Well, I really believe in the mission to build a site that helps people learn anything... and I believed in human-powered search before that (and still do to be honest).
I've got the education bug, and I want to take the promise we all see in things like Lynda.com and Kahn Academy and scale it into a brand as big as Google or Wikipedia.
LAUNCH, Angel investing and This Week in Startups are all fun, but they are not as challenging as MAHALO.
Also, keep in mind that Mahalo is a top 200/300 site with millions in revenue even with this hit. It's the most successful thing I've done.... despite the hits we've taken.
Perhaps you shouldn't try to be 'everything to everybody'. I might not be your demographic, but whenever I think of learning I never think of Mahalo.
I would say choose one vertical that you can conquer - from an education play - and conquer it. Then branch out horizontally.
You can't beat Lynda.com, Khan Academy and every other learning site at the same time. Take it one vertical at a time and come up with a unique value proposition.
Lynda.com was the first mainstream internet video portal to make programming/technical tutorial videos and charge for them.
People don't go to Khan for the quality of the videos (i.e. fancy production and cameras), it is because he has an interesting way of explaining complex topics - and he focuses on the content (not himself).
Those are not very easy to beat, because they have already achieved Product/Market fit.
Unfortunately, you guys are still struggling to find yours.
Jason, you might consider doing a non profit with a more narrow focused education project rather then a for profit catch all product. Im personally involved with 2 projects that are being directed at kids and teens and are using game mechanics to try to get them excited about learning.
There is a DESPARATE need within this market for passionate knowledgeable and skilled people who are willing to invest their time energy and certainly money to help build these projects and get the word out. Personally knowing that the work that im doing will help kids and teens and maybe even young adults get excited about learning is more exciting then the idea of having everybody use my product and then being able to sell it and make alot of money. Ok almost as exciting. :-).
I wasn't going to say anything... but I find the straight-up 4th grade grammatical issues (eg. "Google want's") to be far more annoying than the proper name misspellings.
Point taken about it being the most successful, but is it profitable? It would seem like the conferences could be bigger and more profitable immediately if you focused entirely on that and expanded on it.
Plus, you've already carved out a massive amount of market share and goodwill with the conferences related products.
Jason I think the stats, pre-pivot, pivot, and after pivot bear this out that Wales may be right that a profit site cannot be execute properly..
I even saw the stats pattern when the Quantcast stats were not hidden..and I had to look up how to do stats again just to analyze it..as I had not touched stats math in years..
I've got the education bug, and I want to take the promise we all see in things like Lynda.com and Kahn Academy and scale it into a brand as big as Google or Wikipedia.
LAUNCH, Angel investing and This Week in Startups are all fun, but they are not as challenging as MAHALO.
Also, keep in mind that Mahalo is a top 200/300 site with millions in revenue even with this hit. It's the most successful thing I've done.... despite the hits we've taken.