Wall Street to Craigslist: Bitchsezwhat!!?
by Josh Staiger
Wall Street is finding it a little hard to swallow that Craigslist is more interested in maximizing user value than revenue.
To be fair, it's much easier for a privately held company like Cragislist to do this kind of thing than a publicly held one.
I'm sure Craig Newmark and friends have the leverage to be opinionated about how they run Craigslist, whereas when you're dealing with millions of different shareholders with no long-term commitment to the company, it's a lot harder to find a common goal other than "make money as fast as possible".
As tech becomes less capital intensive, it makes me wonder if we'll see privately held companies like Craigslist wield more and more power because they can try innovative business models, they can think long term, and they don't have to march to Wall Street's drumbeat.