The creator of Wikipedia answers the questions: programming, sleep, books, tips "for life"

“Every day I wake up and do the most interesting things I can think of.”

When I first fluently reviewed Jimmy Wales' 961 responses to Quora, I wrote out some of the most interesting ones to “look into my head” to a person who did perhaps the most useful project for humanity with a pronounced IT component (Jimmy does not consider Wikipedia IT project, and considers it a social community project).

Some answers overlap, some contradict each other, since there is a hodgepodge from 2011 to 2018, but all of them are useful, in my opinion, to hone your thinking and the ability to give polite answers and ask retrieving questions. Understand how Jimmy Wales is guided when making decisions, how he makes choices, how he sets priorities, how he looks at life.

During the second and third reading of the answers (961 ... do not ask how many summer sunny days and starry nights it took), I have already identified several thematic blocks that I will publish later. Write your questions in lichku, in the comments, by e-mail (alexey.stacenko@gmail.com), which you can ask Jimmy Wales on behalf of the social community (as we once asked Alan Key ).

Programming

- Jimmy Wales has an account on GitHub?

- Yes, I have an account on GitHub. I use it for Ruby on Rails projects.

- How did Jimmy Wales learn to program and what is the sequence in which he studied languages?

- I can not remember all the details, but I will tell you that I can. However, it is important to keep this in mind: I am not a great programmer. I think I'm not even a very good programmer. But I am a programmer.

When I was young, my uncle opened one of the first computer stores in my city. Perhaps the first. Sales of Commodore computers.

On Commodore, under his guidance and using various books, I recognized Basic. As you probably know, terrible language.

Later, in college, I learned a little Fortran and S. Quite a bit.

Then, as soon as I graduated in graduate school (in finance), I realized how useful programming would be for me. So I plunged deep into it all once in the summer and learned a little C and C ++. I used Coronado C and C ++ tutorials that were distributed as shareware in those days.

Later, when I was working in finance in Chicago, I learned Perl to start building websites. Of course, among other things, I had to learn HTML and, ultimately, a bit of Javascript, but these were the first days on the Internet, before Javascript became so important.

I began to understand Perl very well, and indeed, this is the language I knew best.

Most recently, I studied the book on Ruby and took a course on Ruby on Rails (the course of Michael Hartl is very good). I am by no means an expert, but during my project work in a social network, where I play my role in The People's Operator, I am very glad that I took the time to learn Rails, because I can read the code, I know that it is possible and that is impossible, and I like working with people who know more than me, being competent enough to learn from them.

- How did you learn to program?

- I used the Coronado C Tutorial to learn C, and then the Coronado CPP Tutorial. Technically, this was not my first programming language, since I had studied Basic and a bit of Fortran before. But it was the first time I reallyI learned how to program by studying pointers and object-oriented programming.

These textbooks are still available on the Internet today, perhaps with little or no change, because the basics of these languages ​​are eternal, I suppose.

- Does Jimmy Wales know how to program?

- Yes I know.

If you browse Quora, you'll find other answers that describe my story, but I will tell you what I can do now.

Last year, I took a month off to learn Ruby on Rails. I got to the initial level of professionalism, relying on old programming skills that I haven't used for years.

Over the past 3 days, I plunged into the code base and launched on my laptop a prototype code for a social network for The People's Operator, where I lead the development. I think it is important that the project leader knows the technology and can function, but this is not the case when I will be the lead developer, because my skills are too forgotten to be fast and accurate.

- Jimmy Wales - a scientist working in the field of computer science?

- Not. I am a programmer, although compared to real professional programmers, I am not a very good programmer.

- What was the first programming language that Jimmy Wales learned?

- Commodore BASIC also known as PET Basic, I suppose.

- What is Jimmy Wales's favorite programming language?

- Ruby.

I used to program in Perl, and I still love it. But recently I started learning and using Ruby, and I really like this language. Everything in it is an object! And the syntax is compact and logical.

“How well does Jimmy Wales know programming?”

- I am a good, but not a great programmer.

I started studying it in high school. Languages ​​I programmed for fun or professional use include: Fortran, Pascal, C, C ++, Perl, PHP, JavaScript and Ruby. Languages ​​I don’t know at all include: Python, Lisp and some more.

Of these, Perl was best for me. In JavaScript, I never did anything except small fragments on web pages, and not so much.

I have not written code professionally for many years. Wikipedia and Wikia have many great programmers, so I don’t have to do this. :-)

Last fall, I learned Ruby, and now I am learning Ruby on Rails. I do this for the best reason: there is something that does not exist, which I think should exist, and it is very interesting to create things that should exist.

- I'm torn between graphic / web design, music and travel, what should I do? (for example, enrolling in a 10-week development camp, continuing to work in architecture for money and working in a graphic design night school or traveling for some time and focusing on music)

- If you learn Rails in camp, you can create a website for people who want to travel for the sake of music. There must be a lot of people in the world who dream of relaxing in the summer to follow their favorite group and they need to find friends who want to go with them. There are also many people who dream of seeing a wonderful group on an amazing journey around the world.

Thus, you can combine all your passions and interests and, possibly, earn a lot of money. And even if you don’t make money, the site will remain just an amazing little community of people like you, it would be a great way to have a full life, wouldn’t it?

One possibility, which would not be a huge commitment, is to buy a textbook of Michael Hartl Rails and spend an hour every night, sorting out with him. This is an inexpensive and low-priority way to check if you really want to do something similar.

Sleep

- Jimmy Wales argues that sleep is very important for success. What does he think of many other highly successful people who get so little sleep?

For some of them, I think it’s just natural. If you do not wake up on your own after a short sleep, then you probably don’t treat such people.

Some of them, I think, make a mistake. They would be even more successful if they had rested properly.

And regarding many people or most rumors, I think this is simply not true. People like stories of people who do not need to sleep more than a few hours a day, perhaps in a sense, because it makes them feel better about their own shortcomings — that is, if I were genetically different, or if I wanted to make myself suffer, I could be more successful, but I can’t or prefer not to.

I think that in this area many people think wrong.

“How many hours a day does Jimmy Wales sleep at all?” Smaller than the average adult? I always thought that really successful people just do not need so much sleep to remain vigilant and highly functional.

- I sleep for 8 hours approximately every night. When I can, I sleep more. I believe in a dream. I think that the big mistake that young people make when they want to be successful is to deprive oneself of sleep. This is terribly stupid.

How does sleep deprivation affect mental abilities? Do great people like Einstein, Feynman and Ramanujan have any way to sleep less? If not, how did they do their job?

I think that it is possible to deceive a dream, but I think that the bulk of the evidence points to the opposite of what you seem to think and the opposite of what most people think. But this is how it should be, and this should be a great deception of sleep. :-)

The best way to fool a dream is not to pursue some bizarre regime that we hope will deceive our body to sleep less. You can train to sleep less - but you'll be cognitively weakened and less productive, so what's the point?

So fool the dream by the system of one of the greatest deceivers of sleep of all times, Benjamin Franklin. "Early bedtime and early awakening makes a person healthy, rich and wise."

Go to bed and make sure your sleep is effective. No caffeine in the afternoon. No glowing screens and lights in the evenings. Go to bed early. Get up naturally, but much earlier than if you were socialized and watched television until midnight.

In case someone asks a question, I do not do it all myself. But I have very productive periods in my life, and now I have to get better.

- How can I overcome my lack of focus on the GMAT?

- As a guide, many years ago, I scored 750 points on a GMAT scale on a scale of 200-800.

My advice to you: sleep. Sleep 9 hours a day. 10 if you need it. This extra hour or two of research per day will not do you any good if you are so tired that you just do it out of a sense of duty or competitiveness or something that people are telling you.

Sleep a lot. Wake up. Have some coffee. Dig into the books and be the superman you are in your dreams. Be such a collected, focused person for several hours a day, and then you will know how to do it during testing.

Then, stop using caffeine before you can, so you can ... sleep. Sleep 9 hours a day. 10 if you need it.

- How can a decrease in activity be overcome? I am a 12th grade student. Although I am passionate about math, I don’t want to learn anything. I feel sleepy all the time. How can I study? I meditate, but it is useless.

- Although I agree to some extent with other answers, I would like to assume that 9 hours of sleep at night is normal (you are a teenager, you should sleep a little more if you can), but another 5-6 hours of sleep during the day are excessive to the extent that you can consult with your doctor.

It is worth reading about excessive daytime sleepiness.

As for the reluctance to engage in "official" studies, I can only sympathize. Here I agree with the other answers, but I can say that I have never used my own advice and, therefore, had terrible school performance during most of my adolescence. Sometimes you just need to score and break through some boring tasks.

But then again, I think excessive sleep is a warning sign from your body. Go check out!

- Jimmy Wales is flying first class?

I travel by air more than anyone.

Sometimes I fly first class. People often pay for my trip when I come to give a speech for them, and this is usually business class, but sometimes first class. And since I fly quite a lot, I sometimes get upgrades from business class to first class.

I will almost never fly first class if I pay for the flight myself. The business class is often worth it, because I can sleep and be more productive, and also spend less time away from home (there is no need to plan extra time for recovery after the flight without much sleep). But upgrading from business class to first class is usually not worth it.

Once I paid for a first class trip from London to Mexico, because for unknown reasons, it was actually cheaper than a business class.

Finally, whenever I talk about flights, I would like to emphasize that the Wikimedia Foundation paid only for 1 of my flights ... I think it was almost ten years ago. When I work with the Foundation (for example, I attend council meetings), I insist on paying for my flights myself.

Job

- What prompted Jimmy Wales to become an entrepreneur, rather than engage in a corporate career?

I would be a terrible employee. Every day I get up and do the most interesting things I can think of.

- What was the first work of Jimmy Wales?

I carried newspapers. Technically, this was not “work” because, since it was organized, newspaper hawkers bought newspapers in bulk and sold them at retail, which meant that we made a profit if we did our work well and got more customers and did not reorder the newspapers and We did not lose them, and we lost money if we worked poorly.

This is often considered an excellent exercise for the formation of personality and an excellent job training entrepreneur. I thought it was a great experience, demonstrating how little you can get if you do manual labor and, therefore, it is a great incentive for education!

My first actual “job” with a paycheck was a packer job at a grocery store.

- Do you consider yourself an entrepreneur? Do you receive a salary from the funds of Wikipedia?

Yes, I am an entrepreneur. I myself have founded several organizations over the past few years and have participated in several start-ups, both commercial and non-commercial.

No, I do not get paid from Wikipedia. With rare exceptions, I don’t even get a refund. Wikipedia is my charity work.

- Does Jimmy Wales know the value of his fortune?

No, and I do not think anyone knows the value of their condition. How can you know?

I have an old softball glove. How much is it? :-) To know exactly the value of my condition, I would have to get a reliable estimate of the value of everything I have. To seem less stupid, I have a 5-year-old Hyundai car ... I have no idea how much it costs on the market, because why should I know this? I drive it, and it works fine, and this is important.

Even entrepreneurs whose main asset with a very wide margin makes up shares in a highly liquid company listed on the stock exchange are unlikely to be able to very accurately assess what they can get if they really try to sell it all at once.

- What are the chances of Jimmy Wales to become a billionaire?

- At first I thought: what a stupid question. Then I thought: what a stupid question, but it would be funny to try to take it seriously.

According to Forbes, as of March 1, 2016, there are 1,810 billionaires in the world. I assume that they have overstated several people and missed several others, but this figure is close enough for our purposes.

In the world there are about 7.5 billion people.

Therefore, our first estimate can be found simply by dividing one number by another.

So far, there are chances: 0.000024% This is about 1 to 4 million.

But this alignment assumes that I am in a middle position on Earth. But it is obvious that it is not. I am in a very fortunate position, having already been born as a white man American. The recent calculations totaled 516 billionaires in the United States, and most of them are white men, let's just say straightforwardly that there are 400 white male billionaires out of about 90 million white men in the United States.

So far there are chances: 0.000444% This is about 18 times more than before! We have reached 1 to 225,000.

But look, even this is not a very accurate estimate. I am in even more fortunate position. Suppose that being in a good position, being well known and knowing a lot of billionaires, my chances increase 10 times.

Thus, we get 1 to 22 500.

But then we must take into account what is perhaps the most important factor: the desire to carry out a total desire for wealth for all other purposes. I am 50 years old. I like what I do. I have never been even about as interested in money as in matters that I consider important and interesting.

So in fact, the odds end up with something almost indistinguishable from zero for all practical purposes.

Bias

- What is a fact for Jimmy Wales?

“Since language is a complex concept, and since many people are inaccurate in using a language, you can mean several different things here.” I will take it as an epistemological question, reminding you that I am not a professional philosopher, who nonetheless in my life paid much attention to such questions and thought about them, I will explain what I mean when I use the word "fact".

We make statements (or assumptions) about the world: the sun shines, water consists of H2O, 2 + 2 = 4, etc. The well-formed statements are either true or false.

Truth is the result of identifying the facts of reality.

“Fact” is something that is “there” - something in the world corresponding to something in our consciousness. A lie, which may be the result of error or dishonesty, is a statement that does not identify the facts of reality.

Facts matter, and in a very real sense, our fundamental cognitive moral responsibility is to identify the facts.

There is another, more casual, use of the word "fact", which is slightly different. We can compare the facts with a simple opinion and use the word “fact” to identify statements that we are completely convinced of the truth of.

- Which of the sites in your opinion the most biased? Quora, Reddit or Wikipedia?

“I don’t think that the notion of“ prejudiced ”can really be applied to both Quora and Reddit - since they encourage people and allow them to publish their personal views and opinions, of course, many of them will be biased in their own way.

Let's focus on Reddit for a moment - it is divided into “sub-forums” and there is a moderator for each of them - so you get a lot of patriotic and apolitical sub-forums, which are very biased.

Wikipedia is the only platform that tends not to be biased or categorical. We manage to succeed to a greater or lesser extent due to natural human deficiencies.

Books

“What book is Jimmy Wales reading now?”

- I just finished reading Michael Hartle's Ruby on Rails Tutorial.

- Successful people like Jimmy Wales, Jason M. Lemkin and David S. Rose, read motivational books on their way to success?

- I am not a huge fan of such books, but I read some of them, which were very good, and would recommend them to people just starting their own.

"7 skills", in particular, is a very good book.

Tony Robbins “Wake up a giant in yourself” is a pretty lousy book, but if you realize what it really is and pick up only the moments that are worth it, then it’s quite motivational.

“Your money or your life”, which in fact is not a typical “success book” is in fact the book that I think is very useful in terms of understanding how little money actually needs to live and be happy .

Remember - the less money you need to live, the more money available to do cool things.

One of the problems with all these books is that they are practical and superficial, and do not help you establish a serious and long-term philosophical view. For this, I recommend something from the early works of Ayn Rand or Nathaniel Branden.

“What is Jimmy Wales's favorite book?”

She often changes. This is currently a tutorial on Ruby on Rails by Michael Hartl. :)

In the long run, I must say that Ain Rand's “Source” is a book that you should read if you want to know more about how I think.

Other matters

“What is the craziest thing Jimmy Wales owns?”

- In my opinion this is a flashlight Surefire M6 Guardian.

This is a seriously insanely bright flashlight. He is now several years old, and now there are even brighter flashlights on the market, but this is a beautifully designed thing, and it is simply unreal.

- Why did Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, take part in the Bilderberg meeting in 2011?

- I did not attend the Bilderberg meeting in 2011 or in any other year. I have never been invited. I have no idea why the questioner got the idea that I was there, but, as we say in Wikipedia: the link to the source is needed!

- What OS for smartphones does Jimmy Wales prefer and why?

- Android, because this OS is open source (it seems to be for the most part, partly - depending on what you mean by open source).

“What kind of car does Jimmy Wales drive?”

- In London, I do not have a car. In Florida, I have a Hyundai.

- Who will win the fight between Jimmy Wales and Julian Assange?

As the Kinks sang, "I'm a lover, not a fighter - And I was born for speed."

He lives near Hyde Park, so I propose to arrange a race. From his home to mine.

He is much taller than me, and I am sure that he can run faster than me. Therefore, he will easily win, except that he will have to get ahead of not only me, but also the police. :-)

- Will Jimmy Wales secretly provide money to a highly professional and talented student so that he can continue his education?

- No I do not think so. I do not think it will be great. If you consider it as an investment, it is on average almost no pay off. If this is viewed as charity, it is unlikely to be sufficiently effective, and will often lead to bad emotional consequences for all who are involved.

I would be more likely to hire a very ambitious and talented student on an incomplete basis. This is an honorable exchange of profit for money, which does not create long-term debt or dependence.

- What is Jimmy Wales's opinion about hacktivism?

- In very many cases, such actions are counterproductive at best. They rarely achieve anything more than mere concern for a goal, but they cause a very bad impression on the general public.

I dream of having the same talent turned to work on creating things that can really organize people for positive change.

I hope that young people inclined to this direction will stop and take a deeper, longer and smarter look at how influential they / we could be / can be if we unite and use our strength wisely. In the book “Homeland” (Homeland) by Corey Doctrou there is something perfectly illustrating what I mean.

- Why does Jimmy Wales want to know if Edward Snowden ever edited Wikipedia?

- Based on everything I've read so far, I'm a big fan of Edward Snowden. I think that he did something bold and for valid and principled reasons. One of the things I really like about what he did to clarify is the fact that his leak was selective and mostly abstract. He did not present any real detailed operations against legitimate military objectives under threat, but he attracted to the public consciousness some activity that clearly shocked most people — an activity that deserves an open public debate.

It is known that he was active on the Internet as a teenager. His youthful posts at Ars Technica were widely discussed and analyzed, and he painted a picture that helps us understand how he turned into the person he is today.

I created a public discussion of public facts - NOT exposing. It is worth noting that the person who wrote this article is the person who sent a photo of himself with a gun and a description in which they fantasize about a shootout with me. Do not believe PR, this is absurd.

As it turned out, it seems that editing Wikipedia did not happen using the usernames that were already discussed in this article. Remember, you can check it yourself - all changes to Wikipedia are publicly available.

- Why is it almost impossible to learn any mathematical concept in Wikipedia? It is very difficult to catch, especially if you do not have a good base in the subject.

- One of the many things that are not in Wikipedia is a textbook. There is a reason why textbooks are written as they are written, and encyclopedias are written differently.

As other users have said, you can learn a lot of mathematics from Wikipedia, but by design it is not structured in a step-by-step sequence to facilitate learning from scratch. And should not.

- What is the educational environment for Jimmy Wales children? Do they go to a traditional school? Montessori Home schooling? Do not go to school at all?

- My 12-year-old daughter is studying at home. My 2-year-old son is likely to go to a regular school in England.

“Jimmy Wales hates Bill Gates just as many Americans hate him?”

- No, I do not hate Bill Gates. Before I say more, I would like to point out that there is an assumption in a question that I think is wrong, that is, that "many Americans" hate him ... a recent Readers Digest poll called him the seventh person most trusted in America. .: What is trust: 100 most trusted people in America | Reader's Digest . So yes, some people hate him, but the same can be said about anyone in the public eye.

I met with Bill Gates several times, not enough to say that I really know him, but it is enough that he knows my name and knows what I do and could say “Hi Jimmy” when he sees me.

He is incredibly intelligent and incredibly well versed in matters that are not indifferent to him. To listen to him, talk to him about some health problems (in particular, vaccines) in which you are interested in the Gates Foundation, what you hear can be a revelation to you.

And although I do not agree and I can criticize some (or many) things that Microsoft did in one or another period of time, I can say the same about many organizations, including large enterprises, charities and government. I do not consider the mistakes or sins of Microsoft at the same level as the mistakes of many other terrible organizations. Therefore, it would be very strange for me (or for anyone, to be honest, if there was no specific reason for having personal accounts), to feel a certain hatred towards Gates or Microsoft.

I belong to the FOSS community (free source / open source), where many people traditionally view Microsoft as a key competitor / enemy. But it is worth noting that all the millions of words of poison erupted from people who have not produced anything valuable and have not had any impact on the world, mean nothing. The hard work of good programmers meant that FOSS continues (still) to dominate in terms of the actual functioning of the Internet. Hatred is a waste of time.

- What advice would Jimmy Wales give the younger generation?

“I think one of the most important tips I can give to young people is that you should try to arrange your life in such a way that you minimize your consumer spending as much as possible, so that you can less debt.

What for?

If you want to do something interesting in your life, you will need a certain degree of financial independence, by which I mean the choice without needing to think directly about cash.

Suppose you take your first job and immediately make various decisions about where to spend the money to spend all or most of your salary, wallowing in debt to do it. The most common way to do this is to buy a car and rent a beautiful apartment. Now, after 6 months, when you realized that your boss was a jerk and you wanted to change jobs, you have a big problem.

Consumer spending (as opposed to investment spending) is mostly not needed for income. In some cases (meeting with clients, etc.) you will need to invest some money (a good tone for business). Now it's not about them - it is spending on business. Keep them under control, of course, but that's not the point.

For those who better perceive the information with the attached figures, consider it that way. Suppose you want enough money to be able not to work a year, and you want to maintain your lifestyle during this year. How will settling your consumption needs with this? Suppose you start with zero savings. Suppose for simplicity that you can find safe investments in line with the rate of inflation ... although this is quite optimistic!

If you spend 5% less than you earn, you will need 20 years to save an annual salary. It will never work, because in 20 years your life will change completely, you will probably get married and have children. And who wants to wait 20 years to not work for one year and realize his dream?

If you spend 50% less than you earn, you need only two years. Much better.

But look! There is a mistake in the above reasoning, and I want you to notice it. You are not trying to accumulate a “salary for one year”, but rather trying to save “annual expenses”.

Therefore, if you spend 5% less than you earn, then you will need only 19 years to get this year of freedom. (Because you need to save only 95% of your salary!)

And if you spend 50% less than you earn, then it will take you 1 year (not 2!) To get this year of freedom, because your expenses are less.

Reducing your mental expectations about how much you need to spend to be happy has two positive effects: you end up saving more money, and this money saved is ultimately stored longer.

Now for the majority of young people who will read this, the ultimate goal will not be to adopt a limited lifestyle until the end of their days. But if you really want to achieve something, this method gives you the time you need to try.

- What was the biggest turning point in the life of Jimmy Wales?

- Many people asked me about it, so listen.

Based on my life experience, life does not work that way. I think it looks like a very common theory of entrepreneurship, which suggests that you need “one big idea,” and wealth will knock on your door. (This is what makes many people afraid that someone will "steal the idea" - the correct form of paranoia that kills many startups.)

Of course, simple but incorrect answers would include "creating a free online encyclopedia" or "leaving work a trader to start a company ”or“ study C programming, while at the same time learning something else at school ”.

But my life, good and bad, is a series of solutions every day. Some decisions are more important than others, but none of the decisions are more important than a series of daily decisions. The thousands and millions of decisions you make are much stronger than any “big” decisions.

Why is it important? Many young people are worried that they will make the wrong “one big decision” when the moment comes. Maybe it will. Or maybe not. It will not be as important as you think. Every day you have the right to decide differently, to choose a new path, which means making decisions about whether to learn something new, work an extra hour or go home, watch or not watch this movie, read this book or not worth it. And all these little choices are crucial - some of them will be wrong, but make sure that most of them are correct.

- In which charity does Jimmy Wales participate?

- Wikipedia is owned by Wikimedia Foundation, a non-profit charitable organization 501 © (3). I spend most of my time on it, to some extent (working on management, talking to the press, working with the community), rather than on anything else. In the case of this job, I do not accept any salaries or expenses.

- Why does it seem that there is a tendency to apply innovative technologies in relation to newer problems, rather than trying to find problems where simpler existing technologies can have a greater impact?

“In some cases in the developing world, this is due to the fact that impatient designers and NGO founders have too little experience in the areas where they are trying to help. Therefore, they develop solutions that sound very cool and clever, sitting in Cambridge, Massachusetts or Palo Alto, California, but which actually do not work in the real world. The best will soon learn more and can be just as innovative, using more realistic methods.

- If Wikipedia was founded today, would Jimmy Wales create it as B-corp ?

- I am very interested in the concept of a B-corporation. I don’t know if I’ll consider the concept of a B-corporation for Wikipedia ... this is a historical hypothesis with many “what if” variables. But I, of course, would be interested in this.

I really think it's worth thinking about all the strengths and disadvantages. If Wikipedia were a commercial mechanism, even with some built-in restrictions, incentives for staff would be significantly different, and not always in a good way. Since the B-corporation is a non-profit organization, it would be easy to get a lot of money from investors ... who would then expect and deserve a refund. Receiving this return may encourage the organization to take care of some things that they do not need right now. I am very pleased with the non-profit structure.

I am working with Lily Cole on her startup, which is unrealistically difficult, and now she plans to launch it as a social business according to the concept of Muhammad Yunus . I think this is also an interesting model.

I think that for many Internet startups the concept of a B-corporation is very good. Change.org is a great example. By the very nature of the business, and for the benefit of the brand, it is encouraging and makes sense to consumers. But at the same time, the founder can attract capital from investors and hire employees with traditional incentives in the form of stock options - and get rich if everything goes well.

My next venture (shhhhh! Only we here at Quora can know about this!) Will almost certainly be a B-corporation for the same reasons.

“Why does Jimmy Wales say crowdsourcing is a terrible concept?”

The term "crowdsourcing" comes from the term "outsourcing". The basic concept of outsourcing is to find a job where labor is cheaper. The idea of ​​crowdsourcing is to look for the cheapest labor of all, forcing the public to work for you.

I think this concept is offensive and completely incomprehensible to what is happening in Internet communities. For some entrepreneurs in the consumer Internet space, crowdsourcing is an evil psychological trap that forces them to engage in unrealistic projects.

If your basic approach is to think: “I have the work that you need, now I just need to get the public to do it for me,” then you are all confused. The correct approach is to think: “People want to achieve a goal, I need to work a lot to try to provide them with what they need to do it.”

True communities are not your cheap labor. These are real people with passions, hopes and dreams. Your task is to help them do what they want, rather than extract work from them.

“What can we do to have Jimmy Wales talk to us and work with us if we have great ideas for a startup?”

- Send me an email. Before sending it, review it several times and remove all ads. Just tell me three things.

First , actually tell me what you are doing. I don't want to hear any empty words, just an explanation. “We are making the world better, through the next generation platform for GenZ blah blah blah” - utter crap. “We are creating an application for ordering pizza. It’s better than all the other apps, because it’s like a Kayak — it’s meta-searching all the local pizzerias near you to show you the price list according to your options. ”It’s cool.

Secondlytell me how you think I can help you. “Your vision of Wikipedia inspired us to contact you, and we will work with you with pleasure,” he doesn’t tell me what you want from me, that’s nonsense. “We would like to invite you as a member of the board of directors. We have an investor, he is just an angel, but he believes that we need someone with experience in the consumer Internet in our team. In addition, we need to get acquainted with venture capitalists, and we are aiming at 10 capitalists with whom we would like to work, and we think that you can help us transfer meetings with these organizations to a completely different level. ” - Maybe I can help with that.

Thirdlytell me how it will benefit me. I am very active in my charity work, but your startup is not charity. (If charity, then forget the last point ... but I’m already an adviser on many projects, so I probably won’t be able to take on anything else now!) :-) "We thought you would like to meet young entrepreneurs "- is nonsense. I really like to meet young entrepreneurs, I do it all the time in the routine of conferences and meet them through friends and so on. But if you want more than a friendly pat on the back and encouragement, then treat me as a businessman - let's find something that is mutually pleasant. “If you could join us as an adviser, we could compensate you for the stock option in the amount

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