Normally whenever an acquisition happens, I avoid these types of posts on HN because there are often people in the comments (and even in the posts themselves) calling out the acquired company saying “I could have done this” or “Acquirer could have built Acquired Company in a day” but, this one deserves a reply.

The reason why this deserves a reply is that the OP’s post does not really contain any facts rather, it contains assumptions (either the OP’s assumptions or others).

For instance:

“Yahoo screens the employees, and tells the founder that 2 of them passed”

AND

“Summly says dang, only 2 out of 5 passed?”

The article the OP links to, to cite this actually states[1]

“In addition, only two of Summly’s employees will go to Yahoo with D’Aloisio”

There is no mention of anyone failing a ‘test’, all it states that only that 2 of Summly’s employees will be joining Yahoo alongside the founder. Now when OMGPOP were acquired by Zynga, one of their employees didn’t join Zynga[2] and that employee chose not to join Zynga – the same may have happened to Summly’s other employees as well (something that we do not know).

Moreover, the OP calls out Yahoo for acquiring Summly for $30M and citing that,

“Summly says no, $50m is our minimum. We need to pay back our generous investors”

However, there has been no confirmation of an acquisition price – there are rumours which place the amount in that ballpark and rumours which say the price was 90% cash. Now, when startups get acquired, they do not get acquired for one price (as Media outlets etc will report) rather, amongst other things there’s an earn out for employees/founder(s) and money to cap table. These things are often complicated and can be very complicated which is why, I am not criticizing media outlets for reporting a single price – in particular these Media outlets love the “millionaire” stories because it gives them a ton of page views - although, when someone is calling out a company for selling for an unconfirmed price by, saying that it is ridiculous – these things need highlighting.

Likewise, the OP concludes with:

“The craziest thing is that there are a lot of really qualified, CS-beefy teams doing really amazing things in the mobile news/discovery space these days - and that would definitely take a $30m acquisition offer or less. I don't really understand why they picked this one”

First of all, as I already highlighted no one knows that Yahoo gave the people at Summly a test – and if they did, if the employees who are not joining either rejected the role or failed the test. Likewise nor do we know an official price for the company of which flaws I already mentioned in regards to a single price.

However, what we do know is that Yahoo acquired Summly (which is shutting down although, some of it will be incorporated into Yahoo)[3] and regardless if you agree with it or not, they acquired them for a price which is suitable to Yahoo and Summly's investors/team.

Either way, I wish Nick D’Aloisio and the rest of the Summly team all the best and congratulations on your exit to Yahoo.

[1] http://allthingsd.com/20130325/yahoo-paid-30-million-in-cash...

[2] http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/167244/Turning_down_Zynga...

[3] http://ycorpblog.com/2013/03/25/yahoo-to-acquire-summly/