Name: Craig from Craigslist Turned Down BILLIONS to Change the Site
Uploaded: 2024-12-13T19:31:06.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Craig from Craigslist Turned Down BILLIONS to Change the Site' from Theo Von Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2024-12-13. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Craig from Craigslist Turned Down BILLIONS to Change the Site' from Theo Von Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2024-12-13. Transcript available.

I want to remember to ask this.
How did Craigslist make money?
Oh, oddly enough, since we run very lean, Jim runs us 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 money guys like, I need my return.
Yeah, if no one's invested millions in us, we don't have to go public.
No one's looking to get billions.
And I'm happy with the current results.
Yeah.
The future is scary sometimes, but this works out pretty well.
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.
Yeah.
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.
Speaking.
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's philosophy is to monetize only those ads for people who
are 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, which 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.
Yeah.
It does provide some structure, right?
Well, that's useful in the sense that, well, everyone is struggling trying to
get through the day.
Right.
And some people are selling, doing things for profit, like brokering apartments
in New York City.
And with, 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.
Wow.
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.
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, well, 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 how much money I have to give away within 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.
Yeah.
And Ouija boards don't have the bandwidth I need.
So I may just come back and haunt people.
Yeah.
Hey, that would be awesome.
Yeah.
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.
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.
And 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 dollars?
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.
Yeah.
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.
Yeah.
Without digging into my personal stuff.
Yeah.
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.
Oh, they're 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.
Yeah.
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.
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.
Well, the deal is that it's money.
I've had 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, and I, now and then, I, like, will go to a fancy dinner.
Oh, yeah, that's nice.
You have to treat yourself to good food.
The thing is that you could 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, I just don't get.
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 could 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, they just have, so it's like, what are you doing?
Like, you know, it becomes almost this obsessive thing where, I don't know, it
just, 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.
I do, I guess, yeah, what, in the libertarian movement and the related
financial stuff, in the 70s, early 70s, there was this idea of capital
preservation, because inflation was really bad then.
So people were finding assets, which, where they could preserve their capital,
of course, I was in college, I didn't have much, 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.
But that's the old libertarian background.
These days, my philosophy is much more mixed, because I'm, 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.
It's 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.
That's when I started reading science fiction.
That's when I started reading science fiction.
That's when I started reading science fiction.
That's when I started reading science fiction.
That's when I started reading science fiction.
That's when I started reading science fiction.
That's when I started reading science fiction.
That's when I started reading science fiction.
That's when I started reading science fiction.
That's when I started reading science fiction.
That's when I started reading science fiction.
That's when I started reading science fiction.
That's when I started reading science fiction.
That's when I started reading science fiction.
That's when I started reading science fiction.
That's when I started reading science fiction.