Your Child a Millionaire

Your child or grandchild can become a millionaire.  Software is the best way for young people to get rich.  Everyone has heard of Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook, but he is not alone.  David Karp started programming as a teenager and got rich as a young man.  Nick D'Aloisio became a millionaire while still a teenager with his product, Summly.  We will consider David Karp and Nick D'Aloisio in just a minute.  First, let us discuss the child prodigy.

There are fields where the child prodigy can exceed the capabilities of mature adults.  These fields include mathematics, where Carl Friedrich Gauss and Blaise Pascal were child prodigies, music, where Mozart was one of many prodigies, and chess, where Sammy Reshevsky is a fine example of a child prodigy.  I believe that computer programming has enough in common with mathematics, music, and chess that we should have wunderkind programmers.  Perhaps there are wunderkind programmers and we have not heard about them. Perhaps if enough young people are exposed to computer programming at a younger age, then the wunderkinds would start to appear. Are David Karp and Nick D'Aloisio programming wunderkinds?
 

David Karp at Tumblr

David Karp was a teenager when his parents decided he could drop out of school and focus on computer programming.  You might have heard of Tumblr, the product he developed that made him a millionaire.  If you are unfamilar with Tumlr, check out this website, McKayla Is Not Impressed: http://mckaylaisnotimpressed.tumblr.com/

Tumblr is a blogging website, not unlike this Blogger website, although Tumblr seems more oriented towards posting photos than posting articles.  Tumblr was purchased by Yahoo and David Karp's take is estimated at $250 million.  That is as much money as Mitt Romney made at Bain Capital, a private equity investment firm, after a lifetime of work and a Harvard MBA. David Karp is just 27 and dropped out of high school.

Here are two articles about David Karp.
Before Tumblr, Founder Made Mom Proud. He Quit School
By JENNA WORTHAM and NICK BILTON, New York Times

Weekend Confidential: David Karp
by ALEXANDRA WOLFE, Wall Street Journal

Nick D'Aloisio at Summly

Nick D'Aloisio started programming at age 12.  At age 15 he started working on a a newsreader app, Summly, which he sold to Yahoo for an undisclosed amount, estimated to be in the tens of millions range.  At age 17 Nick is estimated to be worth millions of dollars.  He had help from SRI International, a California think tank, in developing algorithms for summarizing articles.  His product is more sophisticated than Tumblr, and he had a number of investors, so he has to share the money.  The moral of this story is that complex products are not necessarily more profitable than simple products, like Tumblr.

Here is an article about Nick D'Aloisio and Summly from the Wall Street Journal Online:
At 17, App Builder Rockets to Riches From Yahoo Deal
by AMIR EFRATI

A Blog to Assist You

If your child is interested in computer programming, he or she might hit it big and become a millionaire.  If your child is interested in computer programming, I have started an entire blog to assist you.

Canright on Software and Programming
http://canrightonsoftwareandprogramming.blogspot.com/


Good for Your Child, Good for Texas

Developing a greater supply of computer programmers is good for Texas.  I have described the importance of software and the supply of programmers in these posts:

The Texas Software Initiative  Thursday, January 3, 2013

The Texas Young Programmers Project  Friday, January 4, 2013


If your child is interested in computer programming, do not discourage him.  There are many paths and many resources for a person to pursue programming at a young age.  It is not unusual for programmers to start while they are teenagers or younger.

Robert Canright