Non-profits and benevolence: The latest Wired issue has a very interesting piece on the philosophy behind craigslist and the people behind craigslist and it reminded me very much of this Startup School presentation by Paul Graham on the parallels between a founding a start up and a non-profit. The article points out all the idiosyncracies that have made craigslist so different from other websites and are largely to blame for its tremendous growth. Craig Newmark had, from the very beginning, built the site to be as minimal, out-of-way and respectful of its users, partly mirroring his own quiet, polite and quirky personality which has been a huge reason for its success – so much so that its users came back even after the first CEO set up a coup to steal traffic away from craigslist to his own for-profit site. Craigslist is arguably regarded as the model for startups in this day an age – $100M in revenue with only 30 employees – operationally lean and very efficient. While I am a big fan of the site, there are still some aspects of the site I would like to see improved and while I can see why this may not be craigslist’s priority or concern, they certainly should enable and allow other developers to build tools to help its users use their service better.

Obama’s mistakes: Umair Haque examines some of the flaws in Obama’s leadership style and why his presidency hasn’t lived up to the expectation we all had.