The Secret To 17-Year-Old Nick D'Aloisio's $30 Million Success: Amazing Hustle
However, in tech media circles, D'Aloisio was already well known.
In 2011, Gizmodo's Casey Chan wrote about making D'Aloisio cry. Chan covered apps for Gizmodo. So, D'Aloisio emailed Chan to see if he would write about his app, which was called Trimit at the time.
Chan said he was interested in the app. This led to D'Aloisio going nuts.
"Over the course of a few days, D'aloisio berserker barraged me with over a hundred e-mails about Trimit," says Chan, "I saw him go from calm to excited to a nervous wreck to suffering a nervous break down to threatening to bat shit crazy to borderline suicidal."
D'Aloisio never mentioned that he was only 15 at the time.
After not getting quick responses from Chan, he went on to email everyone else at Gizmodo. In response to D'Aloisio's email barrage, Gizmodo decided to name Trimit the "worst app of the week." But, the editors felt bad about that, so they just pulled the coverage altogether.
This sent D'Aloisio over the edge. He wrote to Chan:
While this appears to be the ramblings of a crazy person, it also shows someone with a dedication, focus, and energy to succeed. (And, again, he was 15!)
Gizmodo wasn't the only publication that got aggressive emails from D'Aloisio. He was in our writers' inboxes too.
While we don't want to encourage others to bomb our inbox with pitches, we think his behavior reveals a big part of the reason he's successful.
The kid is a hustler. He works hard. He's aggressive. He went after his investors, he pursued the media.
In one of his interviews from yesterday he told people who want to be like him: "If you have a good idea, or you think there's a gap in the market, just go out and launch it because there are investors across the world right now looking for companies to invest in."
This is obviously an oversimplification, but it's not terribly far from the truth. If you have a good idea, and you're willing to work incredibly hard like D'Aloisio, you'll probably find success.