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Comment by jessriedel | Hacker News Reader

I think the standard response here is that CL clearly leaves massive amounts of money on the table. It can't be modeled well as a for-profit company. Whether or not it can be modeled as a non-profit with a coherent philosophy is debatable, but just pointing out that some of its actions seem profit-driven does not eliminate the apparent conflict with other actions.

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> It can't be modeled well as a for-profit company

I'm not an MBA, but why the hell not? They entice people to become regular users with all the free stuff, building a network, allowing them to make an enormous profit off of the few products they do sell.

If they started charging for other things besides job ads (and the other 1 or 2 things they charge for), they could very well start losing money because of people refusing to pay and going elsewhere.

Here, "Money left on the table" doesn't mean "short-term money that would have long term negative consequences for the business". I means free money, that is money after you take into account the effects of various price changes. You may disagree and claim that CL's strategy of charging for nothing besides a few NY/LA business listings is for-profit optimal--and therefore that there's really no free money--but you'd be in a minority.

Ah, I forgot that the paid listings were only for certain locations, not just certain categories.

I do in fact argue that CL's strategy is profit-optimizing as a market-making and competition-avoiding strategy:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4324889

Sure it can.

The money left on the table builds value by:

1. Leaving very little profit margin for any potential competitor.

2. Ensuring a continued large network effect, CL's principle source of value.

I reply here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4325126

I'm used to being in the minority.

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