Almost everyone uses Wikipedia, but not many people know a lot about its co-founder, Jimmy Wales.
Before starting Wikipedia with Larry Sanger and becoming an Internet entrepreneur, Wales was working as a financial trader.
Although Wikipedia is now one of the most popular destinations on the web, with over 5 billion visits per month, its founders are not billionaires as Wikipedia is a non-profit organization.
So what are Jimmy Wales' sources of income?
Wales gets paid about $70,000 for giving a speech in a corporation or at a University.
He also received a few million dollars in different cash prizes. For example, he received $1 million Israeli prize for scientific, technological and cultural accomplishments.
Wales also helps some brands to promote their products which is another source of income for him. Recently he collaborated with the famous brand of Swiss watches, Maurice Lacroix, to promote their new watch.
Jimmy Wales also invested in Quora, which is an online platform for asking questions and connecting with people, that has over 600 million visits per month. Quora earns lots of money from ads that they display among their content.
Stay on this page to find out more about Jimmy Wales, his career and his family.
You can find much more stuff about Jimmy Wales on this page!
Year | Net worth |
---|---|
2022 | $12 million |
2021 | $10 million |
2020 | $8.4 million |
2019 | $7 million (verified) |
Jimmy Wales has been married three times.
First marriage: Pamela Green (1986-1993)
Second marriage: Christine Rohan (1997-2008)
Third marriage: Kate Garvey (2012 - Present)
He met his current wife, Kate, in Davos, Switzerland. It is also interesting that she previously worked as Tony Blair's diary secretary.
Parents: Jimmy Wales' father's name is also Jimmy Wales and his mother's name is Doris Ann.
Jimmy's mother ran a small school when Jimmy was a kid, so that was a huge inspiration for him to create the world's biggest encyclopedia.
Kids: Jimmy has three daughters. One with his second wife, Christine Rohan, and two with his current wife Kate Garvey.
Although he was born in the United States, Jimmy Wales now lives in London.
Photos of his house are not available to the public.
Have you ever wondered how many hours do successful people sleep per day?
Jimmy Wales is one of those famous people who know how important it is to sleep well in order to be able to achieve your goals.
Here is what he said about the importance of sleep:
I sleep 8 hours just about every night. When I can, I sleep more. I believe in sleep. I think a big mistake that young people make when they are eager to be successful is sleep deprivation. Makes you stupid
So if you really want to be successful, you shouldn't sacrifice sleep. You should sleep well and you will be more productive and more happy.
We know it is not easy to establish healthy sleeping habits, so we can recommend you to use sleep calculator in order to track and optimize your progress.
Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing.
The real struggle is not between the right and the left but between the party of the thoughtful and the party of the jerks.
I'm a big advocate of freedom: freedom of speech, freedom of expression, freedom of thought.
When someone just writes 'f**k, f**k, f**k', we just fix it, laugh and move on. But the difficult social issues are the borderline cases — people who do some good work, but who are also a pain in the neck.
If I had some information, the last thing I would ever do with it is send it to Wikileaks.
Wikipedia is a non-profit. It was either the dumbest thing I ever did or the smartest thing I ever did.
All of us in Silicon Valley—business people, investors, reporters, but especially impatient young entrepreneurs—fetishize start-ups today. We obsess about technology and products. We tell the Steve Jobs story, the Mark Zuckerberg story, the Bill Gates story, over and over again. We forget about Tim Cook and Sheryl Sandberg and Paul Allen. We look at success and see only the short half of the picture.
I think people don’t mind commerce, they don’t mind capitalism, they just want a fair playing field and if you are successful, then good for you.
There’s plenty of rude stuff online. People say things online that they would be ashamed to say face to face. If people could treat others as though they were speaking face to face, that would be huge.
How can we in the tech community make sure that unusual success at a very early age is not mistakenly thought to be the norm?
You play for high stakes when you decide to start your own business. Whenever you can, you should cheat to turn the game your way: Grow up more slowly. Stay in school, show up at class, take the full book of final exams. Hang out late at night in the lab with the rest of the crew. Then, go get a job for a regular company. Watch and learn.
When I opened Wikipedia, it had three articles, yet it was called an encyclopedia.
In general, the best advice I can give people is to take criticism seriously, apologize for anything you have done wrong, and pull back from conflict. Of course, if you are right on a content matter, you should press forward in the interest of quality, but conflict often has a way of taking on a life of its own, unfortunately.
Given enough time humans will screw up Wikipedia just as they have screwed up everything else, but so far it's not too bad.
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