OfferUp is an online mobile-first C2C marketplace with an emphasis on in-person transactions. It was founded as a competitor to Craigslist, differentiating itself with mobile-friendly apps and user profiles with ratings.
History
OfferUp was created in 2011 by Nick Huzar, former co-founder and CTO of Konnects, Inc., and Arean van Veelen. OfferUp is a mobile-driven local marketplace that competes with companies such as eBay, Craigslist, and Facebook Marketplace.
In 2015, OfferUp was named one of the Hottest Startups by Forbes, citing the company's explosive growth between funding rounds throughout the year, and was speculated to take over Craigslist's share of the C2C marketplace. Since then, the company has become a large marketplace for buyers and sellers and was named one of "The 7 Most Innovative Startups in Seattle" by Inc. OfferUp was in the Top 50 most downloaded free apps on Apple Appstore and Google Play and has been praised for being more user-friendly to list products on than sites like eBay.
OfferUp is based out of Bellevue, Washington and is currently used in several major cities across the United States, with plans to expand internationally. The company moved into a new office space in 2017 which was furnished only with items found on the platform.
Growth
According to Mary Meeker, a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers, during her 2016 “Internet Trends” report, OfferUp saw the average daily time spent per user in the United States growing from 12 minutes per day in November 2014 to 25 minutes in June 2015, on par with Instagram and Snapchat, and more than Twitter and Pinterest. She also noted that the company's gross merchandise volume has grown at a faster pace than eBay at the same stage as the respective companies.
As of October 2017, the company is said to have 33 million users and saw an increase in transactions from $2.9 billion in 2015 to more than $14 billion in 2016. Overall, the company grew 166% between 2015 and 2017, according to Comscore, and generated more peer-to-peer transactions in the first five years than eBay North America in its first ten years. The top categories on the marketplace include toys, furniture, and cars. OfferUp's employee numbers have also experienced rapid growth, starting at 11 employees in 2015, growing to 67 in 2015, and 218 employees in January 2018.
On March 25, 2020, OfferUp announced they were acquiring rival Letgo. led by Letgo owner OLX Group. The Letgo app in the United States was merged into the OfferUp app on August 31, 2020.
As of June 2021, OfferUp has been downloaded around 90 million times. As of September 2021, the company is said to have 20 million monthly active users and 260 employees.
Funding
In 2016 the company raised $130 million in funding, bringing the company's total funding to date to more than $221 million. Many investors include Andreessen Horowitz, Warburg Pincus, GGV Capital, Altimeter Capital, Jackson Square Ventures, Allen & Company, Tiger Global Management, T. Rowe Price, Quixotic Ventures, Alliance of Angels, Third Kind Venture Capital, Vy Capital, Coatue Management, and Max Levchin; angel investors including Serena Glover, Andrew Wright, and Rudy Gadre.
In March 2020, the company raised another $120 million through the acquisition of Letgo.
As of December 2022, total funding raised is $381 million.
Product
The OfferUp platform, offered for iOS, Android, and the web, facilitates buying and selling of used goods. The marketplace, which is primarily optimized for smartphones, features large photos of products for sale via an infinite scroll interface. For buyers, products are featured based on the geo-location closest to the buyer to help encourage face-to-face user interactions, but can also be filtered by category, price, and distance. On the seller side, products are listed immediately by uploading a photo from a user's smartphone or computer; the platform makes it easy to sort inbound inquiries by the highest bid before contacting prospective buyers to agree upon a price and meeting place.
OfferUp currently offers a “bump” feature, which allows users to move their item to the top of the queue for increased visibility at a fee. Transactions are completed using cash or through OfferUp's in-app payment platform.