We are a very open, very democratic site, which means we get all sorts of people. We do get some bad guys who are a few fries short of a Happy Meal. So we have to enlist the aid of our community to help us. The lesson implicit in this is that people will help you out and behave in a really good way. If you trust them, they will respond to that trust.

The stuff that works best is driven by passion rather than dollars.

A lot of publishers have close relationships with people in power. So the press, which used to speak truth to power, doesn't. The big result of that has been the erosion of trust.

Treat people like you want to be treated; live and let live; and also give the other person a break now and then.

Finding a good cause is incredibly hard and time-consuming.

I had one simple idea about telling friends about arts and technology events. People in the community suggested everything else to us, and that's our theme. We're really run by the people who use the site. We just run the infrastructure, and help out with problems.

I am committed to doing customer service for Craigslist for the rest of my life. The exit strategy is death.