Gil Penchina, previously eBay’s Vice President and GM of International, is now the CEO of new startup Wikia.
Wikia is the for profit sister site of Wikipedia. Where Wikipedia focuses on verifiable facts, Wikia is all about opinions – travel guides, political opinions, whatever. Wikia announced a $4 million venture round in March 2006.
I spoke with Gil for a few minutes this morning about his decision to leave, his plans for Wikia and some of his favorite new web startups. Listen to the podcast at TalkCrunch.
Interesting. She must have gotten a much better offer. I doubt eBay’s Vice President would just leave without being promised significant monetary gain.
Digg this story here.
Simran – agree, except that Gill is a dude – http://www.eadp...05/Penchina.jpg
Actually, I’d be surprised if an early-stage startup CEO drew as high a salary as a VP at Ebay so I bet Mr. Penchina left because he believed the equity was highly valuable. In fact, I believe that equity is really the only reason why anyone should ever take a startup CEO position.
they need to get some branding people in, so its a wiki for everything, even a pro-george bush page lol,
its a big risk, no marketing, no ads.
How do these people manage to Millions of dollars into a website? And than all you see is google ads on the side. wikia has them you tube has them and others as well.
No wonder google keeps getting richer!
so this paves the way for the wiki sell-out by the back door? wikipedia is not for profit but the ring-leaders side-step that with this new venture, also based on thousands of people writing free content.
those who have been screaming about the death of wikipedia have been proved right sooner than i thought.
not for profit indeed.
donal scannell
Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders
“Gil Penchina, CEO of Wikia, and an 8-year veteran of eBay, contrasts his experiences and lessons of working in a big company with heading a small start-up.”
http://odeo.com...io/1162574/view
I have a question – what equity stake would CEO get? How much?
Sorry guys, i knew it was coming….
http://www.redh...3A+Gil+Penchina
Make sense. You knew they’d want to leverage the brand name while it’s still hot.
ohhhh yes
Interestingly enough, I was talking to Jimbo Wales on IRC last night and he didn’t mention this… curious.
Great. Another forum to hear peoples opinions. It will be interesting to see how this takes off, how it is moderated and monitored etc.
Gil is an absolutely great business leader and Wikia is lucky to get him. He is fun, sharp, and inspirational. He’s done great things for helping build eBay’s business. I am looking forward to seeing him in action again at Wikia.
Went over to Wikia and looked around. In a word, it’s quiet. Looks like they’ve got their work cut out for them to replicate the success of wikipedia. From the podcast it sounds like Gil’s hoping for organic growth with pretty realistic expectations, so hopefully they’ll make it.
It’s sad when a website can use free software (MediaWiki), base a site on a famous site almost completely (Wikipedia), and end up getting $4 million and a famous CEO.
At least it’s started by Jimmy Wales.. But, still, I don’t see how they could raise $4 million with what looks like a striped down and Google-Ad-ized version of Wikipedia…
Gil was a valued team member at eBay, I am sure he’ll do well!
I Like the idea but still think wikipedia rulez better, and i hate te ads on Wikia, Wikipedia is nice and clean.