process.
Livingston: How did you first come up with the idea of flagging?
Newmark: I forget. I think it was my customer service team, not me. I don’t
recall, it was so long ago.
Livingston: But it worked pretty well?
Craig Newmark 251
Newmark: Yes. It works great in all sorts of ways, and it’s also an expression of
our values. Mutual trust. This is kind of democracy in real life. Everyone wins,
except for the bad guys.
Livingston: Do you remember a time when you wanted to quit?
Newmark: Nothing like that. Sometimes I’ll have some anxiety. For example,
when the site is having a problem, or when there’s some issue that I’m having
trouble handling, but that’s not usual.
Livingston: It started out as a side project. Was there ever a point when you
said, “I don’t have the time for this”? Or were you always very committed?
Newmark: Always very committed. I’m stubborn. As I sometimes say, “I’m one
very persistent nerd.”
Livingston: I’m surprised that you never had any problems that you thought
were totally overwhelming.
Newmark: The problems I’ve had which got to me were the after-effects of
some of the bad trust decisions I made.
Livingston: Who did you learn things from?
Newmark: From friends, from business people I know. I should give particular
credit to our principal corporate lawyer, a guy named Ed Wes from Perkins
Coie. He’s been very good at a lot of issues. He’s really helped us out a great
deal.
Livingston: The turning point for you was when you decided to do craigslist
full-time, when your advertisers took you to lunch?
Newmark: Basically in mid-December of ’97, they took me out to lunch and
said, “This isn’t working. You’ve got to take more responsibility for the way
things are going.” And I did.
Livingston: And you thought, “This is the right thing for me to do”?
Newmark:Yeah. That meant that I coasted on savings for several months or so,
but that’s not a problem. And it worked.
Livingston: Did you fund craigslist initially or did you take outside investment?
Newmark: I funded it with my own time. In no form did we ever take investment
money. While we were trying to run nonprofit, the nonprofit entity took a
few tiny loans, but we’re talking about low thousands.
Livingston: I’m interested in the concept of how little money it takes to start
certain types of web-based startups.
Newmark: Good point. The deal is, I did have some help, some favors; but, for
the most part, for the first few years, it was just putting my own time and energy
into it. If I was billing for my own hours, it would have been a great deal of

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