I don't effects we dig in and network effects companies and their founding stories. So I emailed Craig Newmark the founder of Craigslist and we had a chance to sit down to talk Craig handed over the operations of Craigslist in 2000 and is now more focused on his philanthropy, but when we catch up we get to discuss his mental models for business and for life and just like the product he built his secret to success is simple its enduring it's just treat others the way you want to be.
Treated let's jump in for a quick chat with Craig.
Yo Craig, it's great to have you on the Novak's podcast and you and I had a chance to meet a few years back. We went on a hike around Mount Tam to with Jim Buckmaster. We're talking about future of the world future the internet craigslist.org place in it, and I was very memorable for me and you know, so, please do to have you here today given your sort of old-time nerd status and representative of the sort of hobbyist and creative era of the internet.
So pleased to have you here, so thanks for coming
on pay. It's my pleasure. Thank you.
It's the case that everybody knows about craigslist.org. It's one of the great Market places in the world one of the great companies with network effects and certainly as an effects. We focus on that work affects all the time. But but almost more importantly, of course, it is really a piece of cultural fabric for the United States in many parts of the world and it is set up, you know connections between hundreds of
of people over the years and there's really a part of how we live our lives and while that has become a calling card for you in a way you gave up management of that back in two thousand five years into the journey and you've been focusing on philanthropy and another good works in the community since then and because while they know craigslist.org, they might not know you and they having heard your Story from beginning to end might help them understand your way of thinking and then we can get to your
Or mental models and how you think about a service mindset and how you think about philanthropy in the future of our world? Because I think that's going to be very fascinating to people as well. You know, I guess let's put you in time and place now you live in San Francisco. You're how old now
65 67
67 years old. So you are 42 when you started your email newsletter. Can you bring us back to how that started for you just to set us. I had
just recently taken a kind of a job in the
Dot-com industry 95 is when it All Began, I wanted to connect with my community more. So I started a very simple CC list about Arts and Technology events. I tried that and that that worked out pretty well and people wanted more and I listened and did more
got it. So it started as an email list to your friends not
included in that list. It was strictly a cc
list CC list and it just kept getting bigger and bigger and then it added.
Listings that people said hey Craig, could you tell everyone on the list that I've got my apartment for
rent? I actually asked people to announce that because at that point that's when we started to see a department shortage in San Francisco
and you know, there might be some job listings or there might be some art festivals or other things that your community was interested in. You just kept adding them into this big CC list and the list kept growing and growing to the point where it got to be too busy
singing this maybe 250 addresses was
Too much to handle as a cc list. They do have a finite sizes. I had to use a list server majordomo, and I had to give the thing a name to since I'm pretty literal. I wanted to call it. San Francisco events people around me though told me they were already calling it Craigslist. I had inadvertently created a brand and they were right. I didn't know what a brand was but I learned
fast and so it became Craigslist and then you said okay. Let's put up a website and we'll just take all.
These postings and put them up and people can consume them as they want to over
time. I figure that out. I don't remember exactly when but within the year. I realized that I had all these emails and I could write some software which turned emails into web pages. I had instant and for free web publishing and that works out pretty well particularly since it was just me doing the whole thing.
And so what were some of the lessons that you learned during that to 1995 to 2000 period when
We're running Craigslist. It was just you and you were adding a few people to help out. What were some of the things that you learned that you think might have informed how you think today about how you should treat people how you should treat your customers or helping two sides of the marketplace in different ways or some of those lessons. They're the biggest
lesson was one. I learned in Sunday school for mr. Mrs. Levin treat people like you want to be treated. That's the lesson which somehow surfaced in my head as I was starting things it particularly applies to customer service treat people.
People like you wanted to be treated along those lines though. Is that sometimes you respond to real needs and wants because I was talking to people listening to people and that set the pattern for the whole history of Craigslist beyond that. I was learning other lessons like doing well by doing good is a successful business model. I was also learning that you really want to listen to your lawyer's when it comes to setting up a real company because they will know that
Things that you don't want to figure out the hard way,
you know one thing that I would ask if you could think through some of the hard times that you went through with Craigslist, whether it was with eBay or other things you could tell us that story that might be helpful to Founders to understand how to get through some tough times.
There were some big distractions, you know where I had to learn more and all that. But the deal is that when you have a good team who prepares you well things are much better than you think and
And sometimes you have good help in the form of communications advisors financial advisors legal advisers. They hard part sometimes is just knowing when to really really listen to advice knowing when to trust your instincts and when to listen to experts
when in tough times make sure you're surrounded by great
people and make sure you're seriously listening which is often a real
challenge. It's often a challenge to listen because you
And open your mind or you can open your heart
listening is a skill which some people acquire naturally without help that I'm not one of them. I had to get a lot of classroom instruction and listening had to do a lot of lists of reading and then I had to get yelled at a number of
times because I think a lot of people think they're just good at listening I get to Simply breathing are
a lot of people are good at listening probably though the human Norm is not so good at
listening and
Do you keep yourself open to new things
Craig? I just remind myself that I know better. I should do better and that works a lot of the time but I am still quite completely imperfect.
And so you've got this deep thought line and your career of service to your friends then to your users then to the community fellow citizens other countries, right so boiled down. You said Services about making things good or better for someone in creating value for them. Did when did you realize that Craigslist?
Users were creating value for each other. Not you creating value for them.
Well, I don't think of it explicitly a service. I just feel that I should do what I should do. What I've committed to do. I like to say that a nerves got to do what a nerds got to do some time. Maybe five plus years in I realized that people were helping each other out in really big ways creating value for each other. I figured whatever could be done by the company to
to maintain that would be a great idea. But at that point I was doing strictly customer
service and when you say customer service, you are answering people's emails. Yes got it was everybody in the company kind of in customer service is that was that philosophy that you brought
arguably so everyone thinks about the customer and there is explicit customer service even accounting is a kind of customer service and that's I would say that's front of Mind among the technology staff.
You'll notice that I haven't mentioned anything about marketing since well, we had a brief attempt at a little Marketing in 2000 but a couple of ads in HR magazines for job postings. That's
it. It just grew on its own. What do you look back and think of what conditions allowed it to grow without any
marketing basically did something simple effective useful stuck with Basics didn't do any fancy use the design principles that people
Wanted rather than the design principles that a designer might want
I just feel as if the life you've lived and life that you're living now is such a great example for people in so many ways. How about having values sticking by them surrounding yourself with the right people learning to listen learning to stay humble. It doesn't seem to be the way of the most recent Silicon Valley that we're in the
car Cafe in many cases people who are trying to generate attention or out.
Age those are the people who get our attention, but I don't know if the representative of anything it is a fashionable these days to write stories articles about that. But no one really knows how true that is. Sometimes people write articles suggesting that bad attitudes are representative of one thing or another but we don't really
know what would you most like for some of these young ambitious Founders to hear Craig,
you know, it's enough if you just treat people like you want to be treated.
Heated that's a big one the Golden Rule, right?
Well the deal is that some things we take for granted. Like I like to think I internalized and practice that philosophy but I'm sure I wasn't that good at it for a period of years and you know, I consciously realized it again over the last let's say 20 years and that made a difference that it's it's so commonplace a principle that that people get intend to take
Rented and
what caused you to forget it Trey? What cause you forget? It was that the acceleration of Craigslist and the attention that that got you that cause your brain to shift or what
that's what caused me to remember it that is interacting with people on a daily basis in substantial numbers and then people talking with me about what makes Craigslist work that reminded me of the golden rule. The thing is that most people here treat people like you want to be treated and
And may just be too used to hearing it and may just not think about how it applies to their behavior all the time. However, I never quite stop doing it. And then I guess doing Craigslist reminded me of it and then it reminded me of it even more and while I'm not perfect. I try really
hard. Well create. This has been a real pleasure to spend some time with you today. I appreciate you taking time out of your day. And I want you to know that we really appreciate all you've done and all that you continue to do.
Oh,
it's my pleasure. I really appreciate it.
