Craigslist Founder, Humble and Humorous
Thursday, May 17th, 2007 | by Rajan Sodhi | 
7 Comments |
Just got back from seeing Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist.org. He was the guest speaker at the JFSA Innovators Luncheon this afternoon. I was amazed at just how humble and humorous he was. Definitely someone who doesn’t take himself very seriously, despite his success and profile. One example is that his official title on his business card reads “Full-Time Customer Service Representative”, and is what he prescribes to do on a day-to-day basis from his renovated ’shack’ along with 23 employees in San Francisco. The 55 year old believes strongly in the principles of community and that most people, not all, but most are trustworthy. He brings this spirit to his site that is purposeful, functional and based on its enormous traffic, highly useful. This, despite having the most uninspiring, straight-forward design (he chalks that up to not being able to design graphics) that 12 years later has proved to be part of Craigslist’s charm. Currently, the site’s only source of revenue are job postings by employers and recruiters in seven cities, and apartment sales in the greater New York area. He has said earlier he has no interest in selling Craigslist for the fortune that awaits him. After hearing him today, I believe him.
7 Comments
May 17th, 2007 at 11:14 pm
[...] Craigslist Founder, Humble and Humorous [...]
May 18th, 2007 at 10:51 am
Just found this blog. Terrific information!
Great blog entry on Craig Newmark. Love his title. I just referenced this entry at my blog.
Best Regards,
Margie Zable Fisher
http://www.theprsite.com – Matching Small Businesses with Great P.R. Resources
Blog: http://zfpr.typepad.com/practical_pr/
May 18th, 2007 at 4:21 pm
Thanks Margie. I agree, I was impressed by his title as well. It really demonstrates his commitment to the principles he had from the outset when he first developed Craigslist. The point of his title is to demonstrate how out of touch many CEOs are with their customers, never getting on the front line to actually listen to them.
May 25th, 2007 at 5:10 pm
I just love Craigslist…so does my husband. We have been able to find and sell a lot on it. Goes to show that you don’t have to have a “flashy” website for people to notice you…the product will always speak for itself and word of mouth is *always* your best marketing.
May 26th, 2007 at 4:32 am
[...] just read a cool blog post over at the Big Marketing for Small Business blog. It’s about Craig Newmark the founder of Craigslist.org. Just in case you haven’t [...]
August 15th, 2007 at 5:29 pm
have you all seen allurstuff instead?
http://allurstuff.com/
it’s also a classifieds site, but with more emphasis on searching, and with a pretty slick google maps integration. (i think it’s the best out there so far)
October 28th, 2008 at 9:11 pm
he is very humble, here is a new interview with him
http://searchfeature.com/blog/search-featured-craig-newmark-owner-and-founder-of-craigslist/
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