Mark Pincus' Blog

fortune covers craigslist - communism beating capitalism!

my friend adam lashinsky at fortune has another insightful piece, this time on craig and craigslist. he's gleaned a few great new facts like that they should do $20m in revs this year on $5m in expenses, and really captures the gastalt of craig. thankfully, he cuts the story of craig to a paragraph but we'll all have to get used to its retelling as he gets increased business press.

also, interestingly, adam gets the founder of stubhub to estimate what craig could be making if he chose to really monetize his traffic - $500 million! of course, if he went for the gold, his users might head for the door.

one does get the feeling reading adam's story that craig is this pillsbury doughboy giant from ghost busters knocking over buildings (newspaper chains) without even seeing them.

adam talks about the potential of googlebase to attack craig's base. i dont buy it. i think that classifieds are about quality leads fast and not the most leads, and that craig's loose sense of community will trump google's lack of community or humanity. also, he talks about keeping up with technology and new features. helloo!! i tried that one. craig wins because he doesnt change it, so changing faster isnt going to help.

Redemption showing sunday night in sf - pls help fight to save tookie williams from an unjust execution

there is a screening of redemption, an awesome movie on Sunday. More importantly it is part of an effort to stop the execution of tookie williams, a man nominated for the nobel peace prize, who has spent the past 25 years writing children's books aimed at deturring urban youth from entering gangs.

I know we all lead busy lives and get asked to lend our support to too many efforts. But this one is different.

1. we are all safer with tookie around. He has turned 100's of kids away from gangs.

2. we cannot afford to be the community that executed tookie. This happens in texas, not sf.

3. tookie has lead an amazing life and his redemption story is inspiring.

4. this is an amazing movie. Jamie fox's best performace ever.

5. this is the fight we are all supposed to fight. If we don’t stand up for tookie, we have already lost the war.

Here are the details...

*** PLEASE FORWARD WIDELY ***

Danny Glover invites you to a screening of "Redemption: The Stan Tookie Williams Story"

Where: Victoria Theatre, 2961 16th Street in San Francisco (next to the 16th Street and Mission BART Station)

When: December 04, 2005 at 5pm

Why: Help STOP THE December 13th EXECUTION of Nobel Peace Prize Nominee Stan Tookie Williams

Danny Glover, Barbara Becnel, Boots Riley, and Kevin Epps will host a short program before the movie to explain the status of Stan's case and let people know how to get involved in the movement to stop the execution. With only a few weeks left before the execution date, your help is urgently needed. Please join us in the fight to save Stan's life.

This event is a fund-raiser for the San Francisco Save Tookie Committee. Tickets are $5 for students/youth/seniors and $10 for the general public. Inmate art, donated by Alan Laird of Expressions Art Gallery, will also be available for purchase to raise funds for the campaign to save Stan.

Co-sponsors and endorsers welcome; donations appreciated. Please contact Danielle at Danielle@vanguardsf.org or 415-581-2512 for more information about endorsing or co-sponsoring the event.

Tickets available at

www.victoriatheatre.org

or at the door.

Stan Williams co-founded the L.A. Crips in 1971. In 1981, he was convicted of murder by a jury from which all Blacks had been removed.

Standing before a racist system, without adequate funds or competent counsel, he had no real chance of demonstrating his innocence during his trial.

While in prison, Stan began writing books de-glamorizing gangs and prison life for children and young adults. Because of this work, he has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize five times.

For more info go to

www.savetookie.org

Another congressman caught cheating us - when do we call this conspiracy?

Rep cunningham (R. CA) quits house after pleading guilty to conspiracy and tax evasion in accepting $2.4M for steering pentagon work to defense contractor MZM.

And what happens to everyone else involved from the pentagon and MZM?

How many cases of govt corruption do we have to face before admitting that its the system and not a few bad apples?

And if 414 public companies 'restated' earnings last year, can we call that a corrupt financial system? Ahold also announced its pating back shareholders over $1 billion for its fraud. That's just one. There are shareholders at another 413 companies that are still waiting for theirs.

Shouldn't there be some test applied, beyond which its called a corrupt system?

Can't we assume that for every one congressman or company caught there are another 10 getting away with it? Or do we believe our justice system is that swift we just catch, try and convict em all?

And why am I a 'liberal' for demanding reform? If a conservative is someone fighting to maintain our current system, then you guys better do some repositioning fast before you go down with the ship!

And where is bush and cheney on all this? If they're not guilty or protecting friends, one might expect to hear a strong repudiation of people like representative cunningham who btw now faces 10 well deserved yrs behind bars.

But we can't really blame cunningham or his friends in the white house. They're just mice in the maze following cheese. Its our fault for allowing a system so fraught with potential for interest peddling to persist.

let's admit one thing, the entire basis of our lobbying system IS influence selling. I'm sure someone can make a case for the good but there's no way it outweighs the daily corruption.

What would happen if we outlawed lobbyists?
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Google-Mart - more comparisons

robert cringley has a great post on how google will take over the whole internet in a similar fashion to walmart. interesting how these two companies are increasingly both topics and being compared.

Sam Walton Taught Google More About How to Dominate the Internet Than Microsoft Ever Did

Google has the reach and the resources to make this work. There are only so many fiber networks and they'll be BUYING service from those outfits -- many of which are in or near bankruptcy. Say the containers cost $500,000 each in volume and $500,000 per year to run. That's $300 million to essentially co-opt the Internet. And you know whose strategy this is? Wal-Mart's. And unless Google comes up with an ecosystem to allow their survival, that means all the other web services companies will be marginalized. There will be startups and little guys, but no medium-sized companies. ISPs, which we've thought of as a threatened species, won't be touched, but then their profit margins are so low they aren't worth touching. After all, Wal-Mart doesn't try to own the roads its goods are carried over. And the final result is that Web 2.0 IS Google.

Microsoft can't compete. Yahoo probably can't compete. Sun and IBM are like remora, along for the ride. And what does it all cost, maybe $1 billion? That's less than Microsoft spends on legal settlements each year.

Game over.

Some facts on Walmart

a republican friend who reads my blog told me the other night he thought i was a 'liberal'. now i dont have any problem with this label, accept it probably doesnt apply. i'm a g-d damned independent. as i've said, neither party represents many of my views or interests.

when i asked him how he could be supportive of a government that fosters evil corporations like Walmart he took a offense. he actually tried defending them but we both realized we lacked any good facts to back up our opinions. when i told him the limited facts i did know, he said he doubted they were true but admitted that if there were, maybe my views had some merit.

i'll add to this that over thanksgiving i got into the same debate with my sister who is an ethics prof. of course, being my sister, she argued vehemently against me until we realized that we agreed on our basic principles - that a corporation should only be held to two standards. those are the law and the market. i believe Walmart is failing at on the legal front and that the market will soon catch up. the stock is probably a good short in the near future. under so much scrutiny the company will have to end its highly profitable practices of driving down labor costs and avoiding medical costs.

anyway, here are some facts i gathered from the site of the Walmart movie. now before you yell at me about presenting 'one sided' facts (??), i will provide a link here and you will be able to see the complete sources behind all of these which are incredibly well documented.

walmart and welfare...

ALABAMA: 3,864 Children of WAL-MART Employees are Enrolled in Medicaid

ARIZONA: 2,700 WAL-MART Workers on Medicaid

ARKANSAS: 3971 WAL-MART Workers on Public Assistance

FLORIDA: 12,300 WAL-MART Workers and their Dependents on Medicaid

GEORGIA: 10,261 Children of WAL-MART Employees are Enrolled in PeachCare for Kids

TENNESSEE: 9,617 WAL-MART Workers on TennCare

walmart and unions...

$7,000 ANTI-UNION CAMERA PACKAGE per store
$30,000 UNDERCOVER SPY VAN per store
$100,000 24 hour ANTI-UNION HOTLINE
$7,000,000 Rapid response team with CORPORATE JET

$50 MILLION to settle an off-the-clock class action suit in Colorado

In Texas it is estimated that Walmart cheated workers out of up to $150 million in unpaid wages

• "In a recently certified class-action suit in Texas on behalf of more than 200,000 current and former Wal-Mart workers, statisticians estimate that the company underpaid its Texas workers by $150 million over four years by not paying them for the many times they worked during their daily 15-minute breaks. That $150 million estimate does not include other types of unpaid work. The statisticians, who analyzed time records from 12 Wal-Mart stores, found that the Texas employees averaged at least one hour of unpaid work each week from working through breaks."
• Source: Steven Greenhouse, "Suits Say Wal-Mart Workers Forced To Toil Off The Clock," New York Times, June 25, 2002 [reprinted via Common Dreams]

Wal-Mart Managers delete time from workers' timecards

• In Massachusetts, "a Middlesex court judge has put his imprimatur on a suit alleging the retail giant failed to pay employees for time worked and neglected to give them meal and rest breaks, the Herald has learned. The eight-page ruling by Superior Court Judge Ernest B. Murphy cites an affidavit by a computer expert hired by the plaintiffs. The expert allegedly found 7,000 instances during a one-year period when Wal-Mart managers deleted large blocks of time from their employee payroll records."
• Source: John Strahinich, "Judge OKs Employee Lawsuit Against Wal-Mart," Boston Herald, January 7, 2005.

Wal-Mart currently faces lawsuits in thirty-one different States for wage and hour abuses potentially involving hundreds of thousand workers.

Federal Poverty Level Family of Four - $17,650

 

Average Wal-Mart Hourly Sales Employee Wages - $13,861

Wal-Mart is paying eleven million dollars to settle Federal allegations it used illegal immigrants to clean its stores.

WAL-MART SUBSIDY NATIONWIDE: $1.008 BILLION  (from cities)

Currently in the U.S. there are 26,699,678 SQUARE FEET of empty WAL-MARTS

2001: EPA orders WAL-MART to pay $1.0 MILLION fine for Clean Water Violations in: TEXAS, OKLAHOMA AND MASSACHUSETTS

2004: WAL-MART fined $3.1 MILLION by EPA, the largest ever for a retailer, for Clean Water Act violations in TEXAS, COLORADO, CALIFORNIA, DELAWARE, MICHIGAN, SOUTH DAKOTA, NEW JERSEY, TENNESSEE and UTAH

WAL-MART Imported $18 BILLION from CHINA in 2004

The WALTON FAMILY Has Given LESS THAN 1% of Their Wealth to Charity
Bill Gates has given 58%

In 2004, WAL-MART Employees gave OVER $5 MILLION to help fellow workers

The Walton Family gave $6,000

The WALTON FAMILY received a federal tax cut of: $91,500.00 per HOUR in the 2004 tax year

69 incidents of robbery, rape and murder in Walmart parking lots in first 7 months of 2005

131 communities have voted Walmarts out

yahoo buys google ads?

has anyone noticed that yahoo is advertising on google adsense? has this always happened and i'm just noticing or new phenomena? just saw an an ad for yahoo myweb on silicon beat in the adsense box.

is smaller safer? new startup realities?

john battelle, fred wilson and silicon beat all talk about the current reality for startups (at least in the new media space) which is that smaller is safer. what they mean is that without a clear path for high dollar exits (called IPO market), a significant number of startups are selling to big players and many more hope to. however, this can only happen if they keep their valuations low.

what's always been interesting is to realize that for a founder, the actual payout may be the same or more at much lower prices if they never raise big rounds of vc. this also implies that either they can create the same intended value without the big capital or that they do such a bad job deploying it that they dont achieve the intended results in revenue and cashflow.

to some degree this is simply enabling a beautiful mechanism for risk free, distributed r&d for google and yahoo. they dont have to bet on the next flickr. they can just wait and see who gets there, especially when these companies (like flickr) never achieve significant revenue, even when they get big audiences.

i think this may cause more seasoned entrepreneurs to raise outside capital in smaller chunks, selling less of their companies. they can play the option. low valuations enable this.

Another lefty against torture

In the category of I may be crazy but at least I'm not alone...

And one other point as this debate has now swept to my friends and family too, I have heard the argument about how torturing one person could have stopped 911. Maybe.

We know for sure that our normal humane procedures worked! We identified the guys months ahead but nobody shared or acted on it.

“

If you want to have a serious debate, pose a solution.

Bull! The burden is on David to prove that torture itself is a solution. The solution Marc proposes is, stop using a tactic that doesn't work. It's been shown over and over that torture doesn't work.

And the "well, look at how they behave" defense is a straw man. If the USA is to be the inspirational beacon of liberty and justice we all know it is, we have to actually behave better than our enemies, not just say it. The battle for stability in Iraq is not about munitions and troop movements, it's about winning the hearts and minds of the people who live there. If we behave as badly as the terrorists, then a reasonable person can conclude that it's just two sides of the same coin - and then it's only a battle propaganda. Our only hope is if they choose the Western values because they are actually better than the terrorists, not because we have a gun to their heads.”

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One different view on torture

From peter kay a venture capitalist. Thanks for your input. Ill add my own comments after yours.

“You've been watching too much CNN and MSNBC and reading too much NY Times.

Get a grip on "torture". Get some context on "Torture" used in previous wars and then show us how we compare to those wars.

Compare our "torture" with every other nation's torture (including our current enemy who enjoys televising beheadings) and show us where we are on the list.

Finally, get a real grip on "due process" in wartime. Find out how much due process is owed to enemy combatants who do not follow the Geneva convention.

Put some context in your posts that's a little better than WTF!!!.
You're a sharp entreprneur but a crappy political observer.

Comparing your President to Stalin & Hitler? WTF!!!! Context, please.”

First, peter is right that these are my own off the cuff observations. However, I disagree with his assertion that we should put this torture in the context of other acts past and present.

That implies a) that some torture is ok and b) that it can be justified if either your enemy does it or its more mild than past forms.

America has always held itself to a higher moral platform as it should. We didn't justify torturing nazis or japanese pow's even though they were killing our troops. Same was true in vietnam.

I will ask you peter, please tell us when you think torture is justified and what form is acceptable?

Remember one thing, govts are institutions, not people. When we let our institutions act immorally the consequences usually go way beyond the first rationalized act.
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Want to rebut my posts?

I've gotten a lot of feedback on my political rants, mostly positive but some people think I'm way off base.

I want to invite anyone with opposing views to email me and I will post them here on my blog in their entirety.

This is your chance to make your case on any of these issues.
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