Jimmy Wales: Founder of Wikipedia

<div> <p>Jimmy Wales is the founder of the online non-profit encyclopedia Wikipedia and co-founder of the privately owned Wikia, Inc. including its entertainment media brand Fandom.  Wales serves on the board of trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit charitable organization he established to operate Wikipedia. In 2019, Jimmy launched WT Social - a news focused social network. In 2006 Jimmy was named in Time magazine’s ‘100 Most Influential People in the World’ for his role in creating Wikipedia.</p> <p> </p> </div> <p>Some interesting insights from this episode:</p> <ul> <li>Jimmy was an avid reader as a child and used to devour the World Book Encyclopedia.</li> <li>He took a cautious and conservative approach to entrepreneurship, taking manageable risks, learning to fail fast, and always spending less money than what he took in.</li> <li>“I like to get up and do the most interesting thing I can think of to do and I try to live my life like that every day.”</li> <li>The core value of Wikipedia, which is to present high quality, neutral, factual information, is what allows the organization to maintain its integrity and consistency.</li> <li>He set a very aspirational mission for Wikipedia which is to give every person on the planet free access to the sum of all human knowledge.</li> <li>The success of Wikipedia is staggering. It’s now a top 5 website globally with over 54 million articles in 300 languages and 1.5 billion visitors each month and growing. </li> <li>To be a successful leader, you have to have clear and consistent values that people can buy into.</li> <li>“Excellence is about doing something interesting and having fun. It’s got to be interesting because otherwise what’s the point?”</li> </ul>