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12 Year Old Gets $6.5M for Gaming Company
Bayscribe writes "A Silicon Valley company co-founded by a 12-year-old has just raised $6.5 million in venture capital. PlaySpan, based in Santa Clara, Calif. says it offers game publishers a technology that lets users make payments and shop for other items. It calls itself the first "publisher-sponsored in-game commerce network." Arjun Mehta, a 6th grader, says on his Web site that he is passionate about software that can make the game experience more "rewarding," and that he started the company last year in his garage. He paid for it from earnings made from selling online game items he won."
i smell another dot com bubble bursting
From the article:
dupe or not - that kid has just got to be an insufferable, annoying little snot.
a bit like "doogie howser MD" only real, remember that?
Not only is this story almost certainly a dupe, it's also over 4 months old.
In other words, could someone check whether that company still exists?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The linkage in the article is incorrect. The linked article talks about a startup (Elementeo) founded by a 13 year old kid named Anshul Samar, and NOT about PlaySpan, supposedly founded by 12 year old named Arjun Mehta.
Sloppy.
The actual article is here.
Apparently the kid isn't an actual co-founder, nor the CEO. It's his father running everything, the kid is just a sensationalist marketing tool.
Really, I highly doubt these kids even know a tiny fraction about the technical aspects of what they're selling or how it's done. They'll get lots of money for sure, and also learn a whole lot along the way, but they're definitely not the brains or management behind the operation at the moment.
This one turned 13 before I got to the article.
I wonder if this is what my mom thought I could have been doing with my time when she kept yelling at me for wasting all my time touching myself when I was 12?
I'll have to ask her sometime.
thats right, I rarely use capitals. deal with it. but don't mistake my laziness for stupidity
Makes slightly more sense with the correct link..
http://venturebeat.com/2007/09/19/playspan-run-12-year-old-ceo-gets-65m-in-venture-capital/
Which is not to say that investing $6.5M in a company run by a 12yo makes much sense but stranger things have happened at sea.. or so they say.
It sounds like there's some speculation that the kid doesn't really have that much to do with the company at all. Except for being an effective way to generate press. Nobody pays much attention if some random guy gets a few million dollars for a gaming idea. But a 12-year old...that's news!
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." -Albert Einstein
A comment says The story about 12 year old co-founder is a big oversell...I know because I broke the story on funding two days ago. The CEO Karl Mehta and Arjun's dad is the real guy behind it...arjun just came up with part of the idea for it, and is not really involved with the business per se. Arjun's mention on the site is a gimmick which will be rectified soon...the release doesn't mention him and for good reason. Venture beat is investigating it, turns out the it is a hoax. Father using his son to make millions.
The chinese gold farmers do this since years, isn't there already a patent for this business method?
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
Has anyone drilled down to find out more info on the kid's background?
I have done a little, and no, it's not the kid in a vacuum making these
accomplishments. He's 12 years old and smart, not a super genius born with 142
man years of VC experience. That's not built into the genetic code or injected
in the pop tarts he eats. But his support network does have this VC experience.
You could have achieved similar things as a child, if:
- You lived in Silicon Valley
- Had a support network with VC pitching experience
- Had family with connections to above said group
- Had family that planned for your achievements
I've read gushing stories of young entrepreneurs that seem outlandish or super human
in accomplishment for their age. But, when I dive down into the details, more often than not, I find cases of ready made systems that will not let the child fail.
Stories of a young furniture magnate with 2 warehouses and a booming business, only to find that his father owns 12 warehouses as is accomplished in the furniture business. The media loves portraying these kids in a light of pure achievement with no mention of their contacts, support and guiding but that is dishonest reporting.
I guess it makes for a less interesting story when you see the looming shadow of a father pulling strings for the child like a puppet behind the curtain.
The child seems happy enough with the attention though.
The company seems to be aiming to sell their product / service to people who run MMORGs. I a few MMORGs start using it, then you could have interesting situations where people are trading objects in one world for ones in another. This could lead to inflation and exchange rate fluctuations between the two worlds much as you currently get between countries. I wonder what their plan is to counter this.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Should read: "12-year old takes credit for his father's entrepreneurship and garners headlines for his father's company, father rewards extra publicity with new ferrari which kid will subsequently wreck during driver's ed"
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I couldn't help but notice that Bayscribe's (the submitter) e-mail handle is VentureBeat. So I'm assuming he wrote the article that the writeup links to? If so, that needs to be more clear in the writeup. It's not enough that the e-mail address is a tell. He isn't submitting this article as a disinterested third party who finds it interesting; he most likely wants to drive traffic to his site.
Kind of explains a lot, actually.
How very Web 2.0 Bubble...
Well, there goes 5 minutes I'll never get back.
I know his father Karl Mehta. He hails from Bombay/India and is a known 'hack' in Silicon Valley devising all sorts of get-rich-quick schemes with his VC brother Miten Mehta (go google). This appears to be one of his yet-another pipedreams. His previous idea was Tradeits.com (www.tradeits.com) which didnt reach anywhere. More here: http://center.spoke.com/info/p2iETB/KarlMehta
Please don't waste a min of your time on this crap. Arjun, his son, has no clue about what's going on - his father is using him for the dramatic effect.
Molten rock? Luxury! We used to have to bring our own interstellar dust in a bucket and hope that we could pile up enough to have it hold together under its own gravity!
P.P.S. I'm doing Science and I'm still alive.