Summly is a reading application launched in 2013. Instead of having to read full paragraphs of articles, books, any type of text, Summly summarizes paragraphs into a few succinct phrases that allows the reader to get the idea of the passage. One would imagine that the creator of such an ingenious application would be older, with resources, and part of a company that creates applications. However, the picture of the real creator of Summly is instead one of an 18 year old British teen names Nick D’Aloisio. Nick was driven by entrepreneurship and technology from a young age. At 12, with no coding knowledge, he started creating mobile applications. At first, his ideas were simple as he was still learning how to code. However, D’Aloisio was determined to make an impact in this field.

In 2011, at the age of 15, D’Aloisio got his first round of funding for Summly and after a year of development it was launched. It then gained 500,000 users in the first month after launch and became the number 1 news app in 28 countries. Then in 2013, D’Aloisio sold Summly to Yahoo for 30 million dollars. While it could be expected that he may be reckless and let the money get to his head, so far he hasn’t touched it. He says, “I’m too young to appreciate the value of it…I don’t have a mortgage, I’m 17. To me, a hundred pounds is a lot. Take that as a benchmark” (Stevenson 2013).

His comments and actions suggest a maturity beyond his years. He is famously known for saying, “time is the new currency” (Stevenson 2013). There is much to be learned from this now 20 year old entrepreneur.

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