Simon Kissane wrote:
(On a side note, how many people working on Wikipedia actually are employed by Bomis? There's Larry, Jimbo, and who else?).
I am the majority owner of Bomis. Tim Shell is my partner, and we have another partner who is (merely) an investor, not an active participant in the company.
Larry works solely on Nupedia and Wikipedia.
You may also have had contact with Jason, Ted, and Toan, which, if you include me as well, is our programming staff.
We currently have 10 employees. In addition to me, Tim, Larry, Jason, Ted and Toan, there is Terry (advertising sales), Christine (business manager and my wife) in the business areas, and Rob and Jeremy in the Bomis content management department. The 10th employee is my brother Johnny -- he only works part-time, doing programming tasks.
We have never had venture capital. We didn't make millions in the dot-com boom, but we didn't lose millions, either. We never even *saw* millions. :-) We're making a decent living, and we're growing the company in the old fashioned way, i.e. trying to turn a proft from month to month, paying the bills, serving the customers.
As a side note, it is sort of funny to me when I read people discussing "Bomis" in the abstract. Ultimately, that just means me, since I'm the final decisionmaking authority. Bomis is not a big abstract company, it's just the people that you know. A down home mom and pop dot-com. :-)