In 1994, Wales took a job with Chicago Options Associates, a futures and options trading firm in Chicago, Illinois. By "speculating on interest-rate and foreign-currency fluctuations," he had soon earned enough to "support himself and his wife for the rest of their lives," according to Daniel Pink of "Wired" magazine. Wales has described himself as having been addicted to the Internet from an early stage and used to write computer code as a pastime. During his studies in Alabama, he became an obsessive player of Multi-User Dungeons (MUDs)—a type of virtual role-playing game—and thereby experienced the potential of computer networks to foster large-scale collaborative projects.

Inspired by the remarkable initial public offering of Netscape in 1995, he decided to become an Internet entrepreneur and, in 1996, founded the web portal Bomis, with two partners. The website featured user-generated webrings and, for a time, sold erotic photographs. Wales described it as a "guy-oriented search engine" with a market similar to that of "Maxim" magazine; and according to "The Atlantic Monthly" it "found itself positioned as the "Playboy" of the Internet". Bomis did not become successful, but in March 2000 hosted and provided the initial funding for the Nupedia project.

ವಿಕಿಮೀಡಿಯ ಪ್ರತಿಷ್ಠಾನ
ವೈಯಕ್ತಿಕ ಜೀವನ
ಚಿಂತನೆ ಮತ್ತು ಪ್ರಭಾವ
Chicago Options Associates and Bomis