee at Yahoo now. I am sure if he stays at Yahoo long enough he will also be asked to integrate other acquisitions into software he is working on. You make a valid point about Yahoo being able to produce similar results in house but the software alone doesn't get you a client base, publicity (certainly not the same level of publicity the Summify purchase has received) and the 3 guys they have hired. So what if he's only 17? If he has good ideas about how to take Yahoo's mobile news presence forward then the problem should disappear. Of course if he's a poor developer then other employees have the right to be frustrated but it should only be based on his competency and not what he is worth.
- mgkimsal 14y ago
  More to the point, I've no doubt that some Yahoo employees have likely investigated this sort of tech and built prototypes, only to get shot down by middle management. I've no special insight at Yahoo (had a couple friends work there) but for any sufficiently large company with employees as talented as Yahoo (YUI, YQL, etc) this has surely happened. So... to have your idea/prototype/demo shot down, then later $30m spent on essentially what you'd offered the company for free... that's gotta be frustrating. Again, pure speculation that this had happened, but I'd be surprised if no one internal to Yahoo had floated/demos something like this before. They certainly could have bought some of the hype (stephen fry, etc) during a rebrand. But... instead, they buy from outside vs using and promoting internally. Once more - just speculation, but that's were I would suspect frustration would come from.

JPKab 14y ago

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?

cbs 14y ago
let's not pretend that he is an innovator 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.

cbs 14y ago

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.

Evbn 14y ago

He can't be too young to be a millionaire, as he was born a millionaire.