6 ms·

The 17-Year-Old That Yahoo Paid $30M Was Licensing His Startup's Core Technology

45 points by esalazar 14y ago

ed56 14y ago
Really? "Despite speculation on the Internet that Summly only licensed its summarizing technology from SRI International, an independent research institute, Mr. D’Aloisio said the technology was developed by Summly and that the company owned 100% of the intellectual property behind the service." http://blogs.wsj.com/tech-europe/2013/03/26/what-does-30-million-buy-you/ http://blogs.wsj.com/tech-europe/2013/03/26/what-does-30-mil...
- illuminate 14y ago
  Do they define licensed as owned (for this particular purpose)? http://summly.com/technology.html http://summly.com/technology.html Summly's internal team partnered closely with SRI in building our app. Innovations from SRI International have created new industries, billions of dollars of marketplace value, and lasting benefits to society—touching our lives every day. SRI, a nonprofit research and development institute based in Silicon Valley, brings its innovations to the marketplace through technology licensing, new products, and spin-off ventures. Government and business clients come to SRI for pioneering R&D and solutions in computing and communications, chemistry and materials, education, energy, health and pharmaceuticals, national defense, robotics, sensing, and more. Visit sri.com for more information. "Summly came to SRI International with a core concept to solve the information overload problem, which is especially challenging for mobile devices because of their limited screen size," said David Israel, Ph.D., program director in the Artificial Intelligence Center at SRI International. "Building on SRI's expertise in machine learning and natural language processing, the Summly team is creating a new type of content, providing understandable and relevant summaries tailored for mobile devices."
  - anigbrowl 14y ago
    a new type of content, providing understandable and relevant summaries tailored for mobile devices I'm waiting for them to patent it and then sue newspapers for using headlines.
- billirvine 14y ago
  Summly's help desk: https://summly.desk.com/customer/portal/articles/761930-what-was-the-role-of-sri-international-in-building-the-app- https://summly.desk.com/customer/portal/articles/761930-what... Launch coverage: http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/01/summly-app-nick-daloisio-video-interview/ http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/01/summly-app-nick-daloisio-vi... http://gigaom.com/2012/10/31/summly-wants-to-make-news-summaries-cool-ok/ http://gigaom.com/2012/10/31/summly-wants-to-make-news-summa... http://www.theverge.com/2012/11/1/3583720/summly-nick-d-aloisio http://www.theverge.com/2012/11/1/3583720/summly-nick-d-aloi... "Summly uses a combination of natural language processing and 'rocket science' from the famed scientists at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) to pick out only what's important from news articles"
jonknee 14y ago
... And if it was from SRI it means it probably didn't work nearly as well as advertised. Even with Apple's help Siri is still a joke.
- mikeash 14y ago
  Works well for me.
joonix 14y ago
I like how the last sentence of the article completely contradicts all the points made in the rest of the body.
- richardjordan 14y ago
  Yes indeed. That was needless pandering so we wouldn't think they were trying to be mean to a teenager.
richardjordan 14y ago
Well, I said just yesterday on a thread that I hoped someone would do a follow the money in this deal as there's a lot that's strange about it. Doesn't mean that there's necessarily anything nefarious but it does mean that of we live in an age where investigative reporting is not completely dead it makes sense for someone to at least poke around this a bit and find out all the details. Yahoo doesn't get the technology from the transaction (summly doesn't own it). Yahoo doesn't get any particular talent on the transaction (there isn't a team of tech wizards they're buying for that 30million). They're not getting a huge number of users (tons of apps have a million users - still a drop in the ocean on Yahoo's own user numbers). So what is this deal all about?
- citricsquid 14y ago
  http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/appsblog/2012/nov/01/summly-iphone-app-news http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/appsblog/2012/nov/01/su... "Publishers have been tremendously supportive, and we've already signed a deal with News Corporation," says D'Aloisio. That could be it?
  - richardjordan 14y ago
    Yahoo doesn't have to pay 30million to do a deal with newscorp
- zschallz 14y ago
  Could it be that this is a move to get Yahoo more attention? 30 million is not that expensive for advertising, and pretty much every local news show covered the story of the amazing 17 year old start up founder who was acquired by Yahoo.
  - sageikosa 14y ago
    Wag the dog?
    - joonix 14y ago
sakopov 14y ago
This sounds more and more like everyone involved in this at Yahoo did zero research prior to making this acquisition. Well, either that or Yahoo was determined to kill any competition before possibly rolling out with a similar product. Regardless, it puts Yahoo in an awkward position.
keeptrying 14y ago
What if this is just one big fuckup on Yahoo's part and they can't admit to it because they'll look like idiots? I.e. they somehow forgot to check the actual technology. The more I read about this, the more I think this could be the case.
citricsquid 14y ago
By the way: None of this is meant to take anything away from what founder Nick D'Aloisio did with Summly. That guy is a pure hustler, and he earned every penny of his millions. How can they say that after suggesting: Maybe Yahoo has decided spending $30 million to give one of their disappointing startups a safe landing is a way to get on their good side. If the deal was for Yahoo to gain favour with the investors (lining their pockets; Nick cashing out being an irrelevant side effect) how on earth did he "earn every penny"? If that is true then he was in the right place at the right time with the right investors.
- ryanSrich 14y ago
  >"earn every penny"? >"he was in the right place at the right time with the right investors" What's the difference between these two?
  - citricsquid 14y ago
    If you count his work as including acquiring the investors then I guess you're right, that might explain the word "hustler". If you count his work as being building the original application, creating a brand and then being involved with the business that was sold then the company being bought only because of the investors means his work was immaterial to the sale.
- xradionut 14y ago
  Looking at his pedigree and the Scalzi difficulty scale, he was in the right place when he was born.
fnordfnordfnord 14y ago
Is this what some people like to call "killing it"?
msencenb 14y ago
This is a pretty poor attack on a startup that managed to get itself acquired for more than most of us will ever sell a company for. As Peter Thiel says there are two kinds of companies: companies who go from 0 to 1 (SpaceX, Tesla, maybe Google) and companies who go from 1 to n (globalization of technology). Summly clearly fits into the 1 to n bucket, but so do a lot of other companies. Would people be pissed if Github got acquired? I see no outcry for a $100 million dollar round of funding for a company that is built upon open source software. How is github any different than Summly from a 'renting' of technology perspective?
- jiggy2011 14y ago
  Github has revenue and provides a core service to many software devs.
- 18pfsmt 14y ago
  I almost down-voted you, but then I thought about it and I think you have a point worthy of discussion. The core of Github is open source, which allows for interoperability and confidence, but what they have built on top is proprietary and community-engaging. Just like managing email infrastructure, there is a lot of nuance and domain expertise that comes from experience only. Come to think of it, it seems a lot of open source technology is so loosely built (configurable/ flexible), that it requires serious expertise to actually run it.
- sergiosgc 14y ago
  «How is github any different than Summly from a 'renting' of technology perspective?» Are you kidding? Github has global visibility, and is the absolute leader in the open source software hosting vertical. From a "renting" of technology perspective, they are not that different. From a "large customer base" perspective, which was also mentioned in the article, they are complete opposites.
andrewhillman 14y ago
This confuses me... "The acquisition was led by Yahoo HR boss Jackie Reeses." HR is leading investment decisions at Yahoo? I looked up this person and she is based in New York and her title is EVP People and Development at Yahoo!
- evan_ 14y ago
  Makes sense if it was an acqui-hire.
ary 14y ago
Forgive me for having to ask this, but can anyone link me to a cogent argument made here on HN as to why this particular story inspires so much fixation? After the Nth front page story here I'm still having trouble understanding why everyone is so wrapped up in it. Supposedly the Spock-like logical minds of HN are immune to the wunderkind mass media story hook; so what gives?
- rayiner 14y ago
  Spock like what? HN is more like "Sports Fans" from SNL. This story is our version of "should they have recruited LeBron straight out of HS?!"
- ruswick 14y ago
  It is for that very reason that everyone on HN is so fixated on it: any competent person can see that something is amis here, and the outrage on HN is a reaction to the reductionism and hyperbole of the media, which eats this shit up. Of all places, HN is probably the most likely to call BS on this sale.
brador 14y ago
His father is a VP at Morgan Stanley. Deal was done from day 1. Stop over analyzing, it's not a regular startup, it's not playing the same ballgame you or I play. No value was required. The usualy rules do not apply. Daddy hooked his fish.
- jiggy2011 14y ago
  Smart rich people typically don't get rich by just giving away large piles of cash to the children of other smart rich people.
  - brador 14y ago
    Public stock money isn't from smart rich people.
    - jiggy2011 14y ago
      You think it was just straight embezzlement?
- joonix 14y ago
  You didn't explain anything besides "his father is a VP at Morgan Stanley." The rest is just hyperbole and sensationalism. Explain how VP of Morgan Stanley => Yahoo buying startup for $30M. There are hundreds of VPs at Morgan Stanley.
- TDL 14y ago
  If you had said he was a MD at Morgan I would have raised an eyebrow, as is, VPs are a dime a dozen. Furthermore, it seems as though his father is on one of Morgan's commodity desks. If he is in fact a trader, this means he has no influence on the I banking side (where deals are done.) Edit: "his father works in commodities for Morgan Stanley..." http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/9885632/Nick-DAloisio-Britains-17-year-old-app-entrepreneur.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/9885632/Nick-DAloisio-... And now I'm going to do something actually productive.
- omonra 14y ago
nlh 14y ago
I have a question that's been bugging me for the past few days (threads ;) : Has anyone actually _confirmed_ that Yahoo paid $30M? As in, seen an official statement or reviewed the actual deal docs? Because as of now it seems like the only actual source for that number is Kara Swisher on AllThingsD, and that's her saying "sources tell her". I ask because I wonder if one of the big twists in this story is that, perhaps, Yahoo didn't actually pay $30M. Maybe they paid $10M. Or $1M. And perhaps this whole shebang is a big, big PR blitz -- that's working spectacularly. Folks pay $2M for 30 seconds of Super Bowl ad time. This story has, so far, gotten Yahoo a LOT more than 30 seconds of exposure. It's everywhere (my extremely non-technical and non-nerdy biz partner emailed me an AP news link this morning - he's my "masses" filter). One question I have is - what would the consequences be if they did leak an incorrect amount? I mean, would shareholders have a right to be upset? "You leaked to the world that we paid $30M and in reality, we...we...got a better deal? Oh. Cool." It reminds me of a joke I have with some friends about an acquisition someone did a few years ago. They announced the deal as being priced at "Under $50M", and the news reported and celebrated this $50M acquisition. Now friends say things like "I, too, happen to have Under $50M in my wallet at this very moment!" ;)
albut 14y ago
Maybe Yahoo shareholders should sue the Yahoo board? It looks like this acquisition is about transferring Yahoo company cash to Summly, so that at least part of Summly's shareholders can give some of it back to people on Yahoo board or management who approved the deal, thus misappropriating the Yahoo shareholders' money.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
okor 14y ago
Don't hate.
tdr 14y ago
KeenSkim will soon launch an iPhone version, after developing it's own in-house tech. https://www.keenskim.com/static/KeenSkim_iPhone_app.htm https://www.keenskim.com/static/KeenSkim_iPhone_app.htm - sign-up for reminder when ready https://www.keenskim.com/ https://www.keenskim.com/

45 points by esalazar 14y ago

ed56 14y ago

Really? "Despite speculation on the Internet that Summly only licensed its summarizing technology from SRI International, an independent research institute, Mr. D’Aloisio said the technology was developed by Summly and that the company owned 100% of the intellectual property behind the service." http://blogs.wsj.com/tech-europe/2013/03/26/what-does-30-million-buy-you/ http://blogs.wsj.com/tech-europe/2013/03/26/what-does-30-mil...

illuminate 14y ago
Do they define licensed as owned (for this particular purpose)? http://summly.com/technology.html http://summly.com/technology.html Summly's internal team partnered closely with SRI in building our app. Innovations from SRI International have created new industries, billions of dollars of marketplace value, and lasting benefits to society—touching our lives every day. SRI, a nonprofit research and development institute based in Silicon Valley, brings its innovations to the marketplace through technology licensing, new products, and spin-off ventures. Government and business clients come to SRI for pioneering R&D and solutions in computing and communications, chemistry and materials, education, energy, health and pharmaceuticals, national defense, robotics, sensing, and more. Visit sri.com for more information. "Summly came to SRI International with a core concept to solve the information overload problem, which is especially challenging for mobile devices because of their limited screen size," said David Israel, Ph.D., program director in the Artificial Intelligence Center at SRI International. "Building on SRI's expertise in machine learning and natural language processing, the Summly team is creating a new type of content, providing understandable and relevant summaries tailored for mobile devices."
- anigbrowl 14y ago
  a new type of content, providing understandable and relevant summaries tailored for mobile devices I'm waiting for them to patent it and then sue newspapers for using headlines.
billirvine 14y ago
Summly's help desk: https://summly.desk.com/customer/portal/articles/761930-what-was-the-role-of-sri-international-in-building-the-app- https://summly.desk.com/customer/portal/articles/761930-what... Launch coverage: http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/01/summly-app-nick-daloisio-video-interview/ http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/01/summly-app-nick-daloisio-vi... http://gigaom.com/2012/10/31/summly-wants-to-make-news-summaries-cool-ok/ http://gigaom.com/2012/10/31/summly-wants-to-make-news-summa... http://www.theverge.com/2012/11/1/3583720/summly-nick-d-aloisio http://www.theverge.com/2012/11/1/3583720/summly-nick-d-aloi... "Summly uses a combination of natural language processing and 'rocket science' from the famed scientists at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) to pick out only what's important from news articles"

jonknee 14y ago

... And if it was from SRI it means it probably didn't work nearly as well as advertised. Even with Apple's help Siri is still a joke.

mikeash 14y ago
Works well for me.

joonix 14y ago

I like how the last sentence of the article completely contradicts all the points made in the rest of the body.

richardjordan 14y ago
Yes indeed. That was needless pandering so we wouldn't think they were trying to be mean to a teenager.

richardjordan 14y ago

Well, I said just yesterday on a thread that I hoped someone would do a follow the money in this deal as there's a lot that's strange about it. Doesn't mean that there's necessarily anything nefarious but it does mean that of we live in an age where investigative reporting is not completely dead it makes sense for someone to at least poke around this a bit and find out all the details. Yahoo doesn't get the technology from the transaction (summly doesn't own it). Yahoo doesn't get any particular talent on the transaction (there isn't a team of tech wizards they're buying for that 30million). They're not getting a huge number of users (tons of apps have a million users - still a drop in the ocean on Yahoo's own user numbers). So what is this deal all about?

citricsquid 14y ago
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/appsblog/2012/nov/01/summly-iphone-app-news http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/appsblog/2012/nov/01/su... "Publishers have been tremendously supportive, and we've already signed a deal with News Corporation," says D'Aloisio. That could be it?
- richardjordan 14y ago
  Yahoo doesn't have to pay 30million to do a deal with newscorp
zschallz 14y ago
Could it be that this is a move to get Yahoo more attention? 30 million is not that expensive for advertising, and pretty much every local news show covered the story of the amazing 17 year old start up founder who was acquired by Yahoo.
- sageikosa 14y ago
  Wag the dog?
  - joonix 14y ago

sakopov 14y ago

This sounds more and more like everyone involved in this at Yahoo did zero research prior to making this acquisition. Well, either that or Yahoo was determined to kill any competition before possibly rolling out with a similar product. Regardless, it puts Yahoo in an awkward position.

keeptrying 14y ago

What if this is just one big fuckup on Yahoo's part and they can't admit to it because they'll look like idiots? I.e. they somehow forgot to check the actual technology. The more I read about this, the more I think this could be the case.

citricsquid 14y ago

By the way: None of this is meant to take anything away from what founder Nick D'Aloisio did with Summly. That guy is a pure hustler, and he earned every penny of his millions. How can they say that after suggesting: Maybe Yahoo has decided spending $30 million to give one of their disappointing startups a safe landing is a way to get on their good side. If the deal was for Yahoo to gain favour with the investors (lining their pockets; Nick cashing out being an irrelevant side effect) how on earth did he "earn every penny"? If that is true then he was in the right place at the right time with the right investors.

ryanSrich 14y ago
>"earn every penny"? >"he was in the right place at the right time with the right investors" What's the difference between these two?
- citricsquid 14y ago
  If you count his work as including acquiring the investors then I guess you're right, that might explain the word "hustler". If you count his work as being building the original application, creating a brand and then being involved with the business that was sold then the company being bought only because of the investors means his work was immaterial to the sale.
xradionut 14y ago
Looking at his pedigree and the Scalzi difficulty scale, he was in the right place when he was born.

fnordfnordfnord 14y ago

Is this what some people like to call "killing it"?

msencenb 14y ago

This is a pretty poor attack on a startup that managed to get itself acquired for more than most of us will ever sell a company for. As Peter Thiel says there are two kinds of companies: companies who go from 0 to 1 (SpaceX, Tesla, maybe Google) and companies who go from 1 to n (globalization of technology). Summly clearly fits into the 1 to n bucket, but so do a lot of other companies. Would people be pissed if Github got acquired? I see no outcry for a $100 million dollar round of funding for a company that is built upon open source software. How is github any different than Summly from a 'renting' of technology perspective?

jiggy2011 14y ago
Github has revenue and provides a core service to many software devs.
18pfsmt 14y ago
I almost down-voted you, but then I thought about it and I think you have a point worthy of discussion. The core of Github is open source, which allows for interoperability and confidence, but what they have built on top is proprietary and community-engaging. Just like managing email infrastructure, there is a lot of nuance and domain expertise that comes from experience only. Come to think of it, it seems a lot of open source technology is so loosely built (configurable/ flexible), that it requires serious expertise to actually run it.
sergiosgc 14y ago
«How is github any different than Summly from a 'renting' of technology perspective?» Are you kidding? Github has global visibility, and is the absolute leader in the open source software hosting vertical. From a "renting" of technology perspective, they are not that different. From a "large customer base" perspective, which was also mentioned in the article, they are complete opposites.

andrewhillman 14y ago

This confuses me... "The acquisition was led by Yahoo HR boss Jackie Reeses." HR is leading investment decisions at Yahoo? I looked up this person and she is based in New York and her title is EVP People and Development at Yahoo!

evan_ 14y ago
Makes sense if it was an acqui-hire.

ary 14y ago

Forgive me for having to ask this, but can anyone link me to a cogent argument made here on HN as to why this particular story inspires so much fixation? After the Nth front page story here I'm still having trouble understanding why everyone is so wrapped up in it. Supposedly the Spock-like logical minds of HN are immune to the wunderkind mass media story hook; so what gives?

rayiner 14y ago
Spock like what? HN is more like "Sports Fans" from SNL. This story is our version of "should they have recruited LeBron straight out of HS?!"
ruswick 14y ago
It is for that very reason that everyone on HN is so fixated on it: any competent person can see that something is amis here, and the outrage on HN is a reaction to the reductionism and hyperbole of the media, which eats this shit up. Of all places, HN is probably the most likely to call BS on this sale.

brador 14y ago

His father is a VP at Morgan Stanley. Deal was done from day 1. Stop over analyzing, it's not a regular startup, it's not playing the same ballgame you or I play. No value was required. The usualy rules do not apply. Daddy hooked his fish.

jiggy2011 14y ago
Smart rich people typically don't get rich by just giving away large piles of cash to the children of other smart rich people.
- brador 14y ago
  Public stock money isn't from smart rich people.
  - jiggy2011 14y ago
    You think it was just straight embezzlement?
joonix 14y ago
You didn't explain anything besides "his father is a VP at Morgan Stanley." The rest is just hyperbole and sensationalism. Explain how VP of Morgan Stanley => Yahoo buying startup for $30M. There are hundreds of VPs at Morgan Stanley.
TDL 14y ago
If you had said he was a MD at Morgan I would have raised an eyebrow, as is, VPs are a dime a dozen. Furthermore, it seems as though his father is on one of Morgan's commodity desks. If he is in fact a trader, this means he has no influence on the I banking side (where deals are done.) Edit: "his father works in commodities for Morgan Stanley..." http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/9885632/Nick-DAloisio-Britains-17-year-old-app-entrepreneur.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/9885632/Nick-DAloisio-... And now I'm going to do something actually productive.
omonra 14y ago

nlh 14y ago

I have a question that's been bugging me for the past few days (threads ;) : Has anyone actually _confirmed_ that Yahoo paid $30M? As in, seen an official statement or reviewed the actual deal docs? Because as of now it seems like the only actual source for that number is Kara Swisher on AllThingsD, and that's her saying "sources tell her". I ask because I wonder if one of the big twists in this story is that, perhaps, Yahoo didn't actually pay $30M. Maybe they paid $10M. Or $1M. And perhaps this whole shebang is a big, big PR blitz -- that's working spectacularly. Folks pay $2M for 30 seconds of Super Bowl ad time. This story has, so far, gotten Yahoo a LOT more than 30 seconds of exposure. It's everywhere (my extremely non-technical and non-nerdy biz partner emailed me an AP news link this morning - he's my "masses" filter). One question I have is - what would the consequences be if they did leak an incorrect amount? I mean, would shareholders have a right to be upset? "You leaked to the world that we paid $30M and in reality, we...we...got a better deal? Oh. Cool." It reminds me of a joke I have with some friends about an acquisition someone did a few years ago. They announced the deal as being priced at "Under $50M", and the news reported and celebrated this $50M acquisition. Now friends say things like "I, too, happen to have Under $50M in my wallet at this very moment!" ;)

albut 14y ago

Maybe Yahoo shareholders should sue the Yahoo board? It looks like this acquisition is about transferring Yahoo company cash to Summly, so that at least part of Summly's shareholders can give some of it back to people on Yahoo board or management who approved the deal, thus misappropriating the Yahoo shareholders' money.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

okor 14y ago

Don't hate.

tdr 14y ago

KeenSkim will soon launch an iPhone version, after developing it's own in-house tech. https://www.keenskim.com/static/KeenSkim_iPhone_app.htm https://www.keenskim.com/static/KeenSkim_iPhone_app.htm - sign-up for reminder when ready https://www.keenskim.com/ https://www.keenskim.com/