Everyone loves Craigslist
- the Web's biggest classified service. What makes Craigslist unique is
its quasi-public service approach to business. The only fees it charges
are for listing jobs in San Francisco, New York and Los Angeles.
Everything else is free. It seems like a strange approach given how
more revenue it could generate by charging for other things such as
aparment listings. Still, revenue this year is expected to be
$20-million. Craig Newmark, who
started Craig's List and still owns a majority stake, has rejected
venture capital financing and an IPO. It's so anti-capitalist that it's
refreshingly different. Still, there are people who wonder what Craig's
List could be worth if it did business more aggressively and took
advantage of its position as the seventh-most popular Web site in the
U.S. Fortune's Adam Lashinsky
steps into the valuation financial breach with a story that estimates Craigslist
could be worth have annual revenue of $550-million. Lashinsky's figure comes from Eric Baker,
co-founder of Stubhub.com, an online ticketing site, who examined
Craigslist's traffic and transaction volume. So far, Newmark has shown
no interest in reaping the financial benefits of Craigslist's success
but that could change given his plans to introduce a new online
journalism service that would will a void now being met by newspapers.
(Update: From what I understand, the new service is a venture headed by
Buzz Machine's Jeff Jarvis) Newmark's plans are still somewhat fuzzy
other than it seems to be something based on community or cooperative
journalism. If Newmark needs financing to launch this new service
(business?), he could easily raise VC or do something with Craiglist's
structure (IPO?) or squeeze some more cash from Craiglist through more
extensive fees (the most likely possibility). For more insight into
Craigslist's approach to business, check out a story I wrote earlier
this year in the Financial Post after an interview with COO Jim Buckmaster.
Update: Mathew Ingram
has worked up Craigslist's potential value – $330 million- using Om
Malik's $38 per unique monthly visitor metric. Ingram says this is
“about 16.5 times the company’s revenue, which is higher than the range
that Jason Calacanis thinks is reasonable
for an online property, but a lot less than the almost 70 times revenue
eBay agreed to pay for Skype, based on the $4.1-billion price tag).”
- the Web's biggest classified service. What makes Craigslist unique is
its quasi-public service approach to business. The only fees it charges
are for listing jobs in San Francisco, New York and Los Angeles.
Everything else is free. It seems like a strange approach given how
more revenue it could generate by charging for other things such as
aparment listings. Still, revenue this year is expected to be
$20-million. Craig Newmark, who
started Craig's List and still owns a majority stake, has rejected
venture capital financing and an IPO. It's so anti-capitalist that it's
refreshingly different. Still, there are people who wonder what Craig's
List could be worth if it did business more aggressively and took
advantage of its position as the seventh-most popular Web site in the
U.S. Fortune's Adam Lashinsky
steps into the valuation financial breach with a story that estimates Craigslist
could be worth have annual revenue of $550-million. Lashinsky's figure comes from Eric Baker,
co-founder of Stubhub.com, an online ticketing site, who examined
Craigslist's traffic and transaction volume. So far, Newmark has shown
no interest in reaping the financial benefits of Craigslist's success
but that could change given his plans to introduce a new online
journalism service that would will a void now being met by newspapers.
(Update: From what I understand, the new service is a venture headed by
Buzz Machine's Jeff Jarvis) Newmark's plans are still somewhat fuzzy
other than it seems to be something based on community or cooperative
journalism. If Newmark needs financing to launch this new service
(business?), he could easily raise VC or do something with Craiglist's
structure (IPO?) or squeeze some more cash from Craiglist through more
extensive fees (the most likely possibility). For more insight into
Craigslist's approach to business, check out a story I wrote earlier
this year in the Financial Post after an interview with COO Jim Buckmaster.
Update: Mathew Ingram
has worked up Craigslist's potential value – $330 million- using Om
Malik's $38 per unique monthly visitor metric. Ingram says this is
“about 16.5 times the company’s revenue, which is higher than the range
that Jason Calacanis thinks is reasonable
for an online property, but a lot less than the almost 70 times revenue
eBay agreed to pay for Skype, based on the $4.1-billion price tag).”
3 Comments
From what I can gather from Jeff's site and others, it sounds like Craig is just an angel investor in the news startup Jeff is editor-in-chief of — something he started earlier this year with Upendra Shardanand (ex Firefly, Microsoft Passport, AOL, and Time Warner).
Rumour has it Torstar is getting into this big-time, too, via a JV with some Valley firm. Not like they have much choice…
- Stuart
The Torstar thing is not a rumour. I didn't want to spill the beans if it wasn't public, but it is.
The US outfit is Live Deal, and it is “free” with fees for certain services. Torstar apparently put money in as well.
- Stuart