Update: Jimmy Wales NOT Failing His Attempt At ‘For Profit’ Business

by Jason Wilk on October 21, 2008

  • Wikia is letting go 30% of its current 43-person workforce that work on the ‘for profit’ Wikia Search and Wiki software projects.
  • The revenue nor traffic is there yet to support Jimmy Wale’s attempt to make money on a project outside of donations.
  • The company has raised $14M to date from Marc Andreessen, Joi Ito, and Ron Conway, as well as Bessemer Venture Partners, the Omidyar Network and Amazon.’

Update: Mr. Wales confirmed to me that the Valleywag story about his layoffs was false. He said he is in the process of hiring still and not firing. This may have been in an effort to throw off TechCrunch’s scrutinized LayOff Tracker.

Webware.com, WebProNews, TC, ValleyWag

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Tagged as: jimmy wales, Wikipedia

  • Too bad the valleywag story isn't true.

    Wikia laid off 3 employees, not 30% of the staff. And we're hiring.
  • jason
    Glad to hear Jimmy. I don't like this layoff news just as much as the next guy. Give us some of the open positions and we will post them.
  • Jimmy Wales running around to every blog to deny the rumors. That's PR? Remember all the scurrying around when Carolyn Doran mysteriously disappeared from the Wikimedia Foundation? We were told it was nothing to worry about. A couple of months later, though, the truth came out. The truth always comes out, eventually. They haven't figured that out quite yet in WikiLand.
  • jason
    I'll take his word on it for now considering I think Valleywag is trying to mess with TechCrunch's layoff tracker that everyone thinks is ridiculous.
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