Etsy just had its first-ever billion-dollar quarter, a major milestone for the handmade, artisanal, vintage marketplace that’s been around for 13 years.

Since taking the helm in May, Etsy’s Chief Executive Josh Silverman has been laser-focused on gross merchandise sales (GMS) growth, which he views as the metric to define Etsy’s success.

“We see ourselves as the voice of the new Main Street, the digital main street, as small sellers and entrepreneurs are trying to build businesses for themselves,” Silverman said during an interview for Yahoo Finance’s Breakout Breakfast series on Tuesday.

Etsy’s (ETSY) 1.9 million sellers represent 99% of all voting districts in the U.S., and Silverman is focused on galvanizing the community of sellers and creators.

“In the recent tax reform, we made some concrete proposals on how it can help small entrepreneurs. It was something all of our community of sellers — Republicans, Democrats, Independents — could get excited about,” he said. “We’ve also been outspoken on net neutrality, which we think is important to allowing equal access to allow small sellers to compete on a level playing field with the big folks.”

Etsy 2.0

Though Silverman is attempting to maintain Etsy’s culture of collaboration and community, the transition hasn’t been easy. The same day that Silverman replaced the company’s beloved CEO Chad Dickerson, who held the post for six years, Etsy announced layoffs. A few weeks later, Silverman let go of another 20% of the workforce. Last month, Silverman decided to shut down Etsy Studio, a site where crafters could buy raw materials like beads and tools. Etsy Studio launched five days before Silverman became CEO and by the end of his first week, he had redirected nearly everyone off the project and subsequently decided to scrap the idea entirely.

Silverman addressed the widely-reported culture shift that the company has been experiencing.

“We had a large number of people work for over a year to build [this] new business. Since many of the suppliers and buyers are already on Etsy, why don’t we launch a new business entirely focused on that?,” he said, adding that shutting it down “was a very painful decision, and very painful for all the people who worked for it. It wasn’t a bad idea, but it wasn’t one of the few most important ideas to accelerate growth in the business.”

While acknowledging the difficulty in making these hard decisions, Silverman said he has to streamline the business to accelerate growth. And, for now, it seems to be paying off. Etsy’s stock has experienced a 150% surge during Silverman’s tenure thus far.