Mixergy: Wikipedia’s Founder On How The Site Was Built & Promoted. – With Jimmy Wales

By Andrew Warner

How did Jimmy Wales get the world to help him write an encyclopedia? And what could YOU learn from his experiences to help you build a business that leaves a legacy?

I invited Jimmy to Mixergy and I asked him to talk about the business side of his non-profit, Wikipedia. He told us how the idea for Wikipedia evolved, how he got people to contribute to it, why people promoted the site, and more. My goal was to help you learn how to build a startup that leaves a legacy, from the man whose work changed the world.

Jimmy Wales is the founder of Wikipedia, the free, non-profit encyclopedia that anyone can edit. He is also the co-founder of Wikia, a community destination supporting the creation and development of wiki communities on any topic people are passionate about. You can connect with him on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and his blog.

Edited Excerpts From The Wikipedia Story

He was inspired by the open source movement
I was looking at the growth of the free software movement and I was seeing how communities of programmers were coming together online to create software. So it wasn’t so much about wanting the end result (the encyclopedia) to be different, although the end result is quite different, but more about realizing that were was a new model for collaboration going on online and that there would be a lot of cool stuff that should go along with that.

There wasn’t a business plan
The best businesses are not cooked up by MBA’s with reams of data and business plans. That’s never been true. The best businesses are meeting the needs of the customer in an innovative way. It really was more about seeing an opportunity and an idea and knowing it needs to be done, and that’s what I think really makes something work.

There’s nothing wrong with thinking about the market need and so forth. I’m just saying that shouldn’t be the primary. Because if it is the primary you end up with a very tedious, uninspiring business that tends to not to go anywhere. (more)