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How To Build a $30M Startup Without Spending Any of Your Money
SpicyBrownMustard writes "Forbes has an article that follows up on the news/hype/buzz/hysteria surrounding the acquisitions of Summly and Wavii by Yahoo and Google, respectively. It's a rather comical write up with a rather sad ring of truth to it, especially that we now know that Summly was little more than a collection of existing technologies built by others. The article says, 'Stress that you have celebrity relationships, and that your app was built by a team that has several hundred successful apps in Google Play and IOS App Store. It doesn’t matter that those aren’t your team members, it is still true.' Summarization technologies are the 'big new thing' apparently. Don't miss out — make your summarization app today and hop onboard that gravy train!"
So far, the hype around Yahoo's new CEO has been just that. So far, she's made a teenager a millionaire, turned the website and mail monochrome, and now this.
For every summarisation site that is sold for even a relatively decent amount, there are probably thousands that never made it past the initial bandwidth hit that the server fell over with.
Also, the article itself is really full of things that aren't likely to happen. Read it for a giggle or a smirk, but beyond that, it's not a formally laid out plan to make buckets of cash - and forbes smashes loads of advertising on the site (once you even get to the article that is) that is annoying.
If you ask me, Forbes is the only real one making the real kerduckets here with a wishy-washy story that displays more ads than I have fingers and toes...
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
I read the article and all of the steps. I'm pretty sure I can make a go of it. I just have one question. What's summarization technology?
It doesn’t matter that those aren’t your team members Yes it does misrepresentation is usually considered to be fraud!
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
convince slashdot that as a waning influence on technology and the internet thats rationed off its core competencies to other players like microsoft, you'll need your own slashdot icon for stories from now on.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Film at eleven!!
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
Even if it is a hodgepodge of tech - the simple fact is Yahoo! Itself would have never been able to figure it out, how to build it. That's the problem, large companies can't innovate (let's just assume that Summry is an innovation to keep the discussion simple). So, even though we find it simple to build in theory, Yahoo couldn't pull it off internally. That, that is what to take from this.
So wait, from your description alone, it sounds like reading /. on mobile is the same as a summarization technology. The summarization is just done by "editors" (god I'm trying not to laugh) "editing" (must... keep... straight... face...) articles already submitted as summaries of pre-existing articles posted elsewhere on other sites. So if I repackaged an RSS feed of m.(/.).org and "mobilized" it so it works even "better" on twitter, I could be bought out for a gaba-za-billion dollahs? Must find fake software front now!
.
On the other hand, as for the need for connections, didn't someone named Bill do something like this? -- Get a contact at IBM through his rich mother...
-- tell them he has the software which they'll need
-- go out and buy someone else's premade software that does what he claims he'd be able to do
-- make buckets of money
[refs, please see any history you care to find on ms and how they landed their bonanza contract for IBM]
"My skills are worthless. I will be much more financially successful by abandoning my ethics, falsifying relationships for the purposes of shmoozing, siphoning the hard work of others and deceptively whoring my ill-gotten 'products' for the ultimate payout to live in luxury for the rest of my life without having to lift a finger. I got mine, fuck the rest of you suckers!"
Oh, and it *way* helps if you've won the genetic lottery and are born into connections as well.
But corporations are wonderful and Jesus will use capitalism and tax cuts to save us, right?
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
Wow, 20 million. And I can't raise even 0.18% of that for my project. :-(
http://slashdot.org/journal/373333
Mod me down, I deserve it.
It really takes the cake when I see things like this. "was little more than a collection of existing technologies built by others." don't we all build off of others?
Paul: Father... father, the sleeper has awakened! - Dune
Glorified money laundering is exactly what Yahoo's investment in this app amounts to. It's the tech world equivalent of investing millions of dollars in concept art for the purposes of avoiding tax. Like concept art (Damien Hirst et al), everyone knows it's a crock but the art world keeps the pretence up because the gravy train is too good.
Peace,
Andy.
Say what you will about Summly, but Wavii is not just a hodgepodge of existing tech. They spent three years building their own natural language processing technology, and their team probably has a better understanding of machine learning than most of Google's engineers. It's not hard to see why Google would be interested.
Don't forget out of control military spending, creating more enemy terrorists every time we take out innocent bystanders with drone strikes around the globe, propping up dictators with our financial support and military protection, corporate bail-out fraud and abuse, offshore tax haven fraud and abuse, physicians and hospitals that bill patients into bankruptcy - regardless of insurance renumeration - but refuse to continue treatment and let patients die after the money is gone, government meddling in the relationships between private citizens, unbalanced influence of wealthy lobbying groups - yes, this country is sick and dying.
in the business world, there is value in pulling together existing technologies and providing a useful service. no one is claiming the kid is an Einstein. just that he created something useful. something that yahoo may have been trying to do themselves for awhile.
anyways, even if you just chalk the sale up to $30M of advertising/branding publicity, there's value in that too. Message: "we are expanding, adding new tech, getting cutting edge, we are a hip cool place to work or to pitch your start up tech"
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
In fact, a lot of money is simply dreamt into existence nowadays. This is how it works:
And nothing of value was gained. Only lost. For society, that is.
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
That's okay, it all balances out: We create more of them with drone strikes, they create more of us with bombs set off in civilian population centers.
Pro tip: When two people, or groups of people, are locked in a decades long deathmatch, beating the hell out of each other, it's generally retarded to attribute all responsibility for the continued violence on only one side. In your view, Western governments have some sort of moral obligation to embrace peaceful dialogue with terrorist groups, yet we never hear much about Al Qaeda's moral obligation to embrace peaceful dialogue with the people they've declared jihad against. Why is that, do you think?
I'm perfectly happy to agree that Western governments take many "anti-terrorist" steps that are counterproductive to the aim of "ending terrorism." It just seems curious to me that all the blame seems one sided in this equation. I wonder at what point terrorist groups earn proportional blame for their role in continuing to attack civilian targets for political reasons?
Bill Gates was the classic example of "right time, right place". IBM had absolutely no clue (along with everyone else) that there was going to be a vast market for PCs, or else they wouldn't have let some college drop-out get near their products, regardless of who his parents had dinner with.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Welfare fraud and abuse, Medicare fraud and abuse, Medicaid fraud and abuse, food stamp fraud and abuse, Social Security fraud and abuse, illegal immigaration fraud and abuse, myriad welfare programs fraud and abuse, rampant inner city crime, massive deficits and crushing debt, homosexual marriage, on demand infanticide, corrupt politicians----this Country is sick and dying.
Dear Baby Jesus, please let the free market come and save us.
PS can you smite Iran and the Czech Republic too.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Google buys something innovative. Yahoo buys something that superficially resembles what google bought, with the innovation removed.
This space intentionally left blank
PS can you smite Iran and the Czech Republic too.
I think you mean Chechnya rather than the Czech Republic, but I figure that we can take 'em both out without much trouble.
Love,
Your military
That is all.
"If I have seen further it is by standing on ye sholders of Giants."
American chicks can't themselves around all that
Back in 1994 i recall an internal demo on British Telecoms intranet that had document summarizing capabilities.
WOOOOSH
"You can justify anything by putting it in quotes, adding a famous name and making it a sig" - Albert Einstein
Generally, it's exactly the opposite. You buy the execution and not the idea. Ideas are a dime a dozen and about as protectable as a tin of tuna in a wild cat den.
Just the title suggests there is another high-tech bubble inflating around smartphones apps...
Any URL that starts forbes.com/sites/ is an unedited blog by some bozo - it's not journalistic content produced by Forbes. It can be any old shit, and usually is.
http://rocknerd.co.uk