Success Quote by Jimmy Wales

Wales is selling a technology project by pretending it isn’t one. The line’s smartest move is the bait-and-switch: “killer website” gets the Silicon Valley dopamine hit out of the way, then he pivots to the real pitch - legitimacy. Wikipedia can’t just be fast, usable, and addictive; it has to feel like a civic institution. That’s the subtext behind “much bigger.” He’s not only describing scope, he’s laundering a startup’s ambitions through the moral language of public service.

The casual phrasing matters. “We’re doing that of course” treats technical excellence as assumed, almost trivial, which quietly flatters the team and reassures skeptics that idealism won’t excuse mediocrity. “Having a lot of fun” is doing brand work too: it frames volunteer labor and open collaboration as joyful, not extractive - a key message for a platform that depends on unpaid editors, goodwill, and a culture of participation.

Then comes the crucial line: “affect the world in a positive way.” It’s intentionally broad, a kind of ethical umbrella big enough to cover messy realities: edit wars, bias, gatekeeping, misinformation, and the fact that “neutrality” is often a negotiated truce, not a natural state. In the early Wikipedia era, this mission talk functioned as ballast against accusations of amateurism and chaos. Wales is arguing that the product isn’t the website; the product is trust at scale - a shared reference point in an internet designed to fragment attention and authority.