Mar 27 2008
Young Scientist now Young Millionaire
Great story by John Collins about Limerick’s  Collison brothers, who just became teen millionaires upon the sale of their software company. The 19 (Patrick) and 17 (John) year olds — one of whom (Patrick) took the Young Scientist award in 2005 for his computer language Croma, used for building web apps — sold their company Auctomatic, which manages inventory on eBay for large sellers, to Canadian company Live Current Media for somewhere around $5 million. No one in Ireland would invest in them. Two former Google execs in Silicon Valley did. John hasn’t even finished his Leaving Cert yet. 
Â
2 responses so far
Take a bow those who promote the Young Scientist Exhibition, I guess this is what you were hoping to achieve!
I heard one of the guys saying that they could not take up the offer of investment in Ireland because there were too many conditions attached. However as long as we insist on oversight and audits of public money, these funds will be risk averse and so entrepeneurs will go to those who can take a risk and back their judgement.
It makes sense of John McElligot’s (of eBay) campaign for better broadband in Ireland as it shows just what can be done
The story about their partners Kul and Harjeet Taagar is even more amazing. Harjeet is a law graduate and Kul a PPE graduate of Oxford University. I have read that they were the first non-hackers ever accepted into Y Combinator. It’s a great story.