Creating the World’s Most Popular List: Craigslist is Born
"We don't have much in the way of a business strategy," says Newmark. "Like no business plan. Which I say to torment all my friends who are VCs or MBAs. That's always entertaining. The deal is, it's a mixture of luck and persistence."
When Newmark's simple email listings reached over 240 subscribers, he could no longer carry on as he was; even his cc field would not accept anymore email addresses. Instead of shutting down, Newmark decided to move his list to a public server for all to access. He wanted to call his new website "SF-Events" but some of his closer friends suggested calling it "Craigslist" to emphasize the personal and down-to-earth nature of the list.
In its first few years, Newmark ran the site as a part-time hobby, continuing his consulting work full-time during the day. He tried to bring on some volunteers, but they did not pan out as Newmark expected. That is when he had an epiphany. "I saw that we needed to get serious and run it as an actual company," says Newmark. After all, until that point, Craigslist consisted solely of one single 128 MB hard drive computer in Newmark's living room.
It was Newmark's decision to hire Jim Buckmaster as CEO that signaled a new era for the young company. "In 1999, Craigslist was running on a PC," recalls Buckmaster. "I took it to a multi-server environment. I took it to a number of other cities."
In addition to expanding the site, Buckmaster worked with Newmark to change the way the site was run. Up until that point, there was no search engine on the site, no discussion boards, and every user-submitted post was reviewed and uploaded manually. Together, the two moved Craigslist towards the direction of self-service. Users could post material directly online, and a new flagging system would be introduced in order to let users moderate and police their own community.
As a consequence of hiring Buckmaster, Newmark says, "I now own less than 50 percent. It was a good investment."
Following those changes, Craigslist started to boom. Despite its sole source of revenue coming in the form of paid employment ads in three cities ($75 per ad in San Francisco, and $25 per ad in New York and Los Angeles), Craigslist was earning over $10 million in revenues by 2004. Then, in 2005, for a price tag of $15 million, eBay purchased a 25% stake in the company from a former shareholder. "Although I never figured that part of Craigslist might be owned by a public company, Meg Whitman and Pierre Omidyar (eBay) showed that they were interested in us for all the right reasons," says Newmark.
Still, despite the tremendous success of Craigslist, the company and its founder remain humble. It has fewer than 20 employees, and Newmark says he plans on keeping it that way. "Our philosophy is that we're basically making enough money to pay the bills, with a little left."
After all, for Newmark, the company serves a higher purpose than profit. Through Craigslist, he says he has met people naïve enough to believe that using the Internet, they could together save the world. "I share that naïveté," he says.
Creating the Worlds Most Popular List Craigslist is Born
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Dave KurlanDave Kurlan is the founder and CEO of Objective Management Group, Inc., the industry leader in sales assessments and sales force evaluations, and the CEO of David Kurlan & Associates, Inc., a consulting firm specializing in sales force development. Dave has been a top rated speaker at Inc. Magazine's Conference on Growing the Company, the Sales & Marketing Management Conference and the Gazelles Sales & Marketing Summit. He has been featured on radio and TV, including World Business Review with General Norman Schwarzkopf, in Inc. Magazine, Selling Power Magazine, Sales & Marketing Management Magazine and Incentive Magazine. He is the author of Mindless Selling and Baseline Selling – How to Become a Sales Superstar by Using What You Already Know about the Game of Baseball. He created and wrote STAR, a proprietary recruiting process for hiring great salespeople, and he writes Understanding the Sales Force, a popular business Blog and is a contributing author to The Death of 20th Century Selling and 101 Great Ways to Improve Your Life, Volume 2. - Visit Dave Kurlan's Website |
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Staging DivaDebra Gould, aka The Staging Diva®, is President of Six Elements Inc., an internationally recognized home staging company. Inspired by many requests from aspiring home stagers wanting to start similar businesses, Gould created the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program. Gould has trained over 1000 Staging Diva Graduates worldwide to start staging businesses. Buying decorating and selling six of her own homes in four years lead to an interest in real estate staging which she turned into a career with the launch of sixelements.com in 2002. Since then she has staged hundreds of homes in addition to teaching home staging training. Gould is the author of several home staging resources including a series of popular ebooks made up of a Design Guide, Color Guide and Portfolio Guide. For more information about Debra Gould visit stagingdiva.com. - Visit Staging Diva's Website |
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Jay Kubassek(Jay's Full Bio: EvanCarmichael.com/jaykubassek) In five years, Canadian-born entrepreneur Jay Kubassek went from selling mufflers at a Midas franchise to revolutionizing Internet marketing with the 2004 launch of CarbonCopyPRO, a online marketing education company, now worth over $20 million with customers in over 160 countries.
As an independent film producer, his upstart film fund Aliquot Films is currently producing a films with Spike Lee and Abel Fererra (starring Ethan Hawke and Dennis Hopper.)
Jay's entrepreneurial spirit is irrepressible. He’s the owner of five companies, a professional speaker and trainer, international real estate developer/investor, extreme sport enthusiast and emerging philanthropist. Jay resides in NYC with his wife Jamie, son Milo and dog Cooper. Visit Jay's official website: www.JayKubassek.com - Visit Jay Kubassek's Website |
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Stephanie RobeyStephanie Robey is President and CoFounder of Pivot Positive, LLC - an Internet marketing business focused on helping people start work at home ventures. Previously, she was employed at The Search Agency with over 20 years experience in graphic design and 10 years experience in online marketing. She was responsible for launching the Conversion Path Optimization (CPO) unit where she and her team have conducted hundreds of optimization tests for online companies across multiple verticals. She is a successful entrepreneur having started and sold 2 companies and remains on the board of directors of the third, PhotoSpin.com Stephanie began her career in the direct marketing realm creating and producing direct mail for many of the major cable television companies and directly attributes her understanding of Internet marketing to those early offline experiences. Stephanie is a graduate of San Diego State University with a BFA in Graphic Arts and also holds an Executive MBA from the Graziadio School of Business and Management at Pepperdine University. Read Steph's Blog Meet Steph and Dave Sign up for our Free 7-Day BootCamp: Self Employed & Rich - Visit Stephanie Robey's Website |
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