Nick D’Alosio is the new contender for the youngest-funded entrepreneur. At only 15, D’Alosio receiv ed his first VC funding for his news summary app. He raised a total of $1 million.
The London-based teen received an email from a group of investors in Hong Kong while on vacation for Spring break. The teen almost didn’t open the email, but luckily he did. The email came from Li Ka Shing of Horizons Ventures, the same guys who invested in Facebook and Spotify. Horizons Ventures wanted to learn mora bout the news summarizing app D’Alosio had built and released a few months earlier in Apple’s UK App store.
The teen has been building the summary apps since the age of 12. He noticed that in order to read news from Twitter, one would have to read the full content. He wanted to change that and began working on Summly. D’Alsio was able to demo his app through Horizon’s initial $300,000 investment a year ago. This led to more funding from big names like Ashton Kutcher, Mark Pincus, Yoko Ono, and others.
The $1 million raised to improve the original algorithm. The algorithm works by selecting words from a given article to build a summary that will perfectly fit onto the screen of your iPhone without having to scroll or load the article. If you would like to read the full article, there is access just by swiping.
Nick D’Alosio hopes to continue high school and also attend college. He would like to continue working on Summly and looks up to other tech guys such as Kevin Systrom of Instagram and Daniel Ek of Spotify. Only time will tell how big Summly will be, but with it’s current backing, it’s only going to go up.
Signed, Isidori Mtabo
