And at NSX, we dig into network 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 products he Beller, his secret to success is simple. It's enduring. It's just treat others the way you want to be treated.
Let's jump in for a quick chat with Craig. Yeah. Well, Craig, it's, great to have you on the Netflix podcast, and, you and I had a chance to meet a few years back. We went on a on a HEICO around Mount James. It's with Jim Buckmaster, and we're talking about future of the world, future of the internet, Craigslist dot org's place in it, and it was very memorable for me.
And you know, so pleased to to have you here today, given your sort of, old time nerd status and, sort of representative of the sort of hobbyist and creative era of the internet. It's so pleased to have you here. So thanks for coming on. Hey. It's my pleasure. So thank you. It's the case that, you know, everybody knows about craigslist.org.
It's, one of the great marketplaces in the world one of the great companies with network effects and certainly as end effects, we focus on network effects all the time, but but almost more importantly, of course, it is really a piece of cultural fabric for the United States and many parts of the world. And it is set up, you know, connections between hundreds of millions of people over the years and is really part of how we live our lives.
And and while while that has become a calling card for you in a way, you gave up management of that back in 2005 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 it predicts the story, 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 mental models and how you think about a service mindset and how you think about philanthropy in the future of 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 you're you're how old now? 60 5? 60 seven. Sixty seven years old. So you are forty 2 when you started, your email newsletter. Can you bring us back to how that started for you, just to to set us. I had just recently taken a kind of a job in the emerging dotcom into 3. 90 5 is when it all began. I wanted to connect with my community Morgan. So I started a very simple CC list about arts and technology events.
I tried that and that, that worked out pretty Beller. And people wanted Morgan, and I listened and did more. Got it. So it started as an email list to your friends. Not even an email list. It was strictly a CC list. A CC Flint. And it just kept getting bigger and bigger. And then it added apartment listings that people said, hey, Ukraine, 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 apartment shortage in San Francisco. And, you know, there might be some job listing 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 Flint, and the list kept growing and growing. The point where it got to be too big. The CC list, maybe 250 addresses was just too much to handle as a CC Flint.
They do have, finite sizes. I had to, use a Flint Currier, major demo, and I had to give the thing a name too 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 figured 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 softwares, turn emails into web James, I had instant and for free web publishing, and that worked 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 2 1995 to 2000 period when you were running Craigslist, it was just you and you 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 or how you should treat your or helping two sides of the marketplace in different ways. What were some of those lessons there?
The biggest lesson was one I learned in Sunday school from mister and Missus Levin, treat people like you wanna be Pete. That's the lesson which somehow surfaced in my head as I was starting things. It particularly applies to customer service. Treat people like you wanted to be Pete. 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 wanna listen to your lawyers when it comes to setting up a real company because they will know things that you don't wanna 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.
If 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, sometimes you have good, help in the form of communications advisors financial advisors, legal advisors.
The 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 can't open your mind or you can't open your art? Listening is a skill, which some people acquire naturally without help, but I'm not one of them.
I had to get a lot of classroom instruction listening, had to do a lot of Flint, of a 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. Like, it just seems like breathing air. A lot of people are good at listening. Probably though the human norm is not so good at listening. And how do you keep yourself open to new things, Greg? I just remind myself that I know better. I should do Beller.
And that works a lot of the time, but I am still, quite completely imperfect. And so you've got this deep thought line in your Currier. Of service to your friends, then to your users, then to the community, fellow citizens, other countries. Right? So boiled down, you've said services about making things good or better for someone, and creating value for them. Did when did you realize that Craigslist users were creating value for each other?
Not you creating value for Well, I don't think of it explicitly as service. I just feel that I should do what I should do, what I've committed to do, I like to say that, a nerds gotta do what a nerds gotta do. Sometime maybe 5 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 maintain that would be a great idea. But at that point, I was doing strictly customer service.
When you say customer service, you were answering people's emails. Yes. Got it. Was everybody in the company kind of in customer service? Is that was a that a philosophy that you brought? Arguably so, everyone thinks about, the customer, and there is explicit customer service even accounting as 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, put a couple of ads, in HR magazines for job postings. That's it. It just grew on its own. What do 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 the life you've lived and life that you're living now is such a great example for people in so many ways about having values sticking by them, you know, surrounding yourself with the right people, learning to listen, learning to stay humble, it doesn't seem to be the way of of the most recent Silicon Valley that we're It's hard to say.
In many cases, people who are trying to generate attention or outrage, those are the people who get our tension, but I don't know if the representative of anything. It is a fashionable these days to write stories, articles about that, but you know, 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 what would you most like for some of these young ambitious founders to hear, Craig? You know, it's enough if he does treat people like you wanna be treated. That's a big one. It's a golden rule. Right?
Well, the deal is that some things we take for granted, like, I'd like to think I internalized and practiced that philosophy, but, I'm sure I wasn't that good at it for a period of, years and, you know, I conscious realized it again over the last, let's say, 20 years and that made a difference, but it's it's so commonplace a principle that that people again tend to take it for granted. And, you know, what caused you to forget it, Craig? What caused you to forget it?
Was it the acceleration of Craig's list and the attention that that got you? Caused your brain to shift or 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 with me about what makes Craigslist work that reminded me of a golden rule.
The thing is that most people here treat people like you wanna be treated 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, Craig, 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 that you've done and I'll let you continue to do. Oh, it's my pleasure. I really appreciate it.