New teen millionaire and you make $10 an hour at your campus job
Nick d’Aloisio, founder of the popular Summly news app, has become the world’s latest young man to make boatloads of money by creating an application for smartphones, but here’s the catch.
We’re bringing the story to you because the young Summly founder is only 17 years old. That’s right. He’s just 17 and sold his first app to Yahoo for $30 million.
The Summly founder created the company when he was only 15, in December 2011, and received financial backing from investors including Yoko Ono and Ashton Kutcher. The popular service sums up news articles in about 400 characters, making it very easy for users to scan for information and find full articles if they’re looking for more in-depth information. For some perspective, D’Aloisio is even younger than Yahoo itself, which went into business in 1995.
The company has been increasingly focusing on its mobile product lines, as tablet and smartphone use continues to increase. Summply’s appeal is that it is great at condensing information for mobile consumption. The acquisition is not surprising.
D’Aloisio said that he will remove Summly from the market for now but that users should expect to see the technology that runs his app in a range of Yahoo products.
On his website, D’Aloisio, announced the acquisition, in the short and sweet form so characteristic of Summly, on the company’s website today.
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. After spending some time on campus, I discovered that Yahoo! has an inspirational goal to make people’s daily routines entertaining and meaningful, and mobile will be a central part of that vision. For us, it’s the perfect fit.
Not only will Yahoo pay around $30 million to acquire the service but it will also hire two other Summply employees, beyond D’Aloisio, who will join Yahoo full-time while the firm integrates Summly’s technology into its own products. The high school senior will balance his work at Yahoo while also studying for his final exams in May.
