Craigslist is what I want my platform to be. Making money but not so much to burden myself with entering the stock market or making billions of dollars every month. I just want to provide a useful tool and make money to take care of me and my family in a low-key fashion.
Yeah, I mean look what happened to all them startups that cashed in on the IPO craze, but only to end up losing control of the company or becoming irrelevant altogether. This happened to many other tech founders too. Became instant millionaires overnight but eventually got forced out, pressured to sell, or got unwillingly replaced at the top. If you are a passionate founder, there's probably no worse feeling than getting kicked out from your own company.
I ain’t joking. I said what I said precisely because I don’t use bloated JS framework du jour in my web apps. I hate that npm installs tens of megabytes worth of packages for a page whose sole purpose is to print ‘hello world.’ 😅 Like I said, I’m a back end dev first and foremost.
I have a theory that their causal web design is just a method to boost user trust and compound their market share Non enthusiasts see how underdeveloped it is, assume it's lean, and don't even wonder why it's under monetized It really helps set the tone of the site and creates a genius feel that avoids nonsensical clutter It really creates an every man app, and that's the genius about it
Huge part of this is that the company isn't a publicly traded one. Honestly a company being public is like a cancer slowly killing its usefulness/value for the greater public.
Public markets exist for a reason. Several in fact. It's not cancer. They were created to access wider funding. Unless ofc you believe that private equity funds are better than public markets...
my experience is that public companies tend make their products worse for more revenue, more than private ones. The fundamentale flaw with public companies is they are forced to grow, by law, which is just inherently unsustainable. Companies not being content by simply being successful is the cancer @@pierrex3226
@@pierrex3226 Yeah, sure. Public market is great for companies who need funding. The problem is that in the US once the company goes public their purpose by law becomes maximizing profit for investors. It is not cancer, but over time it will develop one.
What the fuck, he just made a service everyone can use for free, their data is not the product but rather it's the space on the site for people who use it for commercial purposes, there are no quarterly redesigns that ruin the website's UX every time, it's just updated and fixed when it needs to be. Granted, this is a mainly text based website, not something that requires a large amounts of bandwidth or storage, but if he can do it in a sustainable and moral way, there's still hope...
The product of the other free sites is access to their users. So Craigslist does the same as FB, Twitter, etc. Only that the others allow advertisers more control on what part of the space they get (targeted advertising)
Craigslist makes me miss the Original internet. Somewhere between 2012 and 2020 literally every gold standard of interface and interaction design was replaced by garbage.
True. I have a 4K display at 100% scaling and modern websites suck. Instead of showing me more information, they just increase the amount of empty space between elements. For TH-cam there is an FireFox addon to restore the 2010 UI layout, which works much better.
One of my fav entrepreneurs. I am from India, and a friend's friend had met Craig - he is quite accessible, and super humble. He would be sitting across you and talking like he is just another person. And I had read the case study of CL much before. It's admirable - their philosophy, and also the fact that they have reached 1B in revenue already.
Craigslist has found every apartment I’ve lived in in San Francisco since.. forever. It looks exactly the same. Craigslist has, legit, provided me shelter. Very thankful!!
0:09 Keep in mind that the stats you are referencing are website users, most users of snapchat, spotify, and many other apps are basically never visiting the website.
Hardly. There are plenty other people like him. Unfortunately, those people are rarely in the position to carve out major market share for themselves due to either starting late or not having the resources to do it. I won't argue that he seems to be a great guy, however.
Wasn’t Craigslist instrumental in the whole online solicitation movement that really took off around 2009ish? The whole erotic services section I thought drove majority of the traffic before congress pass the online protection act of which Craigslist hired a lobbying firm to try to stop that bill as it would make companies liable . So I’m not sure about the whole ethical thing.
For a credit card company, 2-5% is NOT reasonable... Take Germany, we have the Giro card system (or at least had, until banks found ways around customer protection laws). With the giro system, we had transaction fees in the range of 0.25%. THAT is still more than reasonable
You really have me rethinking my beliefs. This story is so short & simple that it’s suspicious. Most of these billionaire backstories usually have a lot of drama & complexity. But this doesn’t. It’s weird
There is a bit of information missing here. When the eternal college student was hired, who would become the ceo, the video says it was the ninth employee, yet there was no revenue. How are they paid? Had Craig saved a million dollars during his lonely 30s? Or maybe, there was some VC involved in the beginning. How did that go? There is definitely a part that is not told here. Super nice video nonetheless.
Please start such videos with a brief explanation of what the discussed website/service is. I've never heard about Craigslist and was wondering on what the hell is it, while the name was repeated again and again during the first minutes of the video.
It'd be substantial, but not any worse than what junk your email receives. Plus CL is a much more pure form of buyer-seller connection service as opposed to the likes of Uber who are far more controlling (and arguably responsible).
Hey, just a heads up: There is this German channel called „einfach erklärt“ that is taking your videos putting a German voice onto them. Are you in cooperation or is this kind of a theft? The German channel already has 1,5 Mio views total and 15 k subs. Best regards, Nick
It's a bit sad that craigslist is not well known here in Europe, where the eBay conglomerate holds most of the market share. They do have a "pay to win" mechanic where you can pay 3€ to have a red rectangle around your offer and other dumb bs.
Promoting offers is not dumb BS. I'm pretty sure that with access to data we could demonstrate that for at least the most liquid and standardized products, spending money on promotion works
Not saying you're wrong, but how can you be unethical when you purposely pass up on charging your visitors and sellers more? Along with other potential streams
Hey, I really love most of your videos. I think you do a great job making them. They're educational and informative. But every now and again I notice weird inconsistencies or misleading info. For this video, for instance, ebay's lawsuit against Craigslist had nothing to do with monetization. Ebay had purchased a 28% share in Craigslist but then expanded another rival website that Craigslist considered a threat. So Craigslist responded by diluting eBay's shares to just 25% to prevent Ebay from trying to control the company. Ebay sued because they felt the share dilution was illegal. It had nothing to do with how much money Craigslist was making off the website. I'm a bit confused why your video said nothing about the share dilution, even though it was the entire point of the lawsuit? Why state that the lawsuit was only about Craigslist not making enough money off of posts? Other then this, though, amazing video!
Ooo, interesting. I guess it doesn't derail the entire narrative, but then again we shouldn't shoehorn things into making them fit a narrative. Thank you for that. Sometimes the comments section is valuable.
The keep lesson is that you actually don't need alot of employees to run a profitable business. The top 100 companies often employ hundreds of thousands of employees requiring insane revenue to stay afloat.
While it's an amazing website, they should and could hire a front end web developer (like myself hehehe) to just make the site more appealing and modern. Doesn't have to be flashy or anything but just a nice facelift.
Wait, in view of craigslist's dominance, it is inevitable to involve in numerous frauds. How come craigslist survive potential fines and regulations over the years when the revenue is not even maximized as those big techs?
Craigslist is what I want my platform to be. Making money but not so much to burden myself with entering the stock market or making billions of dollars every month.
I just want to provide a useful tool and make money to take care of me and my family in a low-key fashion.
Same!
Yeah, I mean look what happened to all them startups that cashed in on the IPO craze, but only to end up losing control of the company or becoming irrelevant altogether. This happened to many other tech founders too. Became instant millionaires overnight but eventually got forced out, pressured to sell, or got unwillingly replaced at the top. If you are a passionate founder, there's probably no worse feeling than getting kicked out from your own company.
@@lionelemilio4141 I mean Craig is a billionaire so it's not like he hasn't created generational wealth
What’s your platform about if you don’t mind?
@@lionelemilio4141 You're totally not the problem
Let's take a moment to appreciate how logically he answered this question.
Hahaha
What question?
@@poulticegeist the question is "what is socconda?"
...using chat gpt
Badum Tssss
As a backend dev I think I could get a job at Craigslist as their front end dev.
😂
I ain’t joking. I said what I said precisely because I don’t use bloated JS framework du jour in my web apps. I hate that npm installs tens of megabytes worth of packages for a page whose sole purpose is to print ‘hello world.’ 😅
Like I said, I’m a back end dev first and foremost.
They could just improve the css.
I have a theory that their causal web design is just a method to boost user trust and compound their market share
Non enthusiasts see how underdeveloped it is, assume it's lean, and don't even wonder why it's under monetized
It really helps set the tone of the site and creates a genius feel that avoids nonsensical clutter
It really creates an every man app, and that's the genius about it
@@JoeWithTheHoesBidenit’s like visiting a “way back” site… actually genius tbh.
Huge part of this is that the company isn't a publicly traded one. Honestly a company being public is like a cancer slowly killing its usefulness/value for the greater public.
Public markets exist for a reason. Several in fact. It's not cancer. They were created to access wider funding. Unless ofc you believe that private equity funds are better than public markets...
my experience is that public companies tend make their products worse for more revenue, more than private ones. The fundamentale flaw with public companies is they are forced to grow, by law, which is just inherently unsustainable. Companies not being content by simply being successful is the cancer @@pierrex3226
@@pierrex3226 They exist for a reason. It's not a good reason.
@@pierrex3226 Yeah, sure. Public market is great for companies who need funding. The problem is that in the US once the company goes public their purpose by law becomes maximizing profit for investors. It is not cancer, but over time it will develop one.
IPOs are nothing more than stamping an expiration date on the quality of your service/product nowadays.
What the fuck, he just made a service everyone can use for free, their data is not the product but rather it's the space on the site for people who use it for commercial purposes, there are no quarterly redesigns that ruin the website's UX every time, it's just updated and fixed when it needs to be. Granted, this is a mainly text based website, not something that requires a large amounts of bandwidth or storage, but if he can do it in a sustainable and moral way, there's still hope...
Crazy approach right? Hahaha
The product of the other free sites is access to their users. So Craigslist does the same as FB, Twitter, etc. Only that the others allow advertisers more control on what part of the space they get (targeted advertising)
I think it does have a lot of bandwith which does require finesse backend coding
Craigslist makes me miss the Original internet. Somewhere between 2012 and 2020 literally every gold standard of interface and interaction design was replaced by garbage.
Nowadays its form over function
True. I have a 4K display at 100% scaling and modern websites suck. Instead of showing me more information, they just increase the amount of empty space between elements.
For TH-cam there is an FireFox addon to restore the 2010 UI layout, which works much better.
@@Roshan_420 You'd love the Gemini protocol then where small is beautiful.
Exactly. I miss 2006 to 2016 internet. That had the best experiences for me
I would like to shake Craigs hand - we need More people like him
One of my fav entrepreneurs.
I am from India, and a friend's friend had met Craig - he is quite accessible, and super humble. He would be sitting across you and talking like he is just another person.
And I had read the case study of CL much before. It's admirable - their philosophy, and also the fact that they have reached 1B in revenue already.
Because he is just another person.
It’s like you subconsciously put those with money above yourself and others
When You're Mega Rich..
It's Easy to be humble.
@@jesusisunstoppable4438 not as easy
In a 100 years, there may not be an Amazon, but still a Craigslist.
I adore that some people can get into mainstream tech without being bogged down by endless growth mentalities! We need more people like Craig!
Wow, he’s the kind of person that I aspire to be in the future
And honestly? we need more people like him in this world
CL is something every tech entrepreneur should aspire to.
I'll love to build a company with the same philosophy.
You can. The hard part is sustaining it.
@@Caleb6000 And resisting temptation to sell to money making giants.
Me too
Angie's list.
iF Big tech giants are the Nazgul kings...
Craig Newmark is TOM BOMBADIL !!!
This man deserves a lot of respect.
Hats off to Craig for dodging all the punches capitalism threw at him, and continuing to better the world. I wish more companies could be like this.
Great video. As someone from the UK, I’ve never really noticed Craigslist but this piece was insightful into the size and success of the website.
Craigslist has found every apartment I’ve lived in in San Francisco since.. forever. It looks exactly the same. Craigslist has, legit, provided me shelter. Very thankful!!
how the hell do u produce such high quality videos daily?
On the grind hahaha
0:09 Keep in mind that the stats you are referencing are website users, most users of snapchat, spotify, and many other apps are basically never visiting the website.
Imagine choosing not to sell out, and still becoming a billionaire as a result
7:56 that moment when you post your cv in LinkedIn and suddenly LinkedIn offers you a job 💀
Let’s get it LA!!! Another year of viewing your content!!
🙏
Good video. Didn't know this about Craigslist
Just a humble guy, having a humble time. Nice.
With so much negativity out there, It is nice to have humble feel good people and stories about the internet. I love Craigslist.
this compony is the shiny version of the rarest pokemon of companys
This is the most Vulcan channel I've seen and I love it.
Thanks for shedding light on this name i've known forever but never knew anything about.
Craig is one of a kind and a wonderful person.
Hardly.
There are plenty other people like him. Unfortunately, those people are rarely in the position to carve out major market share for themselves due to either starting late or not having the resources to do it.
I won't argue that he seems to be a great guy, however.
I love this video. This guy is my hero now
That's by far the most beautiful story I've watched on your channel, thank you.
More stories like this one, please.
Craig the legend
On 0:10 anyone know where is this list come from?
KEEP THE GOOD WORK BROTHER
🙏
Great video, i was completely unaware of this topic. Might use craigslist more often.
Dang Craig is such a great guy. World needs more people like him.
Far and in-between my dude.
The video should have been titled something like: 'The real goal were the friends he made along the way; now he is a billionaire'
craig has made a list
Indeed
We gonna find out whos naughty or nice
I will make a modern version of Craig's list with only maximized profit as target and call it *capitalist's list.*
😂
Wow! Craigslist is very humble!
Awesome. Thanks for not putting beats as background music.
Wasn’t Craigslist instrumental in the whole online solicitation movement that really took off around 2009ish? The whole erotic services section I thought drove majority of the traffic before congress pass the online protection act of which Craigslist hired a lobbying firm to try to stop that bill as it would make companies liable . So I’m not sure about the whole ethical thing.
I prefer sites that look like this, simple, fast and practical.
Honestly a 2 to 5 % fee would've been pretty reasonable especially given credit cards fees are around that
Agreed
Hard to charge a % fee when the site is more like a classified ad. Would be easier to just charge $1 per post. Would also help keep spam/junk off
i would rather use this boring and harder to navigate platform than any other flashy but predatory platform(and yes 2%-5% is kinda reasonable)
@@codycast what about free items
For a credit card company, 2-5% is NOT reasonable...
Take Germany, we have the Giro card system (or at least had, until banks found ways around customer protection laws). With the giro system, we had transaction fees in the range of 0.25%. THAT is still more than reasonable
You really have me rethinking my beliefs. This story is so short & simple that it’s suspicious. Most of these billionaire backstories usually have a lot of drama & complexity. But this doesn’t. It’s weird
There is a bit of information missing here. When the eternal college student was hired, who would become the ceo, the video says it was the ninth employee, yet there was no revenue. How are they paid? Had Craig saved a million dollars during his lonely 30s? Or maybe, there was some VC involved in the beginning. How did that go? There is definitely a part that is not told here. Super nice video nonetheless.
Thanks for creating this video. Very interesting to learn all about Craigslist. Looking forward to many more interesting videos this year LA!
🙏
#2 Craig. Only second to Craig Jones.
as long as there's crime, craigslist would never die
11:50 His Exit Strategy Is Just On Another Level. 🤣🤣 May He Live Longer. 🙏🙏
He's One Of The Few Good Giants Left On Planet Earth Indeed.
The cost is juicy user stories.
CL does charge for somethings like vehicles and services...... Last I used it, it cost $5 to list a vehicle for 30 days.
I like how it's a positive story to start off 2024
Please start such videos with a brief explanation of what the discussed website/service is. I've never heard about Craigslist and was wondering on what the hell is it, while the name was repeated again and again during the first minutes of the video.
What percentage of listings on craigslist are a scam?
It'd be substantial, but not any worse than what junk your email receives. Plus CL is a much more pure form of buyer-seller connection service as opposed to the likes of Uber who are far more controlling (and arguably responsible).
@@doujinflip True.
@@doujinflip True.
No doubt he's a legend.
Hey, just a heads up: There is this German channel called „einfach erklärt“ that is taking your videos putting a German voice onto them. Are you in cooperation or is this kind of a theft? The German channel already has 1,5 Mio views total and 15 k subs.
Best regards, Nick
It's really interesting but if every corporation run like this and doesn't care about grow I suppose will be harder to get a job in those areas
Wow, what a cool story!
Great video as always
Thank you as always Balpreet!
i need a lot more details about how he made the website and why people even used it
It's useful, it's a web based advertising board
Craig taking a beating with this one lol 😁😂 11:25
These titles are wild bro. Do you use that Ai title generator? Literally no way you don’t 😂. Happy new years tho keep pumping out A1 content ❤
Hahaha, rarely use AI for titles haha. Usually the AI titles are super sterile
That is humble I respect that soul
That feels like what the internet was supposed to be, before it went nuclear and kind of went to shit.
Funny because i just downloaded the app for the first time earlier today. Pretty clean app too.
If it's free, you're probably the product 🙂
It's a bit sad that craigslist is not well known here in Europe, where the eBay conglomerate holds most of the market share. They do have a "pay to win" mechanic where you can pay 3€ to have a red rectangle around your offer and other dumb bs.
Promoting offers is not dumb BS. I'm pretty sure that with access to data we could demonstrate that for at least the most liquid and standardized products, spending money on promotion works
@@pierrex3226 It's a cash grab. Paying 3€ for a temporary automated hex colour value change.
Misleading title. Craigslist does Not make $0 revenue. And making no revenue is in no way makes you an "ethical" company.
Exactly. Is the "non-profit = ethical" theme common on this channel?
Not saying you're wrong, but how can you be unethical when you purposely pass up on charging your visitors and sellers more? Along with other potential streams
@@Diverse0725 That's just called being naive. Giving away free stuff isn't a metric of morality.
thanks, I did not know that at all, amazing guy!
Awesome guy,
7:22 IS THAT JOE GOLDBERG??
They charge for car and truck ads too
Hey, I really love most of your videos. I think you do a great job making them. They're educational and informative.
But every now and again I notice weird inconsistencies or misleading info.
For this video, for instance, ebay's lawsuit against Craigslist had nothing to do with monetization. Ebay had purchased a 28% share in Craigslist but then expanded another rival website that Craigslist considered a threat. So Craigslist responded by diluting eBay's shares to just 25% to prevent Ebay from trying to control the company. Ebay sued because they felt the share dilution was illegal. It had nothing to do with how much money Craigslist was making off the website.
I'm a bit confused why your video said nothing about the share dilution, even though it was the entire point of the lawsuit? Why state that the lawsuit was only about Craigslist not making enough money off of posts?
Other then this, though, amazing video!
Ooo, interesting. I guess it doesn't derail the entire narrative, but then again we shouldn't shoehorn things into making them fit a narrative. Thank you for that. Sometimes the comments section is valuable.
Thank you for broading the "narrow passage" of the narative
Google making billions in profit but still not enough and put more and more ad''s
1980s- early 90s ibm was not a legacy tech company, they where bleeding edge, it was like working at google back then.
Happy new year!!!
Happy New Year to you too Daniel!
wrong right from the start... @0:15 250 million visits, not users.
indeed what a legend 👑
Cool guy , even more interesting vid
We all have to appreciate his consistency, just wow.
The keep lesson is that you actually don't need alot of employees to run a profitable business. The top 100 companies often employ hundreds of thousands of employees requiring insane revenue to stay afloat.
Very Logical video
Happy New Year!
Happy New Year to you too man!
While it's an amazing website, they should and could hire a front end web developer (like myself hehehe) to just make the site more appealing and modern. Doesn't have to be flashy or anything but just a nice facelift.
Interesting story
Good video.
now that's a guy i can admire
Man, I really don't like the cheesy transition animation and sound. Other than that, great vid as always.
ОДНОКЛАССНИКИ ПОСЕЩАЕМЕЕ СПОТИФАЯ, вот это реально разрыв 💀💀💀
But how can Craigslist charge a fee when they don’t have a payment and shipping option?
Please make video on yelp
Wait, in view of craigslist's dominance, it is inevitable to involve in numerous frauds.
How come craigslist survive potential fines and regulations over the years when the revenue is not even maximized as those big techs?
When Hari doesn't mention Apple in one of his videos:
Never thought I would hear Craigslist & ethical in the same sentence.
iF Big tech giants are the Nazgul kings...
Craig Newmark is TOM BOMBADIL !!!
wholesome story
Bro speaks in b-roll
Why does not making a profit make you ethical? For profit companies don’t steal your money, you pay them😂
Exactly. Is the "non-profit = ethical" theme common on this channel?
nah the $0 revenue is a clickbait at it's peak craigslist makes $1 billion in yearly revenue today it's $600 million
They charge $5 for vehicle listings now, something this video didn't mention.