[Jason Calacanis posted a link to a discussion he started on facebook asking what people would do if they were the ceo of his company. I wasn't able to post to the threat (not a friend?) so I thought I'd put my thoughts here on the off chance that he finds them via Technorati or similar. Most importantly though, he provides an excellent lesson in collecting ideas from your customers.]
I'd allow the public to create/edit SeRP pages themselves, wiki-style. No doubt you considered this early on and instead opted for higher-editorial-value manually-edited pages to start with. That was a good decision because it demonstrates the Mahalo concept and gets over the "critical mass" issue of any new content system.
But as a user I can tell you that my instant desire was to create/edit SeRPs. (Seriously, no "porn" SeRP?)
With MediaWiki powering at least a piece of your site I'm guessing that this concept isn't too hard to realize. The main thing I'd do is focus on the user interface. As you launch this you in no way want to distract new users with user-generated content. You want new users to see the value of the manually-edited stuff. Power users and those curious about a particular topic can dig into the seething foam of user-generated content, but they need to be able to bounce back and forth between the two very quickly and obviously.
A two-tab, quick-refresh (ajax, dhtml, whatever), bar placed just under each SeRP title (i.e. iPhone). One tab is called "Mahalo" and the other tab is called "Community"… or something along those lines. The idea being that there's one page that's officially sanctioned and one that's user-created, wiki-style. The default tab is the "Mahalo" tab even if there's no official content yet… to retain the focus on high-quality editorial value and to insulate you from the startup flamefest that new content systems are before they mature.
Leverage the content you already have by jumpstarting the Community version of each SeRP by copying the official content into it. Or maybe I'm wrong here. Another idea: Maybe you should do the complete opposite and write a set of checks and balances that always prevent similar links from appearing on both pages. In other words, don't waste a user's time having to see the same link on both the official page and the community page. The Mahalo page shouldn't be seen as a subset of the community-provided stuff. The two in combination should be seen as a single set that works together. When Mahalo editors find a link of value on the community page they should remove it from that page and put it onto the official page. When a community member tries to add a link that already exists on the official Mahalo page it's removed automatically, although transparently… and kindly (with explanation and a smiley face/hang ten). Yes, I like this second idea better.
On the marketing side somehow you need to get more people talking about your product on their blogs. I recommend, in a completely biased manner, dneero.com, launching within days (check your inbox for closed beta password).
Funding side, I have no idea. Sounds like you've got some bucks to play with.
Are partnerships with Google possible? I love the idea of Mahalo high-editorial-value pages but would prefer to access them directly from Google in the same way that I get some links like "About Me" "Contact Me" and "My Schedule" when I Google "jason calacanis." Not sure if this is possible as you may see them as competitors or vice versa.
SoCon08