I have some new tour dates to let you know about. I'll be in East Lansing. I'll be in Toledo, Ohio, Rama, Ontario in the Canada. Pittsburgh, PA, Eugene, Oregon, Kennewick, Washington, Seattle, Washington, Victoria, BC, and the Canada. College Station, Texas. Belton, Texas. San Antonio, Durant. Amarillo. Oxford, Mississippi. Howdy, howdy. Fayetteville, Arkansas. Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and Tallahassee, Florida. Rosemont, Illinois, Winnipeg.
and Calgary in the Canada. Get all your tickets at theovon.com slash T-O-U-R. Thank you so much for your support. And thank you to the fella in Montana that gave me this jacket. Got some Indian artifacts on the back. And I just want to say thank you. I really like this jacket. We've also got some new merch. Some new gang gang tees. In pepper and ivory. And we've got a new gang gang hat. That giggity.
Check those out and more at TheovanStore.com. Happy holidays to everyone. Today's guest is an entrepreneur and a philanthropist. He worked at IBM. He worked at Bank of America. but most people know him as the founder of Craigslist, a site that has given so many unique experiences to the world. We're so happy to get to spend time today with Craigslist's own. Craig Newmark.
and just want to let you know like we're just excited you're here and we don't have any this isn't like a like a got you podcast we're not trying to do anything uncomfortable um you know obviously you've had a very unique life and um we just want to I think we're curious about it, you know? Well, two episodes ago you had Ryan Martin. Yeah. And I learned one big thing on thinking about what he had said. So...
I'm prepared to even mention that because he made me realize something, which I won't be able to do anything about, but at least understanding helps. Oh, about anger. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, I thought Ryan Martin was really interesting. He's a professor over in Green Bay, because I think anger is something that's kind of enveloping people a lot these days, you know? I find it a lot in myself, and obviously it's kind of embarrassing.
You know, it's a weird feeling that's like, you know, it can lead to a lot of negativity, can lead to, you know, dangerous activities, but it also, I feel you get embarrassed of it, you know, and it kind of just takes you over. Well, in my case, it's tied in with some traumatic stress. And my deal is I learned the hard way that no good deed goes unpunished. I learned that a person who's basically honest will never be able to successfully deal with a person who lies for a living.
that's very frustrating because I have to keep it in. Someday somebody may be able to deal with it maybe with some help from me. Someday some situations may... turn into some real drama, possibly criminal referrals. But I'm the kind of guy who... People for years have been telling me that some areas I just don't have the skills and I contribute by not talking. So do you feel like you're kind of a quiet guy sometimes?
Generally quiet, generally restrained, except for reasons of comedy. I know that I'm not as funny as I think I am. And yet, like... I tell my philanthropic grantees that I would like for them to tolerate my sense of humor but not encourage me. Okay, nice. And so far that's worked out well. Particularly last night, the Bob Woodruff thing, I did briefly hang out. What was it last night? Just so we can tell our listeners now. Yeah. Last night, there was a fundraiser for the Bob Woodruff Foundation.
They run a network called Got Your Six. Got Your Six? Got Your Six, like in the military sense. Right, Got Your Bet. Yeah. And about 350 organizations who are actually good at helping. Many philanthropic organizations are challenged when it comes to actually helping. But these guys are good. They need a lot of money to help out, help out vets and their families.
This was both a comedy concert and a music concert. The guys, I think it was Mark Normand. Oh, Mark Normand was there? Yeah. Yeah, he's great. We're both from New Orleans. Well, starting from there, there's Jim Gaffigan. Wow. Jerry Seinfeld and Jon Stewart on the comedy side, which was great for me. Yeah. And then on the music side, Nora Jones. And then there's this guy.
uh, Springsteen. Yeah. Cause I had spoken to him before and I told him, uh, that, uh, as a nerd, I understood that he was very popular, but that I don't know his music. and he reacted quite satisfactorily. His jaw dropped. His wife, this was a few years ago, but his wife got the joke immediately. The better part of the joke is I was being literal. I really am a nerd. Yeah. I'm the kind of guy in the late 60s in high school. I wore a plastic pocket protector, thick black glasses taped together.
No social skills. So you really, you, did you kind of embody that nerd vibe? Like you were like, you saw a nerd and you were like, I'm going to be over here. I'll be there. I had to, uh, originally, uh, you found the, the store. of uh old photos oh wow that's me in high school that's mad those are the thick black glasses oh yeah not taped together at the time now see i can simulate or fake normal human social behavior now
But it is a simulation. I have to work hard on it all the time. And after a while, I will start getting cranky. Okay. But the nerd cliche originated. right around when I was around, so I do take credit for it. Well, we're glad to have one of the most... Nerdtorious humans Craig Newmark. Thanks for hanging out man. I appreciate it You know we're in we're in the Chelsea hotel number two. Do you know that I know you're a Leonard Cohen fan
Yes. And this is, he had songs based that were based out of here. I think he spent time with Janis Joplin here. He did. Yeah, allegedly. And well, I'm near where I live in the... in the village not far away, walking distance. I have a friend, my comedy consultant, and he lived here during that heyday. He knew both of them and others.
He was intimidated by Leonard Cohen. See, this friend was in the process of transitioning from music to comedy, which turned out to be easier for him to do. He was really big in the 70s and 80s. He may not have invested well because I saw him yesterday, but he's much funnier than I am for real. Yeah, okay. That's why I know that I'm not as funny as I think I am. Very fair. You're doing okay with me so far.
Thank you. If I knew you better, I'd, I believe comedians indulge in a practice called breaking balls. Oh, yeah. I will introduce my friends sometimes as a guy who used to be funny. Uh-huh. I will tell him, oh, yeah, comedy requires actually funny material. Yeah, that's a good starting point. But he's given me a couple jokes to use.
reminding me that at his age and my age, when you get down to tie your shoes, you look around and you think, what else can I do while I'm down here? And unfortunately, that's turned true. When I do get down, I'm...
I have some worries about being able to get back up again. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Once you get down to the ground floor again, sometimes you kind of want to stay down there. We used to listen to Leonard Cohen when I was a kid. My mom would put it on when we would have to clean the house on Saturday. and my mom would put it on. I remember that song, When the Walls Came Down. Okay, that's older school even for Leonard. All the way to hell. And we'd be like, all right, I'll...
I'll clean. Yeah. I vaguely remembered him, well, in like 88 or so, I'm Your Man premiered, and I love that. First we'll take Manhattan, and then I found... various positions. What is that first? We'll take Manhattan. Then we'll take Berlin. Then we'll take Berlin. Yeah, dude, that's crazy. Those lyrics have mildly been in my head over the years, and I didn't even know that that's where they were from. They were from Leonard Cohen. Yeah, he influenced a lot of musicians after.
He's my favorite in an obsessive way. And now and then when I'm in the right mood, I will listen to him. He's not cheerful by the way most people think about him. He's a little dark. Yeah, but he's uplifting if you're into it. Yeah, he reminds me of kind of a darker Anthony Bourdain of music in a way. I haven't thought about that. But I'm trying not to think too much about food. Okay. Okay. Well, my problem simply is that since I've been on the run all morning, I...
did pass a place which had what looked like a good slice of pumpkin pie. Oh, yeah, brother. I, however, may have been disappointed. So I'll think of something later this afternoon. Something a little less risque, huh? Well, my problem is that food is just too delicious, and it's hard to know when to stop. Yeah, well, it's funny because they don't put a stop sign at the bottom of a dessert or something. That may or may not be a...
helpful, I will face the challenge in roughly two hours. Okay, there we go. Well, we have you for a limited time today. I do want to talk. You are the Craig from Craigslist. Yeah, that is true. Yes. Okay. And how did Craigslist start? Like just, I know that's a basic question, but it's, you don't even think about it as a regular human. We don't even know that you're a real, we just, you don't even know.
Yeah, and I occasionally tell people that Craig is fake, like Betty Crocker. My deal is that I move to San Francisco mid-93. Okay. And I saw there were a lot of people helping each other out on the net, sometimes doing so, giving away expensive consulting time. And I took advantage of that.
People helped me settle in, told me about neighborhoods and restaurants and events that I might get interested in. So you were communicating on the internet just with people looking for information about living in a new area. Yeah. A lot of this was from the well, an early virtual community, some from Usenet news groups, which were the first big deal discussion boards. And there is a spirit that we were all going to use the net to help each other out.
So I thought I should give back, started a simple CC list, telling people about what I thought were cool events, usually arts and technology, like Joe's Digital Diner. or the Anon Salon, which was a party fundraiser for a local theater, highly entangled with the very earliest Burning Man. And I never got involved with that. because I realized that I'm not a burner at heart. Yeah. But this mailing list, it started growing via word of mouth, and I started asking for more stuff than just events.
Like if people wanted to sell something, if people had a job or an apartment. So that's how it started. So you started just emailing people just with information about things to do in the area. It started to grow. And it was just an actual list of people you were sending a message to. Yeah, it was literally an email CC list. And that broke at 240 addresses. I had to use a listserv. I had to give the thing a name.
I'm very literal as a nerd. I wanted to call it San Francisco events since it was still mostly that. Yeah. Yeah, I don't have much of an imagination. Well. But then I. I was going to call it SF Events. People around me told me they had given it a name, Craigslist. They told me I had accidentally created a brand. Then they explained to me what a brand is.
Because I was that naive. They were right. Called it Craigslist. Just kept growing increasingly. For the first three years, just me. And how often was the list going out? Whenever somebody had something, I would send it out. Okay. So is that once a week or twice a month? If I was lucky, it could be, let's say, something worthwhile a few times a day. Oh, nice. Okay. The deal is not that.
big, but let's say high value. And I was being careful. I didn't want to spam anyone. Right. And it just kept growing via word of mouth. And we've never really done any advertising. Yeah. I should be careful. I'll wrap around to it. But I'm not involved with the thing nowadays. I'm retired. Busier than I've been, but retired. But the deal is, it's just me for a few years. And you're the only staff member.
yes and what were some of those early high value items like what was something that would come across are we talking like kind of like a like a Are we talking like a little catamaran? What are we talking? Mostly I was thinking about jobs. Okay. Because one of the best things you could do for someone is to help them get a job. Sometimes then help them find a place to live.
What Craigslist is about in a lot of ways is helping people put food on the table. Right, that's a great point. If you can help somebody get a job, that's residual. And it was... completely free the first three years. But the people who were putting jobs on there wanted me to charge them to post for jobs. Because they felt some like indebted in some way? Well, they felt that...
They were paying a lot more money for job ads in other places with fewer results, less quality results. So they said, charge us a little bit. That'll pay the bills. And they were right. experimented a little bit with volunteers and charging for jobs in 98, but I got the idea from people in 97. Running with volunteers didn't work. What do you mean running with volunteers? You mean to help you?
Yes. Okay. And at that point, you're just doing it out of your home? Exactly right. First three years off of your home computer. Yeah. And how big did the email list get? Sorry, Craig. You know, I don't really know how big it got. Through that time, because in 96, I remembered that I'm a programmer. I can write software which turns emails into web pages. And so I started doing that.
which gave me web publishing for free. Okay. And when something started taking too much of my time, I wrote some more code. which reduced what might take an hour a day to a few minutes a day. Got it. And that happened a number of times. But 98 tried running it with volunteers. The people who... cared for the thing, who were doing job postings in particular, said volunteer thing isn't working. Sometimes things would take a while to get posted.
So I had to make the thing into a real company. Right. So at that point, you're like, if I want to keep this going, there needs to be some checks and balances, and obviously salaries help create that. Yeah, I need to hire other people to do coding. customer service billing, and that meant making it into an actual corporate structure. Was that scary to think about that? Very scary.
But the hard part was at that point, you know, at events, parties, I would talk to bankers and venture capitalists who wanted me to do the usual Silicon Valley thing. Monetize everything. and they would throw billions at me. And I was thinking, I don't need billions. I don't understand why people would do that. And that has to do with in Sunday school, Mr. and Mrs. Levin, they taught me that you should know when enough is enough. They taught me to treat people like you want to be treated.
So nothing altruistic. This is just a return to Sunday school values, literally. And so we, Craigslist philosophy is to monetize. Only those ads for people who were paying more money for less effective ads. So not an altruistic decision. Right. Just basics. Yeah, but also a little bit of barrier to entry.
Not in a negative way, because you still, everybody needs to hire someone or has the opportunity and maybe they can't afford the ad, but it provides a little more structure too. Even just some basic, it does provide some structure, right? That's useful in the sense that, well, everyone is struggling trying to get through the day. And some people... are selling doing things for profit like brokering apartments in new york city and uh with uh sometimes with questionable ethics and i found one year
that new apartment brokers might make like 20K in a year, which even 15 years ago, you had to work two or three other jobs. So I said, how do you balance the idea that you want to give everyone a break? And I was able to suggest stuff to the people running the company at that point. Because also in... And I made Craigslist into an actual company in 99. Okay. So that's when it became an actual company in 1999. Yeah. And at that point, are you guys have an office? You guys have.
We turned it from running it in a room in my house into a room in a commercial strip way out in the neighborhoods of San Francisco. Wow, that's cool. The other hard decision I had to make that year, 99, was that I started to realize with help that as a manager, I suck. Oh, yeah. It's hard to be a manager, isn't it?
very hard because you don't realize when you're going to go when you're going to once you start to have employees and stuff you're like suddenly i'm a boss and if you never wanted to be a boss it's a very precarious situation to be and i've been there man what what were some of the things that you noticed you were not good at? Well, mostly hiring and firing. As a nerd, I am not good at reading people. And I needed to promote someone who would be good at that. And I'd already stopped coding.
Because I hired a bunch of people who are better than me. Okay. I stepped down to just do full-time customer service. I'm a great customer service rep. Okay. Not a manager of customer service. But I was a customer service rep and did that for maybe around 15 years. Okay, so you ended up just being a customer service rep at your own company. Yes. Wow, so if somebody had a customer service issue, they would contact you on the phone or email? Well...
With some luck, they would contact someone else on phone first. Okay. I took that. Luxury for myself of not having to answer the phone. Okay. But they would generally email me because I was just Craig at craigslist.org. Easy to guess. So I spent a lot of time doing that kind of thing. And got a lot of stuff done. And you found yourself effective there. Yeah, well, I saw what I mostly saw was a lot of good. That is, people on the net are overwhelmingly good.
The bad guys, bad actors, get a lot more press because sometimes mainstream media... generate clicks by emphasizing the bad. Yeah. This is kind of a normal thing. Especially nowadays. What were some of the things you saw in there early that helped you to believe in the good and continue to make it go? Consistently, I saw people helping each other out. Consistently, I saw people give away stuff that they could have sold for some cash. Like sometimes...
You don't need the cash. And then you would just give away something of actual value, like old computer equipment. That was pretty good. Oh, yeah. A lot of baby cribs on there, a lot of stuff like that. In fact, that's particularly true. Baby cribs, baby carriages, and moving boxes. Which could also be a baby carriage, depending on, you know. Or a cat toy. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. But the idea is that when you move, you have a lot of boxes, which are still really good, and the chances are...
Nearly 100% someone not far away needs good boxes. Yeah. I used to live with a guy. I lived with this guy named Kenny for a bit, and he... was a pretty big stoner right and i didn't know him met him on craigslist right i get over there and i end up living over there and he would stack he had a couple cats and stuff and at night he was kind of like a uh
i guess kind of an avant-garde like circusy kind of animal trainer guy okay but he would stack all the boxes these empty boxes in the room and he would make the cats play on them and he'd make me come out of my room to watch the show you know
So it was crazy, but it was like, I don't know, it's something I still kind of remember about him. I kind of, I guess it was pretty, I thought it was interesting, but yeah, people use boxes. Yeah. Yeah. Well, the deal is that people everywhere in the country are. Okay. When you're doing customer service at that deeper level, you see a lot of stuff, and most of it is great. I did see some stuff I wish I didn't.
And that's the problem with content moderation. It's a very tough job, especially if it's full-time and you're not getting paid much. And so these people are only seeing questionable stuff, and that can do some damage. Yeah, were you, so at that point, yeah, I guess, because Craigslist started to be this place. it kind of became everything really fast is what it felt like just as a user, right?
it became like a first place where you could get a used air you know you could get a blender an air balloon or a roommate but then it started to escalate to where there was like um You know, people would buy drugs on there, you know, or people you'd see people like I would do it, you know, and you would see people. But they also had code names for the drugs. So it made it to be this kind of like it.
It had a fun spot to it. You know, you'd be on there. I mean, they had like, I remember beef jerky was a code name. Those many bennies they had, that brain dander, that baby hay was one of them. I'm trying to think of any other, that Pedrito Blanco. was a spam but they you know what it was that dragon de negro they had um uh i'm trying to eat that whispering mother that was that was a kind of a native one that they were it was peyote whisper i know that uh
The mainstream press greatly exaggerated a lot of this. They didn't point out that what you see on the street always makes it online and online everywhere. You guys weren't producing it. Well. What the mainstream press doesn't point out, that if you're a conscientious site, you keep around the digital forensics. And because people leave a lot of trace evidence around.
CSI style. And that years and years ago, I talked with a lot of cops who were real pleased with the way that we kept around the forensics. And because of high school history, I learned the balance between fighting crime. and the rights of the accused, what's in the Bill of Rights, what's in the Constitution. Wow. So you took that upon yourself? It must have been kind of a tough navigation. Was it tough to navigate that personally because you have this atmosphere that people can kind of...
It's just a pathway, right? Well, what I did is I mentioned this to the boss and to the lawyers. and said that we got to do this balance. We had the advantage of having the Electronic Frontier Foundation available because they're the big pioneers of all this stuff online. What does that mean, the Electronic Frontier Foundation? Well, what they did is they're a great voice in...
standing up for the rights of regular people and that balance. You've got to do the right thing for victims and cops. You've got to do so in an American way, meaning looking at the Bill of Rights and... If a cop wants to see the forensics, there needs to be something like a subpoena or search warrant. That's the way things are done in our country. Those are the laws. That's a judicial overview. And that's the ultimate purpose of that was to prevent the kind of abuse we saw under King George.
Literally speaking, I did have that really good high school history teacher. He taught the kind of civics that you don't have nowadays. But I took this in 1970. I'm really old. you look great well thank you this teacher was great because he even took us once to a taping of a firing line which was william f buckley jr he invented
American conservatism, at least the modern form of it. And that really influenced me because at that point, I'm going to get off on a tangent, but at that point I was looking at that. I was starting to take a bit of a look at libertarianism. that kind of stuff. Again, this is more than 50 years ago. So it's funny because you kind of ended up in this space later on where you're like,
Trying to look at the ethics of like communication, who has rights, how do you protect people, but also give people the freedoms that they deserve under their own life. Is that what you're kind of saying? That's pretty much it.
These days, frankly, I've given up on politics for some years. I now regard terms like liberal and conservative as kind of bullshit. Yeah. And I got to focus on... helping people who protect the country like there's vets and their families there's active service members in their families and right now we're beginning to see battles on our soil, on our own systems, as a precursor to cyberspace warfare. When you think about businesses that are selling through the roof.
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As an influencer, you're a target. Yeah, we get stopped for things and we have to take certain things down, things that we think are just fair speech. You know, we have to put it all through a filter, you know? Well, I'm a... more worried about our foreign adversaries and i'm most worried about our foreign adversaries starting to compromise our utilities water power and even our cars because that's the thing that's happening
In the here and now. Really? You could do a search online for something called Vault Typhoon. How do you spell it? Vault like electrical vault typhoon like a big storm. And the FBI have been warning everyone that right now. Yep. What is it, Voltaf? A cybersecurity expert explains that Chinese hackers targeting U.S. critical infrastructure. What is this? Can you tell me a little bit about it? Do you mind, Craig? Right now, what they're doing is they're infiltrating home systems.
to be used to attack other systems. What's worse is they're attacking the programmable controllers which control the flow of water into our taps. They're controlling the flow of electricity into our homes. And a lot of those systems for much of the country are not protected. The deal is that most of the country... There are rural water systems, rural electrical systems. They don't have the resources to protect them. So a Chinese hacker, a Chinese military hacker, could get in there.
And sway our elections and stuff? Well, sway our waterways, sway if we have access to water? Well, what they can do is turn off the water supply. And so if, let's suppose you wanted to invade a small island country, which was our ally. And if the other country, our adversary, wanted to discourage us. from fighting on behalf of our ally, they could just start shutting off water and power. And, you know, if they did that where you're living, that would kind of ruin your day. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And for that matter, they could compromise cars, which are Internet devices. Oh, that's true, especially as cars become more electric and more like digital, really. Yes, they could shut off your car, stall it out in the middle of rush hour traffic. If they did that in a city like New York, if they could just do 100 cars, that snarls traffic indefinitely. Wow.
Yeah, you do that, and then they shut the power down, and now things are getting really weird. Yeah, and all they would have to do is show they could do it, and that's where the military is headed these days. It is not replacing... Shooting wars. Yeah, but it's more powerful like in World War two The war came to our shores a little bit in Whatever is happening next. It's going to be a much bigger thing
I'm planning to issue a national call to action wherein we tell everyone that we need to protect our homes. Utility companies need to protect themselves. We're trying to build a network of networks where everyone can protect each other. I'm not the guy to really be Paul Revere. Right. Because that would require social skills. And remember, I'm a nerd. But you could be his horse, maybe. Well, I need to be something.
But the deal is, as I issue this call to action, as I point out that many utilities are not protected, I'm going to piss off a lot of people. You think so? Why would they be upset? I don't understand that part. Well, sometimes people kill the messenger. So I'll do it carefully. We're ramping up slowly. we have this pause take nine campaign so when you get a like a suspicious email that could be phishing and our adversaries are really smart they're as smart as our guys yeah and uh
We need to know how to fight back. I need to consider helping out a new group being funded at Vanderbilt. At Vanderbilt? Yeah. Oh, nice. That's where I live in Tennessee. Well, they've just started. within the past couple weeks, started a new facility, which is going to be led by General Paul Nakasone, who led, I think it was Cyber Command. And they have this philosophy of defense forward, where...
They're not waiting for the adversary to come and get us. We're taking more active measures. And that's a big concern for you. So that's something you donate to, right? Well, that's a big area. Like one big area. veterans and military families, and I've now committed to $200 million. Wow. And I've already spent more than half of it. For cybersecurity, I've also committed a couple hundred million.
This is not altruistic. This is just, well, I was raised in the 50s to be a patriot. This is just me following through with basics. And I... Got the cash. I'm not much for luxuries. I do get all the streaming services I want. And I do have a larger TV than I should. I won't say anything.
And beyond that, well, again, back to Sunday school, you want to know when enough is enough. Right, and you have to give back. Yeah, we talk about that on here sometimes. I wonder if there should almost be a law. I mean, you couldn't make it a law, but.
that at a certain point, people, somebody doesn't need any more money, you know, like, because then it becomes, you see some people that just have, so it's like, what are you doing? Like, you know, it becomes almost this obsessive thing where, um. I don't know. It seems scary to think that some people have so much money. Well, I don't judge any of that. Everyone decides what's right for themselves, and that's none of my business. Okay. I figure...
I should put my money where my mouth is and then try to get some good stuff done, make the occasional mistake. And some of my decisions weren't great. But they weren't really mistakes. You mean like in what? Investing and stuff like that, you mean? Well, I don't invest really. Okay. I do, I guess, yeah. What in the libertarian movement and the related financial stuff in the 70s, early 70s, there is this idea of capital preservation because inflation was really bad then.
So people were finding assets where they could preserve their capital. Of course, I was in college. I didn't have much. Right. But I invest. In the literal sense, very little. I just want to keep what I have for nonprofits and some for myself, and I want to keep that safe. Yeah. But that's the old libertarian background. these days my philosophy is much more mixed because i am you know told in sunday school and elsewhere that you do want to
Well, now and then you go on to be your brother's or sister's keeper. Now and then you want to help people out who need a hand. How you do that effectively. no one knows the real answers for but i can do a couple things not altruistic it's just basics and i learned all that over 60 years ago
I mean, I realized recently how formative that was. That's when I started reading science fiction. Yeah, it's funny how those young years, they're little things you'll keep. I still remember like certain things that I... told someone i would do like 25 years ago and every day every couple of days someone's like hey don't forget you still have to do that little thing you know um it's funny how how like those formative years and things that we hear when we're young um
can have such an in uh such an effect on us even as we grow older um i want to talk a little bit more about the actual site so the company starts growing right And in addition to people helping each other get jobs, people were helping each other. People were starting relationships on there. I went on dates off of Craigslist before, you know. Good. Did you yourself ever go? Did you?
No, I always felt like a conflict of interest. Yeah, that's true. You're like, hey, I'm Craig. Yeah, I got lucky in a local cafe. Oh, you met your... Wife. Your wife, okay. And we've been together for over 20 years now. Wow, and if you have kind of some social awkwardness, what was that like for you? I decided I would take a big chance. Yeah, I've been there, dude.
told her that she's beautiful. The guy next to me, she tells me, rolled his eyes. And because he rolled his eyes, that's why she started talking to me. Oh, wow. So there was a little bit of some empathy there, human empathy. Well, it could have been a pity discussion. That's another way of saying empathy, yeah. Obviously, I charmed her. Yeah, that's the spirit. So last night we were at this fundraiser because I think she wanted to meet Jerry Seinfeld in particular. And I don't blame her.
I had nothing to say. I was tongue-tied. But that's how I normally act when I talk to celebrities, particularly if you're backstage and there's a show going on. Yeah. And having done a little bit of that, you got to get your head into the moment and you don't want a distraction. Right. Yeah, that's a good point. You just want to kind of be a fly on the wall in some sense. Yeah.
Wow, so you started off, said hello in a cafe, and then how long was that, was your relationship, how long did that kind of dating life go for you guys? And after about nine years, I think, I brought her over to, I showed her Facebook on a screen. I don't really use it anymore, but I said, is it okay if I change my relationship status to engaged?
Wow. And it took her a moment, but she said, oh, that's good. Because I calculated at that point that parental pressure had grown significantly. From yours and hers? Hers. Okay. And that worked out pretty well. That's a pretty suave online mood. That's almost the most online way you could ask someone to marry you, I feel like. Well...
I hate to say it, but if you consider that suave, you may also be a bit of a nerd. I think when it comes to, yeah, there's like, yeah, talking with women, it definitely, it's not my, you know. I wouldn't. Yeah. Yeah. I, uh, you're not. Yeah. Yeah. I, okay. That's the nerd cliche again. I, um, yeah, I'm still socially awkward. Uh, sometimes I can disguise that. Yes. But that's still, uh, me
And it's not going to change now that I'm in my sunset years. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes it doesn't go away. You kind of start to learn it. I think I've just had the, I have the tough thing of asking a girl out. Like sometimes I'm okay with talk. I'll get.
with talking with a woman but it's just that next part and we'll just be standing there and we'll be like well somebody should ask somebody out or walk away from somebody and then you're just still just standing there yeah well that's the purpose of misconnections yeah which Anecdotally, I know it works once in a while because I've encountered over the years a bunch of couples which had gotten married. No, off of missed connections. Yes.
And I like that a great deal. It is romantic in an understated way. Oh, yeah. Well, how did that start? How did that misconnection start? Well, Jim decided he wanted to put it up. He was the boss then, so he did. Oh, Jim was the guy running the company at that point? When I realized that, again, I'm a terrible manager.
I'd already hired Jim, who's a good manager. Jim Buckmaster. Jim Buckmaster, yeah. You'll see pictures of us together. And if it looks like we're at eye level, it's because I'm standing on a box. Okay.
He's a smaller guy? He's a foot taller than me. He's a taller guy, okay. So it makes for a good... Oh, there you are. You actually do have your box. That's the old office space, and I was the one... who uh who uh suggested the the gag there yeah and uh and uh kudos to your guys for being really good at pulling stuff up
Craigslist.org. Yeah, man. When you guys were the first one to do .org, people were like, what is it? People thought I meant Oregon. People didn't even know what, you know, where is it? Well, it was an early use of it, and... Our approach was to be this minimal monetization thing, and there's no category for that online. So that caught the spirit and worked. Yeah.
And so misconnections, do you remember like the first misconnection that was ever put up or the first personal that was ever put up? I'm sure people ask you that a lot. I don't remember much of that at all. Everything is a blur. And unfortunately, I wasn't smart enough to keep a lot of records. And so a lot is lost, like from the Internet Archive and the Wayback Machine.
I could see the first site that I put up was mid or late 96. And that was pretty good. And I evolved that kind of minimal style. Like, right now our site hasn't changed much in appearance in 30 years. Why is that? Well... I talked to a lot of people and they want it simple, fast, effective. They want what you see is what you get. And we've heard from a lot of designers. who want fancy, and fancy may not be the answer for a lot of things. Sometimes you do see something which is impressive.
fancy and yet effective, but that seems to be the minority. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This is, you know what you want. What do you want? You want heavy equipment outside of South Jersey. What do you want? You know, you want biotech out of, you know, in Mendocino, you know, you want legal issues.
you know you want ride shares you want rodeo interests outside of fort worth it's just it's all right there you know yeah you can put it together quick even a simple even someone who isn't technologically advanced could go here And even the terms you have on there, it's like childcare, right? Pets, rants and raves. It's just anything you could need is kind of right here. And that means the site is always fast.
Oh, because it's not a lot of big background. Wow. And see, we've helped people in the tens of millions or more put food on the table. With jobs, you mean, and selling things. Exactly. Okay. and advertise their services but also we've the site is so simple we've shown tens or maybe hundreds of millions of americans that the internet could be useful and reasonably easy to use. And that meant a lot of people...
who may have been hesitant to get on the net. They get on the net. And again, that's fairness for everyone. That's treating people like you want to be treated. And that ain't bad. Yeah. Fairness, that's an important word, huh? It's important to you. Very much so because you try. Sometimes it's hard. There are often tough decisions to be made. But Jim took over that for the company. And, you know, maybe he's done a better job than I ever could. And I did make for a great customer service rep.
What made you choose Jim Buckmaster? What was it about him when you interviewed him? He believed in the mission, and he was good on the technology side because he, in a way, had two jobs. manager and programmer, because getting good programmers is hard. And Jim, over time, hired a tech staff, everyone better at their job than I was. Wow.
That's cool. It's also cool to hear you recognize that. Like, yeah, these people are better than I was, you know, to learn where your spaces were best. Yeah, I'm funnier than any of them are. Of course. But that's a...
That may not be a high bar. They sometimes did great things, and they would sometimes pull out great ads of all sorts, particularly Miss Connections, and for a while ran a... running best of craigslist although i haven't looked at that in a while you see with the uh philanthropy stuff i'm doing that's consuming i'm now working harder than i've ever been wow um
Because I guess I am in a mission. You know, vets and their families need our help. So that's one of your important causes. Independent journalism, veterans. What is another philanthropic cause you enjoy? specifically also active service members and their families. Okay. Without going on at length, I'm shocked that military families aren't paid enough to get both a good place to live. food yeah and the model used to be the volunteer army would be single guys well there's a lot of families
They're relocated about 600,000 times a year. Oh, yeah. And that's where Blue Star Families comes in. I can go on at great length and I think I'll stop there. But that's the name of an organization that you help support? Yes. Bob Woodruff Foundation for Vets. Okay. $25 million from last night. Wow. And I happened to have a meeting, an event, with Blue Star Families, which could also use...
something like that, but which I won't pre-announce. A fundraising event? Well, if you guys ever need a comedian at one, I'd love to come. I can't believe it. I wish I'd have known last night. I would have gone. That would have been awesome. Well, the connection is through Caroline Hirsch. Okay. who used to run Caroline's and now runs the New York Comedy Festival. Yeah, that's going on this week. Yeah, that's a world I know nothing about. I kind of would like to, but people are...
I should do other things. The comedy cellar is down the street from me. I've never gone in. Really? Yeah. Well, they seem to be. booked all the time yeah they're pretty and it's limited seating too in there yeah and they're supposed to open at least one more space and uh yeah i should get off my butt and do something But there's always lots more work, not only my own work, but let's say my in-laws need some help. Oh, yeah, they always do. And fortunately, we can do a good job about that.
I got to stay focused on the areas where I'm doing some good. Right. The cybersecurity part is part of that because, you know. This is the new war. And did you start to learn that? Where did that interest come from? Did that or where did that realization that cybersecurity is going to be such a big thing? Was there a lot of like. attacks on security at Craigslist? Like, did that happen? Well, there was always something.
But we had a good team for that. Right. But do you have to have that? Say if someone was attacking Craigslist, this is what I'm asking, what would they be trying to get? Well, they would be trying to disrupt service. Okay. They would try to... Oh, try to steal proprietary information, which did happen. What does proprietary information mean? I'm sorry, Craig. Proprietary information at any company is like secret information.
like payroll, client list. We didn't have much of that because we were a simple classified site. But people thought that we had some, quote, unquote, secret sauce. Yeah, some big fancy stuff. And the irony is that that was never the case. And yet people try to do things. There were some problems with leakages of that information. But the problem...
that I'm not concerned with that at Craigslist now. I'm concerned, well, I've been reading about this for decades, and now I see that an adversary would do something like, well. A form of warfare would be to try to jam or hack a drone. If they turn your drone against you, you're going to have a bad day. If it's an autonomous drone. one that's figuring out where the enemy is for itself. If they could subvert it, they would turn our autonomous drone back.
against us that would make for someone's bad day yeah imagine if they if we sent out a drone and it's supposed to get information send it to uh uh artillery unit or a missile that's supposed to fire automatically from the information from that drone and they're able to hack it we could you could literally our army could kill themselves wow there's a lot of mundane things like uh our uh
Well, our hot water heaters at home are becoming Internet connected, so sometimes they could diagnose it remotely. Boilers like that in factories. There are painting robots. And those things, if hacked, they could start running them at high. Another could be just told to run at high until it burns, causes a fire. And if there's a few fires like that, your first responders can deal. But if there's a thousand...
you have a problem. Yeah, if somebody hacks your ovens, you don't even think about that. Somebody hacks your ovens, next thing you know, there's 1,100 fires in an area. Now, the deal is that there's... room for optimism for help because there are already people who are really good at dealing with this what i'm doing is gathering together funding them so that they could work together
starting to work with local governments everywhere, everywhere through the country, starting to come up with, let's say, some best practices because we have some breathing space, we think. Got it. And the idea is that water supplies, power supplies, they also go down because of natural disasters. They need to be resilient. They need to be where you knock them down, they can come back up in a small amount of time.
Well, it's even funny, like even with drones, like when I was a kid, you had to do a little bit of peep and timing, right? If you wanted to look into somebody's window, you had to go over there. I don't know anything about that. Yeah, I'm not saying you do. Yeah. And I, you know, and I'm not saying I do, you know what I'm saying?
But yeah, somebody here does, and it's me. But what I'm saying is this, now as a kid, you can use a drone. And that's the laziest thing. You had to go risk getting beat up by a woman's husband. to look in their window, even if they were just cooking or whatever, right? I'm not getting lewd with it. I'm just saying, you know, but now you can just get a drone and go do it. It's like.
Just breaks my heart, some of that kind of stuff. Well, in Manhattan, apparently that's illegal. And like, oh, right now I wonder, I like my tech toys. Yeah. I would get a drone and I would be bored with it after a few minutes. Yeah. My neighbor kids would enjoy it.
Because they would learn how to use it really well. And their parents have vetoed the idea for the reason you mentioned. I'm sure. I didn't even think about that. Yeah, because I'm still like just squinting real hard and hoping I'm seeing something. Well, it's a big problem in New York. I bet. That's awesome. Lots of big problems, lots of big cities all near each other. Yeah. And a contested airspace because we need the cops to have drones.
That's just getting crazy. You don't think about all of those things. You don't think about all the ways that we could be hacked and the immediate effects of it. So we need to protect ourselves in all sorts of ways. That's why, you know, the idea is to build networks of volunteers who are... run in, let's say, the nonprofit world, the NGO world, and that way then they cooperate with other parties. But we do have to, well, it's like World War II.
We looked out for each other. Everyone tried to play their part. And the looking out for each other in that positive way isn't bad. Yeah. And like right now if... something starts happening weird with my baby camera equivalent, I would like to be able to get help from someone. Right. And even worse, if the...
oven started running away, I would want to know what to do about that. Yeah. When, when Craigslist, when you, at what point were there ever, like uh categories that you wouldn't do were there were there ever um right very early on we heard in large numbers that uh uh people didn't want gun sales on the site And there I am thinking, because I still have some influence then, there are constitutional rights there. But one of them is property rights. So if you have a site, it's your property.
You get to set the rules, so you decide what's right and wrong there. So I believe in property rights and freedom of choice, and that's what you exercise. And that's what people do through the net. it's your site your thing you decide what the rules are so you were able to so you actually got to decide that or not decided are you in your team Team. Okay. I had an opinion, but I wanted the team as such as it was to work it out. That was a little bit of good management, but.
I couldn't consistently deliver good leadership. And even now, I'm not a top-down kind of leader. Maybe I could lead by example. My frustration in a way is that... I want to be able to lead by example when it comes. There's a lot of people with a lot of discretionary money, billionaires, who maybe could be doing really good stuff with that.
I'd like to have the skills to inspire them. Understood. I don't have those skills. Well, I don't even, I mean, I think even hearing today, the things that you care about are things that... sometimes i don't even think to care about in some ways or fears that i don't think that you know you don't even think that oh somebody has to we need to have
A person needs to donate to this because maybe our country isn't worried about it enough yet. You know, it's, you know, so I think it sounds like you're doing a good job. When you did your company. Yeah, because I'm trying to think like, so guns was a thing. Did you guys end up selling them on there or no? No, he said no guns. Swords, anything? I have a feeling swords are okay, but I've never thought about it. Yeah.
I'm trying to think of some... Drugs are illegal. They're off. So drugs were off, but people would try to skirt around that. But even then, some of that was sometimes also... Now, were there ever caught like...
Could the cops use your site as well if they wanted to, like as decoy type of stuff? I hear gossip about that. I don't know how true that really is. Right, because you don't know, right? I... do know that the cops have used the site in different ways to fight crime sometimes let's suppose they think they see a stolen item being
being listed on the site then they would well this is true for anything on the net if a cop sees something they think is wrong and they have a shot at doing something about it they send a subpoena or search warrant to the site and then the site the operators usually pass it to their lawyers and then the site operators provide the forensic evidence to the cops
which again is like CSI and just fighting crime there. The deal is in this country, we have these checks and balances in the Constitution and Bill of Rights. And you know, the founders of the country... did a really good job of that. Yeah. You know, there are amendments and so on, which we only thought of years after, but the people who did the initial work did great work, and it...
for the most part, stands up today. They built a good structure over there. Yeah, well, it's funny because you guys, there was, yeah, it's just like, it's such a part of history, you know, it's such a... I mean, I went on dates from it. I remember I met a girl. We, I met a girl on, I mean, I would use casual encounters too. You know, it's like that was sometimes, um, I met a girl one time.
And we watched a Nets game and made love, honestly. And she let me sign her cast. Right. And I was like, you know, and it was we had a great time. I think we I think we dated. There's no accounting for taste, but I'm glad you asked. Yeah, I know. Who wants to be a Mets fan? Yeah, your guys can remember that one for later years.
oh they've been on there dude i think we accidentally met up once um but there was a place you know i was like i had such a tough time at a certain point in my life dating there was something that added a level of mystery about it that i really liked I've never thought about that. Oh, yeah. Everyone works differently. Everyone does have different tastes. And that's none of my business. Yeah. You know, as long as it's legal. Oh, yeah. It was legal. Did you, um...
It's funny to say that people started marriages. So people even got married off of putting out a dating like I would like to meet someone. Yeah. Wow. Did you ever get invited to a wedding or anything? I have gotten invited a number of times. i'm not much for ceremonies or galas or anything like that and my relatives know this very well i have a dispensation to not go to some of the more obscure events on my wife's side. And on the record, I'm very grateful. I think your comedy is getting better.
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recoverycoaching.com. Thank you. When you guys, at what point did you realize, okay, I need to, had you had enough of the day-to-day, what made you start to decide, I want to sell the company? I haven't sold the company. Oh, you haven't sold. Okay, sorry. Here's the history to prevent some confusion. Okay. I gave a guy some equity. I made it a gift on the expectation that he'd deliver. That may have not happened. But he wanted to sell, sold to eBay. Didn't work out.
And we bought that equity back from eBay. Nice. Now what I've done is I had a chunk of equity stock. And again, thinking, I don't need this. So I. created a 501c4 foundation, put all the equity in there, and that's what generates dividends and sales. Okay. And that's what I'm using to fund these things. Ah. So I now have a good idea.
of uh how much money i have to give away with in the rest of my life because you can look at the residual the dividends and the earnings that's that kind of stuff and i figure i've got five to 20 years And I know roughly how fast I should do it. And my trouble, though, is that I'm 72. 20 years out, I may have to conduct due diligence via a seance. And Ouija boards don't have the bandwidth I need. So I may...
I may just come back and haunt people. Yeah, hey, that would be awesome, yeah. Oh, I could definitely see a spirit looking for a place to stay, you know? You have an excellent point there, although computers don't operate very well. in the afterlife, although I'm making an assumption. I don't know if that's true. So you still own it? Oh, this is an important distinction. I now own no equity.
It's in that foundation, 501c4. Okay, so the company was transferred into a foundation or sold to a foundation? Well, my parts of it. Other people do own chunks of the company. Got it. And they do what's right for them. Okay. Me, what's right for me is, frankly, to keep a little for myself because the wife insists that she needs to buy socks. Yeah. Oh, yeah. So we have some leftover, which we do share with family. But the vast bulk of it is now for charity. I mean, just yesterday, a guy...
I guess an economist analyzed what I would have made had I done the usual Silicon Valley thing. He said, now I'd be worth 11 billion. If you had saved the company and just sold it. Well, if I did the usual. Right. And. Maybe he's right. I don't understand the analysis. Right. But I don't know what I would do with that. $11 billion? Yeah. Yeah, what would you even do it? How many, yeah, because how much money can you put in your bank? Well.
I don't think about it. There are some luxuries I like, but I don't own a car. Really? Frankly, between the subway and Uber, cabs, or Lyft, that's what I need. And again, this is not altruistic or anything like that. This is just being sensible. And altruistic, just so our listeners know. Altruistic means that you sometimes value helping other people more than yourself. Okay. It's the Bible thing. Right. And I agree. I just, my variation of.
have enough to be comfortable and to indulge your family, maybe friends sometimes, and then better do give stuff away. It's a difficult balance. because the future is unpredictable, and I guess it's gotten more unpredictable, but there are people who need a lot of where I can help without digging into my personal stuff.
understood yeah i just wanted to know because yeah sometimes i forget and sometimes maybe some of our listeners forget did you ever feel like other tech companies even though they were probably i bet secretly jealous looked down at craigslist because it was this Like, what was that like? I just wonder. They were quite explicit. It's not a secret. They don't like this model we have of doing well by doing good.
Sometimes, let's say they're not respectful of it, and that's okay. The thing is, I remember what I learned in Sunday school, and people often forget. And again, not pious of me or anything like that. No, I think it's fair to stand up for also what you were aiming for. Well, I've met a bunch of rich people. None of them are all that happy. Yeah. And, yeah, having too much money is a big trap. And you get surrounded by people, by yes men. And you...
get insulated from the needs of regular people, and that does some real damage. How do you keep yourself balanced from that? Yeah, because... It's interesting because you seem like someone who would have a fair answer to what are some of the side effects, the negative side effects of... Well, the deal is that it... Of money, of having some money, you know, or coming into some money. Yeah.
The deal is to be a little bit as cheap as I was when I grew up in the 50s and to do things for yourself or by yourself, like especially going across town. I don't need to take a car. The subway is usually better. And so I do that. Although I did get here on a limo because someone else paid for it. Yeah. And they really wanted to. Good.
So the deal is that now and then I will go to a fancy dinner. Oh, yeah, that's nice. You have to treat yourself to good food. The thing is that you can find good food a lot. more cheaply and with a little bit more fun. And so a lot of those things I just don't get. And I... Wouldn't mind having a smaller house, but the wife's side of the family is very, very large. Yeah. I have one nephew and one niece. The nephew just got married.
And I had to attend that one. Yeah. However, on my wife's side, we have 20 nephew and nieces. Oh, that's too many. Well, it mostly means that I've learned to control my language. Yeah. because I don't want to catch shit from any of my relatives. Yeah. And it works out pretty well. Typically, I know, as they say, that when the kid is allowed... to watch HBO, I'm allowed to use saltier languages. Oh, yeah, I like that, buddy. Yeah, only salt in our languages.
Yeah, I was just wondering, was there one thing, whether it was something like a... like a specific leonard cohen piece a record that he made that he'd autograph was there one nice thing you bought for yourself that um what was something that was meaningful to you i bought Some of the prints that he made. Oh, you did? Okay. He's an artist for real. The thing which I regret is that around here there was an auction of a lot of his letters and stuff. And I should have...
I should have overindulged myself. Yeah. But it was the first auction I actually seriously participated in, and I just didn't get anything. Yeah, man. I don't recognize it. I didn't have anything in color. I did as a black and white prints. And you're heading into some of the ones that just passed. The ones in the middle right now, two of them I think I have.
Wow, that's cool. Yeah, especially the one that's exactly what I have. Really? Yeah, and I may have that one on a t-shirt. Wow. Yeah. Yeah, something like that's nice, man. Especially if it's art or something like that. It's like... you know if i could go back in time there was like a time one time i was in i was in tanzania you know and i was doing uh mount kilimanjaro okay right
And we, and afterwards we went someplace and they had a piece of art in there and it was like $500. Right. And I could spend like maybe $300, but I wished I'd have spent because going like. It was 15 years ago, and it's like, you know, the $200 wouldn't have changed my life that much, you know. It was a lot of money at the time, but it's like, I didn't even think about it two weeks later or two months later, you know.
So I just wish that I would have, because I really liked the painting, you know, I was like, God, I just, and sometimes I wish, like every now and then there's little things like that. I wish I'd have gotten like a nice piece of art or something, you know? Yeah. And the, let's see, on my side of the. the house. That's the biggest investment I've made in art.
My wife was an art major, so she knows this stuff. And a lot of it these days is cheap at auction. And she's good at that. She's gotten good at a number of things, including Freya upgrades while flying. Oh, yeah, it's a deal. That's her new hobby. Oh, yeah. And she's good at it. I'm trying to think of something else. Were there other... So, so what Craigslist was kind of the, the, the stepchild of the tech industry in a weird way. Was it look like that?
Because I could imagine how jealous because here's people putting billions and millions of dollars in a building, this thing, this new avenue and all these venture capitalists and stuff like that. And then they. all this advertising, and here you are with this basic kind of peer-to-peer, how can I offer something that could potentially help my neighbor or connect two neighbors that could use something? Yeah, we've always been an outlier.
As one person put it, we're one of the few ungentrified sites on the net. Yeah. And I guess we like it that way. Not everything has to be expensive or fancy. Yeah. To give credit to a site I consider undentrified, that's Wikipedia. Wikipedia is where facts go to live. And in the long run, Wikipedia, I think, is the most important.
of all sites. I work with him. And even in New York, I'm working with their local chapter to give classes Wikipedia for beginners. Really? Well, when you get to write an article... or change an article that gives you a lot of power well in a small way to uh determine how people think of things
You get to write history. Oh, and some of it's not true. Like, there's stuff on my Wikipedia, like, attaching me to, like, a part of my family. Like, they have half my family members wrong on it and stuff, and it, like, puts me in a, it's crazy. I'm like, all right. The deal, unlike newspapers, well, they don't correct themselves normally, especially not in a big way. But in Wikipedia, you can do that. And basically you...
can get a good citation, some evidence of what's right and wrong, and then send it to someone who knows how to edit it. And they can do it. They can do that. Oh, damn. I've got to get in there. Yeah. You guys. know how to get hold of me, and then I know I can get hold of someone who knows how to do the edits. At least how to do it. I have not gone to the class yet. Okay.
Yeah, the deal is that the system isn't perfect, but it's better than anything anyone else has tried. Yeah, it's true. And things do get fixed. It may not happen as fast as anyone wants. Again, there's things, let's say, in the newspaper of record, and things which I know are wrong and which have been presented to them, and they're just not going to fix it. Yeah.
And they don't want to? I don't understand the reason. They want to shape history sometimes, you think? Well, the deal is they were brought something which was wrong. It was proven to be wrong. And they say they weren't going to be truth vigilantes. And I guess I disagree. Yeah, that's interesting. Well, that's a big thing about information now. It's like it's something I worry about with AI because.
If there's, and even just the history of the web, like things in the history of the web, because people can alter that over time. There's big problems with that now. A number of AI systems are feeding on the output of other AI systems, which could be hallucinating, or it could be if you train... Compromised. Yeah, well, that's one way to do that. I like the idea of really good AI replacing or supplementing search, but I worry about that also because...
Even if I just casually screw around, I can get the AI systems to produce wrong information. And I talk about it with some of the people at these companies and hope. that they get it right. I do have a lot of hope for AI doing customer service because if it's done with commitment, if it's done right, it can be done much better because sometimes...
Like you call up for a customer service. You get a call center someplace where they just don't know how to do it. They don't know. And I try to be kind to people who... have been effectively sabotaged by their management, sometimes I become less impatient than I should be. Oh, yeah. Oh, you'll call a customer service. And they're like, we don't even know what you're talking about. But they still answer the phone. I'm like, who are you? Yeah. And instead of complaining about that, I'm.
trying to talk about it, and I am putting my money where my mouth is, like for Consumer Reports, which I'm involved with and working with a lot. With the magazine website? Yeah. Okay. Because they're trustworthy, and the idea... is that I would enjoy working with an AI system which would be responsive and give me good information. And even if it can't, maybe it would kick it to a person.
who might have to do research, but at least they would be good at it. Understood. Yeah, I actually have a question about that, but I want to remember to ask this. How did Craigslist make money? Oh, oddly enough, since we run very lean. Jim runs as very lean. And even though we minimally charge, that makes enough because we're not expected to produce great results for VCs.
For venture capitalists. Yeah. So you don't have these, you don't have these money guys like I need my return. Right. Uh, if no one's invested millions in us, we don't have to go public. No one's looking to get, uh, uh, billions. And, uh, I'm happy with the current results. Yeah. The future is scary sometimes, but this works out pretty well. You've also talked a lot about, yeah, that's your water. Yeah, thank you.
I have just like one or two more questions. Sure. I'm stubborn. You're stubborn? I am stubborn. Oh my God, dude, you're crazy, Craig, because I've never heard somebody. Imagine I'm trying to open a water, right? I can't open it. And then I say, I'm stubborn. Like, I'm stubborn. It didn't even make sense. To me, that was very funny. You're like, I can't open it. And I was like...
I don't know if you could open it out. I was just trying to I I don't know but I was like oh Can I help you and then you're like I'm stubborn but to me in my head I was like He can't open it, but he just the bottle stubborn Anyway, it doesn't make any sense. My deal is that as an old man, I'm happy when I can still do some things. Oh, I see what you're saying. You've talked a lot about independent journalism, right?
And that's something that I've read anyway is near and dear to your outlook in the world. Okay. Well, what we learned in U.S. history in this high school class is that... A free and trustworthy press is just required to keep a republic alive. And the whole media system is fractured in all sorts of unpredictable ways. You're part of that. I'm a lesser part of it. And I don't know what to do now.
except that I try to support things that I know work, like the journalism school at the City University of New York. Okay. And Wikipedia is now modern journalism. There are other things that I try to help. But I'm confused and I'm kind of paralyzed around a lot of this. So I did a lot in the past. But these days, I'm just trying to focus in those areas where I can help Americans.
defend the country because that's a well-defined good which we need in a big way right now. Like service members, active or veteran. and their families have given up a lot for us, and we don't treat them right, so I can do something about that. Cyber warfare is a thing, and it needs help because the government can do some stuff, but...
Everyone needs to play a role, like in World War II. Everyone needs to harden their systems a little bit, depending on how much of a... target you are yeah it's funny i didn't realize until you said some of those things like what if suddenly all of our uh cars were compromised or half of them or all of our ovens were compromised to the point where they started fires in all of our homes you know um
It was just kind of fascinating to me, you know. Well, it means also I've read too much science fiction in my time. But if 1% of those systems were compromised, that alone is a big problem. Yeah. And we don't even realize it. Were there other businesses that you tried to start before or after? No, I am not a real businessman. It's been a happy accident. I'm like...
any success I've had has been by accidentally being in the right time at the right place. And that makes me the farthest gump of the internet. But also with the right attitude to bring one person to another. You know, try to keep the golden rule in your mind, things you learn from Sunday school. What about, are your parents pretty proud of you? Are your parents still alive, Greg? They passed long ago. Oh, they did? I'm sure they...
Would be. I know that my high school history teacher learned about his contributions to all my stuff. He heard about it. Well, he was still around, and that was a big deal. Oh, that probably meant a lot, huh? Yeah. Well, because teachers work hard for little pay. Oh, yeah. So anytime they have any long-term effect is a big deal. Yeah. Yeah, it's so funny. I still keep in touch with a lot of my teachers, you know? It's important to me. I should, but at my age, there may not be many left. Wow.
That's why we got to get that Ouija board going. Yes. You know, I think that's the next level. What are some, what are some small, before you leave Craig, what are some goals in your life like right now? I know you've talked about some of the kind of work oriented and giving back. Are there any kind of personal goals? anything like um i don't know is there any kind of goals you have even if they're just like human to yourself things you still want to learn or do professionally i want to
cybersecurity to be a household word that everyone takes seriously. Personally, I'll be glad if the dentist tomorrow uses nitrous oxide. Yeah. And I will make the same joke over again. That is, can I take the bottle home? And he will refuse me. But we like to do that. No, we do like to do that. I think that's good, guys. pretty good is there anything else that you want to share that's important to you
I think you got it all, and I think people will be tired of hearing from me after 90 minutes. Well, look, I do know if you really want to get some nitrous oxide, you might be able to find some on Craig's list. I've been advised by my medical team against it. All I can remember, well, for sure, is like the Batman says, I'm not the nerd you want, but I'm the nerd you got.
Man, I don't know how somehow I almost get your sense of humor now, Craig. It's very interesting. That might be tragic. Yeah. Well, thank you, man. Thank you for, I just like some, I like your initial goals of like. My goal is to help one person find something. This person's in need. This person might have this. How can I be of service there?
um learning when you notice that i'm not a good manager of this so i need to get some help here right it's not a strong suit of mine maybe this world but the customer relations is a strong suit of mine you know and and that's interesting just because You know, sometimes we all feel like we have to do everything in different spaces. And then, yeah, and I'm glad you found a lady along the way. How long has your marriage been now? Married 12 and together 20. That's great.
And it's good that I'm better at remembering those dates than she is. Yeah, amen. Craig Neumark, thank you so much, man. Hey, it's my pleasure. I appreciate your time. Now I'm just floating on the breeze and I feel I'm falling like these leaves. I must be cornerstone. Oh, but when I reach that ground, I'll share. Peace of mind I found I can feel it.