Everipedia: The crowd-sourced online encyclopedia for absolutely everything

Founder

Cofounder of Genius.com. Magna cum laude from Yale and a graduate of Stanford Law. Fulbright Scholar and avid classical pianist. Early investor in Coinbase and Helpr.

Travis Moore

Founder

Real estate mogul in Las Vegas. Former Senior Business Information Analyst at Anthem. Triple majored in Biology, Biochemistry, and Neuroscience at UCLA. His passions are programming and investing.

Sam Kazemian

Founder

Sam double majored in Neuroscience and Philosophy at UCLA. He is a big fan of German metal band Rammstein. His friends fondly refer to him as Persian Zuck.

Investor Q&A

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What does your company do?

Everipedia is the next stage in the evolution of the internet - we combine the best parts of Wikipedia, Reddit, and Google into one massive encyclopedia of human knowledge and searchable content. First we’ll make what Wikipedia tried and failed to do: a completely open platform where anyone - not just a few thousand editors - can contribute text, sources, images, and videos for a much richer encyclopedia experience.

Where will your company be in 5 years?

Wikipedia has 39 million pages worldwide—but there are more than just 39 million things in the world. With Everipedia, we give everyone the freedom and the access to source and share knowledge. There are no gatekeepers and no information elites. Create your own page about something you love, have it upvoted by the crowd, and contribute to what we envision as the largest information database in the world.

What problem are you solving?

The biggest problem, in my opinion, with Wikipedia's notability requirement, is that it is used for sexist and bigoted motives. 87% of Wikipedia's editors are white males under the age of 30, so it's basically the 4chan crew who's running Wikipedia. You can prove, by looking at the big picture and analyzing the numbers on a macro level, that they have a sliding scale on their notability requirement, based on your skin color and your gender. They're a lot more strict on women and minorities having pages than they are on white males.It's a big problem that Wikipedia is the 6th biggest site on the internet, has all kinds of biases in it, and they're biases that are losing them traffic. Wikipedia doesn't care, because the editors aren't getting paid. They're not getting paid with money; the way they're getting "paid" is that they're allowed to use their power to reinforce their racist, sexist, and bigoted beliefs.Everipedia just wants to make money. The way that we want to compensate ourselves is with money. We have logical and capitalistic motivations which allows us to give users a lot more freedom on our platform--the same way that, for example, Facebook does. Facebook lets you have a Facebook page about your startup, about your cat, about anything you want.

What are the differences between Wikipedia and Everipedia?

The less strict notability requirement is really just the tip of the iceberg. We also have all these pages that people are searching on Wiki for that they don’t have. They don’t have it, but we might, which is what has allowed us to grow so fast. The site is really just, in every way, shape, and form, a better version of Wikipedia. That means the software is much, much easier to use. It’s very easy to access and edit from your phone. We’re more friendly in terms of building an inclusive community of involved users. You get IQ for your contributions, and you also get badges. Users receive a lot more recognition for their contributions than on Wikipedia. It’s also less prohibitive for registered users to edit and contribute on our site, whereas on Wikipedia, only a select few who are in a sort of “cool kids club” get to write.There are also verified accounts for celebrities. Snoop Dogg is not allowed to edit his own Wikipedia page, but on Everipedia, Snoop Dogg can get his own verified account, and people will know that anything he says is coming from Snoop Dogg himself. Verified pages have a check mark next to it. We also allow voting on the footnotes. One problem with Wikipedia is that Wikipedia has cited footnotes, but a lot of people don't even know they're there. On Everipedia, the footnotes are more front and center. Anyone can comment on any footnote, and you can go to them directly from the site. It doesn't just give you the random name of a book that you can't even find anywhere. It's all things that you can verify right there. You can also upvote or downvote them. On Wikipedia footnotes are an afterthought, whereas for us the footnotes are front and center. It’s also a restriction, though, because we only accept web based sources for the aforementioned reason.

What content do you have that Wikipedia doesn’t?

Right now, we have a lot of pages that Wikipedia specifically doesn't have, like characters from TV shows that aren't notable enough to be mentioned in the Wikipedia pages. We have “Love & Hip Hop” character pages that have over 100,000 page views. That’s clearly shows there's a demographic and an area of content that Wikipedia is missing out on, even though it's the number 7 biggest site in the world. Since it's a non-profit, Wikipedia says anyone can actually take the sum total of their articles, even for profit purposes, as long as they say that it's from Wikipedia. We're working right now to actually import all of Wikipedia to the site. Basically, we're trying to fork Wikipedia, and bring it over to Everipedia, so that it's just Wikipedia plus everything else that's unique to our own site. This ensures that we won't have any real deficiencies to speak of. Obviously, we're going to cite Wikipedia as one of the primary sources that an article comes from. We're already starting to test some of those scrapings.

How is Everipedia’s community different than Wikipedia?

Although the community is still not big, it's expanding. It's just so much easier for people to get involved. At Wikipedia, they kind of treat it like a club that you need to be invited into. The people who are already contributing aren’t getting paid in money, so the only thing they have is their pride. Part of their pride is excluding other people from joining their exclusive club, but we're trying to actually actively get people to join us and contribute, the same way that I was doing at Rap Genius. I think we're going to have a contributor-to-consumer ratio that is more similar to Rap Genius, than to Wikipedia, which would be huge. Rap Genius has a way, way bigger chunk. It's closer to 1% of people contributing in some way, whereas Wikipedia is not even close to that. Wikipedia makes it so difficult. You can't even figure it out. Even if you really, really wanted to contribute to Wikipedia, you’d have to learn wiki markups to do it, which I've tried, and I failed. Even though I’m not a technical person, I’m a website person, and if even I can't figure out wiki markups, I doubt most high school or college kids would be able to. Basically, the only person who could figure it out is someone who has some experience with software development. That's a pretty small pool of people who would even be capable of contributing to Wikipedia, which also explains its messed up demographics. It's basically a bunch of young tech guys who are running Wikipedia, whereas any other site you look at, it's more of a cross-section of society. There's all kinds of people who contribute to Rap Genius. That's because the software is really easy to use.

How are users engaged?

People are really interested in getting involved. Usually the first thing they want to add is stuff that they're really passionate about: their own companies, themselves, or their friends. Then as they use the site (and it's easy to understand how to make pages, merge pages, edit, link, and cite), they start branching out to the other content. We learned that the more modern our site looked--the more closer to Facebook or other social media sites it is in terms of usage, like messaging or editing--the easier it is for people to hop on.They usually hop on by making something that they're really knowledgeable about, mainly either themselves, their company, or something in their hometown. Then they get more involved, and quickly start making much more complicated nuanced pages. We have one of our editors who's always on the site. He was making very sophisticated pages about cancer, different types of cancer treatments, and “starving cancer versus chemo starving cancer”--things that weren’t even on Wikipedia. Its unique content in the scientific realm is unique to Everipedia right now. People first start by editing stuff that's really basic, and then branching out.

How did you guys get started?

My co-founders, Sam and Teddy, have been working on the site for a year before I (Mahbod) got involved. It was about 6 months after I had left Rap Genius, and I was giving a talk at UCLA. At my talk, Sam came up to me, and he showed me my Everipedia page. I had a eureka moment, because I had coincidentally been trying to get my own Wikipedia page. I tried to put it up myself but it got taken down. Then I even had someone who was more experienced help me out with it, but it still got taken down. When I saw myself on Everipedia, I thought, "This is amazing. If I wanted this so bad, there's probably millions of people like me." That turned into our pitch. The way that we pitch Everipedia to people is by starting a page about the person, or about their company, and then say, "This is you. This is your wiki, and you can improve it." Then someone jumps in and starts improving it, and by then they've learned how to use the site, and it becomes one of their tools.Everyone reads Wikipedia, but very few people actually know people who have contributed to the site. Everyone uses Google; they use it just as much as they read it. Facebook pages can be built by anyone, but no one actually contributes to Wikipedia at all. So our whole point was, with that observation in mind, if we could get even just a small amount of engagement, if we could just get 1 or 2 percent of people that read Everipedia to contribute, which is actually an order of magnitude more than Wikipedia, the ratio to contributors to readers, we would be as big or bigger than Wikipedia itself.

How many people have contributed or edited on your site?

There are over 4,000 registered users on Everipedia. Before, we had a handful of people every day that would come on, sign up, try the site, edit existing pages, and make new ones. But in the past 2 months, there's been so many new people coming and trying the site, that it's almost hard for even all of us that drive it, to just keep track of all the new people, message them, and reach out to them. Sometimes people do slip through the cracks, just because there's so many of them. Some uncited content gets on the site, and it takes a day or two to really get it reviewed. It’s growing really fast. I don't have a specific ratio, but at this point, just us at the office, which includes me (Mahbod), Travis, George, Christian, and Navin, is almost too few people to keep track of everything right now. At this point it's a bit overwhelming even with five people, but it’s a positive first world problem to have.

1	1.8 million monthly unique visitors.
2	One of the fastest growing sites in the world. Currently ranked 20,833 up from 1,900,000 in July 2015.
3	3.5 million pages and counting.
4	Already making money. Vision to become a site more important than Wikipedia, Google, and Reddit. Revenue will increase with popularity.
5	Founder Mahbod's previous company Genius is valued close to $1 billion. Genius investors include Andreessen Horowitz.
7	Current banner ad avenues are bringing in about $150-300 per day.

1	Everipedia already has revenue, but not enough to cover expenses, although we are changing ad networks and hope the change will increase revenue.
2	Investors won't see a return until the company is acquired or IPOs, or becomes profitable and starts paying dividends to shareholders.
3	The site may not grow enough to make a lot of money.
4	The possibility that the team will give up on the project and stop working.
5	If our competitor Wikipedia undergoes a massive remodeling, it may impact the growth of Everipedia.
6	Everipedia is dependent upon the retention and addition of high quality employees.
7	Everipedia is dependent upon the continued support and involvement of key management, engineering staff, and employees of all types. Everipedia’s success and ability to compete is dependent on its continuing ability to identify, attract, hire, train, retain and motivate highly qualified employees with knowledge of the businesses in which Everipedia operates. If any of Everipedia's key personnel were to cease their employment with Everipedia, Everipedia’s business may be adversely affected.
8	Everipedia's business model is dependent on its ability to sell web advertisements. Web ad revenue is correlated with site traffic. Therefore our ability to earn money is dependent on our ability to drive traffic to Everipedia. Insufficient users and traffic to Everipedia would negatively impact our business, prospects, results of operations and financial condition.
9	The development of new site features and design is a complex and lengthy process and may not be completed within anticipated timeframes.
10	In the past Everipedia has obtained sufficient capital for operations primarily from investors. Future operations depend on Everipedia's ability to increase revenue. While Everipedia may consider funding its business in future through a combination of debt and equity financing, there can be no assurance that such additional financing will be obtained.
11	Everipedia operates in a sector where other participants create competition. The company operates in a market that is growing and will attract competition. Competition is driven by proprietary technologies and knowhow, capabilities, consistency of operational performance, quality, price, value, alternative therapies, and speed. Some competitors may have greater financial, research and development, operational and marketing resources than Everipedia and be able to bring competing products to market. Greater financial, research and development, operational and marketing resources and experience may allow Everipedia's competitors to respond more quickly with new, alternative or emerging technologies.

Director	Occupation	Joined
Mahbod Moghadam	Co-Founder @ Everipedia	2015
Travis Moore	Cofounder @ Everipedia	2015
Theodor Forselius	Treasurer @ Everipedia	2015
Sam Kazemian	CEO @ Everipedia	2015

Officer	Title	Joined
Mahbod Moghadam	Co-founder, Secretary	2015
Travis Moore	Cofounder	2015
Theodor Forselius	Cofounder, Treasurer	2015
Sam Kazemian	Co-founder, CEO	2015

Holder	Securities Held	Voting Power
Mahbod Moghadam	2,400,000 common 600,000 series FF	26.5%
Theodor Forselius	2,513,207 common 628,302 Series FF	27.8%
Sam Kazemian	2,515,207 common 628,302 Series FF	27.8%

Date	Amount	Security
12/2016	$129,878	SAFE
02/2016	$200,000	Convertible Note
08/2015	$120,000	Convertible Note

$50,000	Everipedia's current costs are office, food for employees, and small salaries for 3 of the employees. $50k will cover these costs, increase our runway, and give us time for the site to grow.
$100,000	We will pay bigger salaries and start hiring more people, first as contractors and eventually full-time if things go well. We just renewed our lease on our office for another year and have enough space for a bigger team, so the biggest expense will stay the same until we raise a lot more or start making lots of money.
$200,000	Additional funds will be used for office expenses, rent, and salaries.

Issued	Amount	Interest	Discount	Valuation Cap	Maturity
08/22/2015	$120,000			$1,200,000
02/27/2016	$200,000			$10,000,000

Class of Security	Securities (or Amount) Authorized	Securities (or Amount) Outstanding	Voting Rights
Common	832,700	832,700	Yes
Series Ff Preferred	167,300	167,300	Yes

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Our Team

And Our Major Accomplishments

Why people love us

Some of our investors

we've raised $449,878 from 202+ investors since our founding

In the news

ALL HUMAN KNOWLEDGE IN ONE PLACE

1998: Paid Knowledge

2001: Outdated

2014: Infinite Data

THE BEST OF WIKIPEDIA + REDDIT + GOOGLE

Crowd-Sourced Info

All Searchable

Upvote Sources

Growth

Timeline

Let's take over the internet together

Investor Q&A

Financials

At a Glance

Risks

Details

The Board of Directors

Officers

Voting Power

Past Equity Fundraises

Convertible Notes Outstanding

Outstanding Debts

Related Party Transactions

Use of Funds

Capital Structure

Form C Filing on EDGAR

Everipedia Completes Largest Follow-On Financing in Reg Crowdfunding History

Everipedia Raises $30 Million

Wikipedia Cofounder Joins Everipedia, Moving Site on to Blockchain (EOS)

Part 2: How It All Began and Message to Investors

Part 1: Intro to Everipedia and New Features Since Campaign

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THE BEST OF
WIKIPEDIA + REDDIT + GOOGLE

Join 318,278 investors who funded 320 startups with over $115 million¹