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Now it's lazy and selfish to not take every ounce of surplus you can out of a market? Some folks just want to lay back and enjoy life. If I were Craig I'd sit

by phil21 10y ago

Now it's lazy and selfish to not take every ounce of surplus you can out of a market? Some folks just want to lay back and enjoy life. If I were Craig I'd sit on that goldmine for the rest of my life - most likely it will finance a very decent lifestyle until the day he dies. Why bother with the stress of expanding and doing what everyone else is doing? I'm completely convinced that strategy makes for miserable people. The happiest folks I've met in my life are those who own the "lifestyle businesses" everyone on HN enjoys deriding so much. Isn't Craig living the hacker's dream? A reasonably useful service that provides value to customer, that once built you don't have to put much effort into maintaining or improving - because it works. Then you spend the rest of your free time on the beach. You also get the nice side benefit that most guys like this tend to provide relatively low-stress long-term jobs employees can build a balanced life around.

smallgovt 10y ago
This is sort of my point... Don't get me wrong, he has every right to run his business in any way he so desires. And, who am I to pass judgement on him for this? I'm just saying that we shouldn't see this sort of decision making as 'honorable' or 'selfless' in any sense. It's the opposite, in a way.
- phil21 10y ago
  I think it's a lot more honorable and selfless than trying to blow it up with a huge round of VC funding and turn it into the next ad-funded unicorn. Why found a company just to turn into the same exact companies you tried to get away from? But I also completely agree that's subjective, and there really is no morality here. It's simple personal preference.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
bredren 10y ago
The problem is not that CL isn't squeezing out every ounce revenue. The problem with the benevolent dictator at Craigslist is his kingdom is so big and he does nothing to advance it. It would not be hard to offer minor but relatively simple identity validation for users. Or dabble with the ability to create trust networks or reputation. Or offer basic mechanisms for safe transactional payments. Or an official mobile app that worked well. Or a hundred other things that would improve lives. There is no question craigslist gets a "job well done" but there is a great argument that if they have a choke hold on the online classifieds market they should offer increased value over time. Craigslist reminds me of the IRS. Sure, you can fumble your way through filing your taxes with us, but why would you do that when TurboTax can do it better. Except there is no alternative. I think Craigslist is acting more like the old newspaper classifieds they disrupted if anything. Despite this article's focus on a couple companies, there are other startups getting major traction in used goods space apart from Facebook. If CL loses significant market share, I hope they don't go trying then to revamp the site. Because it would only be that much more obvious how much they held back from their users for so long.
- fnovd 10y ago
  >It would not be hard to offer minor but relatively simple identity validation for users. Or dabble with the ability to create trust networks or reputation. Or offer basic mechanisms for safe transactional payments. And when users are lulled into a false sense of security from these changes, who is all of a sudden liable when things go south? CL being barebones is a feature, not a bug.
WikipediasBad 10y ago
>Isn't Craig living the hacker's dream? A reasonably useful service that provides value to customer, that once built you don't have to put much effort into maintaining or improving - because it works. Then you spend the rest of your free time on the beach. I don't know about you, but real hackers get personal enjoyment from creating software, products, and innovating. They don't do it so they can "spend the rest of their free time on the beach." In fact, if you are trying to just make enough money to spend the rest of your free time on the beach etc, you're probably not a real hacker.
- phil21 10y ago
  The beach was a bad example, but I think we agree here. I used it to illustrate that a hacker (at least what I think of when I say the word) is not primarily motivated by money - he's motivated by creating useful things people use. The goal of automating your daily job out of existence so you can move on to more enjoyable activities. Just a side note: some of the best hacking I've done was on a beach building some really cool stuff. So in my world (I do consider myself a hacker, if a poor version of one) if I create something like Craigslist I don't try to squeeze every ounce of profit out of it at the expense of customers and employees. I spend as little time as possible on that solved problem which pays my bills, and I go hack on new problems that have yet to be solved. This may be in tech, but it may simply be learning an entirely different skill entirely. Work I leave as work, and of course hack on any interesting problems that come from that area of my life as needed. If I did my job right though building it, that should be relatively rare. > In fact, if you are trying to just make enough money to spend the rest of your free time on the beach etc, you're probably not a real hacker. I'd probably argue against this based on my above statement. I know very few folks I would describe as hackers who are motivated to make money beyond what they need to comfortably live and fund the projects/research they are personally interested in. Stacking millions in a bank account isn't something that motivates the folks I was describing - building things and living a free life is what I think motivates that archetype.

by phil21 10y ago

smallgovt 10y ago

This is sort of my point... Don't get me wrong, he has every right to run his business in any way he so desires. And, who am I to pass judgement on him for this? I'm just saying that we shouldn't see this sort of decision making as 'honorable' or 'selfless' in any sense. It's the opposite, in a way.

phil21 10y ago
I think it's a lot more honorable and selfless than trying to blow it up with a huge round of VC funding and turn it into the next ad-funded unicorn. Why found a company just to turn into the same exact companies you tried to get away from? But I also completely agree that's subjective, and there really is no morality here. It's simple personal preference.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]

bredren 10y ago

The problem is not that CL isn't squeezing out every ounce revenue. The problem with the benevolent dictator at Craigslist is his kingdom is so big and he does nothing to advance it. It would not be hard to offer minor but relatively simple identity validation for users. Or dabble with the ability to create trust networks or reputation. Or offer basic mechanisms for safe transactional payments. Or an official mobile app that worked well. Or a hundred other things that would improve lives. There is no question craigslist gets a "job well done" but there is a great argument that if they have a choke hold on the online classifieds market they should offer increased value over time. Craigslist reminds me of the IRS. Sure, you can fumble your way through filing your taxes with us, but why would you do that when TurboTax can do it better. Except there is no alternative. I think Craigslist is acting more like the old newspaper classifieds they disrupted if anything. Despite this article's focus on a couple companies, there are other startups getting major traction in used goods space apart from Facebook. If CL loses significant market share, I hope they don't go trying then to revamp the site. Because it would only be that much more obvious how much they held back from their users for so long.

fnovd 10y ago
>It would not be hard to offer minor but relatively simple identity validation for users. Or dabble with the ability to create trust networks or reputation. Or offer basic mechanisms for safe transactional payments. And when users are lulled into a false sense of security from these changes, who is all of a sudden liable when things go south? CL being barebones is a feature, not a bug.

WikipediasBad 10y ago

>Isn't Craig living the hacker's dream? A reasonably useful service that provides value to customer, that once built you don't have to put much effort into maintaining or improving - because it works. Then you spend the rest of your free time on the beach. I don't know about you, but real hackers get personal enjoyment from creating software, products, and innovating. They don't do it so they can "spend the rest of their free time on the beach." In fact, if you are trying to just make enough money to spend the rest of your free time on the beach etc, you're probably not a real hacker.

phil21 10y ago
The beach was a bad example, but I think we agree here. I used it to illustrate that a hacker (at least what I think of when I say the word) is not primarily motivated by money - he's motivated by creating useful things people use. The goal of automating your daily job out of existence so you can move on to more enjoyable activities. Just a side note: some of the best hacking I've done was on a beach building some really cool stuff. So in my world (I do consider myself a hacker, if a poor version of one) if I create something like Craigslist I don't try to squeeze every ounce of profit out of it at the expense of customers and employees. I spend as little time as possible on that solved problem which pays my bills, and I go hack on new problems that have yet to be solved. This may be in tech, but it may simply be learning an entirely different skill entirely. Work I leave as work, and of course hack on any interesting problems that come from that area of my life as needed. If I did my job right though building it, that should be relatively rare. > In fact, if you are trying to just make enough money to spend the rest of your free time on the beach etc, you're probably not a real hacker. I'd probably argue against this based on my above statement. I know very few folks I would describe as hackers who are motivated to make money beyond what they need to comfortably live and fund the projects/research they are personally interested in. Stacking millions in a bank account isn't something that motivates the folks I was describing - building things and living a free life is what I think motivates that archetype.