Wikipedia

Wikipedia

A fount of knowledge

Founder: Jimmy Wales





Age of founder: 34


Background: Day trader


Founded in: 2001, USA


Headquarters: California, USA


Business type: Online encyclopaedia




W



ikipedia, the online encyclopaedia, has opened up a whole world of information to us and has changed the way we access information for ever. Instead of turning to oversized, out-of-date books for answers, we can now search an online database of more than three million articles – and edit that information ourselves.



Founder Jimmy Wales was inspired by his love of encyclopaedias, and his thirst for knowledge. He envisioned a world where everyone could have access to information in their own language, and by using new technology in innovative ways, Jimmy was able to create a unique information source.


Not your typical business story, Wikipedia is run as a not-for-profit company, a result of the vision of its founder and loyalty of its users.


A thirst for knowledge


Jimmy's interest in encyclopaedias began at an early age. While attending a one-room elementary school in Alabama, he remembers supplementing much of his early education with sets of encyclopaedias, made famous by companies such as Britannica.


Jimmy had early entrepreneurial aspirations, harbouring a secret ambition to earn his first million by the time he was 40. After graduating with a master's degree in finance from the University of Alabama in 1994, he accepted a Job as a day trader at Chicago Options Associates, where he rose to the position of Research Director. Jimmy did well at the firm, and after six years, he had earned a small fortune speculating on foreign currencies and internet valuations.


As he rose up the trader ranks, Jimmy became increasingly interested in the World Wide Web. So much so, that he decided to set up his first website in 1996, alongside his day Job. The site he created, Bomis.com, was a basic search portal that focused on terms searched for mainly by male users. Jimmy funded the venture with money he'd made from trading, intending to generate money from advertising when the site was up and running. But for Jimmy, this venture was Just the tip of the iceberg. What he really wanted to do was to merge his long-burning passion for encyclopaedias, and his new love of the web, creating some kind of online format.


The world of the print encyclopaedia was already well established, and during the 1990s CD-ROM technology drastically cut the cost of manufacturing and distributing such large volumes of information. Publishers such as Britannica and Microsoft's Encarta sold their encyclopaedias to millions of people, and the new CD-ROM format now brought sound and vision to what was traditionally one-dimensional, as well as making searches and cross-referencing easier and faster. Jimmy knew that he'd have to produce something innovative and different to stand out from the popular and well- entrenched market leaders, and putting an encyclopaedia onto the web seemed the obvious route.


Jimmy honed his idea while he watched the growing 'open software' movement in the mid- to late 1990s. Users were able to download software from the internet free of charge and improve it themselves. 'The open-source software movement was growing steadily and becoming more important – although at first people had tended to dismiss it', Jimmy recalls. 'Throughout the industry we were seeing programmers coming together in a volunteer capacity to create open software.' Collaborating was shown to be not only possible, but popular, and it could lead to some excellent results. There were many different types of software available, and Jimmy experimented with two popular open-source website development languages: Apache and Perl.


Freedom of information


After much tinkering, Jimmy decided to apply this open-source approach to create a free online encyclopaedia. He realised that by using this software he could create a site where every user – not Just programmers – could write and edit web information, thereby making his encyclopaedia open to everyone. At the time, if people wanted to work together on a document with lots of other people, the only real option was to email it around, which was bothgrowing steadily and becoming more important – although at first people had tended to dismiss it', Jimmy recalls. 'Throughout the industry we were seeing programmers coming together in a volunteer capacity to create open software.' Collaborating was shown to be not only possible, but popular, and it could lead to some excellent results. There were many different types of software available, and Jimmy experimented with two popular open-source website development languages: Apache and Perl.


Freedom of information


After much tinkering, Jimmy decided to apply this open-source approach to create a free online encyclopaedia. He realised that by using this software he could create a site where every user – not Just programmers – could write and edit web information, thereby making his encyclopaedia open to everyone. At the time, if people wanted to work together on a document with lots of other people, the only real option was to email it around, which was bothimpractical and time consuming. Open-source software provided a unique and viable way for people to collaborate online. If this worked in practice it would finally give him the means and method to get his vision for an online encyclopaedia off the ground.


'The idea seemed completely obvious to me and I went into a mad panic as I feared someone else would do it', Jimmy recalls. 'Encyclopaedias are low-hanging fruit when it comes to collaboration; it's pretty easy to do. For example, if you have an encyclopaedia article about the Golden Gate Bridge, everyone knows pretty much what the Golden Gate Bridge is and has a good idea of what an encyclopaedia entry should tell you. In a collaborative environment, it's really important to have a clear vision about what you are trying to accomplish.'


'The idea seemed completely obvious to me and I went into a mad panic as I feared someone else would do it.'





Unlike print encyclopaedias and CD-ROMs, Jimmy's online version would never  go out of date; users would not need to buy upgrades or new editions to ensure they had the most current information. While CD-ROMs were seen as the height of new technology in the early 1990s, as technology rapidly developed, they were soon viewed as a slow and costly information source when compared to the free World Wide Web. And while traditional print encyclopaedias were still popular, a whole set of books could be very expensive, costing hundreds of pounds.


An early disaster


Going against the grain, Jimmy decided to not put together a business plan for his idea. He believed that the best businesses are not cooked up by those with MBAs and extensive business plans – rather, they are those businesses that meet the needs of potential customers in an innovative way. By 1999, he felt the time was right to set up his vision, which he called Nupedia. At the time, the market for internet businesses was booming and had reached peaks never seen before, let alone imagined. NASDAQ (the stock exchange favoured by high-tech growth companies) had risen by more than 85% in 1999.


Jimmy believed that the best businesses are not cooked up by those with MBAs and extensive business plans – rather, they are those businesses that meet the needs of potential customers in an innovative way.





Jimmy's encyclopaedia vision, based on open-source software, would be free to users, but the site would make money through advertising. He kick- started the business with several thousand dollars from his other business, Bomis.com. This supplied the internet access and a server, and paid for staff salaries. He then hired philosopher Larry Sangster (whom he knew through an online discussion forum and had met twice in person) as Editor-in-Chief and two programmers to build the site. The plan was that they would all work from home, and they'd recruit other people on a voluntary basis to update information and help develop the website.