NYU alum Chris Maguire wanted to study video games in college. However, in the early 2000s, he struggled to find colleges that offered video game design as a major, so he was thrilled to discover the Gallatin School of Individualized Study. However, just one year after graduating in 2004, he found himself pursuing entrepreneurship over gaming as the founder of Etsy — an online store where people can sell unique custom products — with two fellow Gallatin alumni.
As of December 2024, Etsy has over 100 million items on the market and over $2.8 billion in revenue that year alone. With the click of a button, over 8 million Etsy sellers can connect with 96 million buyers from all around the world.
In an interview with WSN, Maguire discussed his time at Gallatin, translating his web design experience to business and how he created one of the largest e-commerce marketplaces.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
WSN: What brought you to NYU, and Gallatin in particular?
Maguire: I didn’t initially get into school looking to get into entrepreneurship at all. I originally wanted to get into art — I loved animation, and I loved computers, so I wanted to cobble together something like a video game major. Coming from a public school in Philadelphia, we didn’t have a portfolio-building program or anything, so by the time I was ready to apply to art school, I didn’t have a portfolio. Then, I realized that there’s this individualized study school at NYU that lets you take classes anywhere. All you have to do is have pretty good grades to get into the school in the first place. I got great grades in high school, so it was kind of a hack to get into art classes that I wasn’t necessarily ready for.
As a Gallatin student, Maguire said he found his passion for interdisciplinary studies and learned about computers, animation, web design and coding in courses from schools beyond Gallatin, like the Tisch School of the Arts. Maguire said he began experimenting with web design projects for fun over the weekends until someone offered to pay him to create a website and was thrilled with the end result. Talk of Maguire’s talent spread by word of mouth, and before he knew it, several others were asking him to build their websites. By the time he was a junior, Maguire was juggling various projects as he worked officially as a web designer for hire.
Maguire said one of his favorite projects was “Digital Gallatin,” an online web forum where Gallatin students could communicate with each other. He described that many of his classmates used the software to ask questions, plan group hangout sessions or talk about meeting up to get bagels near Washington Square Park. Maguire said that on one of the most popular “Digital Gallatin” forums, students worked together to write a song for the Gallatin Arts Festival, an annual week-long festival where Gallatin students can showcase their unique scholarship and art forms. Maguire said he performed the final version of the song at the celebration in 2004.
WSN: What was the most valuable part of your Gallatin education?
Maguire: During and after my senior year at NYU, I was doing freelance web design work with my Etsy co-founder Rob Kalin, who is also a Gallatin alum. Suddenly, I thought, ‘I might be able to make a career out of this.’ We got tired of doing client work pretty quickly, so we decided we wanted to build our own business online. Building a business is one of the most interdisciplinary things I can imagine — you have to wear a lot of hats. I had to be a part-time designer, a full-time programmer, a part-time forum moderator, a marketer and more. Then, it’s just about learning. Learning to learn was one of the biggest things I got out of Gallatin. If you want to do something, just figure it out. If you hit a roadblock, you need to learn more or find someone who can help you. Now, I love running into things that I don’t know, because it means that I get to learn something new.
Maguire said that when he and Kalin began pitching an online business to prospective investors, their idea for the website was entirely different. Initially, they aimed to create a form of social media that combined aspects of several existing platforms — and even secured $10,000 in funding from an investor — but then realized they didn’t have the right experience to execute that idea.
Thanks to Gallatin professor Stephen Duncombe, Maguire and Kalin got the last bit of experience and inspiration that they needed to accomplish their online business goals. Maguire said because Duncombe was a mentor figure for him, he and Kalin offered to help the professor’s wife redo her website for free.
WSN: Where did you find inspiration to create Etsy?
Maguire: Rob and I really got involved in the community and began actually communicating with the folks whose platforms we were rebuilding, because we figured that’s the easiest way to build something that they would like. That was a great experience, because as we were talking to clients and getting to know the realm of crafters, we kept on getting referrals. Many of our customers were like, ‘Man, I wish there was a better place to sell the stuff I’m making on the internet, because eBay is a little bit too confusing and too expensive, and there’s nothing else really out there, and it’s really hard to make your own website.’ Then we thought, ‘Wait, we can build that.’
Maguire said that the two of them went back to their investor and informed him that they had a new idea for a website. Although the investor was initially concerned, Maguire and Kalin partnered with Haim Schoppik — an experienced programmer and Gallatin alum a few years older than Maguire. For two months, the three soon-to-be-founders worked tirelessly to create the webpage for Etsy. In the summer of 2005, Maguire founded Etsy in a Brooklyn apartment with his closest friends.
Etsy was an instant success, with thousands of small businesses flocking to sell and advertise their products on the site. However, Maguire said that because his responsibilities primarily focused on customer support, most of the feedback he heard was negative. It wasn’t until Maguire left the company three years later that he realized how big of a difference his business had made in people’s lives.
Now, Maguire works at his own video game-themed ice cream shop called Tubby Robot Ice Cream Factory in Philadelphia. The shop features various homemade ice cream flavors, from cinnamon boast bunch to green tea, and is about to celebrate its eight-year anniversary.
WSN: What were some of the biggest challenges you faced when creating Etsy, and how did you overcome them?
Maguire: A lot of the restraints we had, like not having enough money, or not having a space to be or not having the resources — I think there’s something about that environment that actually generates creativity. If somebody gives me every tool in the world, and you have every color in the rainbow that you can draw with, what do you make? That’s where I get stuck. However, having been at Gallatin was great because you have to figure out your own concentration — you have to talk to professors to try to convince them to let you into their classes, and you had to convince people to work with you on independent studies that sound really weird and explain, ‘No, no, trust me. This is going to be cool.’ I think that really led to some of the best work I’ve ever done.
Contact Amelia Hernandez Gioia at [email protected].
