When I started Craigslist in the mid-1990s I never thought I’d become rich. But I did. A lot of people in tech around that time also got lucky. Millions — even billions — were made simply by being in the right place at the right time.
That’s too much money for anyone to have, so I’m giving most of it away to people and causes that need it. It makes no sense to me that others with this kind of money would criticize anyone doing this.
Craigslist at the beginning was just a periodic email I’d send from my computer in my apartment to a small group of friends looking for things to do in San Francisco. Then people started sending in photos of furniture and other stuff that needed a new home. Soon they were emailing job openings and apartment vacancies. When the email list got too long, I coded it all into a primitive website. It remains that way today, almost entirely untouched.
I am a computer programmer, not a tech entrepreneur or salesman. I didn’t build Craigslist for the money. I turned down big offers for the site in those first few years. To take care of the programmers and the customer service rep (me!) and to keep the site growing, we eventually started charging nominal fees for job, car and apartment postings — it didn’t seem fair to me that big companies were using the site without charge to make lots of money. It was important to me that the site remained free for regular people searching for things they needed, or trying to get rid of things they didn’t. We refused to bog down the site with ads or needless bells and whistles.
It turns out keeping Craigslist an easy page to use without a lot of distractions made people want to spend time there. Meanwhile, the small fees, paid mostly by commercial posters, added up.
I grew up in Morristown, N.J. My dad served in World War II and my mom was a bookkeeper. I’m not a jet, yacht or vacation home guy. I like buying books and I have a really nice house, but that’s about it. It’s always been my attitude that others could benefit from what I didn’t need. Rich people never seem all that happy, either.
When I became accidentally wealthy it meant a lot to me that I could help people who were less lucky. Last year I signed the Giving Pledge, founded by Warren Buffett, Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates. The idea is that people with a lot of money agree to give most of it away before they die or through their wills. After donating more than $450 million over the past decade or so I was well on my way to doing it on my own. But I thought being more public about giving might help convince someone else with a lot of money to give it away, too.
It’s bizarre to me that the pledge has now come under attack by some tech billionaires who say we’re giving our money away foolishly, or complain that the money is going to left-wing nonprofits. The truth is that pledge signers can give their money to whichever charitable causes they want. I don’t understand the critics’ logic, but politics and that sort of criticism have never really made much sense to me. I really am a nerd.
Patriotism has always been important to me, in the founding father sort of way. We owe a lot to those who keep us safe. I give my money to organizations that help veterans and military families — people like my dad and others who served. I fund a public service campaign to help people avoid online scams because those really tick me off. I support independent, trustworthy journalism, the kind that holds leaders on both sides accountable and protects our democracy. I also donate to pigeon protection groups, because I like pigeons.
I don’t get into fights over what’s woke and what’s not. Because I don’t know the answer, nor do I care. I use the money I made to help people who are trying to make life better for all of us humans. It seems to me that the 250 or so people who signed the pledge are trying to do some version of the same thing. How is that not a good thing?
Making money isn’t proof to me that I know something any better than someone else. Wealthy people who believe that they do aren’t as smart as they think. I’m sort of the Forrest Gump of the internet in that way. I was in the right place, at the right time, and I don’t exactly know why.
Craig Newmark is a philanthropist and the founder of the online marketplace Craigslist.
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