I thought of the idea of Summly in March or April 2011. I was 15 years old and I was revising for some kind of history exam. The problem was I was trying to find information that was useful to me. When you type into Google an esoteric term, you get quite a lot of stuff that's not relevant.
Nick D'AloisioBe fearless and don't be afraid of failure. There is no better way to learn than through trial-and-error.
Nick D'AloisioI was using Twitter a lot on my phone, and was realising there was a massive gap between the link on the tweet and the full story. If you could come up with a summary layer to show in Twitter, that would be awesome.
Nick D'AloisioI don't feel like a different person. My motivation has always been to do technology apps and companies, not making money. Just because the money's come, nothing's changed.
Nick D'AloisioI put together an iPhone app called TrimIt and released that in July 2011. About a month later, the private fund of the Hong Kong billionaire Li-Kashing cold emailed me and expressed an interest to invest, but they didn't realize I was 15. They thought it was a U.K. company with a team.
Nick D'Aloisio