Ever wondered how to regain control of a spooked camel? Or perhaps you'd like to know how to avoid catching a cold or how to exercise at your computer. Look no further than wikiHow, the online, collaborative how-to manual started in 2005 by Jack Herrick.
Things weren't always so nontraditional in Herrick's career. In 2002, he co-founded Luminescent Technologies, which develops deep, subwavelength lithography enhancement solutions that help the semiconductor industry make computer chips smaller and faster. "Luminescent is a traditional startup," says Herrick, "and it is rocket science. It will either be a massive success or a bomb." But most important, Luminescent was the day job that allowed him to buy eHow.
eHow, founded in 1999, was an online how-to manual that became a victim of the dotcom bust. In 2004, Herrick and his buddy Josh Hannah made an offer to buy it. "It was like fixing up an old car," he says. "The body might be a wreck, but inside it was beautiful." They took a site that was receiving 40,000 unique visitors a month to one that became number 3 in the Nielsen/NetRatings educational category, with 5.5 million unique visitors per month. This was tremendously exciting, but Herrick says that paying professional writers and editors wouldn't scale up to the extensive site he wanted to build. It became clear that Herrick's ultimate vision of "an up-to-date website on how to do literally everything, in multiple languages" could not be realized through eHow.
So in January 2005, Herrick launched wikiHow, a collaborative writing project to build the world's largest how-to manual. Herrick was inspired by Wikipedia, a website he considers one of the best ever. "Wikis are living, breathing things," he says. (Wiki comes from the Hawaiian word for quick.)
WikiHow is certainly not your traditional startup. Herrick is intentionally building a company that will not be susceptible to boom-and-bust cycles. For starters, it isn't financed with venture capital. "We're not at anyone's whim, and we won't get into the fear-and-greed cycle," Herrick says. The site supports itself through AdSense, the Google service that provides ads matched to the characteristics and interests of site visitors.
What is most exciting to Herrick is the grassroots nature of wikiHow. "My role is really community steward. Almost everything is done by volunteers, and decisions are made by the community," disproving, he says, many traditional biases about the way to get things done in business. "People are creating amazing, interesting resources without a boss."
In May 2006, Herrick sold eHow and is now concentrating all his energies on growing wikiHow. With almost 14,000 articles already written and 2.6 million unique visitors a month, wikiHow is on its way. Although he is still very far from his ultimate vision, Herrick understands that the challenge is to make the site better at its own pace. "It has to happen gradually," he says. "You have to allow it to flourish at its own speed."
Herrick's own speed is full throttle. When he first got involved with eHow and wikiHow, he worked full-time days at Luminescent and devoted his nights and weekends to the websites. He has gradually whittled back his time at Luminescent to just one day a week. But he can't do it all himself. He needs you. That's the fun of a wiki.
