20 Quotes by Nick D'Aloisio

Be fearless and don’t be afraid of failure. There is no better way to learn than through trial-and-error.

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.

I 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.

There is a generation of skimmers. It’s not that they don’t want to read in-depth content, but they want to evaluate what the content is before they commit time. Especially on a mobile phone – you don’t have the phone, or cellular data, or screen size to be reading full-length content.

I 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.

My first app was released in July or August of 2008. It was a ‘fingermill’ – a treadmill for your fingers. My level of programming was quite basic to begin with, so it was more gimmicky to start with. Day one it was up there, I had 79 pounds worth of revenue.

One thing I’d like to do is angel investing in small companies. That’s what’s exciting, and if you are lucky to have a bit of money, you can take those risks.

I’m a bit of a design enthusiast, and like spending time with my girlfriend and mates.

Yahoo to me, as the founder of a company, is one of the biggest opportunities you could have; it’s one of those classic Internet companies.