Sometimes, amazing businesses are built by a driven founder obsessed with a single idea. But then there’s Craigslist.
This ragtag online classified website happened by accident, had a very bad design as per the experts, and has always been run by individuals apparently allergic to virtually every deeply held beliefs of business and management.
They never went after money, never went after crazy growth. It nonetheless became one of the lasting icons of the internet and is, by all reckonings, insanely profitable and is estimated to be worth more than a billion dollars.
The man behind it, is the remarkable entrepreneur and do-gooder in this universe, Craig Newmark.
What you could learn from this episode:
- Why there were no friends and he was lonely.
- How he got interested in the nascent internet.
- How Craigslist began.
- How it grew without marketing
- Why he still worked full-time on his job and worked on craigslist as a side hustle.
- How he got the name Craigslist.
- His first failure with Craigslist and what he did after this.
- How he figured out what to add to craigslist.
- What they focused on to make it successful.
- Why he never took any investment.
- The best decision he took, even though it could hurt his ego.
- How they controlled spam.
- A deadly shock and how he recovered.
- How they survived even though they never followed conventional ways for a business.
