British
Teen Sells App To Yahoo
For $30m
Nick D’Aloisio, 17,
High School Student; to now have an office at Yahoo and school during evenings,
There isn’t so strong
a line between being an everyday guy and becoming one of the world’s youngest
millionaires; you gotta sell that unique thing you have, and boom! you are all
over the news.
Meet Nick D’Aloisio,
the 17-year-old British entrepreneur who just sold his popular news-reading app
to Yahoo Inc. for close to $30 million, instantly becoming one of the world’s
youngest self-made millionaires.
It’s the classic
Silicon Valley success story of a young software prodigy striking it
ridiculously and improbably big.
D’Aloisio, who taught
himself to write software at age 12, built the free iPhone app Summly — which
automatically summarizes news stories for small screens ‑ in his London bedroom
in 2011. He was just 15 years old. Soon he had backing from Horizons Ventures,
the venture capital arm of Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing and big names such
as Zynga Inc.’s Mark Pincus and actor Ashton Kutcher.
Before it was pulled
from the app store Monday after the announcement of the Yahoo deal, D’Aloisio’s
app Summly had been downloaded nearly 1 million times. It had deals with 250
online publishers, including News Corp., and 10 employees in London. Not bad
for a high school student.
To me, Yahoo is the
best company to be joining right now because it’s one of these classic Internet
companies,” D’Aloisio said in an interview. “With new leadership from Marissa
Mayer, Yahoo has a strong focus on mobile and product, and that’s the perfect
fit for Summly.”
Mayer, the former
Google Inc. executive who took over the Sunnyvale, California company last
summer, has focused on mobile technology to revive Yahoo’s lagging fortunes.
She has snapped up a number of promising mobile start-ups as much for their
personnel as for the innovation.
In D’Aloisio, Yahoo is
getting someone who truly thinks and lives in the mobile world. Rather than
browsing the Web by clicking a mouse, more people are connecting to the
Internet with their smartphone or tablet, changing what kind and how much
information they consume, Yahoo mobile chief Adam Cahan said.
Silicon Valley
companies such as Facebook and Yahoo are looking to adapt their Internet
businesses to hold on to consumers who want easier, faster ways to find what
matters to them.
“Summly solves this by
delivering snapshots of stories, giving you a simple and elegant way to find
the news you want, faster than ever before,” Cahan said.
D’Aloisio, who took a
break from school for six months to focus full time on Summly, will join
Yahoo’s London office while continuing his studies in the evenings and living
at home with his parents. He says Yahoo plans to integrate Summly into all
sorts of mobile experiences.
“The real idea is to
take the core of the technology and find different fits for it and make it as
ubiquitous as possible on the Web,” he said.
“We want to take
summarisation and build beautiful content experiences around it.” He says his
parents — his dad is an energy financier, his mother is a lawyer — will help
him manage the financial windfall (he says all he wants is a new computer and
pair of Nike trainers). But he says he was not driven to the deal by dollar
signs.
“Technology has really
been the driver behind this whole deal,” D’Aloisio said. “I can’t wait to see
how it plays out at Yahoo.”
D’Aloisio is just one
of a number of under-21 entrepreneurs who have made millions at a very young
age. Patrick Collison, who took his first computer class at age 8 and entered
young scientist competitions as a teen in Ireland, was just 19 when he and his
brother John sold their Silicon Valley start-up Auctomatic to Canadian company
Live Current Media Inc., a deal that made them overnight millionaires.
“It was helpful
perspective to have something like that happen very early on,” said Collison,
who is now co-founder and chief executive of San Francisco payments start-up
Stripe.
“It shows you that
it’s not all that big a deal. Yes, it’s wonderful to create something that
someone is interested in acquiring, and it’s nice to have more money than you
had before, but really nothing changes. Enjoying what you do on a day-to-day
basis is what’s important.”
The sudden flash of
worldwide media attention has been a bit overwhelming, D’Aloisio said. But not
in a bad way. “It’s been an absolutely awesome experience,” D’Aloisio said.
“I’d love to do it again someday with another company.” Spoken like a true
entrepreneur. [LA Times]
