He Has Millions and a New Job at Yahoo. Soon, He’ll Be 18.

New York Times ^ | March 25, 2013 | BRIAN STELTER

[grundle]

One of Yahoo’s newest employees is a 17-year-old high school student in Britain. As of Monday, he is one of its richest, too.

That student, Nick D’Aloisio, a programming whiz who wasn’t even born when Yahoo was founded in 1994, sold his news-reading app, Summly, to the company on Monday for a sum said to be in the tens of millions of dollars. Yahoo said it would incorporate his algorithmic invention, which takes long-form stories and shortens them for readers using smartphones, in its own mobile apps, with Mr. D’Aloisio’s help.

“I’ve still got a year and a half left at my high school,” he said in a telephone interview on Monday. But he will make arrangements to test out of his classes and work from the Yahoo office in London, partly to abide by the company’s new and much-debated policy that prohibits working from home.

Mr. D’Aloisio, who declined to comment on the price paid by Yahoo (the technology news site AllThingsD pegged the purchase price at about $30 million), was Summly’s largest shareholder.

[grundle]

I'd love to hear the radical lefties argue why this kid doesn't deserve this money, and who exactly was "exploited" in order for him to get it.

[Gator113]

Amazing.

[TheZMan]

What the hell news summarizing algorithm capable of running on mobile phones is worth $10+ million? Holy crap.

[WVKayaker]

One of the 1st programmers for the Apple App store was a young guy who wrote a simple game, and sold it for $.99. His first check was for more than $600k and by the end of the first year, he had millions and more apps coming!

Here's just one article about them...

Despite the recent comments by some iPhone developers on the harsh economics of the App Store, other developers are making a killing by cranking out inexpensive but popular apps.

Newsweek's Dan Lyons profiles Ge Wang and Jeff Smith the brain trust behind Smule, creators of four $1 and $2 apps including a virtual lighter (Sonic Lighter), a virtual firecracker (Sonic Boom), a voice changer (Sonic Vox) and a virtual flute (Ocarina).

Ocarina has already racked up 400,000 downloads in less than a month and the company which originally forecasted about $100,000 in revenue this year, will instead rake in a cool $1 million. "It's amazing," Smith says. "The business is already profitable."- ZDNet