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!"

Comments

What Forbes didn't mention...

[Fluffeh]

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...

Re:What Forbes didn't mention...

[Xest]

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.

Re:What Forbes didn't mention...

[tgd]

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.

Re:What Forbes didn't mention...

[Xest]

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.

Re:A Black Eye for Female CEOs

[rasmusbr]

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

Re:A Black Eye for Female CEOs

[VortexCortex]

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.

Re:A Black Eye for Female CEOs

[Frankie70]

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.