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How To Build a $30M Startup Without Spending Any of Your Money

Posted by Soulskill on from the take-two-they're-small dept.

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!"

27 of 120 comments (clear)

  1. A Black Eye for Female CEOs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:A Black Eye for Female CEOs by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

      As much as I'm unimpressed by her tenure so far is "CEO brought in by floundering corporation with dysfunctional management manages dysfunctionally, flounders, N=1" really useful data on "Female CEOs"?

    2. Re:A Black Eye for Female CEOs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Yahoo seems to have done something with this purchase that they haven't been able to do in a long time: get some positive press. They couldn't have bought this kind of press coverage for the millions they've spent on this kid.

      Gender has nothing to do with it. In this case it was age.

    3. Re:A Black Eye for Female CEOs by rasmusbr · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Your post reminded me of this: http://xkcd.com/385/

    4. Re:A Black Eye for Female CEOs by hjf · · Score: 2, Insightful

      the woman decided that ALL of her teleworkers should come in and work in the office EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY, after she had to work from home after pregnancy. what a crazy bitch!

    5. Re:A Black Eye for Female CEOs by Cigarra · · Score: 3, Informative

      Yahoo seems to have done something with this purchase that they haven't been able to do in a long time: get some positive press. They couldn't have bought this kind of press coverage for the millions they've spent on this kid.

      Gender has nothing to do with it. In this case it was age.

      Exactly. And that's the whole point so many people seem to be missing here: we nerds KNOW this "acquihire" was bogus and stupid, but the mainstream media and the 99% of non-geek population saw all the headlines about Yahoo! buying some hip startup (from a 17 year old genius no less!), said to themselves "that's cool" and MOVED ON to other issues.

      IOW, Yahoo! bought "coolness" for 30 millions. I say it was a good deal.

      --
      I don't have a sig.
    6. Re:A Black Eye for Female CEOs by VortexCortex · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Exactly. And that's the whole point so many people seem to be missing here: we nerds KNOW this "acquihire" was bogus and stupid, but the mainstream media and the 99% of non-geek population saw all the headlines about Yahoo! buying some hip startup (from a 17 year old genius no less!), said to themselves "that's cool" and MOVED ON to other issues.

      IOW, Yahoo! bought "coolness" for 30 millions. I say it was a good deal.

      Yahoo rented mild "coolness" for all of 3days or so at most in the main demographics before they, as you put it, "MOVED ON to other issues". Anyone with half a brain realized it was a dumb move. I say it was a crappy deal; Bottomless coffers be damned. Even my non-tech savvy mom said, "They paid how many millions for live-bookmarks like in Firefox? It's making the news because it's stupid, right? If I had stock there I'd sell it before they mess up big." -- While she was somewhat wrong, it does some crappy summarizing thing too (but folks who publish RSS feeds do usually provide a quick headline / summary in the titles), she was mostly right, IMO. She said it reminded her of when she got rid of AOL and then they became AOL-Warner Cable (she meant time-warner), since she doesn't use yahoo mail anymore.

      All the anecdotal evidence I've come by points to their "coolness" was equivalent to tripping over nothing like a klutz then saying, "I meant to do that", except it cost $30 million to do so.

    7. Re:A Black Eye for Female CEOs by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 2, Insightful

      N=3

      Carly Fiorina
      Meg Whitman

      When Carly Fiorina left HP, it was worth half of what it was worth with she arrived.

      While Meg Whitman was CEO of eBay, revenues went up by 200000%.

      There is good reason to consider Carly as incompetent. I see no reason to see Meg as incompetent. They are not interchangeable just because they are both women.

    8. Re:A Black Eye for Female CEOs by phantomfive · · Score: 2

      Profit is up, revenue is down. It's too early to say anything for sure, but you can't keep improving profit by cutting costs forever.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    9. Re:A Black Eye for Female CEOs by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 3, Informative

      the woman decided that ALL of her teleworkers should come in and work in the office EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY,

      No she didn't. The telecommuting is being phased out slowly, and employees have until June to transition to full time office work.

      after she had to work from home after pregnancy.

      Telecommuting and maternity leave are two different issues.

    10. Re:A Black Eye for Female CEOs by Frankie70 · · Score: 4, Funny

      I have an 8x10 glossy of Steve Balmer on my desk.

      Call me superficial, but lack of a matte option would be a deal breaker for me.

    11. Re:A Black Eye for Female CEOs by tyrione · · Score: 2

      N=3

      Carly Fiorina Meg Whitman

      When Carly Fiorina left HP, it was worth half of what it was worth with she arrived.

      While Meg Whitman was CEO of eBay, revenues went up by 200000%.

      There is good reason to consider Carly as incompetent. I see no reason to see Meg as incompetent. They are not interchangeable just because they are both women.

      Since joining HP, Meg Whitman has seen intricately been involved in every major transaction for HP. Meanwhile, the stock has halved its valuation and the blame game on purchasing has been rampant. She has no credibility in actual technology corporations any more than Fiorino. EBay is a glorified Flea Market.

  2. What Forbes didn't mention... by Fluffeh · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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!
    1. Re:What Forbes didn't mention... by Xest · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Summly seems to have been the biggest "boy genius" swindle of the 21st century so far.

      Basically, his Dad is a director at the investment arm of one of the biggest banks in the world. He got a number of well known names (Steven Fry, Ashton Kutcher, the Murdochs) to invest in the app and use their popularity (or in Murdoch's case, media wing) to publicise it.

      The company itself wasn't run by the kid, it was run by a silicon valley veteran who again, his dad got on board. The complicated development (the article processing etc.) was done by a 3rd party, and the Android version was being developed by a 3rd party also. Internally, there was not much left to do apart from the iOS front end for the outsourced back end, and given that he had another veteran silicon valley dev working as a developer there (and I believe more developers on top) I'm not entirely sure whether the kid himself actually even wrote a single line of code.

      His mother is a lawyer, who I understand works for, or has done some work for Yahoo too prior to the acquisition. That probably helped things along too.

      So you're right, I'd say these things aren't likely to happen for most people. Unless your dad just happens to be a director at a major investment bank and just happens to know some of the most wealthy people around who also just happen to have strong media platforms to hype your product from that is.

    2. Re:What Forbes didn't mention... by tgd · · Score: 5, Insightful

      So you're right, I'd say these things aren't likely to happen for most people. Unless your dad just happens to be a director at a major investment bank and just happens to know some of the most wealthy people around who also just happen to have strong media platforms to hype your product from that is.

      Business has always worked that way. Why do you think CEOs get paid so much? Connections, leverage, wealth, politics -- once you're bigger than a small local company, those are the real differentiators, and behind virtually every "successful" startup is a similar story. Names and details may change, but the plot is the same.

      And that's not new -- it was just as true 50, 100, 200, and 2000 years ago. Wealthy Babylonian merchants got so for the same reasons, as did ancient Greek, Roman, Chinese, etc ... you name it, that's how it has always worked.

    3. Re:What Forbes didn't mention... by Xest · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Sure, this is why ability to network is more important in succeeding in the business world than any ability to produce anything useful. But hopefully we can at least stop pretending the Summly story is something it wasn't and recognise it for what it was - a kid born with a silver spoon, and no particular stand out talent, having his career set up for him very publicly by his already wealthy father.

    4. Re:What Forbes didn't mention... by FuzzNugget · · Score: 2, Insightful

      So, as usual, your skills are worth precisely dick. It's about whoever's vagina you were lucky enough to pop out of.

    5. Re:What Forbes didn't mention... by tehcyder · · Score: 2

      I guess his attitude would a "Libertarian" one by today's standards.

      Rich people are almost all fucking libertarians: they want absolute freedom to enjoy their money, and not pay taxes. Gosh.

      --
      To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
    6. Re:What Forbes didn't mention... by kye4u · · Score: 2

      So, as usual, your skills are worth precisely dick. It's about whoever's vagina you were lucky enough to pop out of.

      Warren Buffet refers to it as the "Ovarian Lottery"

    7. Re:What Forbes didn't mention... by tehcyder · · Score: 2

      Maybe that's why we spend so much time trying to get back in one.

      I think Sigmund Freud would like a word with you.

      --
      To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
  3. Re:Summarization technology? by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 2

    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's an algorithm for taking a readable piece of text that challenges your attention span, excising chunks of it with the same care and attention to meaning that spambots bring to the task of composing text, and then spitting it onto your smartphone; because 'Mobile' is where the sweet, sweet, VC sugar is.

    Not that I'm a skeptic of this fine and worthy invention or anything.

  4. Bullshitter makes lots of money off suckers by TWiTfan · · Score: 3, Funny

    Film at eleven!!

    --
    The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
  5. Misses the point by hsmith · · Score: 2

    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.

    1. Re:Misses the point by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 2

      Arguably it misses the point in a slightly different way: it is alleged that the 'summly' acquisition was more or less a sideshow to the purchase, from SRI International(who built the actual summarization technology, and also a little toy called 'Siri' among a variety of other projects, some quite interesting and high powered), of some of the related technology and patents.

      Still not something that Yahoo could develop internally(hence the buying of it); but SRI isn't exactly a lean and hungry startup, just an organization with actual serious R&D focus.

    2. Re:Misses the point by owlnation · · Score: 2

      That's the problem, large companies can't innovate

      This is true. But there is a VERY simple solution to this problem: fire your HR staff. All of them.

      Nobody in the 21st century needs HR staff. All of the "work" they do can be covered by managers actually doing their jobs, in the same way managers in small firms do, and by utilizing one of many tech solutions for any admin (or just scrap a lot of the admin, it's mostly work for work's sake. HR staff had to be appearing to do something, after all).

      Within a year of doing this, your firm will begin to innovate again. Within 5 years, once you have weeded out the bad employees, the HR mistakes, and the weak managers, your corporation/large firm/government body will be an innovation powerhouse.

      And by doing this you'll be saving money and increasing employee happiness and productivity too. There is NO downside to firing ALL of your HR staff. Remember, nobody on this planet, currently nor throughout our entire history, has ever dreamt of working in HR.

      Everyone who does work in HR has failed. So, put them out of their -- and your -- misery. Reap the rewards.

  6. /. on mobile==Summarization technology? + MS also? by girlinatrainingbra · · Score: 2

    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]

  7. Re:sick and dying by TWiTfan · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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."