Top questions
Who is Nick D'Aloisio?
Nick D'Aloisio (born 1 November 1995) is a British computer programmer and internet entrepreneur. He founded Summly, a mobile app that automatically summarises news articles, which Yahoo acquired in March 2013. He later co-founded Sphere, which Twitter acquired in October 2021. As of 2021 he was also a graduate student in philosophy at Oxford University.
What was Summly?
Summly was a mobile app that automatically summarises news articles and other material. D'Aloisio launched its predecessor, Trimit, as an iOS app in March 2011 and renamed it Summly in December 2011. Yahoo bought Summly in March 2013 for approximately 30 million US dollars according to allthingsd.com, although the price was not officially disclosed.
How old was Nick D'Aloisio when he received venture capital?
He was 16 when the business magnate Li Ka-Shing provided 300,000 US dollars in venture capital for his Trimit app, which by then had 100,000 downloads. D'Aloisio is described as the youngest person to receive a round of venture capital in technology. In November 2012 he received 1 million US dollars in new funding from investors including Yoko Ono, Ashton Kutcher and Stephen Fry.
What did Nick D'Aloisio do after selling Summly?
He joined Yahoo as a product manager in March 2013. In January 2014 he announced Yahoo News Digest at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, an evolution of Summly that gives mobile users a twice-a-day summary of important news. It won the 2014 Apple Design Award. D'Aloisio resigned from Yahoo in October 2015.
What is Sphere, the company Nick D'Aloisio co-founded?
In late 2015 D'Aloisio co-founded Sphere Knowledge with Tomas Halgas, whom he met at Oxford. It was said to be a knowledge-sharing service where users swap information via instant messaging. The Financial Times reported in March 2019 that it had raised 30 million US dollars, and in October 2021 reports said Twitter had acquired Sphere, with most of its 30-person team joining Twitter.
Where did Nick D'Aloisio study?
D'Aloisio was educated at King's College School in Wimbledon, taking his A-levels in the summer of 2014. He studied philosophy and computer science at Hertford College, Oxford, from 2014, began the BPhil in Philosophy in 2019 and advanced to the DPhil course in 2021. He has published academic papers in peer-reviewed journals, including Philosophical Psychology and Ratio.
What awards has Nick D'Aloisio received?
In 2013 The Wall Street Journal named him Innovator of the Year in New York City for his work on Summly and at Yahoo. He was included in Time magazine's list of the world's most influential teenagers and in the Forbes 30 Under 30. He won a Spirit of London Award as Entrepreneur of the Year in December 2012 and was No. 1 in the London Evening Standard Top 25 under 25 for 2013.