Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist

Craig Newmark is the founder of Craigslist, the much-admired poster child for possibilities within a culture of trust and fairness on the Internet. Craigslist connects people with things that they need, as well as people with people.




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iinnovate's Owen Tripp sits with Craigslist's Craig Newmark to chat about Craigslist's humble beginnings as a "hobby" that eventually turned into a company--and how it continues to stay true to its original mission as a community service. Craig is named as one of 26 Most Fascinating Entrepreneurs by Inc.com, crediting him for "putting the free in free markets."

In an interview with Wired Magazine, Craig notes that Craigslist's corporate mantra, if any, is to "give people a break." In a recent discussion, ScribeMedia.org points out that, "Craigslist still has the power to confound old line-media moguls and possibly change the face of 'glo-calism'--local reach spread globally."

Craig affirms these notions in his conversation with iinnovate about Craigslist, the Craigslist Foundation, as well as incremental steps and funny anecdotes along the way, while observing that "people are overwhelmingly good and trustworthy. People are okay, and that's true wherever you're from."

Check out our short video footage of interviewing Craig at Craigslist's headquarters in the Inner Sunset neighborhood in San Francisco:



- OT, MLC & MW

Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google

Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google, talks about Google’s industry and competitors, about leading innovation, and career advice.


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We caught up with Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google last week and had an interesting conversation about Google’s business and Eric’s views on innovation, entrepreneurship, and careers.

Eric joined Google as Chairman and CEO in 2001 and runs the company in a unique triumvirate along with co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page. The three of them were recently ranked the #1 most important person on the web by PC World.

Prior to joining Google, Eric was the CEO of Novell and CTO of Sun Microsystems.

Check out this video of Andy Grove asking Eric Schmidt a question:


The videos of the interview are up! Check out this video of the interview:


For the rest of the interview click here.

We received a lot of valuable input and questions for this interview. Special thanks to John Battelle, John Furrier, Om Malik, Philipp Lenssen, Tim O'Reilly, Steve Rubel, and Robert Scoble.

Tune in next week for an interview with Craig Newmark, founder of Craig’s List!

- the iinnovate team

Andy Grove, former CEO and Chairman of Intel

Andy Grove is an iconic figure in technology and management worldwide. A Silicon Valley legend, he joined as one of the first employees at Intel and led the company to where it is today.


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Andy Grove has lived the American dream, escaping his native Hungary during the Hungarian Revolution and arriving penniless in America. Andy became the 4th employee at Intel and eventually its CEO in 1987, a position he occupied until 1997, remaining in the Chairman post until 2004. Andy’s leadership earned him honors including Time Magazine’s Man of the Year (1997).

In this interview Andy talks about key strategic decisions at Intel, about Microsoft’s ability to change, his managerial style, and career advice.

For a video of Andy’s opinion on Microsoft check out the video below:

For more videos from this interview click here.

Special thanks to Robert Burgelman and Philip Meza for their input, Dawn Cardon for capturing the video footage, and for Jeremy Schoos for editing it.

- JULIO.

Chris Larsen, Prosper.com

Chris Larsen is the co-founder and CEO of Prosper.com, an online person-to-person lending marketplace that has excited quite a few in the world of finance, business, and technology, notably the New York Times, SF Chronicle, and Businessweek.





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Chris Larsen is the co-founder and CEO of Prosper.com, an online person-to-person lending marketplace that brings together traditionally inspired dynamics of lending between friends, family, and individuals, with the benefits and rigors of modern-day credit systems.

Prior to Prosper, Chris co-founded and served as Chairman and CEO of E-LOAN, which closed over $27 billion in consumer loans, and was consistently ranked as one of the nation's most trusted consumer brands. E-LOAN took radically pro-consumer actions such as being the first company to provide consumers with access to their credit scores, and played a critical role in the passage of the consumer financial privacy protection laws. Chris led E-LOAN through a successful IPO in 1999, and oversaw the company's acquisition by Puerto Rican bank Popular, Inc. in 2005.

In this podcast, Chris chats with Julio and Min Li about Prosper's innovative vision, its unique challenges as an eBay platform for money (check out Prosper's cool tools for academics and researchers for performing case studies on its model), and the fine balance between the countervailing forces of transparency and privacy in the world of Web 2.0.

Chris holds an M.B.A. degree from Stanford University and a B.S. degree from San Francisco State University, where he was named the 2004 Alumnus of the Year.

- Min Li