SwiftKey founder traded his share of $250m for a bicycle

International Business Times:

In 2008, Hill-Scott joined Jon Reynolds and Ben Medlock in setting up the company that would go on to create SwiftKey but he soon found the long hours and lack of salary too hard to handle. He decided to sell his shares to his fellow founders for the princely exchange of a bicycle. A decision that might sting today.

Little did Hill-Scott know the company’s AI predictive text technology would eventually work its way on to over 300 million smartphones and tablets and be one of the UK’s biggest start-ups, fetching a substantial acquisition fee from Microsoft that saw Reynolds and Medlock reportedly pocket £25m each.

According to the Times, Hill-Scott left on good terms back in 2008 and went on to design websites for the government but it is understood he “did not receive a penny” from the sale.

To be fair, he left pretty early on. But no matter his actual contribution, that’s gotta sting.