Entrepreneurship Success

A number of elements of entrepreneurship contributed to Craig Newmark's success, including:

• Newmark's focus on customer service,
• doing what felt right,
• being considerate towards others,
• keeping his values,
• focusing on the truth,
• checking accuracy of facts,
• delivering information speedily by operating in real time,
• spending a lot of time dealing with customer service issues (Newmark is a full time customer service rep),
• staying true to his roots of independence, openness and community,
• keeping much of his site free, simple, massive, comprehensive, easy to use and navigate,
• and following through with commitments.

The above are the main elements of e-entrepreneurship that contributed to Craig Newmark's success.

Craig Newmark also has the following elements of Entrepreneurship defined by various researchers on this subject:

• He went through the creation process,
• the devotion of time and effort,
• the assumption of risk,
• and earned the rewards of independence, satisfaction, and money. 

The basics of E-Commerce (Electronic Commerce) include:

• expanded global reach,
• new market access,
• reduced cost of sales,
• and refined product offerings,

Craig Newmark had all of the above, in addition to the Elements of Successful E-commerce, which include:

• generating demand,
• accepting orders,
• fulfilling orders,
• processing payments,
• providing service and support,
• managing security,
• and building community.

Craig Newmark's success has also followed the elements of commerce as described by other researchers:

• He has the product and service to offer, which is the information that people need,
• the place on the internet from where he offers it,
• marketing through initial email and word of mouth,
• a way to accept money,
• as well as customer service and technical support. 

• Craiglist has become so popular because Craig catered to what people needed.
• He started out with his own network of friends and acquaintances, sending them e-mails with helpful information that they were interested in, and slowly expanded.
• He only created the website after he had a large number of people that were interested in the information that he offered.
• He claims that he does not focus on the bottom dollar, but rather on providing the information that people want and need.
• People like having information for free, at their fingertips, and most of the information on his site is free to post and view.
• Craig used what he was best at: machines, and this worked best for him.
• Craigslist has become popular through word of mouth marketing and ease of use.
• Craigslist creates trust by responding to emails, being very customer and user focused.
• They are very responsive to feedback, and test changes with the users before implementing them.
• They have no banner advertisements, so it doesn't seem money-driven.
• The users themselves flag inappropriate content.
• The .org domain name makes it seem like it is a not for profit organization.
• There is a lot of entertainment and humor in some of the posts, which get emailed around, increasing publicity, and keeping users coming back for more.
• The site is very easy to use, browse and post, with no registration required, and simple text.

Cragslist success depends on internet technology. The whole craigslist phenomenon is purely on the internet. It started out via email, which goes over the internet, and is now a website, which is purely viewable over the internet. Craigslist can be used and viewed by anyone that has an internet connection. Through the internet, one goes to the craiglist website and utilizes craigslist. If it did not use internet technology, the process would be completely different and much slower. All of the information would have to be faxed, mailed or phoned back and forth, which is a much slower process, and there is no real time updates. There would be a waste of a lot of paper, time and money, and it would be more like a newspaper, which is a completely different venture. It is therefore clear that -Yes, craigslist success does depend on internet technology.

This page is based on a Case Assignment that I wrote for a Course in E-Entrepeneurship.

The picture of the craigslist building is from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Craigslist01.jpg