Genius, formerly known as Rap Genius, is a website that provides annotations and explanations for song lyrics, poetry, and other forms of text. It was founded in 2009 by Mahbod (Maboo) Moghadam, Tom Lehman, and Ilan Zechory.

The idea for the website originated when Mahbod, who had been fired from his law firm, was staying at his friend (Ilan)'s house and started explaining the meaning behind rap lyrics to Tom (Ilans Roomate). Tom who was working helpdesk at an investment firm at the time, quickly developed the site RapExegesis, which later became known as Rap Genius.

In its early years, Rap Genius operated as a niche platform for rap enthusiasts to delve deeper into the meaning and context behind their favorite songs. However, in 2011, the site gained significant popularity, attracting over 1 million unique monthly visitors. Recognizing its potential, the co-founders implemented a forum on the site, further fostering a sense of community among users. Rap Genius also received $1.8 million in seed funding from Y Combinator, a renowned startup accelerator, which allowed the co-founders to leave their day jobs and focus on the site full time. At the time it was became the fastest-growing start-up in Y Combinator history.

2012:

As Rap Genius continued to grow, its influence extended beyond rap music. In 2012, the platform expanded its annotations to include non-rap songs and even parts of the Holy Bible. This move broadened its user base and attracted a more diverse range of contributors. The site's unique approach to annotation, combining entertainment and education, drew attention from both music fans and literary enthusiasts.

The success of Rap Genius caught the eye of venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (A16Z), which invested $15 million in the company. The move by A16Z was influenced by Marc Andreessen's love for their annotation feature, one he had originally wanted to implement in his web browser Netscape but had to remove due to server issues. This infusion of capital enabled Rap Genius to scale its operations and pursue ambitious growth strategies. With increased resources, they improved their annotation platform, added new features, and hired more staff to handle the growing user base.

2012 would be a big year for Rap Genius, they had grown to over 10 million monthly users, 17 full-time employees, and implemented a verified artists feature to give verified annotations behind the meaning of lyrics.

2013:

Despite its rapid expansion, Rap Genius found itself embroiled in controversies in 2013. Mahbod Moghadam, known for his eccentric personality, posted a photo of a dinner with Nas, Ben Horowitz and Mark Zuckerberg to Rap Genius's Instagram after being told by Zuckerberg not to. This act led to a public apology demand from Zuckerberg, highlighting the need for a more professional approach to business partnerships.

While Mahbod did apologize, later during an interview about the incident Mahbod would tell Zuckerberg to quote -"Zuck my Dick". Something similar to what he would tweet at Warren Buffet later in the year, while starting a Warren Buffet diss track competition on the genius site. This incident lost the Rap Genius team a meeting with Jay-Z.

In May the trio was scheduled for what many saw as the first public introduction to Rap Genius,a 30 minute panel at the annual tech conference TechCrunch Disrupt. Their panel would solidify what many already thought of the trio; labeled "foul mouthed, Tech-Bro douchebags", they played into the personas thought up to try and attract attention, something very different in the tech scene. They also said that the future of Rap Genius wasn’t Rap Genius, but "News Genius". Adding that they were actively working on spreading the annotation aspect to “Every website on the internet’’, as well as saying in just a year Rap Genius will be “bigger than facebook”.

In July they added Rock Genius, Poetry Genius and News Genius to the site. With the new sections, the site was more popular than ever, and the forum was exploding. That is until they were delisted by Google in December for predatory SEO tactics.

Genius had been agreeing to tweet out rap blogs in exchange for the blogs posting Genius links to the songs they were talking about. This would in turn boost Rap Genius’s SEO to Googles web crawler. Google doesn’t mess around when it comes to things like this but they gave genius a little slap on the wrist, made them fix some links and two weeks later they were back on top of Google search results.

2014:

Coming into 2014, Genius was on top of the world and their business model was nothing if not expansion, so much so that they began neglecting the forums, even removing the link from the homepage during several redesigns.

Furthermore, Moghadam's inappropriate comments on the site added fuel to the fire. 3 hours after the Isla Vista shooting, Mahbod began annotating Elliot Rodger's manifesto. Adding that Elliot's sister is probably 'Smoking Hot' and calling Elliot's writing "Beautiful". Recognizing the severity of the situation, Moghadam resigned from the company, leaving a void in Rap Genius's leadership.

In the aftermath of Moghadam's departure, Rap Genius underwent a rebranding, dropping "Rap" from its name and reemerging as "Genius." With a renewed focus on annotations across various genres, the company sought to distance itself from the controversies and rebuild its reputation. Alongside the rebranding, Genius raised an impressive $40 million in funding from investors, further fueling its expansion and development.

As part of its growth strategy, Genius launched specialized sections for different types of annotations, such as Fashion Genius, Tech Genius, Screen Genius, History Genius, Sports Genius, Lit Genius, Pop Genius, RNB Genius, Meta Genius, X Genius, and even Law Genius where you can help annotate the IRS’s 1040.

They were rapidly expanding, but at the cost of the community. Maboo was the defacto community leader, so when he left so did almost any transparency with the company. The forum users were asking for quality of life updates for years, it was still on the basic design platform it had been, and frankly the design of the forums were horrible. With the rise of sites like Kanyetothe and Sectioneighty that had no real backing, and certainty not one of Genius’ size, it made no sense for their site to look like this. The forum sections were just confusing, a lot of them arbitrary and once you actually got into a thread, you’d have to scroll thru every reply. There was, and still is no page element.

The site design was so bad even Kanye reached out to Ben Horowitz and offered to redesign the site, but like most Kanye projects it never came to fruition.

2015-2018:

In mid-2015, Genius embarked on yet another site redesign, accompanied by the unveiling of a new logo that would later become synonymous with the brand. However, their decision to move forward with these changes was met with a wave of overwhelmingly negative feedback from the community. Despite the outcry, Genius chose to disregard the feedback and proceeded to publicize the change anyway.

Around this time, the now two co-founders went on a press run revealing that they go to couples therapy and completely retconning the narrative surrounding the founding of Genius itself. They revised the story, claiming that the platform originated from a single conversation between the two founders, effectively erasing the significant contributions of Maboo.

After unsuccessful attempts at expanding into additional sections, Genius also refocused solely on annotating content. They removed all the unnecessary "X-Genius" sections of the site, and released a browser extension called "News Genius" for annotating third party websites. They also partnered with The Washington Post to annotate the 2015 presidential debates. However, the extension faced backlash for potential misinformation and cyberbullying promotion, leading to its discontinuation.

With their original aspirations of annotating the world essentially abandoned, Genius sought a new direction - "Original Content". The inspiration for this shift came after a video featuring Desiigner explaining the meaning behind his lyrics went viral. Genius seized the opportunity to turn their verified annotations feature into an entire video series. Artists were invited to participate, sharing captivating backstories and insights into their songs. This video series quickly became the flagship program of Genius, establishing a significant presence on YouTube and other social sites. However, Genius faced criticism for neglecting its original site and forum, which had been integral to its early success. Users felt alienated as the company prioritized external platforms like YouTube for content distribution. The site/company continued this way for years reportedly spending every last dollar on video content.

2019-Present:

In 2019, Genius made headlines by filing a lawsuit against Google and LyricFind, alleging that they had been stealing lyrics from Genius's website and displaying them in Google's search results. Genius claimed that they had implemented a watermarking system using a unique pattern of apostrophes to catch lyric theft. When Genius discovered that the exact same pattern was appearing in Google's search results, they believed their suspicions were confirmed.While Google denied the allegations and argued that the lyrics were obtained from licensed partners, the controversy shed light on the challenges faced by platforms that rely on user-generated content and the need for stronger safeguards against copyright infringement. The lawsuit would be dismissed after the judge found that Genius' lyric transcriptions were derivative works of artists songs, therefore Genius did not hold the copyright to the lyrics and could not claim Google's display of them as a copyright violation.

In 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic brought the live music industry to a halt, Genius responded by increasing its focus on digital content, collaborating with artists to produce virtual performances, and hosting online music events. Labeled "Genius Live" viewers could send money to ask their favorite artists questions during a live QNA and performance.

The funding for project spurred a round of layoffs within the company. One of the employees told Fine Print NY- “We were all like, this is a bad idea. No major artist is going to sign up for this, and people aren’t going to want to sit at home and pay $100 to ask Wiz Khalifa, ‘What’s your favorite cereal?’

To the surprise of almost nobody within the company, Genius Live was also a failure.

In mid-2020, Maboo resurfaced, posting an article to HackerNoon, calling for the resignations of Tom Lehman and Ilan Zechory. Maboo criticized them as "two white guys who have no black friends," accusing them of being mildly racist and lacking passion for hip-hop. Maboo's allegations didn't receive much attention as he was perceived as a disgruntled former employee. However, in the same week, Ilan's wife, Audrey Gelman, had stepped down from a company she co-founded following allegations of profiling and mistreatment of black and brown employees.

A month after Maboo's article, Ilan himself resigned as the President of Genius, opting to return to his previous occupation in celebrity hypnotherapy. In his place, Genius appointed Miki Toliver King, who became the first black executive for the company. Despite this change in leadership, Genius was already facing significant challenges, and by September 2021, their financial situation had become dire.

With less than $500,000 remaining from the $79 million they had raised over the years, Tom Lehman conducted an all-staff Zoom meeting to announce that Genius had been sold in a fire sale to holding company MediaLab, for $80 million.

During the announcement, Lehman revealed that the total purchase price was considerably lower than the liquidation preference of preferred shareholders. Consequently, holders of common stock and options would not receive any consideration. As a result, Genius terminated an undisclosed number of employees and rendered their stock options worthless. Shockingly (or not really), while the company faced financial struggles and staff cuts, the executives of Genius walked away with substantial paydays.

Tom Lehman received $13 million, Ilan Zechory received $8 million, four other unnamed executives received multi-million dollar compensation packages, Miki Toliver King had already resigned, Maboo is currently suing the company and the community is dead.

The survival of Genius hinges on its Verified YouTube videos, which remains the only lifeline for the company. Without the Verified program, the company would have faced bankruptcy a long time ago, and MediaLab would not have stepped in to acquire it. Everytime you see that yellow background it should remind you of just how bad Genius dropped the ball, by trying to expand too fast, neglecting their core userbase, neglecting the core foundation of providing lyrics, and turning their back on their community, a community that doesn’t even exist anymore.

Epilogue:

Maboo now runs helladoge.com, a "web 3 twitter clone".

Former CEO Tom Lehman now shills NFT's on his social platforms, he was sued by BoredApeYachtClub earlier this year.