(2008-08-20) Holovaty Every Block

Profile of Adrian Holovaty's EveryBlock HyperLocal Start Up. (Django)

"My biggest goal when I worked with Adrian in Lawrence was to keep the bureaucracy and all the crap away from him and to give him as little direction as possible," says Rob Curley, now heading Web journalism at the Las Vegas Sun.

He got a million-dollar grant from the Knight News Challenge! He promised to be up by March, 2008, and he would beat that by two months, launching in Chicago, New York City and San Francisco. Philadelphia Pa and Charlotte Nc would follow over the summer, and the terms of his grant obligate him to get to 10 cities by the time it runs out next summer.

One of his biggest thoughts these days is about what happens next. When the money runs out, there are several options. He could reapply for a Knight grant, although the foundation's Kebbel says they'd rather help guide the business to firm footing on its own. He could seek venture capital money to support it. Alternatively,"We could magically start making money before then," he says, admitting the site has hardly been aggressive in trying, although the prospect of partnerships with existing sites, and of ads, looms as a possibility... "One large newspaper chain has contacted us and said, "Can we license this now? We want our entire newspaper chain to use this," " says Gary Kebbel, journalism program director for the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation., which funds Holovaty's project with a $1.1 million grant. That sounds like a possible Business Model.

Asked then if he would feature "UserGeneratedContent," articles and images submitted by average readers, he was noncommittal, at best.

Jan'2009: anniversary and thoughts for the future. (They're taking their software Open Source.)