Craig’s List
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So, what happens when an unstoppable force meets an unmovable rock? I have no idea, but I bet it’s a lot like the CEO of Craig’s List meeting a bunch of Wall Street bankers.
Those behind Craig’s List, as well as Craig himself, are vehemenently anti-capitalist when it comes to the website. They refuse to run ads, they only charge certain postings enough to pay for expenses, and they have the general ethic that would make Marx proud.
On the other side of the room were Wall Street vultures bankers. They kept asking the CEO how he planned to maximize revenues from the wildly popular website that doubles in pageviews every year. They apparently didn’t get the memo and kept asking leading to this amusing exchange.
Wendy Davis of MediaPost describes the presentation as a “a culture clash of near-epic proportions.” She recounts how UBS analyst Ben Schachter wanted to know how Craigslist plans to maximize revenue. It doesn’t, Mr. Buckmaster replied (perhaps wondering how Mr. Schachter could possibly not already know this). “That definitely is not part of the equation,” he said, according to MediaPost. “It’s not part of the goal.”
“I think a lot of people are catching their breath right now,” Mr. Schachter said in response.
Apparently, that exchange didn’t stop the enterprising analyst from writing a research bit on the company. In an apparent shot at the company he wrote: Craig’s List “does not fully monetize its traffic or services.”
That probably made Craig Newmark’s day.