Nick developed the idea for his app when aged 15 years and while preparing for his mock GCSEs in 2011. He put a prototype out for attracting venture capital and in November 2011 Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-Shing, who is also a backer of Facebook, Siri and Spotify, invested $300,000 in the development of the app. Li Ka-Shing’s interest in the app quickly drew a horde of investors including celebrities like Ashton Kutcher, Stephen Fry and Yoko Ono.
Okay, so that’s a lesson in attracting venture capital: celebrity venture capital follows top tech venture capital, and the rest follows celebrities.
Nick developed the Summly app with help of the funding and with the help of the Stanford Research Institute and other experts in London. The Summly app quickly gained in popularity, and Nick’s mother, who is a full-time lawyer, became a director of Nick’s company to own shares on his behalf.
According to the agreement between Nick and Yahoo, Nick will join the London office of Yahoo, while other two employees of Summly will join Yahoo’s San Francisco office.
Summly helps to simplify and summarize news and stream them on mobiles according to reader choice.
Yahoo’s statement also observed, “At the age of 15, Nick D’Aloisio created the Summly app at his home in London. It started with an insight – that we live in a world of constant information and need new ways to simplify how we find the stories that are important to us at a glance.”
Well, for me this story was important enough – it goes to show while Yahoo believes employees should not work from home, at the same time it accedes great apps can be developed from home, and they are ready to pay millions to acquire them.