Switchboard Is Like Craigslist Without the Creeps and Flakes

Screenshot: WIRED

Most startups want to grow as fast as they can. For many in the tech game, including as Paul Graham, the founder Y Combinator, one of Silicon Valley’s hottest startup incubators, rapid growth is the very definition of a startup. So called “growth hackers” obsess over A/B testing and analytics, trying to maximize app downloads in an attempt to reach exponential expansion.

But not all tech companies see things this way. Take Switchboard. The Portland, Oregon-base outfit offers an online service that lets people create simple sites for online communities. Using a Switchboard site, you can either “ask” for something you need or “offer” something you have. That’s it. The larger Portland startup community uses it to post job listings, offer expertise, and announce hackathons. Oberlin College in Ohio uses it to help students and alums network with each other and share job opportunities. Then there’s The Meat Collective, which helps people buy and sell sustainably raised meat.

Mara Zepeda Ashley Forrette

The possibilities are limitless, but Switchboard has decided to grow slowly for now, limiting and carefully screening the creation of new communities. “We value the quality of the communities, not the quantity of communities,” says Mara Zepeda, the company’s co-founder and CEO. That may sound elitist, but it’s really about making sure that every user has a good experience, regardless of which Switchboard community they’re a part of. And that means taking time to make sure the service evolves in the right way.

Zepeda, a former journalist for National Public Radio, originally envisioned the service as a networking platform for her alma mater, Reed College in Portland, where she served on the alumni board. She took inspiration, oddly enough, from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Hay Net site, where farmers can either ask for hay or offer hay for sale. She and co-founder Sean Lerner built the original Switchboard just for Reed, but they quickly realized that the platform they’d built could be useful to other communities and decided to found a company.

Where the Money Is

Switchboard makes money in two ways. First, users can pay to promote particular posts. Second, organizations that collect money from members—such as Reed College, or nonprofit organizations—pay an annual fee for the Switchboard service. Other communities can use the service for free. It may seem therefore that it would be in the company’s best interest then to attract as many communities as possible. More communities would equal more users, and more users would equal more promoted posts—and therefore, more money. But Zepeda explains that Switchboard wants to avoid the site turning into a free-for-all for spammers, trolls and, well, jerks. To prevent this, the team is making sure that the early communities set the right tone for the future.

In general, they’re looking for people who are already at the center of a formal or informal community and want to find a better way to help its members connect with each other. One example is Wheelwomen, a community for women interested in cycling, founded by Elly Blue, who previously founded a community called Portland Society, for professional women in Portland with an passion for bikes. Wheel Women members use the site to buy and sell bikes, swap information about great bike trails, find places to stay with other members while traveling, and—this seems to be Switchboard’s favorite activity—post job opportunities.

There are thousands of different tools for building interactive websites, ranging from Facebook groups to private web forum software. But Blue says Switchboard is perfect for the Wheelwomen community. The structure is limited, but that’s a strength, she says. It helps keep things simple and focused. “It kind of keeps the internet trolls in all of us at bay,” she says.

And the focus on quality seems to be working. Although Switchboard includes tools to flag spam or inappropriate comments, Blue says no one has flagged anything on the Wheelwomen Switchboard yet, nor has she had to delete any posts. It has also helped foster a sense of intimacy and trust. “All of the people who will respond to you are part of a community,” she says. “You might not know them but you might not know them but you probably know someone who knows them.”

The Sense of Trust

This sense of trust is a big part of the reason Switchboard isn’t trying to grow too quickly. But it has made fundraising difficult. Switchboard was rejected by Y Combinator, and most Valley-based venture capitalists have shrugged off the company. But Zepeda thinks, ultimately, this was a good thing. “I’m so glad Y Combinator rejected us,” she said in a speech at the TechFestNW conference in Portland earlier this month. When Y Combinator president Sam Altman asked Zepeda to re-apply, she and Lerner declined, deciding to stick to their Portland roots and focus on slow growth. “We were being asked to move to a monoculture,” she said at the event. “We were being asked to move to a factory farm.”

The big question, though, is whether this sort of slow growth will make it harder to actually make money. But she thinks the slow and steady route will help build a more sustainable business in the long run. And she’s not alone. Zepeda sees Switchboard as part of a growing community of companies she calls “feeders.”

These range from other tech companies like Caterina Fake’s Findery to restaurants and food trucks. These businesses are, in many ways, the exact opposite of a Silicon Valley startup. They’re not trying to “disrupt” anyone, just build sustainable businesses that help other people. They tend to be founded by women, immigrants, veterans, the disabled, and other people who are left behind by the modern tech industry. “That’s because they know what scarcity looks like,” she says. “And they have an incredible ability to transform it into abundance. That sounds like a pretty good business model to me.”

And all of these companies have a healthy understanding of food, whether that’s through a corporate culture that values cooking for each other, as at Switchboard, or by actually feeding people, like a catering business. She cites Soylent—the Y Combinator backed company that makes meal replacement shakes—as the antithesis of a feeder company. “This company was built by people who are the opposite of providers,” she says. “To them, nourishment isn’t a gift but a chore. This is the opposite of a feeder mentality.”