This Multi-Millionaire Entrepreneur Hasn’t Turned 18 Yet

27 Mar 2013 by Jasmine Stone in Consequence, Tech/Sci

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Say goodbye to your self-esteem. One of the newest employees at Yahoo’s London office is 17 year-old Nick D’Aloisio, a school student in Britain. D’Aloisio is also, as of Monday, one of the richest kids in Britain, after selling the news-reading app that he developed and held the majority share in – Summly – to Yahoo for a reported $30 million (R278 million).

Yahoo is set to take his algorithmic invention, which takes long news stories and converts them to shortened news reports which users are able to view on their smartphones, and roll it out on their platform.

D’Aloisio still has a year and a half left of high school left, but he plans to attend classes while still working at the Yahoo offices in London, partly to abide by Yahoo’s new rule of employees not being allowed to work from home.

Summly’s investors include Yoko Ono, Ashton Kutcher and Wendi Murdoch, with its most notable investor being hong Kong billionare, Li Ka-shing who funded the project before it was named Summly.

D’Aloisio’s father works at Morgan Stanley, and his mother is a lawyer. Despite having no knowledge of technology, they nutured their son’s keen fascination with it, resulting in him coding at age 12. Shortly after that, development began on Summly with an “automatic summarization algorithm” which can take pre-existing long form content and summarize it.

The app was officialy online as of last November, and has subsequently been shut down. But according to Yahoo:

we will acquire the technology and you’ll see it come to life throughout Yahoo’s mobile experiences soon.

D’Aloisio plans to be a “normal” kid, while still partaking in his hobbies like cricket, and is aiming to attend Oxford univeristy while majoring in Philosophy. As for the money, it has been placed in a trust and with the help of his parents will be managed appropriately.

Brought to you by Consequence Private Wealth

[Source: New York Times]

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