I must have missed when this started, but I noticed Yahoo! Finance has something called Entrepreneur of the Week now. This past week they profiled Craig Newmark of Craigslist fame. Personally, I love Craigslist so I was very excited to see what they had to say about him.

Computer programmer Craig Newmark originally started Craigslist.org in 1995 as a way to keep his circle of friends up to date on the latest happenings in the San Francisco social scene.

It’s amazing how many success stories start out this way. Drew Curtis of Fark.com fame used to send his friends funny stories (the type you’d find on Fark) via email. Eventually, he figured he shouldn’t bother all his friends by email just because some yahoo married a cat (or whatever the wacky story was that day), so he put them on a website. Now his friends could browse at their leisure. Fast forward 7 years or so and the guy is making somewhere around $1,000,000 a year.

I say it’s amazing because it sounds so simple, but when you think about it I guess it’s not so amazing. You’re not going to stick with a project that you hate, especially in the lean years before any money starts rolling in.

“I started my own simple listserv in 1995 to tell a group of 10 or 12 of my friends about the arts and cultural events happening at the Anon Salon or Joe’s Digital Diner, where people gathered once a month to learn about new tech products. Then one guy asked if he could post something for sale on the site while another wanted to try to find an apartment. That set the pattern for the site. I listened to people, figured out how to do what they wanted, and then did it.

There’s the next lesson from Mr. Newmark. LISTEN. It started out as one thing and slowly gravitated to what people wanted, while at the same time keeping the original spirit of the site alive. That was important to Craig and if you don’t believe me, read the following:

“A real turning point for the site came in 1997 after we hit 1 million page views a month. Microsoft offered to run some banner ads on the site. I thought long and hard about it, but at the time I didn’t need the money because I was on overpaid contract programmer. I thought ads were stupid and would just slow the site down.

That absolutely blows me away. I’m sure it helps that he didn’t need the money, but still that’s amazing. How many of us would turn down Microsoft if they came calling asking for ad space? (Bill, if you’re reading, ad space is available on this site.) Now, I think one could just as easily argue that he was foolish to turn down Microsoft and they might have a case. It’s not as if people would stop using the site if he put up a few ads. If fact, I imagine most of his users would have supported the decision. However, one of the appeals of craigslist is the simple interface and he wanted to maintain that. Maybe the site could have made more money over the years, but it’s certainly not hurting.

“We now have 24 employees, which works out well for us because we want to continue to stay small even as we get more traffic. We want to continue to provide tools to the people who use the site so that they can make things happen. Sometimes we think about redesigning the site’s interface, but the only people that care about redesigning are designers.”

I’m happy to see they haven’t changed the design. It just wouldn’t feel right if they did. Just as it wouldn’t feel right with some “Shoot the bunny and win an ipod” ad, it wouldn’t feel the same without the same simple gray background and blue text. And it’s certainly hard to argue with his success.