A south London schoolboy has launched an Apple iPhone app this week, after raising $1m (£620,000) from investors before his 17th birthday.
Nick D’Aloisio, who lives with his family and still gets an allowance every month, developed the app, Summly, while revising for his mock GCSEs last year.
Summly condenses news articles into three key paragraphs that fit onto an iPhone screen. Users can customise the news categories, and link to the original article if they like the summary.
A prototype attracted an investment of around $300,000 in November 2011 from Horizons Ventures, the private technology investment company of Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing – also a backer of Facebook, Siri and Spotify.
The investment arrived on Nick’s 16th birthday – making him one of the youngest people ever to attract venture capital funding. Other backers include the celebrities Ashton Kutcher, Stephen Fry and Yoko Ono.
The prototype was downloaded more than 150,000 times and was chosen by Apple as its App of the Week in the UK and other countries. A company was created behind the app, and Nick teamed up with experts in London, and the Stanford Research Institute, to work on the technology and design.
Summly condenses news articles into three key paragraphs that fit onto an iPhone screen. Users can customise the news categories, and link to the original article if they like the summary.
A prototype attracted an investment of around $300,000 in November 2011 from Horizons Ventures, the private technology investment company of Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing – also a backer of Facebook, Siri and Spotify.
The investment arrived on Nick’s 16th birthday – making him one of the youngest people ever to attract venture capital funding. Other backers include the celebrities Ashton Kutcher, Stephen Fry and Yoko Ono.
The prototype was downloaded more than 150,000 times and was chosen by Apple as its App of the Week in the UK and other countries. A company was created behind the app, and Nick teamed up with experts in London, and the Stanford Research Institute, to work on the technology and design.
culled from the (http://www.telegraph.co.uk) (01/11/2012)
No comments:
Post a Comment