(L-R): Tom Lehman, Ilan Zechory and Mahbod Moghadam of Rap Genius speak onstage with Josh Constine at TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2013. (Photo by Brian Ach/Getty Images for TechCrunch)
Picture it — 2009. The economy is rapidly going down the toilet. But you’re a recent Stanford Law grad, so things are supposed to work out for you. But at the Biglaw firm you’re at, Dewey & LeBoeuf, there doesn’t seem to be enough work to go around. Now they’re offering “deferral time” to associates who want a third of their salary in exchange for a year off. So you take the deal, and launch a whole new career outside of the law.
That’s the story of Mahbod Moghadam up through 2010. That’s when he launched Rap Genius, a lyric annotation website. But it hasn’t all been smooth sailing for Moghadam once he’d escaped the clutches of Biglaw. Moghadam and his fellow Rap Genius co-founders, Yale undergrad classmates Tom Lehman and Ilan Zechory, seemed to court controversy. In tech circles they were known for their antics, and then there was their link-building strategy that got them kicked off of Google.
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Oh, yeah, and he was fired from the venture he’d co-founded.
After the Santa Barbara mass shooting in which Elliot Rodger killed six people and injured another fourteen before killing himself, Rodger left behind a manifesto. This autobiography detailed the reasons why he wanted “revenge” on a “cruel world,” and Moghadam uploaded the screed onto the Genius website. And then he annotated with his commentary. Called “weirdly gleeful annotations that ignore the memoir’s context as a prelude to mass murder” by Gawker, Moghadam seemed enamored with Rodger’s prose and made inappropriate comments about the women in the manifesto. Moghadam apologized for his words and the lapse in judgment, but the damage was done, and he resigned from the company he started.
Now he’s reimagining his career once again. I spoke with Moghadam about his latest endeavor as co-founder of Everipedia, an interactive encyclopedia website that he favorably compares to Wikipedia:
It’s like Rap Genius vs the janky old lyrics sites. Everipedia is really easy to use. We have a diverse community that isn’t 99% white men. You can add gifs and videos to pages – it’s more fun! Celebrities can get “Verified Accounts” — on Wikipedia, celebrities aren’t even allowed to edit their own pages, even if it’s 100% facts. Isn’t that silly. Everipedia is easy to edit from your phone, the design is mobile-first. Since we’re for-profit, we can pay people for their hard work.
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Moghadam got involved with the Wikipedia competition after the creator, Sam Kazemian, showed him his own Everipedia page:
He showed me the site in April 2015. He was a Senior at UCLA at the time, and I was giving a talk about Rap genius at the Bruin Entrepreneurs organization. He came up to me and showed me MY Everipedia! I flipped out. My dream in life had always been to have a Wikipedia page about me. One time, in 2013, somebody made me one — but Wikipedia deleted it! They decided I’m not important enough. It really made me sad, so seeing my Everipedia page was kind of a “Eureka” moment — I realized, if I wanted a Wikipedia page this much, and they were denying me, there are probably lots of people in the same boat! The site’s growing really fast, already one of the 6K biggest in the U.S., so it seems my hypothesis was on point.
He credits his time in law school, as well as his torts professor and internet activist (and unsuccessful presidential candidate) Larry Lessig, for igniting his passion in the internet, calling him a “brilliant, inspiring teacher.” But like so many who attend law school, he was not motivated by a great passion for the law, but because of a lack of viable other options. Though he doesn’t regret the experience, saying, “I think it’s the best thing I ever did. I’m always trying to get young people to go! When you go to law school, nobody f**ks with you. People are afraid. In Democracy in America, de Tocqueville says that lawyers are the U.S. version of aristocracy. I think this observation is spot-on.”
Moghadam missed seeing the worst of the Dewey & LeBouef demise up close and personal, but he says he says he enjoyed his time there. He was at the Biglaw firm for only a year before he took the offer of deferral time, and he seems wistful about the legal career that might have been: “I kind of regret that I didn’t get to be an attorney — but I guess God had different plans. Shalom…” Besides, as he notes, “I liked dressing up for work, it was fun. My business casual attire was always on point.”
Now if he can only steer clear of controversy…
Earlier: A ‘Genius’ Use of Deferral Time
Kathryn Rubino is an editor at Above the Law. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).