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Is it true you dislike MBAs?

"I don’t know that I would say I have a dislike of MBAs. A very large majority of the internet start-ups in the dot com boom were MBA business driven attempts to cash in though IPOs or sales of companies ... virtually all of them went bust. Quite a few of the companies that came through successfully were tech driven and I don’t think that was an accident. I suppose it’s possible [for tech people to be business driven] but I’ve never known one who was motivated in that fashion. And while we pay very competitive market rates my experience has been that most of our tech workers do not approach us asking for raises."

And you don't answer e-mail?

"I get a lot of e-mails from people who don’t take the time to learn anything about Craigslist and how it operates before sending me some kind of business proposition, that if they know the first thing about the company they would know that it is not appropriate to be asking us that. So on busy days I don’t feel a need to reply to such e-mails and generally don’t."

And you really don't hold meetings?

"Of all the meetings that I’ve gone to in the past virtually all of them, I’ve felt, were kind of useless. Some of the things that happen in meetings [such as] trying to motivate people to work harder, well that’s not something that we [need to] do, and as far as keeping people on the same page, well most of our workers are tech workers who are to one extent or another not super sociable and are perhaps more comfortable keeping it on the same page through computer programme chat mechanisms. For tech work it’s a much more robust way of communicating than sitting and talking in person in some ways. The other thing is I don’t like closed door meetings because I know from my years working in big organisations that they always mean something bad is going to happen."

Are you ever tempted to cash in on the success of Craigslist?

"Sometimes people ask us if we are tempted to sell the company or cash in on the success, but we don't want to. I think that's another side effect of our just running the company exactly the way we feel good about running it, which is trying to maximise the number of happy e-mails we get from people who’ve assembled their whole lives on the site for free. We all make very good livings and ... [have] plenty in our bank accounts, so we’re making plenty of money as it is, so it’s not at all that tempting."

To hear more about Jim Buckmaster's philosophy download our podcast.

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