All of the articles I've read about Summly have a bit at the end where the author bends over backwards to not appear to be crapping on a 17yo. I read that passage the same way.
I'd give him a pass on that. He was not unlike any other smart, impulsive, ambitious teenager with a passion for ideas (namely, his own).
When I was 20, I was highly enthusiastic about a card game (actually a pretty good one; it plays really well and people I've never met write me about it) I created, called Ambition, and got into some flamewars that I shouldn't have.
This is one of the rare cases where I wish I were born 5-10 years later; the web is now mature enough that, instead of flaming Wikipedia to make it a "real game", I would have just put it up as an HTML5 game and people could play it. When I was 20, you still had to know a lot to get a real computer setup outside of the CS lab. I didn't quit using Windows for home stuff until age 24 (2007). Now with 'brew install emacs' as opposed to bullshit '90s-era Windows nonsense, it's a million times easier for someone under-20 to start building instead of just talking.
Convex dishonesty (see here: https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/03/29/gervais-macl... ) can be very tempting when you're trying to make a good idea "catch". You don't really have a sense of it being wrong until you're older (25+) and have seen what trust-sparsity does to organizations.
If you're under 25, I think you deserve a pass on well-intended convex dishonesty. You just don't have enough experience with social systems to see why it is (usually) wrong.
Basically, Nick was really pushy when he was young. I personally think all of us were, at some point, an immature or annoying teenager so his behaviour is probably not that out of the ordinary for someone his age. Hopefully he is more mature now.
Some of us had to matured early, since we were raised on family farms without the benefit of being mollycoddled. If you need to grow up, I still have family in the business that can assist in positive behavior modification and inter-personal respect training. Might do Nick some good to live/work outside the 1%.
What's ridiculous isn't that Nick (whose father was a banker) had those advantages but that more people don't. It's not Nick's fault that people like us don't get audience with VCs in our teens.
Sure, Nick had early success, lots of ambition, and the typical immature character of a 15-year-old who's enthusiastic about his own ideas. Impulsive, creative, teenagers tend toward pushiness. Ask Wikipedia about my Ambition (sorry, had to make the pun) and you'll hear a similar story. We all have episodes of stupidity in our past.
It would be interesting to see what mountains Nick could climb if he wasn't helicoptered to the summit.
As for maturity, I probably grew up in totally different time, culture and environment than most of the HN readers. Even my siblings children don't understand their parents background. At 15 we were expected to be top students, hold a job, play sports/music and be respectful to a fault. (Yes sir.) No one would ever want to be consider a punk or a brat.
It's sad, but in the winner-take-all era that has come about after the Reagan Era, self-promotion (even using extremely unfair advantages, such as a parent who knows VCs) wins out over restraint and even over decency. This has nothing to do with Nick; it's just the way times are changing.
I have no idea whether this is good or bad. It just seems to be how things are playing out. This is going to sound awfully cliche, but hate the game and not the player.
This may be wishful thinking, but we may be reaching a Singularity of Stupid, and perhaps there will be a Flight to Substance after the cool kids and VC darlings and celebrity investors get burned and their heads shrink a bit. I'd like to see the Flight to Substance and return to Real Technology soon. Curing cancer is a lot more important than another damn social media app.
Social media is the reality TV of startups. It's not common because it's good but because it's cheap, with "cheap" here defined in the truly scarce quantity: technical talent. Any idiot can do SM, which is why there's so much of it.
