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If you thought high school was tough, try Silicon Valley.
Nick D’Aloisio — a 17-year-old London student and programming whiz — hit the jackpot this week when he sold his news-reading app, Summly, for $30 million to Yahoo!
However, the awe and attention from his tech peers has quickly given way to adolescent-style envy and ridicule.
With few details available about the deal, some question how a kid and his app — one with a relatively small audience — commanded such a high price.
“I hate to be a curmudgeon, but I think Yahoo! shareholders deserve an explanation,” Vibhu Norby, the 25-year-old founder of Origami.com, a social network for families, wrote in a blog post about the deal.
Norby told The Post that his post, which went viral yesterday, “echoes the sentiment of Silicon Valley.”
One explanation is that the purchase was a publicity stunt — part of Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer’s efforts to overhaul the company’s unhip image.
Even critics admit it’s hard to buy the kind of attention Yahoo! is getting for its new golden geek.
“Everyone is curious from a gossip standpoint how will this 17-year-old kid fit in with all the Yahoo! employees,” Norby said.
Summly, which is based on an algorithm that summarizes news stories and presents them in a mobile-friendly way, raised $1.5 million and drew support from a Hong Kong billionaire, Hollywood celebrities and Yoko Ono.
The app has garnered a limited audience with less than a million downloads since its launch roughly 18 months ago.
In an online post, Cornell University computer science professor Emin Gun Sirer asked whether Yahoo! should have spent the bucks elsewhere.
“If Summly is an innovative company worth purchasing, I have some news for Yahoo!: my AI colleagues have tricks up their sleeves that will blow your minds!” he wrote.