Founders at Work.pdf

Craig Newmark 249
in the UNIX/Linux family all the time. We used Apache relatively early. Perl,
now more mod_perl. And MySQL since ’99. Now we’re running it on over 120
Linux servers—small, cheap machines. We’re primarily Linux on the desktop,
with some Mac and some Windows.
We do worry about liability issues relating to the use of Windows, since it’s
pretty insecure. We don’t have much sensitive data, but we have to regard
Windows as a source of compromise.
Livingston: When you put craigslist on a website, did you get a positive
response pretty quickly?
Newmark: Our traffic has always been slow but sure. We’re the tortoise, not
the hare. Now and then we’ll get a surge of growth, but it’s been slow but
steady.
Livingston: Were you just running craigslist at night out of your home?
Newmark: It depends on what part of my life it was. But even when I was contracting,
I would work an arrangement with the people I was working for. Now
and then, I would look at my email and get stuff done. I would put in a half
hour. For example, I would be doing my contracting work, I’d get stuff done,
then I would take a half hour off to do craigslist, and then I would get back
to work.
Livingston: This was run out of your apartment?
Newmark: Mostly.
Livingston: Did you need other people’s help?
Newmark: At the end of ’97, we were getting about one million page views a
month. At that point, Microsoft Sidewalk—or their PR people—approached
me about running banner ads. I had decided to not do them, because they’d
slow the site down and they were kind of dumb. Banner ads are, more often
than not, kind of dumb. More importantly, I thought about my own values and
I was thinking, “Hey, how much money do I need?” I was already doing well as
a contractor. So I figured I would just not do that.
At that point, I got the first inkling of what I now call my “moral compass.”
I better understood it later—particularly since the presidential elections,
because then I realized that people were claiming a moral high ground who
actually didn’t practice what they preached, and it’s about time for people of
goodwill to reassert their idea of what’s right and what’s wrong.
Livingston: Once you decided that the site was good the way it was and you
didn’t need any more money, you stuck to that?
Newmark: Yes, and expanded on it. In the ’98/’99 timeframe, we took a good
look at the morality of charging for something. We asked people, “Hey, what do
you think we should charge for, if anything?” And they said, “The principle is:
charge people who would otherwise be paying more money for less effective
ads.” They specifically said, “It’s cool to charge for job ads and to charge landlords
or apartment brokers.” Beyond that, there was some mix of opinion, but
we stuck with that.