British teen sells app for millions!

[karl]

A south London schoolboy has become one of the world’s youngest tech millionaires after selling his mobile app to Yahoo!.

Nick D’Aloisio, 17, developed the app, called Summly, while revising for his mock GCSEs in 2011.
The app, which summarises news stories, will now close and its features will be used in mobile products at Yahoo!. Nick will also start a full-time job at the web giant while he studies for his A-levels.
He said: "I'm hoping to stay [at Yahoo!] as long as it takes to get the technology integrated.
"We were approached a few months ago and what really excited me was their mobile strategy.
"I think this is an amazing opportunity and I didn't want to miss it."


Full story and photo here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnologyandtelecoms/9952658/British-teen-sells-app-for-millions.html

[Darkness.]

Well, good for him. Yahoo! needed something like this, just so they can stay relavent to average consumers.

[NudistKid]

Why cant i invent something like that and be rich, but good for him

[stev]

I kind of hate yahoo. But still that's pretty cool what the teen did. I wonder if they will be also giving him royalties on the app.

[Jess]

Pretty neat. Good for him.

[Cicero]

That's awesome! I wish I were him lol

He's also pretty hot lol

Also, the US version is called Clipped. I looked up Summly but its not by that name.

[Jasperf]

This is so awsome :) just like Mark being the first teen Billionaire :O

[Rayquaza]

Good for him, although he seems quite snobbish in the video, and the app he's created seems like a watered-down version of Flipboard. Quite impressive at 17 I must say, his parents must have spent a lot for him to be given the tools to create an iOS app.
The place he comes from is where I visit like every weekend xD

[Magus]

Shit, I am doing some shitty ass programs that a 7 year old can do, and this kid already made the big hit application? But whatever. Kudos to the kid.

*Mutters to himself.

[Mirage]

My teacher told me about this, I kinda figured it'd be on VT when I got home ;)

Great job for this kid!

[TheMatrix]

There's always more to the story than they tell you. There has to be.
Yahoo may be many things, but they aren't stupid. And there's no way that this thing-a-mabob that closely resembles Google News all of a sudden will become viral by itself.
No, he pulled some strings somewhere. He or someone else probably has a contact in the management of Yahoo, somewhere, who pulled some more strings, and then this happened.
But Yahoo doesn't just shell out 18 million quid to any random bloke who's got a newfangled idea. Especially not some teen.

You see, he wasn't the only one behind this. He didn't just sit down at his computer and crank out some code in a year. In fact, I'd be surprised if he even did much at all. There are more people working on this (http://summly.com/about.html), but that seems to be one of the lesser-known details.
And now the (likely) unfortunate bit. He doesn't get to keep all of it. You can't just give somebody 30 mega. Some of it will have to be taken back, most of it will go to the other people working on the app(they don't take risks in things they think might fail, that's not the idea of investing), and he might get to keep 10-20% of it. That's still a lot of money, and I'd take that any day, but the media seems to over-hype this.

[WickedWeekend]

Wait, Yahoo still exists?