Monday, February 8, 2016

Oops: SwiftKey Founder Sold Stake For Bicycle Before $250M Microsoft Buy

One of the founders of London-based SwiftKey, Chris Hill-Scott, revealed over the weekend that he sold his stake in SwiftKey--which was just acquired by Microsoft Corp. for $250M--to buy himself a new bicycle. Apparently, Hill-Scott decided to sell his shares in SwiftKey back in 2008--SwiftKey makes predictive analytics and artificial intelligence software--after deciding the startup life was not for him. That stake reportedly could have been worth $36.0M after last week's acquisition. Unfortunately for Hill-Scott, SwiftKey's software is used to predict the next characters you might type into your smartphone, to speed up text entry, rather than predicting what your startup's equity might be worth in seven years.