17 year old sells app to Yahoo! for 30 Million

No, I know about it, thanks. I was just wondering what people's opinions where and if anyone wanted to comment.

These cute stories are skipping over the fact that Yahoo paid $30 Million for the patents, not just an app.

These stories are all part of 'myth building.' This particular type of story (young genius hits big) is relatively common with tech companies.

Most stories are misleading which is why it is so hard for people to get ahead because they dont have a reality of what it takes.

"What mankind could be if......"

Thank you for pointing this out.

I agree whole heartedly and wrote my FULL thoughts on my blog. Little too much swearing for here.

He's just some rich kid. His dad is some high roller trader and his mum is a well connected lawyer. So he didint even hook up the venture capital deals either.

There is much more to this and so many people are making pay day out of it.

In fact id go the opposite way of most people and say that this is both nothing special in the way of technology and hes not some genius programmer, hes just some rich kid who's going to attend oxford!

Tell me, as if some brainy kid you'd still want to attend oxford instead of sitting huddled up in your cave of a room hacking away at your keyboard if you now had millions of dollars to do whatever you want?

I mean even his mum said all they did was buy him a programming book when he was 13! Pfffft. Doesn't mean anything at all in terms of aknowledging his apparent programming super powers.

Bill Gates came from money too, but Bill gates was known to spend countless hours in the schools library messing with computers, he would fall asleep there and his mother would go looking for him at night. He'd get a few hours sleep, be up at the crack of dawn and then sneak back out and hit the machines again. Bill Gates, like him or not (i dont like him much actually) is a 10,000 hour master!

In terms of the tech. Its not AI, please.... its just an aggregator that uses a language program to reset words and combine words based on semantics.

It seems like a big deal when you tell everyone a 17 year old did it, but when you consider the fact that he had a team of nerdlinger die hard coders smashing keys and drinking copius amounts of caffeine in a trendy office it doesnt seems so glorious after all does it.

Im not hating, im just cynical about these things and im even more cynical about the media uptake... (people do realize Yahoo! is a public media company right).

His age is irrelevant - the real story is

Because Andy, quite frankly I'm old enough to remember the last round of "whiz kid millionaires" Dot com boom (then bubble and burst) ring any bells?

It's kind of a blessing and a curse to be old enough to see "cylces" such as this come and go.

As I said, kudos to the kid, but let's get to the real story:

Kid who already comes from affluent family, gets hooked up with seed money and venture capital. Earns millions.

What I described above happens hundreds maybe thousands or more times a year. It's being blown out of proportion.

The fact he's only 17 and Yahoo is involved is what makes any of this a "news story."

I'm not a hater, I'm a true blue dyed in the wool capitalist. Good for the kid, but in typical news media tradition, the real story isn't being told but glossed over for the dumb downed general public.

There's a lot more going on in this story than a 16-17yo kid could have done.... Investment money, patents, advanced coding, licensing deals and so on. But the media will have you believe he came home from school every day, worked on his app and then sold it for $30 Million. Some people just want to know the actual details.

They're not overpaying as such. Sure, if they were just purchasing the App, that would be overpaying.

But what they're doing is so much more.

Yahoo are purchasing the company (and subsequently shutting down the App) for Nick himself - he's going to become one of the most influential faces of Yahoo, they're going to use him to revive their sorry asses. He's going to provide a 'hip' mask for the company, they'll be able to relate to the younger, tech savvy generation further & they hope that this purchase will allow them to do that.

IF it works, this could be a multi-billiondollar payback.

Oh, and they want the technology used in the App.

Yes, because everyone has been lied to so much.

• Dot Com
• Bernie Madoff
• Lance Armstrong
• Barry Bonds
• Financial Crisis

The list goes on and on. Success stories are often manufactured as a sort of narrative to lead other people to the slaughter. In fact, it's truly annoying how much credit some people get in general. Steve Jobs - may he rest in peace - was clearly an innovative business man but 52,500 other people work for Apple.

So much of business success comes down to perception.

Just keep calling innovative entrepreneurs "kiddos" and you'll be a millionnaire in no time!...

His mind got him to where he is at.

Those said people are only a genius relative to their experience and success within the confines of a particular model.

If they don't succeed at doing X, then they aren't a genius at X.

The bottom line is, with the "genius" aspect aside, he made something that has a solid, fuctional and in-demand use and it paid dividends.

The first thing that came to mind is about time someone did something lolol.

And then I started to think I know this kids reader is for mobile, but if uhhhh google or RSS is dying by July? How smart is Yahoo???

Maybe someone here can give us some details as I haven't been following tech much lately and could really care less about RSS or doing anything else with my cell other than taking credit cards lolol.