An app created by a teenager from South London has been sold to Yahoo! for a rumoured $30 million, making him one of the youngest ever tech millionaires.
17 year old Nick D’Aloisio from Wimbledon developed the app, called Summly, while revising for his mock GCSEs in 2011. Summly, a news reading app which summarises content from popular media companies will be closed down by Yahoo!, who will instead take on the algorithmic summation technology that the 17-year-old D’Aloisio built, to use throughout its products.
Nick announced on his website: "I am delighted to announce Summly has signed an agreement to be acquired by Yahoo!. Our vision is to simplify how we get information and we are thrilled to continue this mission with Yahoo!'s global scale and expertise."
He added: "We will be removing Summly from the App Store today but expect our summarisation technology will soon return to multiple Yahoo! products - see this as a ‘power nap' so to speak."
Nick is also believed to have been given a full time job at the web giant while he also studies for his A-levels.
Yahoo!'s senior vice president of mobile, Adam Cahan, said the company was "excited" to have Mr D'Aloisio join the team.
"For publishers, the Summly technology provides a new approach to drive interest in stories and reach a generation of mobile users that want information on the go," he wrote.
The History of the App
Nick, who taught himself to code aged just 12 described himself “as a net native, I was born when the internet was founded and have only known a world with internet.
“Young people are just not aware of the constraints, so why not go build a social network, for example?”
“I was using Google and Bing and there were so many results to scroll through it was really inefficient. So I built an algorithm that shared them and trimmed them. Then it just transformed into the idea of: 'why not just summarise news in general?’.”
At the age of 15, Nick built the app which almost immediately attracted investment from Horizons Ventures, the private technology investment company of Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing – also a backer of Facebook, Siri and Spotify (other high profile supporters of the app include the celebrities Ashton Kutcher, Stephen Fry and Yoko Ono).
The funding allowed Nick to develop Summly into the popular app it is today – or more accurately yesterday, as from today it is no more - with experts in London and the Stanford Research Institute.
Which has led to, well, a very rich and very happy teenager. Jealous? Yahuh, us too. Still you could make yourself a bit of dosh by recycling your phone with us here at OnRecycle. Ok, it’s not $30 million, but it might be £30 and you wouldn’t walk past that on the street, would you? Oh and please like us on Facebook, too, if you enjoyed this blog!
