Rob Kalin is the picture of an entrepreneurial visionary who cornered a niche and created a sensational product, Etsy. From a great profile on Kalin published at Crain's:
As a high–school dropout who had gone on to attend half a dozen colleges before finally emerging from New York University with a major in the classics, Rob Kalin seemed to have few—if any—of the ingredients for entrepreneurial success.
He had a vision of an almost Utopian place where people could purchase handcrafted items online directly from producers like himself, and where those artisans could share their business and aesthetic challenges and solutions with each other online and off.
“I wanted to create a marketplace community,” says Mr. Kalin.
