Everipedia

Part 1: Intro to Everipedia and New Features Since Campaign

Published on Jul 31, 2017

Everipedia's team is the quintessential startup bunch. Seven guys on the team live and work from its makeshift home in Westwood, Los Angeles one block away from the UCLA campus. Sam Kazemian, co-founder and CEO of Everipedia, still champions his UCLA cap and looks like a typical UCLA student. But he has big goals. He truly believes Everipedia will be, in his words, "huge." He knows Everipedia is going to be one of the biggest sites in the world and it's obvious that every person on his team shares this same unwavering vision he has. Although the team appears to be a bunch of recent college grads, you build so much trust in them within the first 30 minutes into a conversation. 

Watch Sam tell you about Everipedia's newest features, including Everipedia Plus, and find out how the team's used the funds raised on Wefunder. 


If you prefer to read, here's the full transcript of our conversation: 

Intro to Everipedia

Please introduce yourself and tell us about Everipedia.  

I'm Sam Kazemian and I'm the CEO of Everipedia. Everipedia is basically trying to be the largest encyclopedia on the Internet. 

Our mission is to make sure as much things in the world have articles and wiki pages and get people to be in the editing process and in the knowledge process, editing as many pages as possible. 

We've redesigned how everything should look and feel. The encyclopedia is a wiki, which means everything like in Wikipedia can be edited and approved and users can sign up to create pages about anything and anyone. 

We've improved a lot of the UX and the software to make it one of the most leading encyclopedia pages on the Internet. 

How many unique visitors does Everipedia have? 

We have over 5 million page views per month, that's our record from last month. We've gotten over 3.7 million unique users per month. Right now, we're looking to basically monetize a lot of the traffic, looking for sponsorships as well as introducing a lot of premium features into the platform. A lot of this stuff will require software building as well as experimentation so this phase we're looking to improve the software so our users have the most satisfaction as we continue to grow. 

We also have Everipedia Plus which is our premium service. Paying customers can get a professionally edited and done encyclopedic article about themselves, their business or anything like that. Basically, they get a verified blue check that the information is verified and true as well as properly cited. The page is still a wiki, meaning that everyone and anyone can continue to add information and keep things up to date, as well as upkeep the page. 

A lot of other stuff we're looking into advertising partnerships and on-page, article takeovers, and sponsorship of articles themselves. A lot of the stuff is early in the process and as summer continues to go by, we're exploring more options. So far it's been good with the Everipedia Plus pages and we're looking to expand and scale that in a model that can grow exponentially. 


Post Wefunder Campaign

What's happened since your Wefunder campaign closed? 

A lot of stuff's happened. The team's grown with more full-times and interns. It's great to have over 200 people backing us and really believing in the mission. It gets us to work harder and faster. We're looking to grow our business side and increase revenue, which will increase the rate at which we're growing per month. 

How were funds from your Wefunder campaign used?

We actually have a low burn rate compared to other startups. We work out of the same place we live. I write the software and the CTO Travis is on the networking layer, making sure everything is up to date. The guys work on the content, outreach and expansion. Basically the funds were used to keep us living- food, rent, normal company expenses. The cool thing is we should be profitable really soon. We won't be reliant on investments so much as needing it for the runway but mainly just increasing the rate at which we grow. So further investment isn't necessity but it will be just good to have.

A lot of things we're working on this summer is changing the software to be smooth and fluid and revamping a lot of stuff. It's always a trial and error and discover process of what the best method of teaching people and creating a platform where knowledge is disseminated and sourced. The things we're focusing on this summer are revenue, monetization, software and UX. Closer to Fall, the site will look a lot better and go smoother. There will be more partnerships, revenue and all that stuff.

Message to Everipedia Investors

Thanks for seeing the mission and Everipedia will be huge. 


p.s. Look out for Part 2 of the Everipedia update series!