It’s one of those stories that teen dreams ought to be made of. South London schoolboy teaches himself to code aged 12, comes up with idea to summarise news items to fit onto an iPhone screen, builds the App in his bedroom whilst revising for his GCSEs, raises $300K to refine and market the product but has to get his Mum to sign the deal, sells to internet giant for ‘between “£20-£40m” at the age of 17.
It’s not a dream. It’s what Nick D’Aloisio announced today for his product Summly as he sold it to Yahoo!
There are many levels to this story. First, we need more youngsters to learn (and be excited by) coding. We need more tech teenage role models like Nick. We need more backers like Horizon Ventures to put up the seed money.
The only negative I can see is that it’s yet another nascent UK-HQed tech company selling out in its early stages to a US giant. We’ll never get a ‘UK giant’ if all our early stage companies get snapped up.
Nick has been offered a job at Yahoo whilst he studies for his A Levels. Let’s hope he forms another tech company in the UK after that.
Footnote - I know Summly is small but it's a microcosm of what happens to up-and-coming UK tech firms taken over before they start to blossom. To make the point, the FT tonight ends its article on Summly thus:
“Two of Summly’s employees will move to Yahoo’s HQ in Sunnydale, California…”
Sure Nick is staying put until his A Level studies are over and then? Maybe one day I will write a report of a UK company taking over a US company and moving its staff to Tech City.