OfferUp app set to rival Craigslist as premier mobile app for online buying and selling
A rival to Craigslist is fast emerging with the mobile alternative OfferUp, reaching 'unicorn' status and valued at $1bn having received another influx of funding yesterday, the company reports. The company closed a $119m funding round on Thursday led by private equity firm Warburg Pincus. They will reportedly use the money to continue to refine its online buying and selling experience. The app, according to an article in Geekwire.com, has 29 million total installs nationwide but has not gone international as yet.
The company is taking on Craigslist, the longtime leader for selling items online in local areas. OfferUp mobile apps let people search for items for sale in their immediate area and focuses on its mobile technology, which makes it easy to quickly post photos of items up for sale in a Pinterest-like presentation.
The startup, founded in 2011 by Huzar and Arean van Veelen, raised its previous huge round of funding — $73m — just 10 months ago. Yesterday's financing will help the company hire and explore launching in countries outside the U.S., the article notes.
“We’ve been growing so fast over the years, the biggest challenge has always been keeping up with our growth,” Huzar said.
OfferUp is on pace to process more than $14bn worth of transactions this year and OfferUp’s growth was highlighted by Wall St. venture capitalist Mary Meeker in her annual ‘Internet Trends’ report who found that users spend the same amount of minutes per day on the app as they do on Snapchat.
The Wall Street Journal suggested in a report this summer that OfferUp was raising money at a $1.2bn valuation.
“Our focus and our belief is that we really want to remove as much friction from the local buying and selling experience as we can and build trust into the experience. Everything we do will fall under that,” Huzar said.