(FORTUNE Small Business) – If you can't be an innovator, why not be a copycat? Mark Pincus, a 37-year-old Silicon Valley serial entrepreneur, has made a career out of riding the wake of hot technology trends. His first three startups made money for himself and investors, but only one has survived. Pincus's latest, backed by, among others, Knight-Ridder, is Tribe Networks, a web marketplace that emulates aspects of Craigslist and Friendster. FSB's Maggie Overfelt caught up with Pincus in San Francisco to find out how to sneak in behind a market leader and build a better business.

You have a history of launching companies strikingly similar to other startups. Are you copying them?

No one has ever overtly accused me of being a copycat. But it's true. I am one.

That's a good thing?

It's capitalism. If you see a business model that's working, you'd be stupid not to follow it. Think of Coke and Pepsi. They're always looking at each other's good ideas and analyzing, "Why did that take off?"

In 1996, when I launched Support Soft, which fixed software for big companies, we went up against Motive Communications. Motive had this beautiful marketing plan for attracting big business. It was better than anything we could've done, so we just copied it. Thank God for Motive! Without it, there was no market.

How do you differentiate your companies from that first mover?

The general public often sees all these entrepreneurs doing the exact same thing, but that's only half true. Friendster, which started the social-networking trend, is just a place to meet people online and get a date. LinkedIn is for professional networking. At Craigslist you buy stuff from and sell to people you've never met.

Tribe.net is the next generation of online classifieds. Local and community classifieds is still a $12 billion business, with no market leader. Add another $4 billion to $5 billion for online. With Tribe, you connect only with your friends and your friends' friends, and you're more likely to trust their listings for a roommate because they're not coming from strangers, as they would in the newspaper or on Craigslist.

How do you plan on making money?

It's too early for that, and I am not defensive for not having revenue. I've already built a fairly large user base with no marketing. We will depend on subtle, targeted advertising much like Google's. BMW of San Francisco, for example, might want to reach all Bay Area Tribe.net users searching for cars. We're also looking at forming partnerships with our newspaper investors, such as the Washington Post Co. When linked with a newspaper's site, our mix of personal info and commerce could mean that more classifieds find buyers and more classifieds get posted.

Every hot fad you've chased-"push technology," incubators-has not lived up to its hype. Why isn't social networking just this year's flavor?

I don't pursue fads. Social networking isn't just a fad. The value of social networking lies in a person's ability to get to a trusted target audience, which will yield better search results in less time. Tribe fills the gap between e-mailing your friends and placing a commercial ad.

Has being a "me too" entrepreneur ever hurt your ability to get funding?

The people who invested in Tribe did so in spite of, not because of, social networking. I put my own money up first, ready to do it on my own, avoiding a situation where investors can make or break my company. When I do take VC money, I take a discount to get the investor I want. As with my new company, I count on trusted relationships.

You always get out just in time. You sold Freeloader for $38 million in 1996, a year before push technology died. You left Support Soft before the market crash. Is this just luck?

Luck is part of it, but as an entrepreneur, you can't focus just on your own business. In mid-2000, just months after I launched Internet incubator Tank Hill, I saw a lot of dumb investors making dumb investments; that, in turn, would hurt the overall market. Before we could crash and burn, I returned most of the $10 million I'd raised-about 80 cents on the dollar-to my investors. Ben Rosen, then the chair of Compaq and an investor, told me I was the best return he had in 2000.

What's next for you?

Not all of my ideas are encapsulated in Tribe Networks. I'm very passionate about seeing a more level playing field in our political system, one where many more people have a voice. There could be something beyond this.