History of Famous Startups. craigslist

Newmark: The other

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Newmark: The other people on my team do, yes. Since I’ve had such bad luck
in interviewing—that’s because I’m not suited to it—I have no role in the hiring
whatsoever.
Livingston: Is there anything about craigslist that people misunderstand?
Newmark: People sometimes still think we’re a nonprofit, even though we tell
people that we’re not. Sometimes people think that we sold part to eBay, and
that’s a misconception I have to fix now and then.
Livingston: eBay is letting you do your thing, right?
Newmark: Yes.
Livingston: What advice would you give to someone thinking about starting a
startup?
Newmark:...

all sorts of

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all sorts of things, all the bad things we’ve talked about, and they would also do
things to try to evade our tools—which worked, by the way, except I have a volunteer
who looks at things. They would post using multiple email addresses,
that kind of thing. I just kept blocking them and blocking them, and they got
tired of being blocked and they finally approached me and said, “Sorry about
this.” And it’s working now.
Craig Newmark 253
Livingston: So they didn’t just go away; they changed.
Newmark: Yes. That is mighty good. It worked very nicely.
Livingston: Can…

money. But that

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money. But that doesn’t matter now.
Livingston: Who were the first craigslist employees?
Newmark: Just a handful of people that I found in ’99.
Livingston: Did you work with them? How did you find them?
Newmark: I think through the site.
Livingston: How did you grow the features on the site? Did you always add
new features based on user feedback?
Newmark: When it comes to features visible from the outside, yes. Internally,
we figure out on a continuous basis . . . we figure out what tools we need, and
then we do them. That’s working to this day,...

process.

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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,...

Newmark: No, Jim

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Newmark: No, Jim helped lead us out of the difficulties. I’m being vague, but
I have to.
Livingston: Going back to the time when you were still in your apartment, was
there anything that worried you?
Newmark: I can’t think of anything. I may be forgetting a lot, but I think the
only worry I can recall was that, when you run your server on someone else’s
machine, if there’s a problem in the middle of the night, you have an issue. Or,
if you are running it at a service, and they are flaky and have weak customer
service,...

or apartment brokers.”

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or apartment brokers.” Beyond that, there was some mix of opinion, but
we stuck with that.
Craig Newmark 249
Livingston: Did you come up with the policy on your own?
Newmark: Primarily the community dictated the policy. And they weren’t shy
about sending the feedback in. I’m mixing together a couple years worth of
feedback—’98/’99 and beyond, but primarily those years.
In the end of ’97, I was approached by some volunteers, and they said,
“Hey, let’s run craigslist and see if we can run a nonprofit.” To make a long,
painful story short, that effort failed. I kind of…

Linux servers—small, cheap

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Linux servers—small, cheap machines. We’re primarily Linux on the desktop,
with some Mac and some Windows.
We do worry about liability issues relating to the use of Windows, since it’s
pretty insecure. We don’t have much sensitive data, but we have to regard
Windows as a source of compromise.
Livingston: When you put craigslist on a website, did you get a positive
response pretty quickly?
Newmark: Our traffic has always been slow but sure. We’re the tortoise, not
the hare. Now and then we’ll get a surge of growth, but it’s been slow but
steady.
Livingston: Were you just running…

That’s a microcosm

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That’s a microcosm of our whole history: people would suggest things to me,
and then I would figure out what seemed to make sense—what a lot of people
were asking for—and then I’d do it. Even now, with a whole company behind it,
we listen. We do stuff, we follow through, and then we listen more. What we do
is almost 100 percent based on what people ask us to do.
The biggest entrepreneurial lesson I’ve learned has been that you really do
need to follow your instincts. I trusted some people who my instincts were
telling me were untrustworthy,...

In 1995, Craig

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In 1995, Craig Newmark started an email list to publicize
events in San Francisco. As “Craig’s List” grew
in popularity, he switched from a mailing list to a
website and added categories. Without consciously
realizing it, he was about to take a big bite out of the
classified ad business.
In 1999, Newmark decided it was time to morph
craigslist.org from a hobby into a real business. Jim
Buckmaster joined on as lead programmer and CTO in
early 2000, and was promoted to CEO later that year.
Dedicated to his mission of building a community
on the Internet, Newmark has…