Craigslist Turns Down Venture Capital Cash, Lure of Instant IPO Riches

[mandy]

CRAIGSLIST INC. will help you fill a job, search for an apartment, sell your car or find a date for the weekend. If you're an investor, the San Francisco-based company won't take your money.

Silicon Valley venture capital firms including Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Norwest Venture Partners and Redpoint Ventures would like a piece of Craigslist, which has grown from a local listing of classified ads to a global Web site that gets more than 10 million users a month. Craig Newmark, who started the site in 1995, and Chief Executive Officer Jim Buckmaster reject the idea of doing an initial stock sale and rebuff investors even as suitors line up...

Buckmaster stands by his convictions, suggesting that new laws on corporate governance make going public even less appealing than accepting venture capital money.

"Why would any sane person subject themselves to that kind of torture?" he said.

full article: http://insidebayarea.com/business/ci_3691243