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Yahoo pays Millions to Teen Coder (the real story)

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Nick D’Aloisio

The story in the tech news of the last few days is the purchase of Summly by Yahoo for the sum of $30M, making the 17-year old founder Nick D’Aloisio an instant millionaire.

It sounds fairly simple.

The story they want you to believe:

Teen whizz writes cool app.  App downloaded by millions.  Yahoo gets interested.  Teen whizz meets after school to agree $30M deal.  Teen now rich.

The reality might be a little more useful.

The reality: Mentors and Advisors made this deal.

Horizon Ventures, the Hong-Kong based Venture Capital fund that is part of Li Ka-shing‘s empire spotted Nick D’Aloisio a few years ago.

He was a great coder, and presents himself well; he had a decent app.

Billionaire Li Ka-shing’s company Horizon put together a group of mentor/advisors for Nick – including Jonathan Ive, chief designer at Apple; other well-known tech and media names including actors Ashton Kutcher, Stephen Fry, Spotify’s Shakil Khan, Zynga’s Mark Pincus and Lady Gaga’s manager Troy Carter.

Together they shaped an unknown London geek into a cool dude and a $30M deal with Yahoo.

It was not the awesomeness of the app, it was the credibility of the mentors and advisors that made this deal.

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One response to “Yahoo pays Millions to Teen Coder (the real story)”

  1. Hi Connor! Great that you revealed the real story. I think it will do good not only to the credit of mentors and business advisors but also to early stage entrepreneurs who commonly come to me and say “that business stuff you´re always talking about I already did, and so my idea is ready for funding”. Being business gullible is a big mistake early entrepreneurs make…

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